[Pain and Glory (dir. Pedro Almodóvar, 2019). Click for a larger view.]
Salvador Mallo (Antonio Banderas) is using a Staedtler Noris to mark a passage in a Spanish translation of Fernando Pessoa’s Livro do Desassossego [The book of disquiet]. Here’s the English translation provided in the subtitles:
Life disgusts me as a useless medicine. It is then when I clearly feel how easy it would be to get away from this tediousness if I had the simple strength to want to really push it away.Here, in Spanish, is a commentary on the books Mallo reads in the film. And here is Google Translate’s best shot at a translation into English, one that turns “acotaciones a lápiz” into “pencil dimensions.” DeepL does a better job (“pencil marks”) if you’re willing to copy and paste the Spanish text in two parts.
And while I’m thinking about stationery, here are some more Almodóvar items: another Noris, a Parker T-Ball Jotter, and an array of notebooks.
Related reading
All OCA pencil posts (Pinboard)
comments: 4
The movie Pain and Glory and Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet are two of my favorite things, seen the movie twice and read the book five times. If you came upon my copy of The Book of Disquiet you would be dismayed at how marked up it is. I was not aware they joined up.
Of the fifteen (?) Almodóvar movies I’ve seen, Pain and Glory is now my favorite.
If you’re reading Pessoa in English, which translation do you recommend?
I've read two and much prefer the 2002,3 edition translated by Richard Zenith, to the more recent 2017 Costa translation, although that may be due more to the order and the editing than the translation. This isn't a book that I recommend to people, "an autobiography of a man who never existed," because it is so contradictory and obscure and unlike anything else. It's a book that finds its readers.
I think it may have just found one (or two). Thanks, George.
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