TITULAR MISCHIEF

The other day I read about the Williamstown Theater Festival presenting Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, which title is used again and again even though it is wrong. I have waged a campaign, to no apparent avail, on behalf of the correct A Doll House. Not calling the play that is a serious mistake.

Ibsen’s point is that the husband, Torvald, has turned his wife, Nora, into a doll—not a full-fledged human being, but a plaything for himself. Their house is like that still popular toy: a miniature dwelling with a doll as its miniature mistress.

Now if you call the play A Doll’s House, you make Nora the proprietress, in command, which is precisely what Torvald and the mores of that time would not allow. The house is Torvald’s, the husband and master’s, and the play might accordingly be called A Doll Owner’s House. Ibsen’s true meaning is conveyed only by A Doll House, without the apostrophe and the final S, i.e., the possessive case. Other languages have translated it correctly. Thus in German it is Ein Puppenheim, a doll house, rather than Heim einer Puppe, a doll’s house.

This somehow led to speculation about title mistranslation and manipulation in general, most significantly of the titles of foreign films, a particularly nefarious practice. They are the ones with which the crassest liberties are taken, in most cases to lure people in under falsely provocative pretenses.

Ingmar Bergman alone has been the victim of numerous mistitlings. Take the film that first brought me to Bergman, but almost deterred me by its American title, The Naked Night, which doesn’t even make proper sense. Still, it made me think that it was yet another of those Swedish sex movies in which lovers go skinny dipping and the camera lingers pruriently on the heroine’s naked body.

Of course the film was nothing of the sort, although it does contain a very different instance of nude bathing, appalling rather than alluring. The actual Swedish title is The Clown’s Evening, which has several meanings, not least the twilight or downfall of the circus artiste, but perhaps also of other than circus people, stultified in their private lives. The British title, Sawdust and Tinsel, is nearer the mark, because there is in the film a bitter conflict between a man of the circus and a man of the theater.

Consider now the retitling of The Face as The Magician. True, the protagonist is a magician of sorts, but what is more important is that he is in disguise, as is his lovely wife, for safety’s sake disguised as a male youth. But their true faces are revealed, making a vast difference, and implying that all art is a kind of disguise, salutary in some ways, but not the bare truth. The Magician may sell better than The Face, but it derails the viewer’s attention.

Similarly, The Communicants was retitled as Winter Light. Yes, it does take place in a snow-bleached Northern winter, but the film is really about communion with the Divine and communication, or lack thereof, among humans. They try to communicate and commune, but with only mixed results. There are wintry hearts in the story, but light, if any, comes only in a very ambivalent ending. The title change reflects the striving to avoid narrowly Christian implications, but is its vagueness any kind of real gain?

Much more objectionable is the turning of the Swedish for A Passion into The Passion of Anna. That could suggest a woman in heat, whereas the film deals with the very different passions of the four principal characters, inviting also thoughts of Christ’s passion. Altogether it evokes the conflicted and conflicting  passions of all humanity, which the changed title cravenly bypasses.

To be sure, Bergman is not the only one to suffer from mistitling. Take Ermanno Olmi’s wonderful Il posto (the job), about two young persons’ desperate need to find gainful employment. In English, it became The Sound of Trumpets, from an almost throwaway line in the dialogue, but having nothing to do with the plot. It has since reverted to its original Italian title, yet again eschewing simple literal translation. Why could it at no time become The Job?

This calls attention to a more recent trend, the retaining of the untranslated original title, usually Italian, as in La Dolce Vita, L’Avventura. I Vitelloni, La Notte and many others, presumably on the assumption that people could figure out the meaning while also basking in the newness, the exoticism of the foreign title.

At other times there was literal translation, albeit foreshortened. Thus what was in the Italian The Nights of Cabiria became a mere Cabiria, perhaps gambling on the suggestiveness of that mysterious foreign word. On the other hand, I can understand the decimation of Lina Wertmuller’s yard-long titles. So it is that Swept Away by an Unusual destiny in the Blue Sea of August became the terse Swept Away. Even more frugally, Film of Love and Anarchy, or At Ten o’Clock This Morning at the Via dei Fiori in a Well-known Brothel was preshrunk into Love and Anarchy, superb films regardless of titular tribulations. But was even the witty Everything Orderly But Nothing Works needful of condensation into All Screwed Up, conceivably because of a far-fetched suggestion of screwing?

However, there are also cases where a literal translation was retained, but not making much sense in English. So with Truffaut’s Les 400 Coups, where in French this means painting the town red, but the English of The 400 Blows means nothing at all. Then there are the tiny, inconspicuous changes, as with that Ibsen play, which nevertheless are misleading. Why would DeSica’s Bicycle Thieves become The Bicycle Thief, when there are at least two characters to whom the title refers? I can see why Rossellini’s Paisa (homeland) was changed to Paisan (homeboy), because the latter had some resonance even for Americanized Italians. But the film is not about a single person; it is about Italy under German occupation.

