Son Of Renowned Actor

Paul Robeson Jr. was 16 years old in 1943 when he watched his father become the first black actor to play Othello on Broadway, a seminal event that not only contributed to the senior Mr. Robeson's place in history but became for his son a moment that helped define their relationship.

"That was the period when he took me into his life as an adult. He shared with me his thinking about the role. I saw it inside, through his eyes, and it became one of the levels on which we bonded," he said.

Mr. Robeson clearly loves to talk about Othello and about his father playing Othello. He becomes animated on the subject of the Moor as a character in literature; he is impassioned on the subject of his father's search for the character's range of emotion; he is eloquent on the play's metaphorical significance for black men and the historical meaning of his father's groundbreaking role.

Felt Unready

He recalled that, seven years earlier, the late Mr. Robeson was asked but felt unready to play Othello at the Old Vic with Sir Laurence Olivier as Iago. Instead, he undertook to study the play from several different angles.

In Russian, his son said, he found for Othello "99 tones of anger," in German "military precision," in French a "seductive caress," and in Yiddish "a sad, sardonic humor." He found Shakespeare's intended poetic rhythm in the original Elizabethan English but then, fittingly, made the Moor true by overlaying an African cadence.

Sitting in a friend's kitchen in Sag Harbor on Friday, his son raised his arms up and spoke Othello's lines with authority - "Arise, black vengeance, from the hollow hell!" - and became for a moment his father.

It was a just a moment.

Cultivating Visison

"My father taught me that vision is something you cultivate from within, and the search for vision is everything. I didn't fully realize that gift until he died, and said so in my eulogy. . . . I could have been easily obliterated, just by benign neglect, but he taught me to be my own person. In the end, that was his greatest gift," Mr. Robeson said.

His enthusiasm for Othello not only was fueled by the memories of his father but goes back to the slave tradition of physical suppression overcome by "the emotional energy of music, speech, sound. I'm used to hearing the world." However, he equates freedom with physical expressiveness.

Now 70, the younger Mr. Robeson talks willingly about his famous father but lectures most often about his own areas of expertise: multiculturalism and the state of black America, the implications of affirmative action, Iran-contra, tax reform, black-Jewish relations, as well as on Russian history, society, and its transformation from a Soviet state.

Frequent Visitors

He and his wife, Marilyn, visit the South Fork frequently from their house in Brooklyn, "a good cousin distance," he said, for trips to the Sag Harbor house of William and Pat Pickens. Mr. Pickens, the founding president of the Paul Robeson Foundation, is in fact a distant cousin. Mr. and Mrs. Robeson visited there for last weekend's kick-off to a yearlong celebration of his father's centennial birthday.

Despite his father's gift of self-realization, or perhaps because of it, there are parallels in his life and his father's.

His father was famous not only for his bass-baritone and his achievements as an actor, but as a scholar, athlete, and activist. The son earned four varsity letters playing for Cornell University - his father was a football legend - and three more for track and field, plus three high-jump championships.

Father Blacklisted

He studied electrical engineering at Cornell. During the 1950s, his father, an outspoken communist and supporter of the Soviet Union, was blacklisted in the U.S. and was refused entry into some concert halls and recording studios. His son, who made his own break with the party years ago, became his father's recording engineer, artistic adviser, and producer.

"He treated me like a professional. I would tell him, 'Dad, you've got to do that over,' and he would. He had no ego."

He dismissed any pessimism that recent events - an alleged lynching in Virginia and a Haitian immigrant's claim of torture by police in a Brooklyn precinct - were proof that too little has changed in American race relations, suggesting that such a view was narrow.

No Sense Of History

"We don't have a sense of history or a sense of patience. American society, all of us, pursue the good life as rigidly and obsessively as they did theirs in the Soviet Union or China, and we won't look at the cause of the problem. We only want to fix the symptom."

"Let's say we give those cops 99 years in jail. The politicians will have put a political spin on it to get re-elected but still will not have looked at a predominantly white police force that lives out of town but works in a predominantly black community. The number of problems they shove aside, to make their constituents feel comfortable with their prejudices."

Instead, he finds a formula for improvement in his father's life - it has been said he turned to communism and to a more tolerant society in Europe in his search for answers to the problems of his own country - and in his writings, a 1929 journal entry that showed, at 31, Paul Robeson was searching for a spirituality that eschewed money and success.

Global Perspective

His father struggled with himself, to find a personal and philosophical perspective, and his son said he took comfort in knowing his own struggles were not the first. He too has looked for a global perspective on American problems, seeing our economic and cultural tensions reflecting "through a glass darkly" the cultural and ideological tensions in the new Russia.

"In the broadest sense, my father searched for the questions. He was not an answerer, like a politician. . . . He was a person of vision though very much a person of his time. We need that legacy as a society like oxygen."

But, his father's detractors, and there were many during his lifetime and a few still, said the senior Mr. Robeson was bamboozled by the Communist Party in the U.S. and by the Stalinists he actively supported in the Soviet Union. They charged he turned the other cheek on the persecution of Jews there, ignoring signs that Stalinism was an insidious fraud.

Tragic Flaw?

"Those who would obscure or trivialize him could say that he acted out Othello's tragic flaw in real life, that he was a great man but a dupe of communism, that, like Othello, he was not only flawed but a victim. But, even his worst detractors don't come at him directly," his son said somberly.

In any system, liberated thinking can be perceived as threatening, he continued, but his father knew better than to "be Moses," to become a unifier and prophet. "He empowered people as the essence of leadership because, if you kill Moses, they disperse."

Life Saved

Amagansett

August 14, 1997

Dear Helen Rattray,

The following is a public expression of gratitude to the Amagansett Volunteer Ambulance Squad and especially to Htun Han for the assistance given following an accident I had while body surfing at Indian Wells Beach. This experience also leads me to provide a note of caution regarding body surfing.

The accident occurred on a sizzling July day. I had biked to the ocean to cool off and, to my delight, found an active surf left over from Hurricane Danny. I plunged in, had three good rides into shore, and was positioning myself for another. When a large wave welled up, I went for it. A slight miscalculation on my part led to no slight consequences.

