Coindreau

from Uncle Albert's notebook (cahier)

Ted is always pretending . . . No, that's not fair: no one is always anything, neither always feigning nor always genuine, though perhaps almost always caught somewhere in between (playing a role and trying to be themselves). But Ted is often wondering aloud what motivates this person or that - he can't see. Indeed, like the poor poet in Emily Dickinson's "I heard a Fly buzz," he cannot "see to see"; the windows keep failing. So, he has to go looking for insight. He'll go to Axel, or he'll ask Roz; he'll come to me. Often, he'll interview all of us - and, I suspect, others as well. Then, I also suspect, at the end of it all, he'll be thinking we don't see any farther than he does; our blinds are no less opaque than his are.
        Yesterday, he came asking about Cora Tull in Faulkner's As I Lay Dying. "I know there aren't really types," he said, "because everyone is different." But that said, it seemed to him that there were a number of women he had "run into here and there" who, like Cora Tull, did not doubt they knew the will of God, which tended to coincide with their own. They are often, in his experience (See how he qualifies everything!) . . . . They are often "fundamentalists," which he puts in air quotes because they don't all know the Bible that well. They may read it assiduously (from the Latin assido, assidere, assedi, assessus, meaning to sit by in a counsel or as an assessor; to watch over; to camp next to; to besiege. Assess comes from the same verb) . . . . They may read the Bible regularly, but they aren't paying attention. They don't have to: they've known from before they could read what it means to say.

M-E Coindreau by m ball

        So, it is not by the Scriptures that they know what they know - that is, the mind of God. It is not by Scriptures but because they have managed somehow to get to "the front of the line" (Ted's words), which they did, whatever Jesus said about the last being first, whatever Paul said about putting others before ourselves - they got there by pushing and shoving their way to the front because the Lord helps those that help themselves. And now they are there, in God's lap, the Coras know. What did I think? Ted wanted to know.
        Since I didn't know what I thought, not being quite sure what the question was, I told him I once taught the book in Maurice-Edgar Coindreau's excellent translation in an advanced French course: Sur mon lit mort. That wasn't true, but with Ted, it is a good idea to have some sort of arcane reason for what you are about to say or not say. But just because I said that I had taught it didn't mean that I remembered the novel well, I went on. Still, I thought I understood what he meant about Cora Tull and the other Coras. And yet "their motivations were in a bailiwick other than mine." (God forgive me, those were the words that came out of my mouth.) So, what did Axel say? Or if he hadn't said, why didn't he (Ted) ask him?
        "That's a good idea," he said. "I will."
                                                                                02/15/24