I could go on and on, but what’s the use of griping? Why in a dishonest world should titling be an exception? But flagrant error, as in Doll’s for Doll, should not be tolerated and prevail. I was once invited to a Midwestern production of the Ibsen play with a seductive note about how my title correction was scrupulously observed. Even so, I didn’t attend. There are matters even more important than fiddling with titles.

ON RELIGION

Although I am an atheist, I do not dismiss religion; in fact. I envy a bit those who have it. But I don’t understand it; perhaps someone can provide me with a credible explanation.

I can see where people in the Middle Ages believed. But today? We have explored the universe and found no Paradise in it. It is said that space is infinite, and somewhere in it God may be ensconced. But the earth is far from infinite, and we can now affirm that it houses no Hell in its bowels. And even if it were a hollow sphere, how could there be room in it for all the baddies since the beginning of time?

Well, you might say we need not take everything in the Bible literally. But what would a nonliteral afterlife be like? And can you be selectively Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or whatever? Can you partly believe in the multiplication table? Or in astrology? Can you be partly Vegan or halfway superstitious? Can you be semi-agnostic? Or half-humble?

I believe you must either swallow religion whole or you are not religious. So then how can persons with first-rate intellects be believers? Like, for example, T. S. Eliot.

Of course, intellectuals may seek recourse in Tertullian’s famous credo quia absurdum—I believe because it is absurd, I take faith on faith. But why should religion be exempt from logic? Falling in love is. True, but there, palpably, is the love object. Even the troubadour Jaufre Rudel, who fell in love with the unseen Countess of Tripoli, did so on beholding her picture.

I find incomprehensible, for instance, the belief of some perfectly intelligent people that they will be reunited in Heaven with a predeceased spouse. What of the man twice widowed and thrice happily married? Will he become polygamous in Heaven, even though he was perfectly monogamous on earth? And how will the three wives feel about it? Yet how many Christians believe such a thing, even though Holy Writ tells them that in Heaven no marriage is.

Still, I can sympathize with believers. It is human to be afraid of death, or unreconciled to it, and so invent a remedy: the afterlife, the soul’s immortality, its basking in supraterrestrial bliss. But can one perceive the soul as detachable from the body? And, by the way, when does the good Christian go to Heaven? Upon his demise or at Christ’s second coming? Both are advocated. Furthermore, what about those cremated by the family, hacked to death by a madman, or blown to smithereens by some fanatic?

What I have especial difficulty with is uniforms, the regimentation that rejects individualism. Must every Jewish man wear a skullcap, even if, for children, it can be motley rather than black? Must there be prescribed hair- or head coverings? Must a woman’s whole body be hidden from view in a standardized way? I can see wearing an artful cross on a necklace, but even that may be ostentation, zealotry, or proselytizing.

There is also the matter of ritual. I see no pressing need for circumcision, sitting shiva, weekend confinement and other restrictions. Or total immersion. To say nothing of practices such as human sacrifice, suttee, footbinding.

And then there is churchgoing at specified hours. This might seem harmless, except that it involves sermons by preachers who are not in the class of John Donne and genuflections and uncomfortable pews. But probably the most problematic thing about religion is that it breeds intolerance toward noncoreligionists (though it denies any such thing.) In the past, this produced persecution and burning at the stake, but there is unpleasantness even in the present. Is anti-Semitism dead? Far from it. And what about Muslim suicide bombers? Is there no developing anti-Islamism?

One of the arguments for religion is that it keeps the underprivileged from murdering the privileged, that it stops crime from running riot. I am not sure to what extent that still prevails. If it does prevent criminality, it is as good as the system of law, with which no one in his right mind would want to do away.

But what about its interference with our rights? To consensual sex, homosexuality, same-sex marriage, freely available contraceptives and, above all, abortion. The chances of forced parenthood benefiting an unwanted child are slim, and even adoption by the right people is an iffy proposition. Whatever doesn’t harm other people, not mere embryos, should be allowed.

That religion creates a certain clubbiness—favoring the coreligionists—is unavoidable and would, without religion, take other forms. As indeed it does, on the basis of the color of your skin, the shape of your eyes, or even your IQ.

THE LONG AND SHORT OF IT

I have now caught the Diana Paulus production of the musical Hair for the third time, having seen it in Central Park and again on Broadway before now. This is the National Company, which has been touring and, after a two-month stint on Broadway, will resume the tour.

Galt MacDermot’s 1967 musical, with book and lyrics by Gerome Ragni and James Rado has two claims to fame: brief nudity and the introduction of rock to Broadway.  (I am not sure of the proper order of importance.) It is an anthem to the youth- and counterculture of the late 1960s, with its celebration of pacifism, free love, drug consumption, and resistance to the draft as a protest against militarism and the Vietnam War.

