Thursday, May 07, 2009

Put a period on it

Hey Nick, you know what's worse than "long sentences and lots of commas"?
One sentence in the Xth fascile, for instance, contains no fewer than 255 words but only one comma -- obviously unproblematic for Kant, a genuine test of the interpretive skills of the reader, a nightmare for the translator.
From the translator's introduction to the Opus postumum.

The Opus postumum is fun because Kant literally wrote notes to himself on the draft of the book he was working on when he died. Thus, you get notes about whom he's inviting for lunch and what to do with the drunkard servant. Nothing about winding any chicks' watches, though.

2 Comments:

At 10:50 AM, May 08, 2009 , Anonymous Nick Milne said...

If there's nothing about clock-winding, I'm not interested. Sorry ;_;

Incidentally, I remember there being a sentence in Robinson Crusoe that ran for over a page in the edition I was reading at the time. This was back in the sixth grade, or so, and we all pronounced it a marvel and an atrocity.

 
At 3:42 PM, May 08, 2009 , Blogger Freiheit said...

Both of you should avoid the Gormenghast trilogy.

 

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