Category Archives: Translating Metamorphoses

Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

At the Desk

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Samhain                                                            New (Thanksgiving) Moon

Moving further into Missing.  Changing P.O.V., cleaning up hanging threads.  Thinking about plot and the next book.

Studying Greek Tragedy last week and this.  They came in threes.  And, if I recall my theatre history, also have three acts opposed to the five of comedy.  I’m working in the trilogy form for the Tailte novels.  Gotta be one of the roots for that idea, right?

(Gustave Dore (1832-1883), “Viviane et Merlin se reposant dans la forêt”)

Translating more of Jason and Medea in Ovid.  Hard going.  Can’t lay off a week and expect to come back fast.  I need to do this everyday when possible.

Cleared the elm out of the vegetable garden and moved the trunk into position to block the dogs from the orchard.  More limbing on the thicker branches, but everything is outside the fence now.  I can handle about 20 minutes of the ax work.  Gets my heart pumping.  Then I finish off on the treadmill.  Mix it up.

 

Cinema and Television, Latin, Translating Metamorphoses

Friday, Friday

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Fall                                                                    Fallowturn Moon

Sometimes Latin lessons leave me feeling further advanced, more knowledgeable, other times, like today they leave me with my brain tied in knots.  Tight knots.  I’m sure that means I’ve spent extra hard energy learning.  I keep telling myself.  Learned a new way to diagram sentences, using Noam Chomsky’s now passe transformational grammar.  I’m not sure why it’s passe, but it looks useful to me.

Keep reading.  That’s what Greg says.  It all becomes clearer if you keep reading.  I believe him; it’s worked that way for me so far.  It’s just that it’s harder stuff now that needs to become clearer.

I’m continuing to plug away at revising Missing.  As I go, things unravel and have to be rethreaded or dropped altogether.  Yesterday I cut the initial scene and it all flows much better in the first chapter now.  The story itself continues to emerge as I revise.  Funny, that’s what they say happens, but I’m experiencing it now.  So, if I can get that first chapter humming, then there’s the second one.  And so on.  BTW:  I’m a bit over half way through on the revision, but as I work sometimes I get lead to other parts of the book that need help.

Kate and I just watched 127 hours.  A gritty, intense movie made more so by its factual base.  When I lifted the DVD out of the player, I turned to Kate and said, “This is as close as I want to come to this experience.”  Since cutting the cable, we’ve watched more movies together.

Back on the treadmill today, cranking it up a bit, trying to shake off the detraining the last three weeks or so have accumulated.

Health, Latin, Myth and Story, Translating Metamorphoses, Weather +Climate

Jason and the Argonauts

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Fall                                                                                   Harvest Moon

The Harvest Moon has waned almost to New.  Leaves have begun to disappear, going from haute couture to essentials during the Harvest Moon’s month.  The temperature has taken a turn toward the cool, too, welcome in this household though not necessarily in others.

Working out stalled for me when I felt an ouch beyond what I felt made good sense.  On Monday I have my post-op visit and should have better information then.  I walk and lift modest weight with no twinge now, so I imagine I’ll be back to working out as soon as next week.  My capacity to recover quickly from this operation reinforces the resistance work I’ve done over the years.

Spent this morning dipping myself in the waters of the Jason and Medea story, Book VII of the Metamorphoses.   It was hard.  Not sure what happens, but some days the translating flows, other times it comes as if clotted and running through a pipe with bends and twists.  Today was a clotted and twisted day.  This is where we get the story of the golden fleece among other narratives.

A bit more now in the afternoon, just to see if I can bounce past the morning’s grind.

I also have the week 3 quiz to do in the Greek and Roman Mythology class.  Probably tomorrow.  Without much effort beyond review of my notes I’m hitting about 92% and that’s fine.  I could pump it up, but I have no need.  Look for a post in the next few days about some interesting things I’ve learned about the Odyssey and about myth.  Interesting to me, anyhow.

Latin, Myth and Story, Translating Metamorphoses

Back

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Fall                                                               Harvest Moon

A morning with Ovid.  Back at it, even though this was a revision of a long sentence I translated a couple of weeks ago.  Greg suggested I redo it with attention to the way the main verb controls the tenses of the subordinate verbs.   This turns out to be trickier and easier than I thought, but it took the morning.

Feels good to have that done.  That means I can move on in Ovid to my next narrative, Jason and Medea.  I also have to translate some more of the Aeneid, too.

Then, back to Missing and the revision, a process that goes well.  At least so I think.

The Vikings have enough going for them for me, the typical fair weather fan, to watch them again, so I’ll take up the remote and assume the position later on today.  Maybe get some bulbs and hosta planted too, though tomorrow looks good as well.

Cooking, Garden, Latin, Myth and Story, Translating Metamorphoses

Head and Hands

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Lugnasa                                                                      Autumn Moon

Worked my head into a fuzzy place today.  Just couldn’t go further, so I worked out.  That always helps.

Tomorrow is a Latin morning with my tutor at 11:00 AM.  Before I meet with him, I have to review my Ovid, the last of the Philemon and Baucis, 14 verses.  I reviewed the Aeneid this afternoon, 9 verses there.  This crop, in both authors, was difficult.

This weekend is a garden weekend.  The orchard, shoring up a leaning apple tree.  It’s a Zestar and we had two apples from it today.  Boy, are they good.  I plan to harvest the tree before we begin the shoring up.  These are mostly bagged and, for some reason, the squirrels have left them alone.  Maybe they’re honeycrisp connoiseurs?