And something else: a tribute to the eponymous hair. The characters, East Village types, sport long hair, the hallmark of the then new bohemianism. There are two epithets for hairiness: hirsute, if it’s a mere matter of its presence; hispid, referring to its bristliness. And then there is something more specific that had me thinking about hair these days: newspaper pictures of Rebekah Brooks, editor of London’s News of the World, which was shut down by its owner Rupert Murdoch for having caused a major scandal.

Brooks claims that she knew nothing of the staff’s hacking into the private lives of royalty, assassination victims’ families, a murdered 13-year-old girl’s voice mail, or about hiring shady private eyes for prying and making highly illegal financial deals with the police. She has refused manifest culpability by relying not only on the passionate support of Rupert Murdoch, but also on rather close connections to Prime Minister David Cameron. The case is under investigation, though previous investigations yielded largely nothing; the more recent ones only the arrest of a couple of individuals. Ms. Brooks, despite calls for her resignation from many directions, defies them and brazenly stays on.

 But what about hair? Ms. Brooks wears her enormous red and curly tresses cascading in bold disarray, sufficient to shelter a couple of rat’s nests. Supremely unappetizing, she appears in newspaper photographs looking like the leader of some gypsy tribe or an especially arrogant teenager.

Well, what about long hair? We know that it was the fashion for men and women in ages past, though the women often tamed it in a variety of hairdos, and the men stopped it at shoulder length. As we see it in paintings and early photographs, we respond to it diversely. On women, if long and neat, it is sexy and appealing. But only up to a certain age. When the wearer is well into middle age—though opinions clearly differ about when that sets in—it looks delusional and unseemly.

Why? Because women’s hair has always been a sexual  lure, perfectly respectable but eminently erotic. And somehow—after 40, 45, 50 or whatnot—a woman is supposed to desist from sexual provocation. The exact age limit was never codified, and even its intimations varied from era to era, but long white hair on a crone may always have smelled of witchcraft.

Hair, perhaps because of its role at the pubes, has tended to be viewed as arousing. On account of its aphrodisiac quality, many European woman do not shave their armpits. Paradoxically, however, other women have been shaving off their pubic hair, presumably to appear more naked, more enticing. Such depilation may look unnatural, but is what passes for natural necessarily desirable? Nothing is more natural than an uncombed head of hair, or a loosely flowing hairdo. Yet bear in mind that Casey Anthony, while on trial for murder, kept her hair demurely upswept. But the moment she was found innocent (unjustly, as many of us think), down came her hair freely. Was it resumption of her good-time-girl status?

And what about men? I know women who find long male hair hugely attractive, indeed seductive. Others don’t. It seems to me that the more silky, undulant, and flowing it is, the more it looks feminine and an abrogation of masculinity. On the other hand, it does call attention to itself, and being noticed is the beginning of any kind of relationship, amorous or not.

There is no denying either that running one’s hand through a loved person’s hair is pleasurable. It doesn’t even have to be a lover; perhaps just a child, not even necessarily one’s own. Still, I believe that every youngster resents parental ruffling of his hair. It is a form of playfulness when the recipient doesn’t feel particularly playful. In a sexual situation, however, it is always welcome.

Women’s long hair, at any rate, has earned literary, indeed legendary, tributes. Think Rapunzel or Melisande or Lady Godiva. Think of the title of one of Debussy’s most popular piano pieces, “The Girl With the Flaxen Hair.” Think of O. Henry’s charming story, “The Gift of the Magi.” Recall that when Rossetti buried his love poems with his beloved young wife, it is with her long red hair that he intertwined the manuscript. (Never mind that later he dug it up.)

That Muslim women are supposed to cover their hair attests to its perceived erotic role in that culture; shaving the heads of Frenchwomen who cohabited with Nazis during World War Two testifies to hair’s all-important allure. I am guessing that the self-induced baldness of so many young blacks has to do with their viewing its crinkliness as inferior to the smooth Caucasian kind. Even removed, hair asserts its importance by its very absence. Think if you will of Samson.

Hair is prominent in poetry and song. I cite only two notable examples, Alexander Pope’s “Fair tresses man’s imperial race ensnare,/ And beauty draws us with a single hair”; and Stephen Foster’s “I dream of Jeanie with the  light brown hair,/ Floating, like a vapor, on the soft summer air.” And let’s not even go into its eulogy on television by Rogaine and the likes.

Finally, hair embodies the relativity of all things human. A copious head of hair on a woman is excellent; a hairy chest on a man is questionable; hairy legs on either sex are anathematized. And what of a beard, a mustache, or bushy eyebrows? How desirable are they? Why is hair under the nose considered better than above it?

Hair, I say, is the great mystery, the carrier of glory and ignominy, an object of affection and revulsion, an instrument of romance and rebellion. No wonder that a show called Hair, if I may put it so, keeps cropping up.

JANACEK’S 'VIXEN'

Is there any doubt left that Leos Janacek (1854-1928), though born into the middle of the 19th century, was arguably the first truly modern composer, and a great one to boot. He composed superbly in every conceivable genre.

