Scheherazade

            On Tuesday morning I finished posting my translation of “Arthur, où t'as mis le corps?” (Arthur, Where’d You Put the Corpse?) by Boris Vian. Tomorrow I’ll start learning the second Vian song on the Serge Reggiani album. I’ll have to move the audio file over from the old computer first though. 

            I memorized the second verse of “L’hymne à l’amour - Moi l’ nœud” (The Hymn to Love – I’m the Node) by Serge Gainsbourg. There’s only one verse left to learn. French lists are harder to learn than sentences because they aren’t held together by any grammatical structure causing them to flow into the memory. I should have it nailed down tomorrow though. 

            I weighed 87.5 kilos before breakfast but only had time to drink a glass of chocolate soymilk before heading out at 9:15 for Global Modernisms class. I rode through wet snow all the way and I was damp and splattered with mud by the time I got to University College. 

            Apala was in the lecture room when I got there, as she always is. She’s the earliest arriving instructor that I’ve experienced at U of T. Most only breeze in about ten minutes before class starts. 

            I asked her if she’d seen the movie “Alfie”, but she had to look it up. I told her that it had originally been a BBC radio play by Bill Naughton and I offered the theory that Alfie had inspired Tayeb Salih when he wrote the character of Mustafa. Just like Alfie, Mustafa had been an almost psychotic manipulator of women in London. Both characters behave as the conquering Other, but with the difference bring that Alfie’s otherness was one of class while Mustafa’s comes from being African. I suggested that there might also be something of the colonial other in Alfie because Naughton was Irish, even though Alfie was Cockney. I said it’s not implausible for Salih to have been influenced by Alfie because he was in London in 1962 when it aired as a radio play. 

            I asked if she’d heard yet whether we will be coming to the lecture next Tuesday with our masks off. She said she hadn’t heard, but I’d thought Ford had said the mask mandate would be ending on March 21 for all schools. I said it would be nice to be able to see everyone’s beautiful faces before the end of the course. I saw with disappointment when I looked this up later that U of T has decided to continue the mask mandate until the end of the term. 

            We spent the first half of class looking at Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih. Apala says the novel is “in medias res”, which means “in the midst of things”. It has no beginning but we don't notice because seems like it has a beginning. 

            She asks if the narrator is dependable and I say he is not because he's emotionally involved and part of the story. 

            It's been compared to The Thousand and One Arabian Nights, with Mustafa as Scheherazade. I say I can see the parallel, since Mustafa is keeping his situation in the village alive by keeping the narrator interested through feeding him bits and pieces of his life. 

            Salih wrote the novel in Arabic and didn’t translate it to English himself, though probably could have. 

            U of T Professor Sara Salih is Tayeb Salih’s daughter. I found a piece called “For My Father, Not Yet Dead” that she wrote about her father’s last moments and how her mother had to give up his body for those who insisted that it be returned to Africa. 

            For Salih the relationship between the north and south; and east and west is always one of conflict. Agonism. Binaries that are illustrated by the arguments about laws relating to religious symbols worn in Canada. Understanding conflict, accepting it and knowing how to use it without forcing a sense of sameness. Understanding differences. What near acceptance enables. The love-hate relationship. Agon is a trope of Greek theatre. Salih understands conflict in his own world and outside.

            The narrator finds Mustafa attractive. 

            We are taking it slow now and will spend more time with this novel. 

            The trope of fog. The narrator knew all was well when he saw palm trees. Narratorial intervention. Reconstructing the space of home. His knowledge that all is well will be challenged constantly. Failure of knowledge. Illusion of knowledge. Self-knowledge is a modernist expression.

            I said the narrator’s family life is idyllic and comforting. 

            Is it a projected stability? Mustafa is unanchored. Agonism is always with the other but maybe the other could be in the self. Singular modernity combined with unevenness. 

            We looked at the collectively written essay, “Combined and Uneven Development.” Alternative modernities versus uneven development. In the alternative central idea, there is central modernity. In combined and uneven development, we are all in the same reality but with uneven realities. The differences are because of capitalism. The writers of this essay are Marxist. Modernity is shaped by capitalism. 