The wave heaved me up and dashed me down to the bottom head first. The force of the impact left me disoriented. When I finally emerged from the churning water, I felt I had done some serious harm to myself. Somehow, I was able to stagger up to my bike and pedal the few blocks to home with my head in a frozen forward-only position. As I washed off in the outdoor shower, I became aware that something was really not right, and that I might have injured myself more seriously than I had suspected.

I called Mr. Han, a partner in Garnham and Han Real Estate, because I knew he was an active member of the Amagansett Volunteer Ambulance Squad. Upon hearing me relate my experience, he told me not to move, that he would be over in two minutes. He arrived with his "tool kit" and immediately retrieved a collar to limit my head movement and called an ambulance.

In the ambulance on the way to Southampton Hospital were Bill Lusty and Peter Garnham, also volunteers of the ambulance corps. This volunteer job represents a huge commitment. In 1996, by the midyear time of my accident, they had already made approximately 145 ambulance trips - rather disruptive to their business schedules, but they do it. In addition, and above and beyond the call of duty, Mr. Han picked up my daughter in East Hampton and drove her to the hospital, and, later, Mr. Lusty drove back to our house and locked it up for us. Since that time, both of these men have made calls and visits and offered assistance of whatever kind was needed.

At Southampton Hospital, after my many X-rays and scans were examined, two fractures were spotted in the C-1 vertebrae, the one directly below the brain. I was then quickly helicoptered to the University Medical Center at Stony Brook, where more neurological expertise was available to help me. The final result is that I am wearing a "halo," a large apparatus encircling my head and supported by metal rods attached to a rigid vest with a sheepskin liner (pretty lousy summer attire), and I will be so clad for 12 weeks or more. It's not fun, not my style at all, but I have been told by many in the medical profession that I'm very lucky to be here; most people incurring this injury are killed instantly.

Even now, in my encumbered and sometimes painful state, the ocean still beckons me. I long to swim and play in the ocean, but I now know that body surfing is too dangerous a sport. I have gained new respect for the ocean; it does not forgive a little mistake. Against its power, even youth and fitness are of little consequence.

The fact that I'm still here and functioning remarkably well I feel is due in large part to the fast, expert, and cautious efforts of Mr. Han. He essentially saved my life. I, in particular, and we, as residents and vacationers in the Amagansett area, are so lucky to have people like Htun Han and the other dedicated members of the ambulance corps here for us. I have long loved Amagansett for its beauty and charm, the water and all the fun activities and adventures to be enjoyed; more recently I have come to love Amagansett for the wonderful people that make up the backbone of this community. I thank them.

BILL THORSON

Lack Of Housing

Shoreham

August 15, 1997

To The Editor:

I am astounded by the response to the ad I placed in your paper, which appeared only yesterday. The ad simply read "Montauk - two-bedroom house $800" (under the year-round section). Within a 12-hour period, there were 36 responses. Of the 22 persons who came to see it today, many expressed apprehension at renting a home with electric heat. All but four wanted it nonetheless.

Many went so far as to offer to make repairs at their own expense; one even offered to entirely renovate the bathroom with a bathtub in place of the existing shower!

As is, the home is comfortable, in a nice, quiet area, but it isn't particularly a "great" bargain considering the old windows and heating source. This really says a lot about the lack of year-round housing in the area. I'm really shocked by it.

MARIANNE BLYTON

Gave Meaning To Life

Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

August 10, 1997

To The Editor:

I accessed The Star's web site hoping to find an obituary, but found none.

The obituary that I was seeking was for my very beloved Jonathan Spanierman. I know that no matter what it contained it could not have adequately described his smile, nor how it lit my heart, infused sunshine into my soul, and displayed his mature innocence. I hope that it mentioned his love for others and his ability to make one feel "worthwhile." Jon gave meaning to my life, and in his name, many, many people were helped to have a better, more meaningful life.

These past few years, Jonathan may have appeared weak, yet he had the courage of a warrior and strength to belie the entire medical community's woesome forecasts while continuing to give love and understanding to those privileged to be a part of his struggle.

Jonathan was a golden boy, too beautiful inside and out for description or comparison. Jonathan was a musician! I have been honored to know and to love him as a boy and then as a man.

As a boy, he honored me; and when he became a man, I learned to honor him. With some deaths, I grieve for the one who is gone; with Jonathan's death, I grieve for myself, his family, and his friends.

Thanks Jon, I love you very much. (Sorry, I just needed someone to talk to.)

Sincerely,

GRETCHEN L. HASSELKUS

Please address correspondence to [email protected]

Please include your full name, address and daytime telephone number for purposes of verification.

Igor Stravinsky's "L'Histoire du Soldat," will be performed in a benefit at the Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor on Sept. 6. It features a new text by Kurt Vonnegut.

The performance will raise money for The Paris Review and the New York Philomusica, and also honor the memory of Rosemary Sheehan, a supporter of the Philomusica and an irrepressible fixture on the East End social scene until her death last year.

"This was an unusual opportunity for a writer because the music and words are quite separate," said Mr. Vonnegut, who lives in Sagaponack. "In fact a unique opportunity - I can't think of any other music where this happens."

War Ignored

The original text, by a Swiss poet and novelist called Charles Ramuz, tells the story of a traveling soldier who meets and is tempted by the devil.

"What bothered me was that this was written while World War I was going on," said Mr. Vonnegut, remarking on how much bloodier that war had been than World War II, the war in which he himself had fought. "But neither Ramuz nor Stravinsky were ever in the war."

"The music has a Kurt Weill edge, a slightly nasty tone, but the way the story goes, the soldier is walking down the road - all by himself, no companions, just the way it would be in the middle of a war," he said sarcastically. "And what's he carrying? A violin! Just the thing to have with you if you're a soldier!"

Down And Dirty

"And then he's stopped. By a military policeman? No, by the devil, who wants to trick the soldier into giving him violin lessons - just the sort of things devils do in wartime!"