Janacek’s later music far surpasses the earlier, and if he had not died prematurely at age 74, when he was on a roll, from consequences of his unrequited love for an unworthy woman, who knows what further masterpieces he might have written. But the woman’s daughter was lost in the woods, and Janacek gallantly searching for her caught a chill that led to a fatal pneumonia.

“The Cunning Little Vixen” of 1922-23, premiered in 1924, was the seventh of Janacek’s nine operas, known in Czech as “The Adventures of Vixen Sharpears.” It is  based on a short novel by the journalist Rudolf Tesnohlidek, whose handwriting was hard to read, so that the typesetter mistook sharp feet for sharp ears, a fortuitous improvement.

It was Tesnohlidek’s editor on The People’s Paper who made the young pessimist write a text to some 200 drawings by the optimistic artist Stanislav Lolek, a text its author thought little of, but which nevertheless came out in book form the following year. (An excellent English translation, illustrated by Maurice Sendak, is heartily recommended.)  It seems to have been the housekeeper who brought the Vixen to the master’s attention.

Janacek’s libretto from the novel is much less satirical but more poignant. The animals of the forest and barnyard talk among themselves and understand human speech, but there is no communication between man and beast. This despite the animals’ very human behavior.

The aging Forester captures young Sharpears and she grows up in his yard. She defies the wife’s disapproval and the grandson’s teasing, has a friendship with the dog, and manages to kill the rooster and hens and feast on them. She is punitively tethered, but bites through the rope and escapes into the forest. Various animals, birds and insects live there, and provide commentary on or counterpoint to the main action.

The clever Vixen manages to maneuver the infuriated Badger out of his den, which she takes over. A male fox, Goldenmane, courts and wins her. Married by the Woodpecker, they start a family of many little foxes.  The poultry dealer and poacher Harasta shoots the foolhardy Vixen dead. When the Forester rests at his favorite spot, he mistakes one of the Vixen’s daughters for her mother. Similarly the Frog whom he catches proves the grandson of one he caught long ago. Time has moved on and wrought its changes; the Forester, nostalgically reminiscing, catches the forest’s autumnal mood, shared no doubt by Janacek, now 70.

Along with the largely animal story line there is also the human one. This takes place chiefly at Pasek’s inn, where the Forester and his cronies, The Parson and the Schoolmaster, drink beer and play cards. It emerges that the Forester is not overeager to go home to his formidable wife; that the Parson in his youth had a misadventure with a girl that soured him on women forever; and that the Schoolmaster was in love with a village girl, Terynka, who ended up marrying Harasta. The Forester recalls the amorous beginning of his marriage, its passion now spent. The only fully happy relationship is that of Sharpears and Goldenmane.

In the recent New York Philharmonic version of the opera, the orchestra and its conductor, Alan Gilbert, did solid work. During passages when there was only music all was well. But the theatrics, costumed and directed by Doug Fitch, and choreographed by Karole Armitage, were a less felicitous matter.

There is, to be sure, a problem for theater having to share space with a very large orchestra. Still, Fitch using every kind of gimmickry, made good with last year’s similar offering, Ligeti’s “Le grand Macabre.” But that was a postmodern clown show with no claim on the emotions. Janacek’s delicate and profound work does not take kindly to Fitch’s shenanigans.

Fitch turned the “Vixen” into a kind of kiddy show, largely defanged and cutesy. Thus whereas Janacek’s libretto contains one sunflower, Fitch had some 35 in back of the orchestra, turning a forest into a flower patch. Up front, three or four trees were represented by transparencies suggesting nothing much.

Other things, too, suffered in the relatively narrow space in front of the orchestra, even supplemented by a runway that zigzagged into the front rows of Avery Fisher Hall. With only one level, the Badger’s burrow was a kind of hut. The hens were costumed as lower-class housewives with rubber gloves for crests (the costumes were mostly made of mundane objects transformed with mixed results ), the rooster was a soprano with heavily padded shirtfront. These fowls did not get killed by the Vixen, presumably so as not to alienate children and benighted adults.

The smaller animals were played, as the composer wished, mostly by children, who sang sweetly and executed the simplistic Armitage choreography adequately. Instead of a major ballet number for the Dragonfly, Armitage had one for what was meant to be Terynka (who could guess it?), looking much too sophisticated and even kneeling to commune with the tethered vixen.

The scenery could not deal with Pasek’s inn, reduced to a small, solitary counter plunked down in the middle of nowhere. So the alehouse atmosphere was lacking.

The singing was respectable throughout, with Isabel Bayrakdarian a delightful vixen, vocally, visually and histrionically. She has sung the part in her native Canada in Czech, and found it both onerous and inapposite to sing it in English, given the necessary changes and Janacek’s vaunted musical approximation of Czech speech and animal sounds. Goldenmane, meant to be another soprano, was sung nicely by the mezzo Marie Lenormand. Joshua Bloom’s baritone did handsomely by Harasta; Keith Jameson and Wilbur Pauley satisfied as Schoolmaster and Parson, respectively. As the Forester, the respected bass Alan Opie sang opulently and feelingfully. The closing scene for him and the new generation of beasties was properly moving. Here the pathos of aging and death expectancy is beautifully subsumed by the sense of nature’s renewal, which the music conveyed through fearless motivic iteration.