            When the narrator of Season of Migration to the North talks of Europeans compared to Sudanese. Humanism is normally suspect. 20th century theory tries to disrupt humanism. What is world literature and can we have it? 

            We took a break. 

            William gave his presentation “On World Literature in the Context of Combined and Uneven Development.” 

            In class, I'm thinking about the bend in the Nile and its symbolism What is the symbolism of the Nile, and what is bending? Bending can be giving in but bending is also being flexible. But there is inflexibility in the narrator’s village at the bend of the Nile. The Nile travels north until this village and then bends almost ninety degrees to an east-west direction. That causes the Nile to be a divider between the north and the south. In the end the narrator tries to swim to the north side and faces death in the middle. 

            William says in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, the dark has no representation. He asks, “In what ways may world literature’s framework be consistent with the development of postcolonialism and modernism in our course readings to date?” He answers that world literature is the next horizon.

            Madeline presented on “Season of Migration to the North, Othello and Instability of Identity.” Mustafa says he is not Othello but sometimes he says he is. 

            There was a very long discussion after Madeline’s presentation on comparisons between Mustafa and Othello. Frankly I think that most of the similarities that people see between Othello and Mustafa are drawn from associative thinking. I don’t think the two characters have very much in common. Mustafa is shown from the start to fit the profile of a serial killer. Othello has no obsessive agenda motivating his behaviour. He has one weakness that Iago finds and preys upon to bring about his downfall. 

            After the discussion, we had ten minutes left to talk about the “Combined and Uneven Development” essay. 

            The opening quote is “The periphery is where the future reveals itself.” I said if that’s true then the centre must be where the past reveals itself. 

            She mentions literary theorist Pheng Cheah. 

            Another quote at the beginning of the essay is, “The way we imagine comparative literature is a mirror of how we see the world” - Moretti. 

            I told Apala that the part of the essay I liked, because I am also a translator, is on page 37 and 38 where there is a quote from Andrés Neuman's novel Traveller of the Century containing an argument in favour of translation. I asked her if a translation can be seen as comparative literature. She says that translation is the beginning of all comparative literature. 

            Wet snow was still falling on my way home and I was glad to get there and eat something warm. I weighed 87.1 kilos before lunch. 

            I weighed 87.6 kilos at 18:00. 

            I finished editing my lecture notes at around 20:00 and posted my Discussion board comment.

            I went to the old computer and copied some files onto a flash drive. I made three trips. First, I copied eight episodes of Astro Boy, then I brought a large selection of photos, but more importantly I copied my audio recordings of Boris Vian songs, so I could start learning a new one on Wednesday. Then I shut down the old computer to give it a rest since it’d been on for a few days. 

            I had two potatoes with broccoli and margarine while watching an episode of Astro Boy. 

            This story begins with Astro Boy’s robot parents receiving a crate in the mail full of dismantled robot parts. Dr. Elefun assembles them and the robot comes to life but all it says is “Aurora” repeatedly. They conclude that it must be talking about the Aurora Borealis and Astro Boy decides to take the robot to the North Pole. Mr. Pompus the detective accompanies him. In the year 2000 the North Pole is a super modern high-tech community but oddly there are penguins there. A human-like robot named Ice Box tells them to go and see Dr. Tic Tac Toe. They learn that Tic Tac Toe did create the robot they assembled and its name is Rainbow. Meanwhile a criminal gang leader named Sharkey Dirk is robbing banks and jewellery stores throughout the North Pole. He’s just robbed the Robot Bank and he and his men decide to hide out in Tic Tac Toe’s ice castle. We learn that Sharkey hates robots and has acquired a gun that can destroy them. He tries to kill Astro Boy but Astro Boy fights him off and Sharkey and his men escape. Then Dr. Tic Tac Toe reveals he has repaired a female robot named Lady Bug. She reveals that she is the mother of a little boy robot named Sharkey who she lost years ago. Astro Boy goes and fights and defeats Sharkey and his men. He brings Sharkey back to Lady Bug. Under Sharkey’s mask he is a little boy robot and he realizes he’s been reunited with his mother and promises not to be a criminal anymore.