MCLC: interview with Cindy Carter

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Bruce Humes (xumushi at yahoo.com)
Subject: interview with Cindy Carter
**************************************************************

Source: Ethnic ChinaLit: http://www.bruce-humes.com/?p=6871#more-6871

The Transparent Translator: Cindy Carter on "Dream of Ding Village"

Yan Lianke’s "Dream of Ding Village" (丁庄之梦) has made the shortlist for
the 
Man Asian Literary Prize and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, and
the winner of the latter will be announced later today (May 14, 2012, UK
time).

Here’s my interview with Cindy Carter, Chinese-to-English translator of
"Dream of Ding Village":

Bruce Humes (Ethnic ChinaLit): You studied Japanese and lived in Japan for
several years before moving to Beijing. Has your knowledge of Japanese,
the people and/or the language been useful to you in mastering Chinese?
What made you willing to leave Japan to pursue your writing career in
China?

Cindy Carter: Japan was the path that led me to China. These days, it
probably makes better sense to do one’s studies the other way around, but
back in the 1980s, Japan was the economic powerhouse, the modern miracle,
and China was just an afterthought, the slow cousin, an object of
fascination for classicists and linguists. . .certainly not the most
obvious starting point for anyone wanting to understand the rubric of 20th
century geopolitics or economic development in Asia. For every nascent
Sinologist, there seemed to be a dozen budding specialists in Korean or
Japanese contemporary history, politics or economics, and I was one of the
latter. I did consider adding Chinese to a minor in Japanese and majors in
Economics and Political Science, but decided it was more than I could
handle and still manage to graduate in 4 years. I’ve been kicking myself
in the arse for that lack of foresight ever since.

So, after studying Japanese for 7 years, I showed up in Beijing with a
visual lexicon of about 4,000 characters, a few well-worn Chinese textbook
phrases (courtesy of a 10-week Mandarin course in Osaka, in which I was
the only non-Japanese student, and the dimmest bulb by far), and about
40,000 RMB ($5000, at the time) saved up from 3 years of working in Japan.
Within a week of my arrival in Beijing, I had sorted out an Internet
connection, a student visa, a shared dorm room and enrolment at a small
satellite campus of Capital Normal University (where 90% of my classmates
were Japanese or Korean), and had explored five different districts of the
city by bus, just by navigating the signs.  My grammar sucked, my tones
were abysmal, but boy oh boy, was I crushing those simplified characters.
Two semesters and nine months later, I’d spent all my cash, was living in
an outer fourth-ring road squat with a rocker from Shandong, and was
reading Wang Shuo’s fiction, Gu Cheng’s poetry and Cui Jian’s lyrics with
reasonable confidence. After a glorious yaogun summer and a 14-month stint
working at the Los Angeles office of the Export-Import Bank of Japan, I
returned to Beijing in late 1998 to pursue writing and translation
full-time.

Sadly, Japanese doesn’t play much of a direct role in my work these days,
although it certainly eased my transition into Chinese. When I first began
studying Chinese, I didn’t have to learn the written language from
scratch, as most western students do, mastering the stroke order and
radicals; all I had to do was figure out how the traditional-form
characters (used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea and elsewhere,
to varying degrees) corresponded to the simplified forms used on the
Chinese mainland.

Ethnic ChinaLit: You obviously don’t shy away from politically sensitive
topics or artists. For example, "Dream of Ding Village" author Yan Lianke
wrote "Serve the People" (为人民服务) which—while much appreciated in
France, 
for instance—has still not been published in China, and even one of his
latest works, "Four Books" (四书), was launched in Taiwan rather than the
mainland; you translated “A Translation between Ai Weiwei and Liu
Xiaodong”; and you did the sub-titling for "Karamay," the documentary on
the 1994 blaze in Xinjiang that killed hundreds, a documentary that is
still banned in China.  Do you specifically seek out such touchy
assignments, and if so, why?  As a resident of Beijing—easily China’s most
“political” city—have you been asked out “for a chat over tea” by the
security apparatus?