Sadness and ecstasy were both here, as in most Janacek endings, and what cavils one had with the production were erased through the composer’s genius.

TENNIS, ANYONE?

This is a blog post about tennis. Please bear with me on the somewhat circuitous path leading to it.

The aristocratic German nymphomaniac, Countess Franaziska von Reventlow, has in her charming memoirs a chapter entitled “The Era of Pauls.” (It sounds better in German, “Das Zeitalter der Paule”—kindly excuse the computer’s lamentable lack of umlauts.) In the early twentieth century, Schwabing, the bohemian suburb of Munich, was the German equivalent of swinging Paris and Vienna, and the Countess made full use of it, notably during one phase when all her lovers were named Paul.

I have never had simultaneous namesakes in my romantic life, but, distributed over a good many years, Patricias have been of importance to me. Before the definitive, supreme Patricia—my amazing, beloved wife—there was the film and TV professor Patricia Mellencamp, and, still earlier, the radio interviewer Patricia Marx (now Ellsberg), with whom I traveled through Europe.

In those days, I was better known as a film critic, and in Stockholm we socialized with, among others, the distinguished film director Bo Widerberg, best known hereabouts for Elvira Madigan, a fine film but not, in my view, his best. Bo invited Patricia and me to his studio, where he regaled us with bits of his forthcoming feature on the Movieola. While we were watching, he was summoned to the telephone, and, in the cat’s absence, the mice had fun.

So after some fooling around, Pat smuggled in a text reading Klippning (editing) by Patricia Marx och (and) John Simon, which amused the returning Widerberg no end. He also invited us to the premiere of his new documentary, The White Sport, for good or bad never released in this country to my knowledge.

Why “the white sport”? Well, aesthetically, because in those days tennis was played, exclusively and blessedly, only in white; but also, socially, because, exclusively and unjustly, only persons of white skin were able to participate. So the politically liberal Widerberg used the documentary not only as a tribute to the beauties of tennis, but also as a passionate denunciation of its racism. I don’t know what The White Sport did for my politics (if, indeed, I have any), but it certainly turned me into an ardent tennis fan. So here we are at my present topic.

I am only a selective sports fan, and then chiefly if the sport is televised. I do watch the Olympics, both the summer and winter variety, major figure skating events, and soccer when it is World Cup time. But tennis is my true love, albeit only at grand slam time on TV. Right now I am gearing up for serious Wimbledon watching. (Need I tell you how upset I get when bunglers pronounce it as “Wimbleton”?)

Stimulating as the three esses—soccer, skating and skiing—can be, tennis is the only truly beautiful sport that also requires brainwork. Beautiful even nowadays, when tennis dress evokes the Mardi Gras or  trunk dress-up parties. Well, perhaps a little humor is welcome; even the ancient Greeks had, along with their dramas, satir plays. Though happily no longer played in long pants by the men,  tennis still, to my eyes, looks best in white, maybe with a touch of added color as in, for instance, Novak Djokovic’s shirts.

The aesthetics of tennis, however, are much more than dress deep. Still, clothes, though they do not make the man and woman in tennis, are a part of the show.  Thus the barnstorming gladrags of the Williams sisters do not enhance their appearance, but the stylish outfits of tall and comely Maria Sharapova contribute to her appeal. Maria does, nevertheless, present a problem.

It all began with Monika Seles, who seems to have invented the grunt. A totally unnecessary and unbecoming feature of the game of many female and even some male players, it may help them release energy, or so at least they believe. Still, quite a few top players are perfectly able to dispense with this often earsplitting and tasteless addendum. Perhaps the worst offender in this respect is Francesca Schiavone, although she would be unappealing enough even without it.  Tennis, to be sure, is not meant to be a beauty pageant, but good looks, in men as well as women players, do not hurt, especially when you consider that far too many tennis women look like unsightly men in drag.

Martina Hingis used to be the one to watch, not only for physical beauty but also for elegance of play. These days there is rather too much hitting the ball hard from the baseline, and not enough stylish finesse. Of course the truly great players, male or female, combine powerful baseline drive with comeliness of movement and subtle placement of the ball. Still, such stylish play as, for example, serve and volley, is comparatively rare nowadays, although chip and charge, its somewhat poorer cousin, persists. Luckily, there are a few all-round players who can do everything and then some.

Here I instance Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic at their best, who amaze us with, among other things, their  spectacular defensive play, the ability not only to return seemingly unreturnable shots but even score winners off them. Yet there is something beyond either great defensive or attacking play, beyond tactics and strategy, something I would call natural grace.

