Le ton beau de Marot : in praise of the music of language

Lost in an art—the art of translation. Thus, in an elegant anagram (translation = lost in an art), Pulitzer Prize-winning author and pioneering cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter hints at what led him to pen a deep personal homage to the witty sixteenth-century French poet Clément Marot.” Le ton beau de Marot ” literally means ”The sweet tone of Marot”, but to a French ear it suggests ”Le tombeau de Marot”—that is, ”The tomb of Marot”. That double entendre foreshadows the linguistic exuberance of this book, which was sparked a decade ago when Hofstadter, under the spell of an exquisite French miniature by Marot, got hooked on the challenge of recreating both its sweet message and its tight rhymes in English—jumping through two tough hoops at once.In the next few years, he not only did many of his own translations of Marot’s poem, but also enlisted friends, students, colleagues, family, noted poets, and translators—even three state-of-the-art translation programs!—to try their hand at this subtle challenge.The rich harvest is represented here by 88 wildly diverse variations on Marot’s little theme. Yet this barely scratches the surface of Le Ton beau de Marot , for small groups of these poems alternate with chapters that run all over the map of language and thought.Not merely a set of translations of one poem, Le Ton beau de Marot is an autobiographical essay, a love letter to the French language, a series of musings on life, loss, and death, a sweet bouquet of stirring poetry—but most of all, it celebrates the limitless creativity fired by a passion for the music of words.Dozens of literary themes and creations are woven into the picture, including Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin , Dante’s Inferno, Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye , Villon’s Ballades, Nabokov’s essays, Georges Perec’s La Disparition, Vikram Seth’s Golden Gate, Horace’s odes, and more.Rife with stunning form-content interplay, crammed with creative linguistic experiments yet always crystal-clear, this book is meant not only for lovers of literature, but also for people who wish to be brought into contact with current ideas about how creativity works, and who wish to see how today’s computational models of language and thought stack up next to the human mind. Le Ton beau de Marot is a sparkling, personal, and poetic exploration aimed at both the literary and the scientific world, and is sure to provoke great excitement and heated controversy among poets and translators, critics and writers, and those involved in the study of creativity and its elusive wellsprings. Lost in an artthe art of translation. Thus, in an elegant anagram (translation = lost in an art), Pulitzer Prize-winning author and pioneering cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter hints at what led him to pen a deep personal homage to the witty sixteenth-century French poet Clment Marot. Le ton beau de Marot literally means The sweet tone of Marot, but to a French ear it suggests Le tombeau de Marotthat is, The tomb of Marot. That double entendre foreshadows the linguistic exuberance of this book, which was sparked a decade ago when Hofstadter, under the spell of an exquisite French miniature by Marot, got hooked on the challenge of recreating both its sweet message and its tight rhymes in Englishjumping through two tough hoops at once. In the next few years, he not only did many of his own translations of Marot's poem, but also enlisted friends, students, colleagues, family, noted poets, and translatorseven three state-of-the-art translation programs!to try their hand at this subtle challenge. The rich harvest is represented here by 88 wildly diverse variations on Marot's little theme. Yet this barely scratches the surface of Le Ton beau de Marot , for small groups of these poems alternate with chapters that run all over the map of language and thought. Not merely a set of translations of one poem, Le Ton beau de Marot is an autobiographical essay, a love letter to the French language, a series of musings on life, loss, and death, a sweet bouquet of stirring poetrybut most of all, it celebrates the limitless creativity fired by a passion for the music of words. Dozens of literary themes and creations are woven into the picture, including Pushkin's (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27829.Eugene_Onegin) Eugene Onegin , Dante's (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15645.Inferno) Inferno , Salinger's (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5107.Catcher_in_the_Rye) Catcher in the Rye , (https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/55934.Villon_s) Villon's Ballades, (https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5152.Nabokov_s) Nabokovs essays, Georges Perec's (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3677938.La_Disparition) La Disparition , Vikram Seth's (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3073568.The_Golden_Gate) The Golden Gate , (https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3341504.Horace_s) Horace's odes, and more. Rife with stunning form-content interplay, crammed with creative linguistic experiments yet always crystal-clear, this book is meant not only for lovers of literature, but also for people who wish to be brought into contact with current ideas about how creativity works, and who wish to see how todays computational models of language and thought stack up next to the human mind. Le Ton beau de Marot is a sparkling, personal, and poetic exploration aimed at both the literary and the scientific world, and is sure to provoke great excitement and heated controversy among poets and translators, critics and writers, and those involved in the study of creativity and its elusive wellsprings. Not Merely a set of translations of one poem, Le Ton beau de Marot is an autobiographical essay, a love letter to the French language, a series of musings on life, loss, and death, a sweet bouquet of stirring poetry - but most of all, it celebrates the limitless creativity fired by a passion for the music of words. Dozens of literary themes and creations are woven into the picture, including Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, Dante's Inferno, Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, Villon's ballades, Nabokov's essays, Georges Perec's La disparition, Vikram Seth's Golden Gate. Horace's odes, and more. Rife with stunning form-content interplay, crammed with creative linguistic experiments yet always crystal-clear, this book is meant not only for lovers of literature, but also for people who wish to be brought into contact with current ideas about how creativity works, and who wish to see how today's computational models of language and thought stack up next to the human mind. Table of Contents Introduction In Joy and in Sorrow Chapter 1 The Life in Rhymes of Clement Marot Chapter 2 For the Love of a Poem from Days Long, Long Gone Chapter 3 How Jolly the Lot of an Oligoglot Chapter 4 The Romantic Vision of Thought as Pattern Chapter 5 Sparking and Sparkling, Thanks to Constraints Chapter 6 The Subtle Art of Transculturation Chapter 7 The Nimble Medium-Hopping of Evanescent Essences Chapter 8 A Novel in Verse Chapter 9 A Vile Non-verse Chapter 10 On Words and their Magical Halos Chapter 11 Halos, Analogies, Spaces, and Blends Chapter 12 On the Conundrums of Cascading Translation Chapter 13 On Shey Translators and Their Crafty, Silent Art Chapter 14 On the Untranslatable Chapter 15 On the Ununderstandable Chapter 16 AI Aims, MT Claims, Sino-room Flames Chapter 17 In Praise of the Music of Language Conclusion Le Tombeau de ma rose Notes Bibliography Permissions and Acknowledgments Index Precisely one-half a millenium ago - and I mean what I say when I say it's precise - on the twenty-third day of the next-to-last month of the year fourteen hundred fourscore-and-sixteen (a tip of my hat to the Gauls' counting scheme), in the humble French town of Cahors en Quercy, some sixty-odd miles to the north of Toulouse, was born a bright boy christened Clement Marot, the son of an auto-taught poet named Jean and a lady whose life's but a question mark: our focus thus shifts from his folks to their lad. Analyzes the various translations of an obscure French poem to show the endless complexity of humans and their languages