Carter: I don’t make a point of searching out politically controversial
books or films, but it does seem that many of the translation projects
I’ve worked on fall into that category. I think this says less about my
political beliefs and inclinations – or even those of the artists – than
it does about the bizarrely narrow official definition of what is
acceptable and what is transgressive (or “sensitive”, in the current
parlance) in mainland China today. The qualities I look for in a work –
and in the individuals I work with – are authenticity, honesty,
originality and artistic integrity. I know it sounds disingenuous or even
reductive, but for me, it really is that simple. You just know whether a
work is good or not, whether it rings true or false, whether it has the
power to connect with something deeper and fundamentally human. I don’t
translate fiction by Yan Lianke, or poetry by Yu Jian, or films by Wang
Bing, or projects by Ai Weiwei because their work is controversial, but
because it is timeless: decades from now, we will still be reading their
books, watching their films, viewing their art, and exploring new facets
of what they created in this “here and now” (此时此地).

As for being invited “for a chat over tea” by the powers-that-be, I’ve
never had that experience. I’m a very low-key, somewhat reclusive person
who spends most of her days at home in front of a computer, just doing the
work of translation. Can’t imagine the PSB would have much to say to (or
about) me. There have been a few weird incidents over the years, mostly
early in my translation career: the guy at the rock concert who wanted to
talk politics and was obviously a plainclothes policeman (shiny leather
shoes are a dead giveaway), or the three men who claimed to be starting an
English school and wanted to meet with me to discuss curriculum
development, then spent the entire meeting asking (in English) about my
translation work and whether I was interested in “dissident literature”.
Although I never heard from those three again, and suspect that instead of
opening an English school they just returned to the office and dutifully
filed boring reports to their superiors, I remember them fondly: rather
than get into a sleek black Audi with three strange men in black leather
jackets and shoes (again with the dead-giveaway footwear and apparel!) I
convinced them to trek with me through a raging snowstorm for about three
quarters of a mile, to what was definitely not the nearest or most
convenient café. Sheer cussedness on my part, because I desperately needed
a job and resented them for wasting my time.

Ethnic ChinaLit: In my estimation, you are a creative writer and a poet,
not just a “translator.” As you rendered "Dream of Ding Village," how were
you able to channel that creativity into the task? Which parts or aspects
afforded you the most freedom to do so?

Carter: I’ve heard it said that writers make the worst translators, but
I’ve never understood the logic in that. As long as one can set aside
one’s own authorial ego and truly inhabit the work of another writer, the
experience of having written fiction and poetry can only improve the
quality of one’s translation. Crafting fictional characters, imbuing them
with distinct voices and opinions, and allowing them to exist
independently of their author is not very different from immersing oneself
in the world of another author and crafting a voice for him or her in
translation.

The task is more straightforward if you’re translating a mature, confident
author with a distinctive style and voice. The most difficult translations
I’ve done were for younger or less confident authors whose styles were
still in flux, who were still assimilating various influences and
struggling to define their own voices. But a novelist like Yan Lianke
makes it easy, because he gives his translators so much depth – and so
many useful stylistic cues – to work with. There are elegant,
metrically-satisfying passages that lull the reader into a false sense of
security, followed by short, spiky sentences or jarring turns of phrase
that pull you up short, and force you to reassess what is actually being
said; there are cadences and codas, repetitions and transpositions,
symmetry and asymmetry, all used to great effect; there are dozens of
different characters, each with a unique voice, temperament, and point of
view; there is wisdom and poetry and satire and childlike earnestness—so
much, so very much, for a translator to work with.

I particularly enjoyed translating the folk songs sung by Ma Xianglin in
the first and third chapters (“With sword in hand / Xue Rengui marched
west… / His men and mounts withstood the test… / Through hamlets, villages
and towns / They felled a mighty army / And struck their enemies down”),
the sobering funeral couplets in the first chapter (“The moon has sunk,
the stars are dim, the family home is dark / but there is hope that come
tomorrow, the sun will shine again”) and the hysterically funny “7 School
Rules” (in volume 4, chapter 2) posted by the two young men who blackmail
Grandpa Ding Shuiyang into stepping down from his caretaker position at
the school where HIV-positive villagers have taken refuge.

I had a great time translating Jia Genzhu and Ding Yuejin’s glorious
jumble of bad grammar, misappropriated legalese, crude invective and
impossible-to-enforce sanctions:

3. Jia Genzhu and Ding Yuejin will be in charge of distributing coffins
donated by the government, whenever we get them. Anyone who doesn’t follow
orders will not receive a coffin, plus we will tell the whole village to
go fuck that person’s ancestors and curse their descendants.