Roger’s movements are nearly balletic, and I am not referring to acrobatics such as hitting a ball between the legs with back to the net, and even winning a point with it. I mean sheer beauty: litheness, easefulness, elasticity, poise—well, yes, grace. Djokovic, a witty Serb, has this too in his—dare I say it?—a somehow witty way; rubbery, perhaps, rather than silken. There is something wonderfully tongue-in-cheek about the way he goes successfully after an apparently unreturnable shot. Or the way he mounts a sequence of shots like repartee from a great comic actor.

But then there is Rafael Nadal,  He, too, has an all-around game. He can return serve like a brick wall, retrieve fantastic shots like a golden retriever, place winners into corners or on the lines, serve aces as almost any of the major servers champion, and  has been for some time number one in the world. Yet I have scant use for this Spaniard. On the court at least he is without charm, though off court, I gather, he can be quite appealing. His playing, however, is robotic, charmless, humorless, hard-bitten, almost bestial.

Among the women, there are quite a few highly competent players, but not, as of now, charmers among the winners.  Ana Ivanovic had the lovable winner quality for a moment, then promptly lost it. Sharapova is too haughty. For Wozniacki, Clijsters, and Kuznetsova, epithets must be drawn from the tubbier reaches of the animal kingdom; the pleasanter-looking Dementieva and even Bartoli, are unfortunately too unreliable players.

Most attractive and promising these days is the lovely German, Julia Goerges, now ranked sixteenth or seventeenth, but who, I hope, is climbing higher. She has already beaten all the graceless dynamos at least once or twice, and her blog postings, especially in German, are perfectly charming. I am rooting for her to make it to the top, although she may be just a bit too delicately feminine to steadily overpower the cows.

At any rate, tennis is no longer the racially white sport. We have Monfils and Tsonga among the men, and , of course, the Williams sisters, great, charmless power hitters, sort of female Nadals. Althea Gibson was a far more appealing player, as were Chandra Rubin, Zina Garrison and, somewhat differently, Yvonne Goolagong.. Among men, Arthur Ashe was a prince, with and without a racket.

Elegance, ultimately, is what I look for, and wearing white, for me, contributes to it. The only time I published anything about tennis was a profile of Mary Pierce for Vogue.  I yearned to do Hingis, but, alas, John Heilpern had beaten me to it. So I was given Pierce, a good player, but an erratic and, I am afraid, uncharismatic one. I found her French mother rather more interesting. But, at any rate, Pierce favored white; my profile began with “White is Mary Pierce’s favorite color,” a sentence Pierce found to her liking.

There is no getting around it: tennis is the most elegant sport, with the possible exception of fencing, which I took up during my Harvard days, only to have it be discontinued for austerity reasons during World War Two.  Figure skating, though lovely, lacks the head-to-head competitiveness, what with winners determined by several often chauvinist judges and questionable scoring. So now good-bye computer and hello TV screen; Wimbledon is calling, more alluringly than the estimable Bali Hai ever did.

TYPOS AND MISQUOTATIONS

I read on the Internet that Anthony Weiner’s (or Whiner’s) troubles stem from a typo he committed on Tweeter: @ instead of D, turning a private misdemeanor into a public offense. Typos are pesky things, and must have caused quite some trouble in the history of publishing—someday surely a bestseller on this subject will cash in handsomely.

Yet even if typos don’t ruin someone’s marriage and political career, they can give a fastidious writer a nasty headache. I have had my share of inflicted typos, although some are harmless enough and even a good source of laughter.

For example: I wrote in my review of High in my column in The Westchester Guardian that Kathleen Turner, as a nun in mufti, wore a pants suit, which came out in print as “ants suit.” This had me wondering what an ants suit might be: An outfit impregnated with an insect repellent to protect you in case you stepped on an ant hill? A technological wonder that could transmute ants into an inexpensive textile suitable for suits?

In another recent review—of War Horse—I compared the pleasure of catching the show to receiving my first major literary award. That became my “fist award.” Now this might make sense if I were a pugilist or could put my fists to an unusual type of intercourse, but since neither applied, this fist caused me quite a fit.

Still, typos, I repeat, are of two kinds. The innocent errors that could not have been committed by the writer, and the culpable ones, that could mistakenly be chalked up to the author. That kind truly hurts.

Moreover, it hurts not only the writer, but also the critic reviewing the book or article in which it occurs, unable to determine whether the guilty party was the author or the typesetter, assuming that such a creature still exists and hasn’t been supplanted by a robot.

It is interesting to note that some genuine mistakes can escape censure by not even looking like typos. For example, a “who” for a “whom” has become so firmly lodged in writing as well as parlance that even a strict traditionalist might forgo making an issue of it. But a “whom” for a “who”—an accusative where a simple nominative is called for—is gross and leaves one disgruntled. Yet even the venerable New York Times abounds in this indisputable authorial error, now that it has seen fit to dispense with the luxury of a resident grammarian along with some other niceties.