"The devil offers him a princess, wealth, a deal is struck and I suppose somewhere along the way the soldier loses his soul."

"I decided to write a libretto about a real soldier and a real war. A really angry story to match the down and dirty music."

Pat Birch, who directed the premiere, has done completely new choreography, and Ann Reinking and Ben Gazzara will appear in the production.

Orchestras Interested

"We workshopped it for four nights in St. Louis," said Mr. Vonnegut, "and I'm finally satisfied with it."

The text will be published in The Paris Review. Already a number of orchestras - Steppenwolf and the Chicago Symphony among them - have expressed interest in future productions.

Mrs. Sheehan, whose father worked for Carl Fisher, was raised in the Montauk Manor Hotel and, while still a schoolgirl, won an essay competition that launched a career as a publicist. In addition to steadfastly promoting the Philomusica, a New York City ensemble of winds, strings, and piano launched in 1971, she helped launch Guild Hall's Joys of Summers benefit and the Boys Harbor Grucci fireworks.

A literary quarterly founded by expatriate Americans living in Paris in 1953, The Paris Review is edited by one of its founders and another East Ender, George Plimpton. The magazine is noted for publishing work by emerging authors and for its interviews with established writers.

Tickets start at $250 and are available from Event Planning and Management in Sag Harbor. The performance will start at 8 p.m.

The East Hampton Town Trustees, Town Councilman Thomas Knobel, who is their advocate, and John M. Courtney, their attorney, have given the public and the politicians plenty of time to ruminate over a proposal that the Trustees assume regulatory power over most of the town's waterfront lands.

The proposal is revolutionary, in that the Trustees would, for the first time, have authority over private property as well as the land they own on behalf of the public. It also could be considered counterrevolutionary, in that the Trustees predate the Revolution, having been established by a patent from the royal governor of New York, Thomas Dongan, when James II was King of England, in 1686.

Although a good turnout and impassioned discourse are expected tonight when the Town Board holds a hearing on the delegation of some of the Zoning Board of Appeals' authority to the Trustees, it appears that what is said may wind up as little more than a formality. The board's three-member Republican majority appears behind the change. That would be unfortunate.

The proposal has gone through several incarnations, beginning with Councilman Knobel's "Trustee Manifesto." Each version has brought up new questions. The fact that the proposal would streamline the Town Code so that applicants would no longer have to apply to the Z.B.A. as well as the Trustees for certain shoreline projects is not enough reason for its adoption.

After a long period of disregard for their responsibility, it has only been in the latter half of this century that the Trustees have become rigorous in pursuing their rights as proprietors. Even so, their accomplishments have been limited by their inability to plot swift and effective action and by the fact that they can neither raise funds by taxes nor enforce their own regulations, except by bringing suit or convincing the Town Board to pay their bills.

The amendment to the Town Code being heard tonight delegates to the Trustees the authority to act either as a regulatory agency or as proprietors, at their own discretion. At the same time, it reauthorizes the Zoning Board of Appeals to act in those parts of town where the Trustees make no claim to ownership, particularly at Lake Montauk. This could lead to an untenable disparity in decisions for similar applications.

In addition, the amendment includes no guarantee that the Trustees will follow the regulatory procedures now in effect, such as having the town's expert planners, biologists, and marine biologists review applications and make recommendations before decisions are made. Nor does it guarantee that the Trustees will comply with the State Environmental Quality Review Act.

Since the Trustees predate the creation of state government, they have claimed, and the courts have agreed, that they are not required to comply with state law. Although John Courtney, who has been the Trustees' attorney for 12 years, has urged them to do so in the past and says they will do so in the future, there is no guarantee they will.

In this regard, it is noteworthy that the Trustees now comply with the State Open Meetings Law and Freedom of Information Act on a voluntary basis. These laws help the public watch their elected officials and insure access to all manner of government records. Who is to say that will continue to be the case?

The most compelling argument for giving the Trustees the authority they seek is, to our way of thinking, that as a whole the Trustees panel has tended to be a more reliable advocate for environmental preservation and less influenced by the power of wealthy landowners than the Town Board. These have been men and women who fit the Bonac profile - persons of broad local experience whose knowledge of the ways of tides and the sea, of fish and wildlife, was impeccable.

More recently, however, the composition of the Trustees has changed. The board now includes a carpenter, a homemaker, a landscaper, a highway worker, a retired accountant, a car mechanic, a pool cleaner and assessor's assistant, and a fuel delivery man. Only one is a full-time bayman. Are there then any characteristics of the Trustees significant enough to persuade the public to give them sole authority for so much of the town's most valuable land? It is a long time since Stuart Vorpahl Jr. enlivened and educated the Trustees with his knowledge of the historical record and hands-on fishing experience. And even he couldn't get elected the last two times he tried.

The way in which the Trustees propose to comply with the State Environmental Quality Review Act also is troubling. Neither town nor state law are without flaws. But they are the best mechanism government has evolved to balance the rights and desires of individuals and corporations against the public good.

The Trustees, with the Republican majority on the Town Board behind them, say they will not need to comply with SEQRA when they are considering lands they own but that they will do so when considering applications for private property. This is less than promising, especially given the fact that upland boundaries of many of the lands the Trustees claim and, in some cases, even the title to those lands are unclear.

The Trustees are well aware that a litigious public could challenge their authority and their decisions and that the number of such suits could escalate if the authority they seek is granted. Here the question arises of who will pay to defend them. The Republicans on the Town Board had each campaigned for office in part by criticizing the Democrats for what they said was an inordinate number of lawsuits against the town. Will they wind up having to create a legal defense fund for the Trustees?

Traditionally, the Trustees have done business in a rather informal manner. They recognize that this will have to change if they are given the authority they seek. Although their lawyer would undoubtedly serve them well in establishing a more structured system, it undoubtedly will take time before applicants will be able to count on even-handed and efficient responses, no matter what the Trustees' intent.