 4. No one is allowed to embezzle school property or take it for their
personal use without the express permission of Jia Genzhu or Ding Yuejin.
Thieves and embezzlers will die a horrible death and their graves will be
plundered.

 6. Extra-marital sex, hanky-panky and lewd behavior will not be tolerated
in the school. Anyone caught engaging in immoral acts or corrupting public
values will be marched around the village with a sign around their neck
and a tall paper hat…

 7. Anyone who disagrees or does not comply with the above regulations
will be cursed for life, have nightmares about dying and pass the fever to
all their family, friends and relatives. Plus, he or she will be sent home
immediately and never allowed back into the school…

In every translation, certain literary and aesthetic challenges arise. In
Dream of Ding Village, the biggest challenge was reconciling several
distinct narrative voices. Ding Qiang, the ostensible narrator of the
novel, is a 12-year-old boy poisoned by the villagers in retaliation for
his father’s activities as a blood merchant, but his is not a consistent
narrative voice à la Huck Finn or Holden Caulfield, nor was it designed to
be. In passages referring to the boy’s family, home and school life, his
burial and posthumous marriage (arranged by his politically-ambitious
father) to the daughter of a high-ranking Communist Party official, we
hear Ding Qiang’s precocious adolescent voice loud and clear. But in the
chapter openings and expository passages, the narrative is classic Yan
Lianke, the stripped-down authorial voice we have come to know so well in
his two decades of fiction. Then there are the lengthy dream sequences
that detail the phantasms of the boy’s grandfather, Ding Shuiyang, and
feature much more elaborate and poetic language.

Although I didn’t find the different narrative styles off-putting in the
original Chinese, the moment I began translating the novel into English, I
realized that narrative voice was going to be an issue. I even toyed
around for a week or two, trying to enhance the consistency of the
narrative by grafting Ding Qiang’s youthful voice onto passages where it
didn’t belong, but in the end, I decided that the original text simply
didn’t warrant this approach; I would have been veering dangerously close
to rewriting, and vastly overstepping my mandate as a translator. The
narrative style in the English translation, as published, is a fairly good
representation of the narrative style in the original Chinese. Two
English-language reviewers have pointed out the inconsistency of the
narrative voice as a flaw in the novel, and I would – rather reluctantly –
agree. That said, I have yet to hear of a Chinese reader or critic who
identified the divergent narrative styles as a weakness. Perhaps there is
a greater tolerance for this in Chinese (as there is a greater tolerance
for repetition, for example), or perhaps Chinese and western readers
simply have different expectations about narrative consistency and the
fluidity with which a writer is allowed to toggle between different
narrative voices…this would make a great topic for a panel discussion, by
the way.

Ethnic ChinaLit: Tell us about your “translating routine” for Dream of
Ding Village. Did you tend to simply begin by translating straight from
the text without reference to dictionaries, or did you do a certain amount
of research first? Did you employ a native Chinese speaker to proof your
text? When you had trouble interpreting a given passage, to whom—or
what—did you turn for help?

Carter: I’d been following Yan Lianke’s work for many years, was familiar
with his style and use of Henan dialect, and had already read Dream of
Ding Village and done some translation excerpts, so I began the process by
spending 3-4 weeks doing a close rereading of the novel, marking up the
text and taking careful notes. Then I spent several days looking over and
revising my (rather outdated) translation of the opening chapter, and went
on from there. At that point, I already knew which passages would be the
most challenging or require the most time, so I was mentally prepared.

Naturally, I had a lot of questions. I use a variety of resources to look
up unfamiliar or uncertain words and phrases: printed dictionaries
(Chinese-Chinese, Chinese-English), online dictionaries, online and CD-ROM
translation software, search engines, and websites in mainland China,
Taiwan and Hong Kong. During the course of the translation, I consulted
about a dozen people – readers, writers, translators, literary critics and
friends – on questions of grammar, style, dialect, history, minute
physical detail, etc. Sometimes I just wanted someone to discuss the novel
with, a fellow reader who could give me a different perspective on the
book. I hired two Chinese friends (one author and one translator) at 50
RMB per hour to help me dissect the grammar and structure of a number of
complex or otherwise problematic passages.

