translating

so i forget why ever one writes blogs one cannot possibly keep up with and do whatever else one does...
as in, substitute "me" or "I " or, preferably, "we" for "one," which so much reminds me of the talk I had to give at the BEA, which is something like the booksellers exhibition association or the equivalent,
and it is because a former very smart student, David Goldfarb, asked me, and it was about editing and translating, both of which I've done something of, and my major detail was about you ("one," ("I," "we," etc.) should, might, have translate(d) the followint

Mon amour.... il
which is , said the poet, Rene Char, Elizabethan usage, and I blundered right in with "he" -- very  very bad idea
and i even tried "it" -- terrible terrible idea
so then I got to "she" which is right, but why not go around it, wiht "my beloved" as my beloved Patricia Terry did,

and which I had done, with Patricia, for Breton's famous
"Union libre", which goes

Ma femme
for which another translator ( who shall be nameless) wanted to put "my woman" or even "my wife"=
both impossible

so we put, of course "my beloved"

well, that's it for translating, and for editing, simiilar ENORMOUSLY exciting things like when editing the Harper Collins World Reader (yes, for my sins) and the publishers hired someone to dumb down all the editing work done by the something like 40 specialists I had chosen to write the prefaces: they were smart and interesting and there went all the advance pay, oh well, you'll say, hey, you had 3 terrific years editing that volume (those volumes) but they SANK because Norton figured out they had to add
the nations they had somehow left out before and try going up against Norton, and you will SINK

but on the other hand, they do distribute Pegasus Books, which so kindly did my Provencal Cooking: savoring the simple life in France, which I loved doing, and because of having such fun, I now did
my (OH CAN WE TALK ABOUT IT AGAIN??) my modern art cookbook out in September with
Reaktion Books (who did my Motherwell with Pen and Brush, and my Picasso and my Dali)
and I get to give talks all over: the Y (oct 22) and the Nat Arts Club (sometime) and in chicago at the MLA and so  on

and for which I translated lots of Cezanne and Picasso recipes, and some Colette and so on..
joy was had by, if not all, then many (lke the Joy of Cooking, which my preface refers to, how not????)