The Star has long fought for the Town Trustees and encouraged them to fight state agencies such as the Department of Environmental Conservation when it seemed appropriate. But we fear the consequences of this proposal. Isn't there some other way to acknowledge the traditional role of the Trustees and bow to their rights? What about seeking enabling state legislation to establish a mixed panel, representative of both the Zoning Board and the Trustees, to rule on those applications that involve Town Trustee lands?

The movement to strengthen the Trustees' centuries-old sovereignty is appealing. But we fear it is an exercise in which nostalgia has gotten in the way of common sense.

Every so often, Gregory Rabassa pays his respects to St. Jerome, the patron saint of translators, by visiting the Frick Collection in Manhattan to see the El Greco portrait. The saint, painted from an obviously Spanish model, is stern looking and reminds Mr. Rabassa of a professor he had many years ago at Columbia University - "a mean old son of a bitch."

St. Jerome's translation of the Old and New Testaments from Latin had been the sole source of all Catholic Bibles in English for more than 15 centuries. His faithful visitor, Mr. Rabassa, is one of the major translators of Spanish and Portuguese, and he has crafted into English some of the finest literature to come out of Latin America in this century.

Abiding Error

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Julio Cortazar, Mario Vargas Llosa, Jorge Amado, Jose Lezama Lima, and others have achieved enormous popularity across the United States and in other English-speaking countries in part due to Mr. Rabassa's work over the last 30 years.

But, any comparison to St. Jerome must end there. The monk had such a biting humor that other monks found him difficult to get along with, and his relationship to St. Paula, who trailed after him everywhere, was a scandal. And he is associated with a terrible and enduring professional error.

Ancient Hebrew lacks vowels and, as the story goes, the monk mistook the group of consonants meaning "halo" for "horns," thereby giving the prophet Moses a false image as a cuckold, which was preserved forever by Michelangelo.

Mr. Rabassa, on the other hand, is modest, soft spoken, and accommodating. His career has provided him with many distinguished friends and produced a long list of awards and honors.

In 1967, he won the National Book Award for Translation for Julio Cortazar's "Hopscotch." His translations of "One Hundred Years of Solitude" and "The Autumn of the Patriarch," Gabriel Garcia Marquez's monumental best-sellers, were finalists in that competition in 1971 and 1977, the same year he received the PEN American Center's first prize for "Autumn."

The list of professional honors goes on, among them a Guggenheim Fellowship, the PEN medal for translation, an honorary doctorate from Dartmouth College, a doctorate in Portuguese from Columbia University, the Alexander Gode medal from the American Translators Association, and so on.

Goal: Invisibility

Unlike other translators, who often complain that they never garner the recognition achieved by the authors whose works they translate, Mr. Rabassa considers being in the background exactly where a translator belongs.

"The highest praise one can give is to say something doesn't read like a translation. The idea is to be invisible, but translators do tend to whine," he said.

The PEN Club made enough noise so that the Library of Congress recently agreed to list translators along with authors, and PEN continues to send a letter to any book reviewer who neglects the translator.

Now 75, Mr. Rabassa spent two years in Brazil on a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship and has been all over Europe and Latin American for pleasure and work. During an interview last week at his simple cottage in Hampton Bays, however, he said he was losing the urge to travel.

Limited Languages

"Portugal was the last great place to travel, but it's been McDonaldized too. The rock-and-roll music has pushed out the fado," he said.

He talked too about his father, who was born in Cuba and came to New York at the turn of the century to escape his own father, a tyrant of Catalan descent. The elder Mr. Rabassa worked as a sugar broker, "a logical occupation for a Cuban," but did not speak Spanish at home.

"The only time I heard Spanish was when he cut his finger, or when he counted. He was perfectly fluent but would get balled up over numbers."

At Dartmouth, Mr. Rabassa studied Romance languages, with emphasis on Spanish and Portuguese. Rus sian was added to the curriculum when World War II began, and he studied a little of that too. But, just six points short of a degree, he joined the Army.

O.S.S. Decoder

He was attached to the Office of Strategic Services, serving for three years in Washington, North Africa, and Italy. Sent first to North Africa when it was thought Hitler would invade Spain, he ended up in Italy decoding messages sent from inside the Third Reich.

As early as January 1945, Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, known as Smiling Albert, was secretly negotiating Germany's surrender. When he was transferred back inside Germany, the O.S.S. had to find a new contact. This was Karl Wolf, an S.S. general who was responsible for many atrocities but saved himself from hanging by taking over the talks.

Despite the espionage, Mr. Rabassa found the work mundane, the negotiations being "such a gradual thing." It was, though, his start as a translator..

First Work

After the war, Mr. Rabassa pursued a master's degree in Spanish at Columbia on the G.I. Bill. Dartmouth had awarded him a degree in absentia. "I figured I got three points for physical education in the military and three for modern European history in the O.S.S.," he explained. He switched to Portuguese for his doctorate.

While studying and teaching at Columbia, he and some colleagues started a magazine that highlighted new European and Latin American writers. One of them, Miguel Angel Asturias, later won the Nobel Prize.

Through the magazine, Mr. Rabassa came to the attention of Sarah Blackburn at Pantheon Press. She hired him to translate "Hopscotch," his first book assignment and his first contact with Julio Cortazar, who became a friend and the favorite among all the authors whose works he has handled.

Used Car Helped

Mr. Cortazar, a leftist in his native Argentina, was blacklisted by the State Department in the 1950s. A serendipitous connection between Mr. Rabassa and the Nixon Administration got him a visa, however, in time to attend an important conference of the Americas Society.

"I once bought a used car from Leonard Garment - the White House intellectual - and I was going with his old girlfriend. I called him and Cortazar never had any trouble from then on," laughed Mr. Rabassa, adding he was amused later to see George McGovern's campaign ads showing a photo of President Nixon and asking, "Would you buy a used car from this man?"

Mr. Cortazar, himself a translator before becoming one of Latin America's leading writers, did the university circuit in this country several times before he died in 1984. He was known for lending a hand to young writers and helping to attract much-needed money for translations.

"Hopscotch" and a short story called "Blow-Up" were later made into films.

Favorite Effort

In comparison, Mr. Rabassa found Mr. Marquez, now more famous by far, "withdrawn."