I also had about 8 meetings, 30 hours in all, with Yan Lianke to discuss
questions of authorial intent and so on. . .things only he could answer.
He was very generous with his time, infinitely patient with my questions,
and his wife makes the best noodles on the planet. My neighborhood tailor,
who grew up in rural Henan, even contributed some useful sketches of the
clothes worn by characters in the novel. I didn’t have a native Chinese
speaker proofread my text, and actually never considered doing that: I
think that with literary translation, it is important to cast one’s net
wide, and not rely too heavily on the opinion of a single individual. In
the end, I bear responsibility for the accuracy, fluidity and readability
of the translation, and the best way to live up to that responsibility is
to consult with as many people as possible, keep an open mind, and craft a
translation that transcends subjectivity (my own subjectivity, and that of
others).

A few other notes about the process of translation:

Language: Since "Dream of Ding Village" was written in Chinese, nearly all
of the conversations I had about it were in Chinese (with the exception of
a few conversations with American or British translators). This was
particularly important when speaking directly with the author, because in
the wording of Yan Lianke’s answers, he provided me with many verbal and
linguistic cues that would prove useful in my translation. Just hearing
him describe the process of writing certain passages, the choices he had
mulled over and discarded, helped me to better understand and communicate
his final choices.

Time frame: I estimate that I spent approximately 2,500 hours, or ten
months of full-time work, translating and polishing the manuscript of
Dream of Ding Village. That works out to about a page a day, which is more
or less what I had anticipated. But from beginning to end – from the day I
signed the contract in early December 2007 to the day (November 17, 2009)
I turned in the manuscript to the publisher – the entire process lasted 23
months, mainly because of financial constraints. It took 4 months to
receive the initial disbursement from the publisher, and that money lasted
for about 5 months. After that, I worked in bursts, borrowing money or
taking on other film and art translations to help finance the translation
of the novel. During those periods when I was working on other projects, I
missed Dream of Ding Village and longed to get back to it.

Finances: I was paid 10,500 British pounds (minus VAT and a 15% fee for my
agent) for the translation of the novel. Of this, about 40% came in 2008
while I was translating the book; 30% arrived in early 2010, a few months
after the submission of the manuscript; and the final 30% was paid after
publication, in summer of 2011. Later, I did a rough accounting and
estimated that I earned about 35 RMB (3.5 British pounds) per hour of work
on the book. By the time I had submitted the manuscript, I was 120,000 RMB
(12,000 pounds) in debt, so in May of 2010, I took a full-time job as an
in-house translator and editor at a non-profit arts center in Beijing. It
meant taking a step back from literary translation, but in the 20 months I
worked there, I was able to pay back most of the debt, and have now
returned to translating fiction, poetry and indie film full-time.

Postscript: The next project I’m considering is an even longer, more
challenging and more underfunded novel.  It’s a brilliant work of fiction
by one of my favorite Chinese authors, but the financial obstacles terrify
me. For this reason, I recently moved out of Beijing and into a
neighboring province, thus reducing my rent by over 80% and living
expenses by more than half. A lot of Chinese writers, indie filmmakers,
artists and musicians live in this area, and we’re all here for the same
reason: it’s the only way we can afford to keep working at our art, and
still maintain proximity to Beijing, well on its way to becoming one of
the most expensive cities in Asia. I think living out here will allow me
to continue translating fiction, poetry and film for at least another 5-6
years, at which point I might need to find a gig with health insurance.

Ethnic ChinaLit: In terms of sheer output, your better-known literary
translations—"Village of Stone" by Guo Xiaolu and now "Dream of Ding
Village"—are dwarfed by the number of films you’ve sub-titled.  How many
have you worked on, and which films/directors left the greatest impression
on you?

Carter: As of 2012, my translation count is up to 50+ indie films, 50+
poems and stories, 2 novels, 4 rock albums, and literally hundreds of
art-related essays, interviews and curatorial texts. Most of the
art-related translations resulted from a recent full-time job doing
in-house translation at the Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art (UCCA), a
non-profit arts centre in Beijing’s 798 Art District, where I learned more
about art in 20 months than I had in the previous 20 years.

But that was a long-winded answer to your relatively straightforward
question. Here are some highlights from the film years, with the English
titles, director names and year of translation (not necessarily the year
of production or film release):

"Paper Airplane" (Dir: Zhao Liang, 2001)

Gritty early DV-generation documentary about heroin and the Chinese rock
scene. The first film I ever subtitled, and I did it for free. Over a
dozen years later, Zhao Liang and I have worked on 4 films together and he
is one of China’s most prolific and respected indie directors. He recently
completed "Petition," his decade-long labor of love documentary project.

