EuroLife: Day 42

A Somewhat Scattered and Belated Entry Featuring
a Confession and a Picture of Our Bathtub

Dolores and I sometimes ask ourselves whether we can continue to write this blog so regularly and with such enthusiasm. Do we have enough time? Do we have enough to say? Will our blog become a sitcom that doesn't know when to quit, that continues to run season after season as the audience dwindles, as the plot line becomes either routine or absurd? Is there a blog equivalent of "jumping the shark?" All these questions merit serious consideration.

With regards to such questions, today's blog presents a kind of milestone, though hardly a proud one. Day forty-two passed without document or record, and this, our blog entry for day forty-two, is actually being written on the morning of day forty-three. A very long day and a liter of fine German beer are to blame. I hadn't intended to order the beer. Someone else at the the table ordered one. I was captivated by the sight of it. I had forgotten how beautiful a litter stein of beer looks with a thick head on it. I hadn't seen such a sight in years. So I ordered one.

Yesterday was long and stressful, so perhaps I had earned the beer. At six thirty last night I found myself sitting at a table in front of about sixty German academics. There is no other way to describe the experience -- I simply found myself there. Some weeks before I had agreed to offer some critical comments one a few papers at what I then assumed would be a small discussion group. As the weeks passed, it became clear that I had agreed to present a paper, in German, at a full gathering of our research group.

With regards to most things work related, I see through a glass darkly. Until last Friday, I thought yesterday's colloquium was on Thursday rather than Tuesday. This revelation lead to a busy weekend of writing. Until Monday, the day before the colloquium, I didn't know where or at what time the colloquium was to be held. Apparently my name has still not been added to the SFB email list, so I'm not privy to such information.

So there I was last night, listening to a presentation about Goethe, waiting for my turn to stand at the podium and read my paper, a comparison of Kant's concept of the person with Goethe's concept of character. My paper was supposed to sum up, respond to, and/or synthesize the two papers that preceded it, a difficult task since I know very little about Goethe and am greatly perplexed by Kant's moral philosophy. In some ways I was glad to be doing this in German. I was hoping to hide my lack of knowledge behind my linguistic deficiencies. If I didn't have anything insightful to say -- in the question and answer period, for instance -- people might assume that I simply couldn't translate my otherwise brilliant insights into German.

At first I wasn't nervous about reading my paper, though I was somewhat nervous about the question and answer period. However, as I practiced reading my paper a few hours before the talk, I realized the difficulties this might present. When reading an academic paper, modulation of tone plays a huge role. Proper modulation helps to keep people awake; it helps them to understand complex sentences that would ideally require several readings; and it adds emphasis to certain words or phrases that are crucial. When I read a paper in English, most of this occurs subconsciously. In some sense, the proper modulation of tone is already presupposed by the way the sentences are constructed. You read them as you write them, adding a word here or there to change the emphasis or rhythm.

In German all of this proved more tricky than I thought. In order to properly and clearly pronounce many German sounds, I have to over-enunciate them. This results in sentences where each word receives equal stress. The effect can be remarkable plodding.

After all this build up, I should add that, as far as I can tell, the talk went well. I received numerous compliments, and I even managed to answer the question that was directed at me.

After the talk, a number of us went to a restaurant, where the High German quickly descended into dialect, where the conversation turned to obscure (at least for me) matters of European history and geography, and where the beer took its toll on the remnants of my concentration. My impressions of the proceedings at dinner, therefore, remain somewhat vague and pleasantly atmospheric.