We’re going to prepare for winter pruning, decide the remaining tasks before the cold and get on the priority ones.

There’s one more soup to make, a winter vegetable that will use our onions, leeks, carrots and tomatoes at least.  Our frozen soups. pot pies and vegetables have begun to use up the available space in our freezer so one task is to clean out the old and the no longer desirable to make room.  That will happen over the weekend, too.

Latin, Myth and Story, Translating Metamorphoses

Finishing.

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Lugnasa                                                                     New (Autumn) Moon

Finished Philemon and Baucis this morning.  Now I have to decide where I want to go in the Metamorphoses next.  Not sure I want to start at the beginning just yet. When I do, I want to produce idiomatic English and English as beautiful as I can render it.  I’m not there yet.  Maybe I’ll do the Medea cycle, she’s pretty interesting.  I plan over this next week or two to start some Tacitus, too.  Just to keep myself guessing.

(Medea.  Sandys.)

It feels good to have gotten this far, but there is plenty more of the trail yet ahead.

 

Humanities, Literature, Myth and Story, Translating Metamorphoses

A Tip of the Glass to Hermes

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Lugnasa                                                          Garlic Planting Moon

I’m within 5 verses of completing Philemon and Baucis.  I will complete it before the Rembrandt exhibition leaves town with its painting of this story from Ovid.  That was my goal though I’ve come up several weeks short because I wanted to circulate my transmission among the docents, but all public tours stopped last week.

When I finish it tonight or tomorrow, I’ll have translated three complete stories from the Metamorphoses:  Diana and Actaeon (Titian exhibit), Philemon and Baucis (Rembrandt exhibit) and Pentheus, one I chose because the story is retold in the Bacchae.  None of my translations are worth sharing much of, if any.  I’m still clumsy and not always accurate, but I moved through 10 verses today, so my speed has improved.

Speed is a goal because the Metamorphoses is long and if I ever hope to translate it, I’ll have to go faster than I have.  It’s divided into 15 books and at some point I’ll shift from a focus only on learning to a focus on translating and learning.  The difference probably being that I’ll work on a long chunk, say a book, then hire Greg or somebody to go through my translation with me.

A commentary useful for advanced students is still a goal, too, and as I translate I plan to do so in a way that will facilitate a commentary.  Pharr’s commentary on Virgil is a good model and one I will have in view the whole time.  BTW I also did another 10 verses in the Aeneid, too.  More practice.  The more I read, the better I get.

 

Garden, Latin, Translating Metamorphoses

TGIF

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Lugnasa                                                           Garlic Planting Moon

A Latin day, this time with work on both Ovid and Virgil.  Aeneid’s first 7 verses, its first sentence with the famous opening phrase, I sing of arms and the man.   Greg sees a lot of progress in my work.  It’s as if some dam broke a couple of months ago when I began using phrases to translate rather than whole sentences.  The benefit of hanging in there.   (philemon_baucis_bramantino)

The most important thing I can do is to read more and more.  That ups my vocabulary, increases my facility with grammar and adds to my foundation in written Latin literature.

When I hit Friday afternoon on a week, I feel like the work week is over.  Tours on Thursday and Latin all Friday morning, then a quiet time.

Tomorrow the garlic goes in the ground, the potatoes come out and I check the bees to see how the feeding is going.  It will be a pleasure to work outside, as a change from all this head work, and in weather beginning to cool.  The nights are better now, much better.

I’m also looking forward to getting back to Missing and the revision.  This last three days: pre-op physical on Wednesday, tours on Thursday and Latin today has not left me with time for it.

Art and Culture, Translating Metamorphoses

The Friday So Far

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Lugnasa                                                              Garlic Planting Moon

Latin morning.  Greg, my tutor, says he sees a lot of progress.  I can feel it, too.  He wants me to start reading Vergil now, at least a sentence or two a session.  I’m now translating with fewer and fewer mistakes, often where I’m confused, so is Greg.  He still gets me out of tight places and we wonder about the tougher ones together.  It’s more collegial.

(Philemon and Baucis)

Kate and I went up to Isanti to the Creamery for lunch and then down to Greenbarn to pick up some composted manure, sweet corn, cucumbers and, ironically, tomatoes.  I want to make a double batch of tomato/leek soup this weekend and we don’t have enough ripe tomatoes right now.  I’m gonna do more pot pies and make some chicken noodle soup as well.  All for the freezer.

As you might able to tell, my mood has lifted, I’m back in the with it range.  A lot of the lift came from talking it out with a Kate a week or so ago.  She’s a great listener and my love.  The combination is a good one for healing.

Garden, Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

Garlic

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Lugnasa                                                            Garlic Planting Moon

Ordered some more garlic from Seed Savers.  Drying the small garlic slices preserves the garlic volatiles and keeps the garlic from rotting.  Good deal.  We’ll make more next year.  Kate’s going to try drying leeks, too.  We have an abundance of leeks.  I was a bit over eager when I hit the garden store in May.  Leek/tomato soup, leek/potato soup, more chicken pot pies, some chicken noodle soup.

Crushed the Colorado beetles.  Seems harsh.  Felt harsh.  But gardening demands choosing sides.  For the plants and against their attackers.  This is what I’ve called previously switching over to Mr. MacGregor.  There are, though, limits.  At least for me.  For instance, I will not go to pesticides, so if an infestation overcomes my manual or less lethal intervention, so be it.

Also picked our entire 6 apple Zestar crop today.  Apples are a couple of weeks ahead of schedule.

All but the last chapter of Missing now summarized and another 6 verses of Philemon and Baucis done.  A good day.