All through "A Contract with God," there are things that should make noise: in particular, what Eisner's thunder says is nothing at all. But when Frimme Hersch tosses his contract into the alley below his tenement window...
How should we read the fact that this is the only sound effect in the story?
A few possibilities:
1. It's a climactic moment, even though it's marked by a modest, even trivial noise. Showing us this "clank" gives us a better sense of the empty world Frimme Hersch is entering: the bleak echo in the alleyway is a sorrowful urban sound.
2. It drives home the materiality of the contract, and the way that these earthly things, in the end, have very little to do with the divine. Why would God be bound by words on a scrap of stone?
3. It's more of a "verbal effect" than a "sound effect," to indicate the impact against the pavement that the panel's static visuals might not carry across. It's like the way a cartoonist might put the word "SHUT" as a sound effect in a panel showing someone closing the refrigerator: that's not the sound it really makes, but we need the word to know what is going on.
Interesting to note, too, that you can absolutely identify this image as an Eisner drawing, even though it has no people in it (and barely any objects).
You've also got to ask why he chose a sound that signifies the metallic, not what you expect with stone hitting pavement. It's not the sound that precedent would dictate, but unlike a Dash Shaw "shut" it's also not a literal description of the action. Did your students have any ideas about this?
ReplyDeleteAny suggestions for a more stony sound?
ReplyDeleteI dunno, THUD maybe?
ReplyDeleteI can accept "clank" if it's a certain kind of stone. Slate might make a clanking noise. Of course, it might also shatter if dropped like that...
Perhaps he chose "clank" because it gives more of an impression of reverberation and therefore heightens the alley and, really, the distance Frimme Hersch feels (and has) with God.
ReplyDeleteThere's also an emptiness 'clank' as opposed to a solidness to 'thud.' 'Clank' is the sound of a single coin hit the bottom of an empty tin cup.
ReplyDelete#3 in the context of #1 seems most likely to me, with #2 as a "could be!"
ReplyDeleteI think "clank" is a little off but basically works for a stone tablet hitting pavement (though as mentioned it might shatter); "thud" to me would imply one of the objects was soft (ie stone vs. dirt or body vs. pavement). I would maybe go with "clack", but whatever.
Or a big cartoony "PLOP!" - that'd work, right?
I like "clack," now that you mention it.
ReplyDeleteOkay, let's all get out our copies of Contract with God and some White-Out...
Okay, so I have not one, not two, but THREE copies of A Contract with God, in two different languages and two different writing systems. Here's what we see when we compare:
ReplyDelete1) English Contract: the subject of this post. "CLANK."
2) Yiddish Contract in romanization: "CLANK," an exact reproduction of Eisner's original panel.
3) Yiddish Contract in Hebrew alphabet, reset to be read right-to-left: "קלאנק" (transcription: klank).
Now, what I can't render in this post is the little line under the aleph in קלאנק, but that line means that the word in the Yiddish-Yiddish version would sound more like "CLONK" than "CLANK". I actually think "CLONK" is a more effective sound in this case, even if it was apparently a happy accident.*
*An accident, I suspect, because the transliteration seems pretty rote and likely sub-authentic where Yiddish sounds are concerned. English "CLANK" would better be transcribed in Yiddish-Yiddish as קלענק, "klenk," if you're not going to bother looking for an idiomatic Yiddish equivalent for it. Unfortunately my knowledge of Yiddish onomatopoeias is limited; "klap" (sounds like "clop") might work, possibly "trask" (means more like "crash, bang," though).
At any rate, I thought I'd look at what further Contract evidence I could (not least because, yo, Eisner himself gave me the Hebrew-character Yiddish version!).
Clarification: the translation of the SOUND EFFECTS seems rote, in being a mere transcription. The rest of the translation seems fine to my inexpert ear...
ReplyDelete