"He writes his ideas and opinions but doesn't like to appear in public," said Mr. Rabassa. They met the first time in New York about 15 years ago, when Mr. Marquez was himself supposedly blacklisted for his radical ideas. "He became a recluse, hanging out with only the high and mighty, like Fidel Castro. But never going into the streets."

Still, he admires Mr. Marquez's work enormously. He said "One Hundred Years of Solitude" was perhaps his favorite. "It was so well written that it translated itself, which speaks well of his style. His ideas may be baroque but his writing is classical," he said.

Mr. Rabassa struggled, on the other hand, with Jose Lezama Lima's baroque ideas and style, which contained invented words, strange meanings for common words, and impossibly complex syntax. "The English and the Spanish didn't match. I had to rearrange it all," he said.

Cold Eye

Although he said he appreciates the passion and romanticism of Latin literature he said he must, as a translator, "look at it with a cold eye." That eye, he added with a smile, "may be from my grandfather's cold Catalan blood. He did not have high regard for artists."

Describing the influence of linguistics on the field of translation, Mr. Rabassa said, "It doesn't seem they're talking about what I'm doing. It's like relating chemistry in our bodies to what we're doing," He moved his hands through the air. "It doesn't seem to be the same thing."

Instead, he argues, one often must find the spirit of the meaning rather than a word or phrase's precise counterpart. Such an approach helped him, he said, with Mr. Lima's elaborate language. Asked for an example, he said it was most easily described in relation to curses. Son of a bitch, for example, wouldn't go into Spanish, so it becomes hijo de puta, son of a whore.

Big Goat?

Likewise, Spanish speakers don't use "bastard," a fairly common expletive in English, while "cuckold" has no value in modern English. The sentiment is therefore best conveyed with cabron, which literally means "big goat." It works, though, ironically. The goat is a medieval symbol of masculinity, and the insult is the same as calling the village idiot Einstein, said Mr. Rabassa.

Now a professor at Queens College and the Graduate School of City University, Mr. Rabassa is working on a work of nonfiction, "The Brazilian People" by the late Darcy Ribeiro, an anthropologist and novelist who "writes like a novelist and translates easily."

Like the others, Mr. Ribeiro had, through the vagaries of South American politics, become something of an outcast.

Magic Realism

On the subject of magic realism, Mr. Rabassa noted that the author of "Seven Serpents and Seven Moons," Demetrio Aquilera-Malta, an Ecua dorian, wrote in the style as early as the 1930s. Although the Brazilians were credited with pioneering the genre, the term was coined by a critic to describe Kafka, he said.

Mr. Rabassa translated "Seven Serpents" in 1979 "as a labor of love," and then went looking for a publisher - "not generally a good idea." A Wall Street Journal profile of Mr. Rabassa, in which he talked about publishers being unwilling to spend money on translation, prompted one to finally come forward.

The Americas Society paid to turn "One Hundred Years of Solitude" into English but, even after it became an international success, Harper and Row declined to assume the cost, said Mr. Rabassa.

A Compliment

Most translating money now comes from university presses and, he added, from the Mobil Oil Corporation. He has only just finished this year's winner of Mobil's Pegasus Prize, "A God Strolling in the Evening Breeze" by Mario de Carvalho. Mobil is also paying to publish the novel, about Christianity coming to Roman Portugal.

Of the more than 35 books Mr. Rabassa has translated, he said he was most proud of "One Hundred Years of Solitude," not because of its success but because Mr. Marquez said he liked it better in English than Spanish.

Ever humble, though, the translator did not take the praise personally.

"I think that was meant more as a compliment to the English language," he said.

In the summer of 1994, I had lunch with a friend near her office in New York City. She happens to be the top woman there and she gets lonesome at lunchtime. The guys at her level all go out together and never have lunch with the women anymore.

Is this some new kind of sex discrimination? "Oh no," she says, "It's just that there's so much talk about sexual harassment suits these days. No one knows what it is or isn't, so they figure, 'Why risk it?'"

But my friend wasn't looking for feminist advice. Her husband, who was "downsized" at one of our biggest corporations three years earlier, hadn't been able to find a job and had almost stopped looking.

Women's Gains

That same week, I saw an item in The New York Times that reported that in the previous five years there had been a nearly 20-percent drop in income among college-educated white American men. Not minority, high-school educated, or blue-collar men, but white management men in their 40s and early 50s, the masters of the universe.

And while women on the whole still do not earn as much money as men, The Times noted that college-educated women in the same age group had seen their incomes rise slightly over the same period. Meanwhile, new national studies were indicating that women were now carrying half the income burden in half of all United States families.

Downsizing had not yet hit the headlines in 1994; the "angry white male" had not yet surfaced in that year's election campaign. But my inner Geiger counter had begun to click, the way it does when something foreign to definition, expectation, and accepted truth happens.

Need For Change

I trust that click; it set me on the search that led to the concept of "the feminine mystique," which led to the women's movement for equality. And now, though my and many other women's lives in the 30 years since had been conducted within that liberating frame of reference, I feel again that urgent change is required. My inner Geiger counter does not lie. I sense something that cannot be evaded or handled in the usual feminist terms.

I sense the need for a paradigm shift beyond feminism, beyond sexual politics, beyond identity politics altogether - a new paradigm for women and men. Since then, the more I've thought about this and begun to try to make it happen, the more I realize that many other people from very different political persuasions than mine are moving in the same direction.

Unwritten Law

There's a mounting sense that the crises we are now facing, or denying, cannot be solved in the same terms that we used to conduct our personal, political, business, or family lives. They can no longer be seen in terms of gender. The old paradigm still shaping our thinking may keep us from seeing these problems for what they are, much less solving them.

For me, the unwritten, inviolable law against which all thinking about women must be tested is life itself. Does it open or close real life as women live it? Does it permit more choice, autonomy, freedom, and control: Does it empower or restrict?

For those of us who started the modern women's movement, the new paradigm was simply the ethos of American democracy - equality of opportunity, our own voice in the decisions of our destiny, but applied to women in concrete terms as the theory and practice of democracy had never been applied to us before.