"West of Tracks" (Dir: Wang Bing, 2002-3)

This massively ambitious 9-hour, 3-part opus about life in China’s rust
belt changed the landscape of Chinese documentary film. Wang Bing spent 5
or 6 years of his life planning, filming, editing and perfecting this
film; I spent 4 months, off and on, translating it. Everyone who worked on
"West of Tracks" – from director and producers, to video techs and
subtitle editors and translators, to those unnamed and intrepid
individuals who volunteered their services or equipment for a few hours or
days or weeks – poured their souls into the film, and it shows. Wang Bing
and I have done five or six other projects since, and hopefully will
continue to work together. If anyone in the world of Chinese indie film
deserves the designation of “auteur”, it is Wang Bing. (Though in the
world of mainstream Chinese film, the greatest auteur is Jiang Wen, hands
down.)

"Before the Flood" (Dir: Yan Yu and Li Yifan, 2004)

A sprawling documentary about the demolition and relocation of an ancient
village in the path of the Three Gorges Dam Project, "Before the Flood"
touches on a number of issues (property rights, community, local politics,
religious revival in China, etc.) that would inform the work of these
directors for years to come.

"Fairytale" (Prod: Ai Weiwei, 16 directors, 2007)

This was the first truly collaborative film translation of my career, and
it was an education in itself. Looking back, it’s hard to say what stands
out the most—being part of a project that brought 1001 Chinese citizens to
the Kassel Documenta in Germany, and dispatched 16 directors all over
China and Europe to capture the personal stories of those 1001
individuals; working with Ai Weiwei for the first time; trying to helm the
translation of a film that shrank from 20 to 14 to 9 hours (chosen from
among hundreds of hours of footage) in the course of one summer, and ended
in an “artistic parting of the ways” between producer and supervising
director; or being able to hire and work with some of the translators
(Eric Abrahamsen, Brendan O’Kane, Joel Martinson, Jim Weldon, and Alice
Wang) I had known for years but had never had the chance to work with
closely. This was right about the time that the Paper Republic website was
going online, and although we had known each other socially before this
intensive project, none of us had much insight into the process or prowess
of our colleagues, the group of translators that would later form the core
of the “Paper Republic crew”.

"WE: Creatures of Politics, Voices of Conscience" (Dir: Huang Wenhai, 2008)

One might logically inquire what sort of cajones are required to direct
and produce a documentary film about three generations of Chinese
political reformers and civil-rights activists, then schedule it for
release just before the opening of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. I can only
think of one Chinese filmmaker with the testicular and spiritual fortitude
it requires, and that man is Huang Wenhai. You’d never know it to look at
him: Wenhai is a practicing Buddhist, soft-spoken and mellow in the
extreme, the kind of person you’d expect to find meditating on a
mountaintop, not lugging camera equipment around to underground
dormitories, home-based churches, or the site of the infamous 1959 Party
Plenum in Lushan. And yet there he was, recording some of the most
incisive dialogue in the history of Chinese film. With limited release
abroad and virtually no release (but for a few furtive screenings) in
mainland China, this documentary is still damn-near invisible, but I hope
that at some point, it will be seen and remembered, because there is quite
literally nothing like it. Many of the subjects who appear in the film
(several have died of old age in the intervening years) are old-school
cadres, survivors of the Long March, former high-ranking members of the
Propaganda Department or Xinhua News Service who dared, in their
retirement, to speak out in support of constitutional government, rule of
law, and respect for individual liberties. But optimists and reformists
beware: this is not a feel-good film. In the end, what stands out most is
the complete disorganization and disconnect between three generations of
patriotic and well-meaning individuals who can agree that reform is
essential, but can’t seem to get on the same page about the specifics.

"Timber Gang, Survival Song, Bachelor Mountain" (Dir: Yu Guangyi, 2004,
2007 & 2010)

You can’t talk about the current state of Chinese manhood without
referencing Yu Guangyi’s "Changbaishan Sanbuqu" (White Mountain Trilogy),
about the inhabitants of the remote national forests of north-eastern
China. It’s not all about the menfolk, of course, but in these northern
climes, where women are a scarce commodity, the gender-gap colours every
aspect of society. I translated the last two films of the trilogy, and
we’re still looking for an investor for finance the retranslation and
subtitling of the first part (Timber Gang).

