Another day. Another hot hot day. Shall I seek refuge with my friends? Shall I invite them to a tea party? And who is to be invited? Perhaps nothing that requires mental strain – it’s just too hot. There’s The Little Prince with its many hidden meanings. Did you, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry., mean this story for children or for older ladies like me who are approaching that moment of no return?
Let’s move on to A.A. Milne and Now We Are Six. And by chance the first poem is called Solitude. Somehow that seems to be a recurrent theme in my life now. Not that I mind. Solitude. “I have a house where I go When there’s too many people, I have a house where I go Where no one can be; I have a house where I go, Where nobody ever says “No”; Where no one says anything – so There is no one but me.” Is this a definition of solitude? Perhaps there are various kinds – wanted and unwanted. Then I find The Tao of Pooh. Strange book. Does explain Tao though. With the adventures of Pooh. It says on the back cover “While Eeyore frets…and Piglet hesitates … and Rabbit calculates … and Owl pontificates … Pooh just is.” Still they would all probably get along at a tea party – maybe with Alice and the Mad Hatter and the Dormouse present too. Talking about a dormouse – there’s that book, quite of a different type, by Umberto Eco. “Mouse or Rat?” Professor Eco you are often a bit too philosophical for me, too deep, but if I pick and choose I can find a lot to ponder. You often make me laugh when speaking of translation as negotiation and The works of Shakespeare turn into Gli impianti di Shakespeare which in turn become The plants of Shakespeare. And we go on to the difference between topo or mouse and ratto or rat in Italian. The deilights of translation. Of course that’s something I’ve been involved in for around 40 years. Now would Hamlet have thrust his sword into a curtain if he had thought it was just a mouse?
Erika Bizzarri 