MacBeth and Prophecy

In the meantime, our Shakespeare group has started reading MacBeth.  The story should be familiar as is its central, unsolveable riddle.  The three Weird Sisters (it is unclear whether they are flesh and blood or spirits) greet MacBeth and hail him as Thane (lord) of Glamis, Thane of Cawdor, and King to be.  MacBeth is Thane of Glamis, but thinks it impossible for him to become Thane of Cawdor, much less King.  But then it turns out that the Thane of Cawdor was part of a rebellion that MacBeth just defeated and MacBeth is given his title.  Suddenly kingship is within his grasp.  He goes on to murder the King, frame his bodyguards for the murder and then kill them, attempt to kill the King's sons (although they get away), murder his best friend Banquo who is the only other witness of the prophecy, and then go wild and start killing everyone else who might threaten his power or resent his previous murders.  It adds up to quite a body count.  So the great question is, did the Weird Sisters set him off on this course, or was it his choice.

My answer has always been that the Weird Sisters awakened some latent evil impulses in MacBeth that would other wise have lain dormant, but that the evil  impulses were there to begin with or they would never have awakened them.  And the proof of it is Banquo.  The Sisters say that Banquo will be the ancestor of kings, but not a king himself.  Banquo leaves the matter to Destiny and makes no attempt to bring it about himself.  Banquo is a clear model of what one is supposed to do under the circumstances.  MacBeth from the start wavers between leaving it to Destiny and trying to give Destiny a push.  (He ends up opting for the push, obviously).

MacBeth is an example of several literary conventions about prophecy.  The prophecy always comes true, though not always in the way you expect.  Hearing the prophecy often plays a rule in bringing it about.  And the prophecy that appears to be a blessing turns out to be a curse.  (Given how being King turns out for MacBeth, it seems fair to say that it was not worth having).

But I actually mostly want to post about several words that could be used to characterize the prophecy and the things that come about beyond our power -- Luck, Chance, Fortune, Fate and Destiny.*  All of these mean things that come about beyond our power to influence, but they are not the same.  My Shakespeare discussion group has used several of these words and particularly explored what they would mean in an Elizabethan context, but I don't see how one case use them today except to mean what they are understood today.  And interestingly enough, no one else seems to be using my favored word here -- Destiny.

Chance gets used a lot, including by MacBeth.  ("If Chance will have me king, why Chance may crown me.")  I would classify Chance, along with Luck and Fortune as not only impersonal, but random and purposeless.  Things that happen by chance (or luck or fortune) do not happen for any reason or as part of a greater design, they just happen.  They are beyond our control, but they do not imply any superintending purpose, or anything that is meant to be.  Chance comes out of nowhere for no reason and that is all.  What makes Chance different from Luck or Fortune is that it is a more neutral term.  There is nothing to suggest that things that happen by chance are either good or bad, they just happen.  And while there can be bad luck or bad fortune, for the most part these terms mean something good that just happens to happen -- an unexpected windfall that comes your way for no apparent reason.  To the extent there is a difference between them, it is probably that Fortune has at least some connotation of being all-encompassing, while Luck usually means just a single event.  In addition to Chance, our group has talked a lot about Fortune, often personified as a fickle goddess.

Which means that Fortune is beginning to veer off in the direction of Fate or Destiny.  These terms, I would say, do not mean just random happenstance.  They mean things that are meant to happen, often as part of some grand design beyond our comprehension.  Neither term is neutral.  Fate means something bad that cannot be escaped.  These days it is often equated with doom or death.  Destiny, by contrast, implies something grand and glorious.  Thus it is the term I use when applied to MacBeth.  He does not see becoming King as a random event, but a part of some grand design.  That rules out Chance, Luck, or even Fortune.  He does not see it as doom, but as something glorious. That rules out Fate.  Therefore, the best description of what he sees in the prophecy is Destiny, and his great error is trying to give Destiny a push.

But, of course, one of the great conventions of prophecy is that, although it always comes true, how it comes true is not always what you think.  What seems like a blessing is often a curse.  And what MacBeth takes to be Destiny turns out to be Fate.

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*I capitalize them because they are being treated, not exactly as gods and certainly not as personal, but as things so powerful that people have little choice but to prostrate themselves before them.

Les Miserables: A Note on Translation

Let me say for starters that I like reading novels in translation -- more, in many ways, than novels in my own mother tongue.  When you read a novel in your own language, after all, there is only one version of it -- the author's.  That leaves you with only one interpretation until other people are brought in -- your own. When a novel is translated, each translation is slightly different and you can read other translators' interpretations of it and marvel and the subtle distinctions to be made no matter how it is done.

Nonetheless, some translations are better than others.  And one of the greatest mistakes one can make in translating is being too literal.  Which is a roundabout way of saying that I don't much like the translation I have.  It is apparently an updated version of a translation that came out shortly after the book was published and suffers from two main vices -- it is too literal, and at times it fails to take into account how the English language has changed since the original was written.

