The Texas School Book Depository building as it is today.

(Via Michael Beschloss.)

… in 1863, Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address as he dedicated a national cemetery at the site of the Civil War battlefield in Pennsylvania.

The text reads:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Oh, and if you ever want to explain to someone why they should never, ever again use PowerPoint, point them at Peter Norvig’s wonderful translation of the Address into .ppt format.

LATER: Via Kottke I find one of Lincoln’s handwritten copies of the text, which now hangs in the White House.

I came to this via a discussion of the Leveson inquiry into the conduct of the British press. I was arguing that one of the main reasons why there is such disgraceful behaviour in the tabloid media is because bad behaviour is invariably rewarded by higher circulation and increased public attention. The reason: British newspaper buyers don’t seem to make ethical judgements when choosing their newspapers, and for as long as that remains true, tabloid excesses will continue.

Listening to this, Tony Blair’s former Press Secretary, Alastair Campbell, suggested that I should look for this clip on YouTube. So I did.

Section of a Proust page proof — from the Bibliotheque Nationale.

Today is the centenary of the publication of Du côté de chez Swann, the first volume of Marcel Proust’s sprawling masterpiece, À la recherche du temps perdu. There’s a lovely post about it by Adrian Tahourdin in the TLS Blog.

On the eve of publication Proust set out his artistic credo in Le Temps: “Je ne publie qu’un volume, Du côté de chez Swann, d’un roman qui aura pour titre général A la recherche du temps perdu. J’aurais voulu publier le tout ensemble; mais on n’édite plus d’ouvrages en plusieurs volumes. Je suis comme quelqu’un qui a une tapisserie trop grande pour les appartements actuels et qui a été obligé de la couper” (“ . . . I would have liked to have published the whole thing together, but works are no longer published several volumes at a time. I am like somebody who has a wall hanging too big for the intended rooms and who has been obliged to cut it up”). He points out that his novel “is dominated by the distinction between involuntary and voluntary memory” and goes on to stress that the “Je”, i.e. the Narrator, of the novel is not him, before concluding “The pleasure that an artist gives us, is to introduce us to another universe” – “Le plaisir que nous donne un artiste, c’est de nous faire connaître un univers de plus”. He must have known these words could be fully applied to his own forthcoming work.

The first English translation was by Scott Montcrieff, who was a journalist on the Times. One of my early mentors was a wonderful journalist, Claude Cockburn, whose first job was on the Times and who used to invite me and my girlfriend (later my wife) to his house outside Youghal in Co. Cork. In his memoirs he recalls being assigned first to the paper’s Foreign department. On entering the room, he found a long table at which sat various sub-editors poring over galley proofs and papers. At the end sat a chap who had barricaded himself behind great piles of books. “That’s Montcrieff”, explained one of the hacks. “He likes to get on with his work undisturbed”. The ‘work’, needless to say, was the translation. Those were the days.

The second English translation was by Terry (Terence) Kilmartin, who was the Literary Editor of the Observer, and the man who brought me onto the paper. But he never did any translating in the office.