Category Archives: Translating Metamorphoses

GeekWorld, Humanities, Latin, Myth and Story, Translating Metamorphoses

Moving Day

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Winter                                                              Cold Moon

A lot of time today going back over translation of Jason and Medea, trying to fix broken phrases, suss out mysteries hidden behind Ovid’s syntax and word choices.  I’m beginning to get a taste now of what the task of translation entails.  I’ve spent three years now levering myself up over the transom; I’m in the room; but, I can’t sit down to work yet.  Too much still to know.  But, I can see myself working in that room in the foreseeable future.

(The Ancient Roman Temple of Bacchus, commissioned by Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius and designed by an unknown architect c. 150 AD)

At the same time I had set today as moving day for all internet related tasks, all tasks requiring good security, all task but writing, really, and even there, the blog moved over to this new(ish) computer.  I’ve had this one for six months or so, but the work required to transfer all those functions over here is, at least for my tech level, significant.

Anyhow, I’ve got most of it done now, all the necessary stuff and I’m writing this entry on the new machine.  In the way of computers this work (the writing) is much the same.  It’s the guts that differ.  A terabyte of storage.  8 gigs of ram.  A bigger screen.  A fresh hard-disk and room to swap another one in when I need it.

[YOUR ALUMINUM FUTURE]

I now have a land of forgotten computers, brave electronic servants whose capacity got left behind by changing times.  This computer, though, I think will last a while.  The PC is fast becoming a less and less expensive door-stop though I still prefer them to laptops.  That’s  in part because I work at home; but it’s also because I love the ergonomic keyboard and  greater capacity for less bucks.

I did encounter one head scratcher in the transfers I did today.  I moved 25 gigs of images onto this machine.  I had them organized in folders.  Folders I understood.  For some reason, undoubtedly a reason of my own making, each image got its own folder on this new machine, meaning I have to sort through and reorganize literally thousands of images.

It’s not all bad. I’ve wanted to cull and reorganize my images for awhile, but I hadn’t decided on now.

Meanwhile Kate’s come down with a cold.  I convinced her to go to bed and try rest and fluids.  These are not necessarily obvious moves to the physicians among us.

Latin, Myth and Story, Translating Metamorphoses

Fafnir and Medea

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Winter                                                                              Cold Moon

Read the lay of Fafnir today.  In this lay Sigurd kills Fafnir, a dwarf transformed into a dragon by the Aegis-helm (helmet of Aegir–terror), then seizes “the cursed gold ofAndvari‘s as well as the ring, Andvaranaut.”  Loki seized them to ransom Odin and Hoenir.  When he did he was told the items “…would bring about the death of whoever possessed them.”  Wikipedia

(Fáfnir guards the gold hoard in this illustration by Arthur Rackham to Richard Wagner‘s Siegfried.)

This is core material both for Wagner’s Ring Cycle and for Tolkien.

Later I spent more time with Jason and Medea, in particular Medea right now, who is plotting, in a long soliloquy, to marry Jason, brush off her father the King and escape backwards Colchis for the wonders of Greece.  She’s trouble right from the very start.

Tonight Kate and I are headed to the Butcher and Boar for a carnivore’s night out.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Humanities, Latin, Myth and Story, Poetry, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

A Life Long Passion

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Winter                                                            Cold Moon

“A mythology is the comment of one particular age or civilization on the mysteries of human existence and the human mind…”                                                                                                                                            H.R. Ellis Davidson, Gods and Myths of Northern Europe

A life-long fascination with mythology and its companion fields, ancient religions and folklore, can be explained by this quote.  We have multiple ways of understanding the world, of asking and answering big questions.  In our day science is regnant, queen of the epistemological universe, but it is not enough.  Not now and not ever.

(Charles Le Brun, Fall of the Rebel Angels, 1685)

Science cannot answer a why question.  It can only answer how.  Neither can science answer an ethical question.  It can only speak to the effects of a course of action over another in the physical world.  This is not a criticism of science, rather an acknowledgment of its limits.

Mythologies (usually ancient religions), ancient religions, legends and folklore are our attempts to answer the why questions.  They also express our best thinking on the ethical questions, especially folklore, fairy tales in particular.