Similarly, when I read on the Internet the article entitled “The Twitter Typo That Exposed Anthony Weiner,” I feel justified in blaming its author for referring to a hacker “whom [sic] Weiner claimed had cracked his account.” This whom-for-who fallacy has become so popular that it threatens the supremacy of the misplaced nominative in things like “Thank you for inviting Jane and I to your wonderful party.” That one, impossible to gloss over as a typo and ubiquitous, may well become—disastrously—acceptable colloquial English.

I wish I could recall offhand an example of the rare but not unheard-of occurrence of a felicitous typo, which produces a merry verbal gaffe. Something like an elephant that held a midget in his trunk, or the famous student boner,  ‘The Templar asked Rebecca to become his mistress. The brave girl reclined to do so.”

Who knows? A lucky typo may even become accepted usage, say, “ants suit” for an ill-fitting garment that causes skin irritation. But enough about typos and on to their cousin, the misquotation. I am the victim of a particularly irritating one. In a 1971 review of a play called Abelard and Heloise, I wrote, “Diana Rigg, the Heloise, is built, alas, like a brick basilica with inadequate flying buttresses.” This in reference to a nude scene revealing her as somewhat deficient in the chest department.

To be sure, a basilica, unlike a cathedral, does not have flying buttresses; still, liking the alliteration of “brick basilica,” I took this architectural liberty.  Now it seems that someone unfamiliar with basilicas misquoted this as a “brick mausoleum,” in which faulty form it has become just about my only contribution to various anthologies of quotations, as well as to Miss Rigg’s own charming memoir, No Turn Unstoned.  This is unfortunate, because it would suggest some connection between the gifted actress and death, which I never intended, but which makes my sally worse than it was, and destined to haunt me unto my grave—no mausoleum either.

MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY?

I just read about the arrest of Ratko Mladic, the Serbian ethnic cleanser, and my thoughts went back to Yugoslavia, the lost country of my childhood. Of course, everyone’s childhood is a sort of lost country, but Yugoslavia literally is: it no longer exists. Serbia, however, exists, as does its and the former Yugoslavia’s capital, Belgrade, where I was growing up. But Serbia was never truly my country, because my father was a Hungarian who came to it to make his fortune (he did), and my mother, though technically Serbian, belonged to the Hungarian minority, and never even leaned to speak Serbo-Croat properly.

Emotionally, I felt intensely Yugoslav, and proud of my Serbo-Croat literacy. I had published, at fifteen, a poem in the country’s leading literary magazine, The Serbian Literary Courier, which no other boy my age could boast of. To be sure, it was only a rhymed rendering of “Trees,” by Joyce Kilmer, whom I took to be a woman—Joyce—but it was a pretty good translation, if I say so myself.

So now I would be a man without a country if it weren’t for the United States, to which my family emigrated to our everlasting gratitude, and in whose Air Force I served during World War Two. Never, though, near either front, European or Asian. Still, being in the service, expedited my American citizenship. I was 16 ½ when I came to this country and speak with a slight accent some people find charming, though I’d be happier without it.

Here is how I might have lost it. At age 13, I went to public school in England—the Leys School, Cambridge, to be exact—where I hoped to go on to the famed university. But war broke out, England was being bombed, and my father recalled me to Yugoslavia the following year, before I could shed my accent. I recall that in the military, a fellow soldier (from Brooklyn, I believe) asked me where I hailed from originally. When I told him, he opined that it accounted for my “broken lingo.”

It was nowhere near broken. By that time I had been a junior at Harvard, whence I was drafted, and to which I returned upon my discharge. But it was too late for me to acquire a Boston, Hahvad, or any other kind of American accent. It amused me, however, that I had landed in my second Cambridge, where I took my sweet time earning a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature. I enjoyed being a Cantabrigian, and would have gladly settled in Cambridge, had not the gods wanted it otherwise.

Certainly I sounded foreign enough to Lorne Michaels when I appeared on Saturday Night Live. It was a skit about a good critic played by Jon Lovitz, and a dishonest critic played by me. Chatting backstage, Lorne asked whose army I was referring to when I spoke of my military service. “Ours, of course,” I replied, feeling at that moment very patriotic. “How else do you think we could have won the war?”

It had been a funny year as an English schoolboy, trying unsuccessfully to learn cricket from an odious little brat named Burtsall. He was the only one willing to give me cricket lessons in the Leys School basement, but he was such a pest that I had a powerful urge to slap him. Artful dodger that he was, though, it was only in the common room that he dropped his guard. There was a shilling’s fine for rowdiness there, which protected him. So I went up to the prefect, deposited my shilling in advance, and slapped the hell out of Burtsall. But because this was considered a sneaky, unsportsmanlike attack, the fine was redoubled. Thereafter, even without mastering a perfect English accent, I at least learned British fair play.