Ethnic ChinaLit: According to an English-language review of the French
edition of Dream of Ding Village by Sebastian Veg:

Yan [Lianke] highlights that his use of fiction is a way of toning down a
reality that is in some ways inconceivably frightening. He has
deliberately left out stories reported to him about collecting blood in
plastic soy sauce or vinegar bags, and washing out the used bags in a pool
that eventually turned red. He also chose to leave aside his first
fictional idea of an imaginary country linked to the rest of the world by
a blood pipeline through which local officials export blood to achieve the
country’s rise to the rank of world power. These cuts should not be seen
as mere self-censorship (at least not as purely political
self-censorship), but also to reflect a preoccupation with finding an
adequate form for what remains an untellable reality, a form that is both
helpful to understanding the objective situation and true to the
subjective experience of the villagers themselves. Here lies the
originality of the book, which despite fantastic elements and overtones,
never resorts to the sensationalism that characterizes some of China’s
contemporary fiction, most notably Yu Hua’s recent novel Brothers.

Two questions for you: 1) Which version of the Chinese text did you
translate, i.e., the one published in 2006 and subsequently banned, the
version that has since been legally published in China, or a third
version? And 2) Do you feel that this alleged disinclination to
“sensationalism” makes the novel more readable and potentially more
powerful to the English-language reader?

Carter: I translated from the text published in 2006 by Shanghai Art and
Literature Press (上海文艺出版社) in an initial print run of 150,000 copies
(according to the front page of the book). It was never allowed to go to a
second printing. I purchased the book – before it was banned, obviously –
at Sanlian Bookstore in Wangfujing, Beijing, near the National Museum of
Art. I also had access to a digital version that was nearly identical to
the print version, but for some annoying typos. (The typos aren’t due to
Yan Lianke, by the way. He continues to write his manuscripts by hand, and
has other people type them up.) The digital version contained too many
typos to work from directly, but it was useful for doing global searches,
locating certain words and phrases, and so on. I haven’t heard about a
subsequent version being published legally in China…are you sure about
that?

Veg’s comments are perceptive. I do think that if Yan Lianke had gone with
his original idea – that is, writing a work of non-fiction on the subject
of blood-selling and AIDS in Henan – we would have a much less compelling
and timeless story. It isn’t the minute details of the blood trade in the
late 1980s, or tales of official corruption, or descriptions of suffering
and disease that make Dream of Ding Village so extraordinary; it is the
characters themselves, their interactions and passions and rivalries, that
bring the book to life. Had Yan Lianke focused on the broader social,
political and economic environment, had he enumerated the causes,
ramifications and details of the real-world blood trade, he wouldn’t have
been able to delve so deeply into the human psyche. We, as readers,
wouldn’t have this bittersweet love story between two young people
rejected by their spouses and dying of AIDS, or the Ding family feud that
ends in shocking murder and unexpected redemption. We would have no
insight into the misplaced rage that drives a group of villagers to poison
a 12-year-old boy, or the fear and insecurity that causes otherwise decent
people to turn petty, to bicker and steal from one another, even as they
are months away from their own deaths. Nor would we have such pathos and
humor and humanity—qualities that distinguish all of Yan Lianke’s finest
fiction.

So yeah, I guess we have the Chinese censors to thank for taking what
might have been merely an informative and socially-conscious work of
non-fiction and elevating it to the level of true greatness. That, plus
winning scads of new readers for Yan Lianke, cementing his reputation as
an author, and ensuring that his work will be translated and read for
decades to come. Good work, GAPP.

Victor Hugo, in Les Misérables, says it far better than I ever could:

Despots make their contributions to thinkers. Speech in chains is terrible
speech. The writer doubles and triples his style when silence is imposed
by a master over the people. From this silence springs a certain
mysterious fullness that filters and congeals into brass in the thoughts.
Compression in history produces concision in the historian. The granite
solidity of some celebrated prose is only a condensation produced by the
tyrant.

Tyranny constrains the writer to shortenings of diameter that are
increases of force. The Ciceronian period, hardly sufficient on Verres,
would lose its edge on Caligula. Less breadth in the phrase, more
intensity in the blow. Tacitus thinks with his arm drawn back. [end
interview]