Where did we come from and why?  “1 In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, 2 the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. 3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.”  NRSV

(edward_burne-jones-the_last_sleep_of_arthur)

Want to live a good life?  Live like Baldr or Jesus or Lao Tze or Arthur.

How can we tell a just society from an unjust one?  Look at the 8th Century Jewish prophets.  Look at Confucius. (not a religion, yes, but functions like one)  Look at the Icelandic Sagas.  Different answers in each one.

I fell in love with these complex, contradictory wonderful narratives when I was 9 years old, maybe a bit younger.  Aunt Barbara gave me a copy of Bullfinches’ Mythology.  I loved Superman and Batman and Marvel Comics.  I was an attentive student in Sunday School and later in seminary.  Over time I’ve come to recognize this fascination as a ruling passion in my life, one that guides life choices with power in my inner world.

It will not, I imagine, fade.  It means writing fantasy is a work of great joy and a hell of a lot of fun.

GeekWorld, Latin, Translating Metamorphoses

a failure to communicate

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Winter                                                                     Moon of the Winter Solstice

How’s this for irony?  My Latin tutor, Greg, and I conduct our sessions on the phone.  Have done for three years now.  Yesterday I had read out a line from the Loeb translation of a sentence we were having trouble with and I waited.  Nothing.  That had happened before so I hung up and called him again.  His phone picked up.  I spoke.  Nothing.

Well, then, he called me on my cell phone.  The landline works better for an hour or so of tutoring, so we usually use it.  I answered.  I spoke.  Nothing.  We traded attempts back and forth until Greg sent me an e-mail.  Was my phone on mute?  No, I e-mailed him back.  Weird.

We continued for a while, then we decided to scrap the session and move into January.  He e-mailed me later and said that both his and Ana’s phone had had the same problem.  AT&T.

Anyhow this tickled my funny bone.  Trying to learn how to communicate with a long dead poet in his own language, two of us, speaking  a common language, couldn’t communicate because the technology prevented it.  When we switched to e-mail, on which we could communicate, we could not use it for continuing our communication focused on Ovid.

Latin, Translating Metamorphoses

Ugh. Latin hard.

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Winter                                                                            Moon of the Winter Solstice

Ohhh.  Not exactly a headache, but a brain sensation similar to muscles after an intense workout.  Stretched to capacity.  Used. Up.  After a gnarly sentence with five phrases including 4 subjunctives, one participle and a partridge in a pear tree.  Even with all the application I could muster the middle two phrases still eluded me.  Sometimes, after this kind of experience I go back the next day and things become clearer.  I’ll try tomorrow.

Next.  An interval workout with resistance.  All of me will be stretched by the end of the day.

Art and Culture, Family, Latin, Myth and Story, Translating Metamorphoses

Workin’

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Samhain                                                                     Thanksgiving Moon

Went through several verses of Jason and Medea, brain began to ache.  Stopped.  I have time on Friday to discuss the parts I didn’t get.  Greg says the real way to advance in translating is to read, read, read.  Which means translate, translate, translate.  I can see it, but I have to pace it.  It’s fun, but it’s also hard.

I’ve trimmed back my schedule, only outside the house commitment I have now is the MIA.  And, of course, the Woollies.  Since I finished the Mythology course on Sunday, that means I have almost ten days with very few interruptions.  That means I can focus and work the way I find best, mornings hard at it and afternoons for clean up.

Kate’s sold more of her work to the store in Anoka; she plans to set up an Etsy site with my help and will apply tomorrow, too, to a consignment store situated next to the Red Stag.  She’s having fun.  Energized.  Retirement has been good for her.  I’m glad.

 

Latin, Translating Metamorphoses

Latin

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Samhain                                                                Thanksgiving Moon

All day today in Jason and Medea, Ovid.  Two more full days before my time with Greg on Friday.  A little creaky.  To be expected.  Still, got through four verses plus.  Into a groove. Not a fast groove, mind you, but a groove nonetheless.

Family, Holidays, Translating Metamorphoses, Woolly Mammoths

I’mmmm Baaaaccckkk.

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Samhain                                                      Thanksgiving Moon

Coming back to the surface after a quick dip below into the land of lethargy and woe. (not really, it just rhymed and I liked the flow.)  Still, feeling more normal this morning, ready to get back at the translating, see if I’m still interested enough to continue.  I suspect that I am.

