Fast forward about 20 years, he publishes his first book. JAD: Okay, so he reads the poem, files it away deep in the corner of his mind. LYNN LEVY: Oh my God, you must have gotten so many chicks when you were 16.ĭOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: Exactly the opposite. Va, friande de ta bouche, qui se couche en danger pour manger confitures si tu dures trop malade, couleur fade tu prendras, et perdras L’embonpoint. Guérison recouvrez, puis ouvrez votre porte et qu’on sorte vitement, car Clément le vous mande. Ma mignonne, je vous donne le bon jour le séjour, c’est prison. To A Sick Damsel, so to speak.ĭOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: A sick young lady. JAD: And this poem was supposed to cheer her up.ĭOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: And - and I thought it was very sweet.ĭOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: Okay. She was 7 or 8 and she had gotten sick.ĭOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: The flu or something. JAD: And he wrote the poem for this queen's daughter. It's written by this guy Clément Marot, who was a poet in the early 1500s.ĭOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: At the court of a queen. JAD: The poem was basically a get-well card. I fell in love with the poem immediately and memorized it. You know, three syllables per line.ĭOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: And it was delightful. JAD: A tiny little poem that kind of sat right in the middle of the page.ĭOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: Like a long thin sausage. But we actually got interested in him thanks to our producer Lynn Levy, because of an obsession of his which predates that.ĭOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: I was taking a French literature class, and one day I came across this poem. JAD: You may know him as the guy who wrote Godel, Escher, Bach, which is a hugely influential book in certain circles. JAD: So this episode was inspired by a guy named Doug.ĭOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: Doug Hofstadter, professor of cognitive science, Indiana University, Bloomington.
We'll have eight experiments in translation, transcreation.