I have had my quarrels with both my beloved countries, the United States and Britain; with the English language, properly used, never. (See my book Paradigms Lost.) French, which I know well, may be more delicate, more elegant, more melodious, but English has the richest vocabulary, offers the writer wider horizons. At how many intersections of synonyms or near-synonyms have I pondered which to choose: heavenly or celestial, feverish or febrile, fury or rage? Even from the same etymon, did I want instinctive or instinctual? For the sake of rhythm or euphony, should I pick doctor or physician? And so on endlessly—or ad infinitum.

Language is, in a sense, my country. But Country (capital C) matters to me only during World Cup soccer or grand slam tennis. Even there, I find myself rooting more often for foreign teams and players. Country, otherwise, matters mostly abroad, where some nations are respected, others reprehended. Time was when being American, even by adoption, was hugely prestigious; today there are probably fewer envied Yankees than ugly Americans. I myself do not fancy the thought of being taken hostage or, indeed, getting killed as a mere naturalized American, whose ancestors were never slave owners or warmongers.

Well then, how much does Country matter? In the old days, an American consul could do wonders for you in a foreign country. Being American opened doors when you sought favors, closed them when you needed security. Nowadays I wonder whether an Albanian passport doesn’t provide more protection than an American one.

It might well be a better world in which nationality or ethnicity of any kind did not matter. In my younger days, when I was writing the language column in Esquire magazine that turned into the book Paradigms Lost, I was vastly amused when visiting Yugoslavs gloated about what they called one of theirs teaching the Americans English; next week, some visiting Hungarians relished what they called one of their own doing the same thing. There even exists a book about Hungarians who made it big in America, in which I am one of the chapters, although I never considered myself Hungarian for all the pleasure I derived from reading the very great poets of Hungary in their own language. Translations of lyric poetry always lose a good deal; the great exceptions—and even those of verse drama—are Richard Wilbur’s superb translations of Moliere and Racine.

Then there are the people who, based on my accent, assume I was born in Austria. The truth of the matter is that my smart parents had the good idea of having me learn a foreign language as it were in the cradle by means of a trusted German nanny. So my first language was German. Hungarian I learned from my parents, who spoke it at home., and during a summer in a Budapest kindergarten. Serbian I could then pick up from everyone else, at school or in the streets. I even attended a German-Serbian elementary school. So, for a bit, Germany or Austria was my second country. French came quite a bit later in private lessons from a delightful Frenchwoman.

My country? On occasional visits to Stockholm and meetings with Ingmar Bergman and other Swedish film and literary people—not forgetting a theater date with Bibi Anderson—made me wish Sweden were my country. And when, as a 13-year-old English schoolboy I traveled back to Belgrade on vacation, the Swiss were wonderful to me. A wretched French hotel concierge directed me to the wrong train, and all kinds of trouble ensued.. In Basel, I chose to change trains, and a nice porter who carried my baggage absolutely refused to take money from a boy with an English public school cap.

At the little Swiss border town, where I had to wait to catch the next day the  train I should have taken in Paris that morning, the station personnel were perfectly charming. They turned me into some sort of mascot, and taught me all kinds of things about each train that was passing through. At night, they wouldn’t let me pay for a hotel, but made me as comfortable as possible on a waiting-room bench, and sent me rested and cheerful off on the proper train. That I spoke good German may have helped, but I truly felt that Switzerland was my country.

I have had pleasant experiences also with the Dutch and the Italians, including their police, the carabinieri. Only about the French do I have reservations. Not about the upper classes, which, though somewhat cold, are erudite and witty. And certainly not about the lower classes, which I found good-humored and warm-hearted. Only about the middle class, which, in my admittedly limited experience, struck me as penny-pinching, standoffish, and xenophobic, and aptly called petit—or petty—bourgeois.

Take, for example, the couple from whom I rented a room for most of my Fulbright year in Paris: an engineer and his wife. She would drop in on me repeatedly to admire the books I bought with my allowance—mostly Pleiade editions of the classics—praise me for my French, and boast of having gone to school with the great French actress Edwige Feulliere, whom I revered. But always she informed me that I was by no means to expect her to help me meet the star. Not once did this good woman invite me to have a cup of tea or glass of wine with her and her husband in their living room, or even let me set foot in the rest of their apartment.

On the other hand, the lower-class couple, from whom a fellow Fulbright scholar rented his room, could not have been more delightful even to me, and, because I frequently and lengthily phoned their tenant, proclaimed me jovially le roi du telephone. Just as friendly were the flics (cops) at the prefecture, where I had to report for my carte de sejour. Because they liked my French and my humor, they amiably offered to get me a joint French citizenship, which I equally amiably turned down. Only partly because I did not want to become canon fodder in the then raging Algerian War, and partly because, despite their insistence that it had to be otherwise, I could claim not a single French ancestor.

I remain an admirer of everything about France except the French bourgeoisie. And since that is the class I would have been born into were I French, I never imagined France to be my country. Actually, I would like to think of myself as a citizen of the world, if only the world would offer me joint citizenship with the United States. World-United, what a good thing that would be!