Le Ton Beau de Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language

Clement Marot (1496-1544) may have been a great French poet, but ""A une Da-moyselle malade"" is not his best effort. Essentially it's a get-well greeting: sorry that you're sick, but try to eat something and get some fresh air. The ditty serves as a springboard for Hofstadter's thoughts about language, translation, culture and human genius as the author, his friends, translators, scholars and even computer programs contribute to numbing permutations of this one weak lyric. Hofstadter, a professor of artificial intelligence at Indiana University, had bestsellers with the 1980 Pulitzer Prize-winning Godel, Escher, Bach and a collection of essays reprinted from Scientific American, called Metamagical Themas. Here he is on shakier ground. Hofstadter is not a poet but doesn't hesitate to lay out his opinions: for example, all rhyming translations of ""Eugene Onegin"" are ""excellent"" and ""fine,"" but he trashes Vladimir Nabokov's monumental and helpful literal version; he also calls Lolita ""pedophilic pornography."" And while there are moments of wit, intelligence and uncommon curiosity, there is also a diffuse structure and inflated--and sometimes hokey--prose: ""In SimTown, many other things can happen including houses being set on fire and goldfish flopping out of their bowls. (I'm leaving off the quotes merely as a shorthand--I know they aren't real goldfish!)"". His cheery gee-whizzery often rings false, and there's probably a good reason for the hollow sound--in 1993, his wife died of a rare disease, which probably also explains his choice of the verse. This book pays tribute to her, while illustrating the powers and limitations of speech. $60,000 ad/promo. (Apr.)