Le Ton Beau de Marot

Artificial intelligence pioneer Douglas R. Hofstadter celebrates the infinite subtleties of human creativity through language and translation in this brilliant successor to his GODEL, ESCHER, BACH. French poet Clement Marot's tiny poem "A une Damoyselle malade", written some 400 years ago, is the unlikely launching point for Hofstadter's latest exploration of the power of human thought.

* Introduction: In Joy and in Sorrow * The Life in Rhymes of Clment Marot * For the Love of a Poem from Days Long, Long Gone * How Jolly the Lot of an Oligoglot * The Romantic Vision of Thought as Pattern * Sparkling and Sparkling, Thanks to Constraints * The Subtle Art of Transculturation * The Nimble Medium-hopping of Evanescent Essences * A Novel in Verse * A Vile Non-verse * On Words and Their Magical Halos * Halos, Analogies, Spaces, and Blends * On the Conundrums of Cascading Translation * On Shy Translators and Their Crafty, Silent Art * On the Untranslatable * On the Ununderstandable * Ai Aims, Mi Claims, Sino-room Flames * In Praise of the Music of Language * Conclusion: Le Tombeau de ma rose