Some parts, I will concede, are extremely difficult, if not impossible, to translate because they express things for which there is no equivalent.  It may be highly significant whether characters address each other as "tu" (familiar) or "vous" (formal), but how do you convey it in English, which makes no such distinction?  Some translations use the first name as the equivalent; others simply use the French (or other foreign) word, and both translations are defensible.  Hugo also has a whole section on argot, the elaborate slang of a sub-culture, used as a code to keep the dominant culture from understanding.  He then has a chapter in such heavy argot that it requires extensive use of footnotes to be comprehensible, even in French.  How can one possibly translate such a thing?

But there are other parts that can be translated, but are done best if one recognizes that, although English has many words of French origin, their meaning in English is not truly the same as their meaning in French.  To take a very basic example, Jean Valjean is forever described as "straining to see through the obscurity."  Obscurity is a French word with a very similar-sounding counterpart in English that does not mean the same thing.  No one in English, in 1862 or today, ever strained to see through the obscurity.  The proper word is "darkness."  Likewise, there are frequent references to "miasmas."  I believe "miasma" was more likely to be part of an English working vocabulary in 1862, when swamp gas was thought to cause disease, but it was never a synonym for foul smell.  Thus when Jean Valjean emerges from the sewer, it sounds ridiculous to say, "The miasmas, the obscurity, the horror, were behind him."*  It is much better English to say, "The darkness, stench and horror were behind him."  Not only is obscurity something quite different in English than darkness, but I am sure that no English-speaking sewer ever contained anything as fancy as a miasma -- just a plain old Anglo-Saxon stench.  And if one sees a man traveling through the sewer with a (seemingly) dead body on his back, in French it may be "assassination in flagrante delicto" or even "assassination caught in the very act."  In English, he is a murderer caught red-handed.**  Or consider when the author (with proper Victorian delicacy) hints that Jean Valjean harbors carnal feelings for his adopted daughter without being aware of it, and qualifies, "less a sentiment than an instinct, less an instinct than an attraction."  Presumably "attraction" had less of a sexual connotation then than it does now.  But the these days the sexual connotation is there, and unless it is intended, the translator would do well to use some other expression.

But these at least are mere irritations, nothing that would cause serious confusion.  Other poor translations really can distort the meaning.  A major pet peeve of mine is the use of "livid" to mean pale.  Yes, I know, you don't have to tell me, the English word livid comes from the French word "livide," which, does, in fact, mean pale.  The original meaning of livid in English was pale.  The use of "livid" to mean uncontrollably angry is really short for "livid [pale] with rage," apparently on the belief that people who turn pale with rage are far more angry and dangerous than people who turn red in the face.***  Livid may, in fact, have meant pale in English in the 19th Century.  All of this notwithstanding, the normal use of "livid" in English these days is to mean uncontrollably angry.  It's not so bad to use livid to mean pale when the pallor is caused by sickness, injury or death.  (Though I still think there are better words to use).  But what happens when Javert tells Valjean (then mayor of a small town) that he denounced him as a convict?  "The mayor became livid."  In today's English, that is a terrible translation!  Rather than saying the mayor turned pale (which is what the original text intends), it suggests that he became uncontrollably angry, a reasonable response, especially if the accusation is false.  My updated version contains a much better translation, "The mayor's face turned ashen."

More confusing is when Jean Valjean says he served in the "galleys" or is even referred to as a "galley slave."  "Galley slave," in English has a very narrow and specific meaning.  It refers to the convict chained to an oar, relentlessly forced to row, as fast as possible, until he dies of exhaustion.  And although I have long associated the practice with ancient times, that association is apparently false.  The practice of a convict chained to an oar was not used in ancient times, but dates back only to the 16th and 17th centuries.  It ended in the 18th century when that type of ship became obsolete, but the outdated term "galerien" continued to be applied to any convict at forced labor, and the prison where such convicts were held continued to be referred to as "galleys" even though they were not ships.  So, when Victor Hugo uses the terms "galley" and "galerien," how does one convey what he (presumably) intended -- not just the denotation of a convict at forced labor, but the connotation of brutal men being brutally mistreated, people at once victims of and menaces to society?  Definitely not with the terms "galley" or "galley slave."  In English the term denotes a practice the reader must surely know was certainly no longer in use by the 19th Century and connotes only a victim, not a evil-doer.  How does one translate it when Jean Valjean tells the court that the "galleys"make the "galerien"?  Surely not (as the original Wilbour translation had it), "The galleys make the galley slave."  This over-literal approach has none of the emotional impact that Hugo must have intended.  "[T]he galleys make the convict what he is" conveys a little more, but not much.  "The jail makes the jailbird," says another translator, attempting to use more familiar and emotionally resonant terms, while keeping the similarity in sound between the prison and the prisoner.  But still it lacks punch.  My favorite translation that I have seen so far has been a simple and unpoetic, "The prison makes the convict."  It may not have the likeness in words, but it conveys well that brutality brutalizes, that people who are menaces to society learned their craft in prison.