Sexual Politics

But for the younger women who came from the 1960s student movement and who had not yet experienced the life that most women led, the paradigm was sexual politics: women as a whole rising up against men as a whole, the oppressed against the oppressors. While seeing women in these terms did open women's lives to new growth and development, I had trouble with this paradigm from the beginning. It didn't fit life - life as I and other women had known it, even scientific knowledge about life.

When I left the presidency of the National Organization of Women in 1970, sexual politics was already dividing our strength. I began putting my energy into teaching, lecturing, and writing again - all of it geared to what I saw as the need for feminist thought to evolve.

No-Win Choices

In my 1981 book "The Second Stage," I proposed going beyond the impossible dilemmas of the sexual politics paradigm and coming to new terms with family, motherhood, men, and careers. My views were bitterly attacked by the "politically correct" voices of feminism, as if I was betraying the women's movement.

Though deeply hurt, I had no desire to mount a divisive counter-feminist movement. I bowed out of feminist organizational politics altogether, except when asked for help.

In the 1980s, when feminist consciousness was supposedly at its apex, women of childbearing years were dividing into two antagonistic camps. They were being forced to make no-win choices that pit motherhood against career. The women's movement for equality was spreading throughout society; women in great numbers were graduating from law, medical, and business schools as well as community colleges and moving into jobs and professions.

Special Interest?

Yet polls began to show that younger women were reluctant to identify themselves as feminists, though they identified with every item of the women's agenda of equality.

A backlash was growing. Women, blacks, Latinos, gays, the handicapped - all were being labeled "special interests," with a moral claim on society no greater than that of the oil industry or the lumber barons.

Women, who constitute 52 percent of the American people, never should have let ourselves be defined this way. Had we weakened ourselves by increasingly organizing over separate, single issues? Did we cloud the vision of the common good by defining our cause in terms of women versus men?

The energy of the leading feminist organizations had been focused on abortion or on sexual politics - rape, date rape, pornography.

I have no doubt that the far right has deliberately focused on abortion as symbol and substance of a woman's independence, autonomy, control over her own body, and destiny. But did we somehow let those who opposed our rights, our very personhood as women, box us in and define the terms of our unfinished battle too narrowly?

Barriers Remain

Year after year we spend all our organizational energy and funds fighting for the right to an abortion, a battle we have already won in Congress and in the courts of law and public opinion. Shouldn't we put at least as much energy into breaking down the remaining barriers to women's advancing to equality with men in our economy?

The key to achieving that goal is changing the structures that make it difficult for American women to combine childbearing with the advancement in business and the professions.

Jobs Wanted

In the early 1990s, the Center for Policy Alternatives and the Ms. Foundation conducted a poll to discover the true concerns of women. To the amazement of the politically correct, it revealed that none of the sexual issues ranked among the main problems of women young or old, black or white. For the great majority of the women polled, the main problem was jobs - how to get them, keep them, and get ahead in them; and how to meet the responsibilities of family life while living the equality we'd fought for.

My sense of crisis came in the summer of 1994 as I prepared to go to Washington as a guest scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. While packing up my papers, I stumbled across The Times article on income losses among middle-aged white male professionals and gains among similarly aged and educated women. Citing the same trend, another article published in The Economist posed this question: Have women driven men from the workplace?

Paradox Seen

At once, I saw the impossible paradox for women: We are achieving what begins to look like equality because the men are doing worse. Is their loss really our gain?

Women today enjoy more control over their lives than their mothers ever dreamed of. The great majority have jobs that may not be the greatest, but that give them a life in their 40s and 50s after their kids are off (though the juggling of children and job in their 30s is tough). Many women are doing as well as or better than those downsized men.

Studying the pattern in the news clippings, I sensed a truly serious backlash ahead. I had noticed the court rulings in which divorced women lost custody of a child because they had a demanding job or were pursuing a degree and placed their child in day care for part of the day. The fathers won custody because their new wives or mothers would stay home all day with the child.

New Coalition

I also noticed how the religious right marched under the banner of "family values" even as its zealots continued to bomb abortion clinics. Feminist groups have mobilized to defend those clinics. But who is mobilizing to confront the economic inequality and dislocation that threatens the survival and stability of families far more than abortion or pornography?

There has to be a paradigm shift in our thinking about women, not just from sexual politics but from the whole focus of our status vis-a-vis men. If women are winning while men are losing, since most women continue to live with men in families, how long can women really win? If jobs, work, and family are the issues that concern women most now, we have to mobilize to protect our children, our families, and ourselves in a new coalition with men.

Restructuring

Our economy is in need of basic restructuring - one that counters income inequality, confronts the needs of family that can't be ignored in a workplace where women now equal or outnumber men, and insists that more and more men share in the responsibilities of parenting. This restructuring can't be accomplished in terms of women versus men, blacks versus whites, old versus young, conservative versus liberal.

We need a new political movement in America that puts the lives and interests of people first. It can't be done by separate, single-issue movements now, and it has to be political, to protect and translate our new empowerment with a new vision of community, with new structures that open the doors again to real equality of opportunity for the diverse interests of all our children - a new evolution of democracy as we approach the new millennium.

Betty Friedan, who has a house in Sag Harbor, is an adjunct scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. The author of "The Feminine Mystique" and "The Fountain of Age," she is working on a new book, "Beyond Gender: The New Politics of Work and Family." This article is excerpted from the journal of the Democratic Leadership Council.

As the dog days slouch across the East End and the thermometer hovers in the 90s, the perfect midsummer night's dream might seem to be an air-conditioned flick at your local cinema.

So what if it's "Air Force One" ("a geriatric comic book," according to The New Yorker) or "Contact" ("barely a smile, let alone a good laugh," op. cit.) - at least you'll need a sweater.

But lo: There's a superior option, and one with laughs galore. It's Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream," now playing in the cool evening breezes at Montauk County Park, presented by the fledgling but very savvy Hamptons Shakespeare Festival.