Tom, Warren, Stefan, Mark, Frank and I met last night at the Woodfire Grill in St. Louis Park.  Discussed Stefan’s Dad.  Possible congestive heart failure.  Long term care insurance:  ponzi scheme or important resource?  The complexity of retirement related issues, especially health insurance of all kinds.  Thanksgiving.  Frank at his daughters with her in-laws.  Mark’s 91 year old mother-in-law cooking a meal for 18.  Warren’s family and their first Thanksgiving without either Mom or Dad.  Tom and his grandson taking several steps at their home.  Our visit to Denver where Jon and Jen took on their new role in the family by throwing their first thanksgiving. (as the child-rearing, career oriented generation)

Watched a TED talk on Monotasking.  Not very good.  Half hearted.  Even so, I find the idea reinforcing since I tend to monotask.  I like to focus on one thing for hours at a time, even weeks at a time.  Over the last three months I had three priorities:  Terra Cotta tour, Missing revision and the Mythology class.  Each one required dedicated time, with no interruptions.

This is not new behavior for me.  When I was in college and seminary, I went the same way, compartmentalizing study, friends and politics.  During my working years with the Presbytery I did multi-task, a lot.  I never like the way it felt.  My feet never touched the ground and the next buzz was already building while one task got sat down.

Family, Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

TGIM

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Samhain                                                              Thanksgiving Moon

6 degrees this morning.  Looked out my study window yesterday evening and saw two deer walking in the street, taking in the lights and wondering about the neighbor with MS.  The dogs didn’t want to stay outside long.  Too cold.

My goal is to have Missing’s first revision done by January 1st.  The Mythology class ends this week and will free up some time.  It’s load has been manageable, but with the research for the Terra Cotta Warriors I’ve had little spare time.  Missing and Latin have suffered.

Still haven’t located anyone to do our snowplowing.  No notices up on the usual places, grocery store bulletin boards, no advertising.  Odd, but it may reflect the minimal snow fall we got last winter.

Kate comes home today and our house will once again have its full complement of mammals.  This is an inter-mammalian species residence and I’m not counting the mice, the chipmunks, the raccoons, the opossums, the woodchucks, the squirrels and the rabbits though they reside on this property, too.  Many of the latter live under our far shed.

Art and Culture, Literature, Myth and Story, Translating Metamorphoses

Challenge a God

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Samhain                                                                  Thanksgiving Moon

My course on Mythology finishes week 8 Sunday with a quiz on material about Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus and Euripides’ The Bacchae.  Over Thanksgiving week we have another 250 word essay due, the final writing assignment.  I’ve chosen to answer this question:  “In tragedies, the worlds of the divine and the human often come into direct contact, but in different ways in each tragedy. Choose one tragedy and analyze how it imagines the relationship between humans and the divine.”  Just weeks 9 and 10 to go.

(Caravaggio, 1595, Uffizi)

Don’t know how many of the 50,000 world wide students have stuck it out, but this is a wonderful way to refresh and deepen knowledge about Roman and Greek mythology.  It has also increased my analytical skills for use in approaching any myth, which includes, of course, the Metamorphoses.

In the Bacchae Sophocles approaches the story of the doubter Pentheus, king of Thebes, from the perspective of Dionysus, a god challenged.  The same incident occurs in Book 3 of the Metamorphoses and I translated it.  My main goal in all this work in the Latin is to embed the stories and the characters firmly in my mind.

While reading The Bacchae, a sudden burst of insight.  Here’s the insight:  The focus of this myth is how a god demonstrates his/her divinity when challenged.  The story of the golden calf in Genesis is a similar story.  So is the story of Adam and Eve.  Even Job.

This is, if you consider it, an ur-story since at some point every god or goddess had to establish their bona fides to persons who would worship them and so people would worship them.  We tend to come at religious life after this delicate and not at all obvious in its outcome encounter has already happened.  In the Bacchae and the story of Pentheus in Ovid Pentheus gets the ultimate penalty for challenging Bacchus.  He dies, his kingdom perishes and his people go into exile. Powerful demonstration of divinity on the part of Dionysus.