Convicts shown in a scene from Les Mis.

Another translation is possible.  When Valjean confesses his past to his son-in-law, one translation is "I was in the galleys."  Another is "I was on a chain gang."  Well, now, to an American, a chain gang certainly denotes convicts at forced labor, and in chains.  It does a reasonably good job of connoting the mixture of pity and revulsion I think Hugo wanted to convey -- men who are both menaces to society and victims of it.  It also comes with a host of other connotations -- a certain historical and cultural context, a certain type of forced labor (usually chipping rocks or building roads or railroads, not doing loading or maintenance on a ship, as Valjean apparently did), and even a certain type of uniform.  So I will acknowledge that a French galley is not precisely the same as an American chain gang.  But "chain gang" is probably a closer approximation for convicts at forced labor (and in chains) than any other expression we have.  So it will do as a reasonable approximation.

American chain gang

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*My apologies that the links I offer do not generally match the quotes used.  The links are to an updated version of a 1879 translation by Isabel Hapgood.  My quotes are from the printed version in my possession, an update of a 1863 translation by C.E. Wilbour, and sometimes from the original Wilbour translation.
**This is a long-standing pet peeve of mine in Spanish as well.  The Spanish words "asesino" and "asesinato" are equivalents of the English "murderer" and "murder," not "assassin" and "assassination."  The difference is not just that assassination refers to a very narrow and specific type of murder in English -- the political killing of someone in high office -- but that it lacks the emotional punch of a simple "murder."
***I don't know.  I personally have never seen anyone turn pale with rage.

Dog Whistles and Plausible Deniability

New category; The Joy of Lex, in which I examine words, language and how they are used.

In this post, I mean to talk about two different devices used in political speech -- the dog whistle, and plausible deniability.  These are often confused because they are both forms of double meaning.  But they use of double meaning differently.

A dog whistle is so-called because dogs have a different range of hearing than humans.  In particular, they can hear higher frequencies, so that actual, literal dog whistles exist that dogs can hear but humans cannot.  A dog whistle statement, then, is one that has one meaning to the general public and another, covert, meaning that only a small number of insiders recognize. The goal is to convey a hidden message to a select group of listeners that the general and journalistic public miss.

Plausible deniability, on the other hand, is a statement with two readily apparent meanings, one offensive and one inoffensive.  When a politician makes such a statement, both meanings are clear, not just to insiders, but to the general and journalistic public as well.  Indeed, the whole point of plausible deniability is to be called out for the offensive meaning and then whine that one is being unfairly accused by the liberal media.

One point here, then, is that dog whistles are generally not about race.  Indeed, our society has become so absurdly hypersensitive about race that racial dog whistles are almost impossible because almost anything can be said to have a veiled racial meaning.  I have even heard questions about whether Obama is too skinny to be President interpreted as a coded racial appeal. 

So if you can't get even to most covert racial comment past the public, what is a genuine dog whistle?  When George W. Bush criticized Dred Scott as an example of judicial activism, that was a true dog whistle.  The right-to-life crowd immediately understood that he was comparing abortion to slavery.  Outsiders were simply baffled.  Paul Ryan may have pulled off a brilliant dog whistle in his convention speech, when he said, "[T]he greatest of all responsibilities, is that of the strong to protect the weak. The truest measure of any society is how it treats those who cannot defend or care for themselves."  The face value meaning of that statement, the way it is most likely to be interpreted by the general and journalistic public is as a promise not to balance the budget on the backs of the poor, even though his budget plan proposes to do just that.*  But it has been suggested (alas, can't find the link) that this is actually a dog whistle, having nothing to do with the poor or social spending, but as a call to protect the unborn from abortion.  If so, then THAT is a highly successful dog whistle.

By contrast, an example of plausible deniability is Mitt Romney's claim that Obama gutted welfare-to-work requirements.  The racial subtext is clear.  But let's face it.  The main point of making such a comment is to make the racial subtext clear. Google "racist dog whistle."  Most of the links are of conservative sites complaining about the unfair accusations.  Some complaints are well-founded (See "Obama too skinny" above).  But with comments like one about gutting the welfare-to-work requirement, it is hard to see them as anything but attempts to provoke an accusation of racism in order to be offended by it.  And that is not, by any reasonable standard, a dog whistle.

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*Well, to make the poor bear the brunt of spending cuts, anyhow.  No doubt the tax cuts, defense increases, and exemption of Social Security and Medicare will prevent the budget from actually balancing.