New, Improved Set

Nothing geriatric about this production. It sizzles with youthful energy and soars with the kind of inspiration that creates unlikely yet somehow just-right dramatic moments.

Norman Mailer once wrote that the best ideas come unexpectedly from left field, if one is receptive, and this "Dream" abounds with such trophies.

There've been a lot of improvements since last year's maiden production of "Romeo and Juliet," wonderful though it was. The set is now more substantial and functional - a pink ivy-covered structure that doubles as Athens and a wood nearby - while better equipment improves the lighting.

Grass, Stars, Fizz

The seating, fortunately, is still on the grass where it's fun and informal. Just bring your friends and family, a picnic, and a blanket or beach chairs, and loll under the starry sky.

(One romantic couple set up a little table on a lovely Indian rug, and celebrated with crystal champagne flutes and a bottle of bubbly. This seemed just right for the evening, which barrels along with a fizz of its own.)

The characters are familiar. Theseus, Duke of Athens, is to marry Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons, whom he has just beaten in battle. Oberon, King of the Fairies, seeks a reconciliation with his Queen Titania after a nasty quarrel, which Puck promises to effect with a magic love potion.

Headlong Comedy

Then there are the crazy, mixed-up romances. Lysander and Demetrius are both in love with Hermia, who has eyes only for Lysander but has been betrothed by her father, Egeus, to Demetrius, for whom Helena has a severe case of the hots.

It's all a mess, but one that's made light of in this headlong comic treatment. The feeling of impending tragedy that often accompanies productions of the play is swept aside without a second thought.

Contributing greatly to the ongoing shenanigans are the antics of what used to be called the rude mechanicals; they have been updated and localized into people we all recognize.

Updated Mechanicals

There's Quince, a carpenter for Shakespeare, here played by the brilliant Connie Rafferty as a lady cop, and Bottom (Remy Auberjonois, who also plays Pyramus in the interlude), now some sort of laborer.

Snug the joiner (Desmond Reilly, Lion in the interlude) becomes a hard hat on a road crew along with Flute (Paolo Pagliacolo, Thisbe in the interlude). Perhaps funniest of all are Kevin Chalmers as Robin Starveling, the moon in the interlude, and David Paluck, our last year's Romeo, as a very puckish Puck.

Also notable among the talented cast are Claudia Besso as Titania/ Hippolita - she played the nurse last year - and Heidi Yudis, who is a fine, unfettered Helena.

Riveting Oberon

Richard B. Watson wins the Tony hands down, however. His business-suited Theseus is dashing, but it is as Oberon that he gives a truly riveting performance. Limping around in a wolf skin and mask, baying at the moon, he reminds us that animal spirits may be our real selves, barely concealed beneath our human forms.

Josh Gladstone's athletic direction makes full use of the set and the surrounding hills, with actors bicycling across the stage and lovers streaking along the horizon in hot pursuit of one another; Puck actually seems to "put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes."

What with Jeanne Hime's energetic choreography and David M. Brandenburg's occasionally distracting original music, however, some of the actors' lines get lost in the excitement.

That, and a wish that the show had started at 6 as it did last year, instead of at 7, are only minor complaints about an otherwise smashing evening.

The show continues through Aug. 31.

Some of the 18 boats participating in the Shinnecock Marlin and Tuna Club's fishing tournament over the weekend found tuna. Many more did not. The arrival of tuna of any species is still awaited, although schools appear to be coming closer.

The Windy VII took first place with a 44-pound yellowfin. A 36-pound bluefin was hoisted aboard the Frigate to win second-place honors, and a 35-pound albacore captured third place for the Shore.

All the tuna were caught about 40 miles offshore to the west of Shinnecock. Floyd Carrington of the Marlin and Tuna Club said boats that headed east were skunked.

Better Inshore

The Offshore Sports Marina in Montauk reports "excellent, excellent, excellent fishing. The water's alive," Gary Anderson said of the inshore action.

He agreed that offshore was slower. Fishermen working the "tails" of Block Canyon were seeing yellowfin and some big-eye tuna, he said. Bluefin giants have been spotted shouldering the water on the surface after bait, but none were taken last week.

Chuck Mallinson of the Joy Sea charter boat reportedly visited Block Canyon for a two-day trip and returned with only two yellowfin tuna, although the charter tangled with a dusky shark in the 700-pound class. The shark won.

Capt. Rob Aaronson of the Oh Brother found only one yellowfin, and a number of "mushies." The nickname for albacore is a reference to its softer flesh. Tuna fishing continues to be unusually slow.

Off Limits

And, to make matters worse, bluefin will be off limits to a great many fishermen. The National Marine Fisheries Service announced on Tuesday that the "general" category of bluefin fishermen had caught 364 metric tons of their 374-ton, June-through-August quota.

Therefore, the general category will remain closed until Sept. 2. The remainder of the June-through-August quota will be added to the September quota. The general category is a group of Federally licensed, mostly rod-and-reel commercial fishermen who target bluefin tuna.

Fluke continue to take up the slack, at least for sportfishermen. On Tuesday, "T.J." at the Gone Fishing Marina in Montauk put it in perspective: "Fluking is the best it's been in over 10 years," he said.

To The Sporties

"The bite started three weeks ahead of normal, and I have weighed more large fluke - over five pounds - than I have in a long, long time. There's tons of nice fish. Spots for big fluke that were good 10 years ago, like east of outer Shagwong [reef], are good again," T.J. said.

"And I'd be willing to bet that fall run on the south side - Ditch Plain and the Radar Tower - will be good too," he went on.

It was clear, he said, that the commercial draggers' loss has been the recreational fluke fishermen's gain. Regulations have severely limited the amount of fluke that draggers can take.

"It hasn't been economically worth the bigger boats being on the beach," T.J. said, referring to the traditional spring and fall trawl fishery that meets migrating fluke near shore on the south side of the South Fork. "It may not be the best for the commercial guys, but it's definitely best for us," T.J. said.

Paul Dixon of the Sporting Life shop in Wainscott reports that the fly-fishing action in the shallows of Napeague Harbor has slowed considerably because dense clouds of baitfish are keeping striped bass sated. For the past week or so bass have been found in other places, most taken in the afternoon.

Then a big surprise on Aug. 6 and again last Thursday - huge weakfish feeding under bluefish schools. Steve Grossman of East Hampton and Laura Anker Grossman, his spouse, caught at least a dozen weaks on Clauser minnow flies aboard one of Mr. Dixon's boats. "We hooked at least 20," the fly-fishing charterman said. The weakfish all weighed about 10 pounds.

Like his offshore counterparts, Mr. Dixon is waiting for tuna, the albacore and bonito species that offer the marine flycaster the greatest thrills. There are reports of albacore offshore, and alleged sightings in Gardiner's Bay, he said, "but I'll believe it when I hook one."

Southampton Town announced this week that it and Suffolk County would purchase most of the defunct Bridgehampton Winery for $1,799,580.

The deal will add just over 69 acres to the town's Long Pond Greenbelt and end plans, pursued by JOG Associates, the property's owner, to transform it into a nine-hole golf course and eight-lot residential subdivision.

"This becomes a very logical place to use as a trail head," said Councilman Patrick (Skip) Heaney, referring to a recently completed draft management plan for the greenbelt, which calls for greater public access.

Central Hub

"One recommendation which percolated out of that effort was the recognition that we needed one central point where we could have a visitors center, parking, and instruct people on the layout of the greenbelt," said Mr. Heaney.

"I support that completely," added Supervisor Vincent Cannuscio. "It's a great idea that would change the parcel from merely being a relatively inaccessible area to one that would be open and inviting."

Paul Rabinovitch of the Nature Conservancy, which acted as a negotiator on the town's behalf, said it was also interested in the possibility of using the winery building, which was not included in the sale, as an administrative office, "if it is feasible and affordable."

Joint Effort

Under the plan, Suffolk County will pay $26,700 an acre for 30.1 acres of woodland on the eastern half of the property, using funds from its quarter-cent sales tax drinking water protection program.

Southampton Town will buy 39.3 acres of meadow, overgrown farm fields and vineyards, and ponds and wetlands on the western half of the property at the same price per acre. The town will use funds from its voter-approved open-space tax and other open-space funds, including approximately $100,000 that it received from New York State as a reimbursement for prior purchases.

JOG Associates, whose principal is Joseph O'Grady, will keep about four acres, which include the winery buildings and an old farmhouse and two one-acre building lots.

Just In Case

"We have been working actively with the County Executive's office on a partnership," said Mr. Cannuscio. "We have received assurances that the funds will be available."

Mr. Heaney said he was optimistic the county would come up with its share of the money. But in case it does not, he added a clause to the Town Board resolution that guarantees the town will purchase the whole thing. "That was my hook," he said.

JOG Associates' plan for a golf course and residential development has been pending since 1994. It required a change of zone through the town's quasi-public service use zoning law, and has drawn fire from environmentalists who feared the course would destroy the habitat of the endangered tiger salamander.

Sabin's Pledge Stands

Earlier this year, a group of neighbors, banding together under the name Save Black Pond and Its Wetlands, launched an ad campaign to preserve the parcel.

Andrew Sabin of Amagansett, a precious metals trader and herpetologist, pledged $100,000 toward the purchase of the land at the group's first meeting in February.

Yesterday, Mr. Sabin, who has said he wanted to see the parcel preserved for the past nine years, stood by his offer to contribute $100,000. "If they want it, they can have it," he said of the town. "If they don't want to use it for the purchase, they can use it to maintain trails or whatever. Something can be worked out."

Preserve Expanded

While the wooded eastern portion of the property has long been a target for preservation by both the town and county - a deal to buy it in 1991 fell through - the western half has been overlooked.

"The vineyard section was basically secessionary farm fields so it was on no one's list," said Mr. Heaney. But the town's open-space advisory committee, "recognizing its connection to the greenbelt and potential for use as a trail head," agreed to recommend it.

BRIDGEHAMPTON

Happy Bear Inc. to Jane Gill, Ranch Court, $285,000.

Wiskey Hill Inc. to Egan East Dev. Corp. III, Mill Path, $165,000.

Wiskey Hill Inc. to Howard Talmud, Mill Path, $170,000.

White to William and Barbara Garry, Kellis Pond Lane, $582,000.

Teresi to Nicholas and Joanna Feffer, Woodruff Lane, $250,000.

Martin to Henry and Mary Griffo, Strong's Lane, $160,000.

EAST HAMPTON

Cusick to Mark Webb, Egypt Lane, $999,000.

Tarshis to Gabriel and Shelley Leviashvili, Diane Drive, $250,000.

Klam to Sam Silber (trustee), Dunemere Lane, $1,585,000.

Czygier (referee) to Trident Realty L.P., McGuirk Street, $275,000.

MONTAUK

Murphy to Paul and Donna D'Innocenzo, West Lake Drive, $205,500.

NORTHWEST

Recanati to Charles and Eileen Miller, Bull Path, $450,000.

Rosenman to PP Real Estate Holding Ltd., Koala Lane, $175,000.

SAG HARBOR

Helsel to Patricia Kaye and Thomas Wargas, Stony Hill Road, $195,000.

Newmann to Susan Sullivan, Wickatuck Lane, $215,000.

SAGAPONACK

Brown to Patricia Goldstein, Herb Court, $1,350,000.

SPRINGS

Rana to Jeanne Standford, Orchard Lane, $164,000.

Bonomo to George and Jacqueline Dellon, Pembroke Drive, $200,000.

WAINSCOTT

Ocean Road Assoc. Inc. to John and Carol Finley, Beach Lane, $1,195,000.

WATER MILL

Alda to Russell Graham, Rosewood Lane, $650,000.

T. Warren Inc. to Luis Bustainante, Montauk Highway, $450,000.

Silvers to Francis MacNamara and Patricia Stewart, Fordune Drive, $1,765,000.

Tibbetts to Richard Lawless and Nancy Lawless-Beckett, Lower Seven Ponds Road, $187,000.