• Category Archives Translating Metamorphoses

  • Latin Fridays. (Maybe I Should Eat Fish, Too?)

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lugnasa                                                       New (Garlic Planting) Moon

    Down in the pits with Ovid this morning, rasslin’.  I’m not moving as fast as I did a month ago, but I believe that this stretch is more difficult, not that I’m slower.  There are many small satisfactions in translation:  learning new words, puzzling out word order, identifying conjugations, putting phrases together to form a sentence and sentences together to form a narrative.  I enjoy it.

    Today is a Latin day, so I’ll whack away at Ovid in the afternoon, too, before I work out.  Tomorrow it’s back to Missing though I hope I can work some short Ovid sessions along the way, too.

    I had two different couples stop me after the Rembrandt tour yesterday, none of them part of the home school group who were my primary tour.  They both said I was an excellent docent.  Used those words.  That felt good.  I thanked them and said it was good to hear.

    Kate’s roasting peppers this morning.  That set off the smoke alarm and the co2 detector.


    Art and Culture Cooking Latin Translating Metamorphoses

  • Intiba, Radix, Lactis Coacti, Ova

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lugnasa                                                               Hiroshima Moon

    Spent yesterday with my nose in the Metamorphoses.  I’ve not been doing Latin every day, rather only when I can devote sufficient time to it, like 3-4 hours.  Yesterday I put in 6.  It’s not the best way.  Each time I have to crank up my Latin engine, which often acts like one of those old cars with the hand starter.  Better to keep the engine  running by daily exercise.

    Still, I made progress.  Even had Latin nouns circling in my mind before I went to sleep:  intiba, radix, lactis coacti, ova.  That’s endive, radish, cheese (coagulated milk) and eggs.

    Today Mark and I will make one attempt for his driver’s license.  By we I mean I’ll drive him over there and then sit as he waits in line.  For hours.  I hope he gets it though since it would allow him to rent cars in Saudi Arabia, be generally more free.

    I sliced garlic and gathered rosemary last night, both for drying.  We bought a dryer several years back and each fall we process things.  First time for garlic, though Kate has done a number of herbs in the past.  I hope to dry apple this year.

    Mark has a bank account, new passport and the material he needs for his visa.  The driver’s license is the main thing he wants now.  He leaves Friday for Lansing, Michigan to visit our cousin Kristen, then on to Detroit to visit Leisa and her husband, Bob.  She’s in a nursing home recovering from a devastating stroke.

     


    Family Garden Latin Translating Metamorphoses

  • Nose in the Book

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer                                                Hiroshima Moon

    Spent the day translating Ovid.  I’m pleased with my progress and now am impatient for the next breakthrough.  That one will only come with a vastly expanded vocabulary and many more hours of translating, but I can see it there, off in the distance.  Then I will be able to set about the task of translating the Metamorphoses, the project I’ve gone through all this learning to accomplish.

    There are, too, other texts that would be fun to work on, especially, for me, some of the historians like Tacitus, Livy, Caesar, Plutarch.  I know.  Some fun, eh?  Works for me.

    Interrupted late in the process by air conditioner repairman.  Ours cut out again sometime last night.  But, as it did last time, it started as the repair guy got here.  Go figure.  We’re rebuilding the damn thing one part at a time.  Last time the capacitor, today the relays.  Educated guesses without a particular problem to diagnose.  90 day warranty on repairs through Center Point.  No extra money paid today.

    Later, sheepshead.


    Translating Metamorphoses

  • A Day Off From Rembrandt

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer                                                         Under the Lily Moon

    Taking a day off from Rembrandt.  I finished all the reading I had laid out, looked up a lot of paintings on the net and am now letting it all soak in.

    The garden work this morning was a nice break and I spent the rest of the day on Philemon and Baucis.  I’m not going to finish it by Thursday, still too much to do on putting together my tour, but I can see finishing it in the next week or two.

    I’m moving at a much faster pace now since my aha last week.  It was a real breakthrough, both in method and in understanding.  Nice to know this old mind still has an aha or two left.

    Gonna work out now, short burst.  I’ve cut back to two of these short-burst workouts instead of three.  They were wearing me out.  On Wednesday’s I’ll do a modest cardio workout with resistance instead of short-burst plus resistance.  The other three days I do a light cardio workout for 50 minutes.


    Art and Culture Translating Metamorphoses

  • Still Advancing

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer                                                     Under the Lily Moon

    My translating pace has picked up noticeably with fewer headaches and WTF’s.  This encourages me; I might be able to set a pace for translating rather than just slogging through as many verses as I could manage.  Over the course of a particular period of time, for example, I could finish a whole book.  There are fifteen books in all in the Metamorphoses.  Wow.

    This is exciting for me.  It means I’ve actually learned a new skill.  I’m far from perfect in my translation and have a long ways to go before I can produce my own confident idiomatic English translations, but I can see that moment coming.

    So, this afternoon.  Rembrandt.


    Translating Metamorphoses

  • Aha Moments

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer                                                   Under the Lily Moon

    In the long ago faraway I took symbolic logic.  My freshman year of college.  I’d never struggled academically and German had already taken my measure in the first semester, so I was in no way ready for another problem.

    Larry Hackestaff was the professor, a philosopher who carried a six-pack of Bud attached to his belt through the plastic rings holding it together.  He was a young guy and he enjoyed the campus gatherings which were 1950’s typical boozy events with beer kegs and purple Jesus.

    Six weeks into symbolic logic my mind had turned to mush.  This stuff just didn’t make sense to me.  Not because I wasn’t trying.  I studied hard, but I wasn’t getting it.  After my debacle with German, my self-image was in trouble.  I took my green copy of our text to the library for one last go, before our first exam.

    Somehow that evening, the propositions and logical symbols and proofs and fallacies jumped off the page for first time and entered my brain.  Never worried about logic or my self-image in that way again.

    I’ve been studying Latin for 2 and a half years now, starting almost from scratch and aiming toward my goal of translating Ovid’s long poem, The Metamorphoses.  The grammar made sense to me; the vocabulary is not difficult, but the application of the two in translating Ovid has proved hard.

    Lots of reasons for that, reasons that reflect my still developing grasp of both grammar and vocabulary, the nature of poetic Latin and, I learned yesterday, my own overly analytical approach to the task.

    I wrote down every word and every possible meaning and case or conjugation.  Then I began to assemble a translation, matching the singular neuter ablatives with other singular neuter ablatives, checking out the various meanings of the words and locating verbal forms and their possible use in the sentence.

    This was satisfying in one respect.  I ended up with a lot of notes and information.  And I imagine that did me some good.  I had, however, missed the primary point Greg had been trying for over a year to get me to see.

    I saw it yesterday.  Look at the verb.  Translate it by itself.  Find a noun that is the subject of the verb.  Find an object if there is one.  Everything else modifies one of these three.  Greg has championed this “mechanical” style of approaching translation as best for novices.

    I believed him.  I thought I was doing that; but, I wasn’t.  Now, I see it.  The next 10 verses fell into place quickly.  It was an aha moment even greater than that one at Wabash all those years ago.  More satisfying, too.

     


    Faith and Spirituality Translating Metamorphoses

  • 10,000 Hours

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer                                               Under the Lily Moon

    OK, I’m late to the 10,000 hour rule.  You probably know about it from Macolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers.  I missed it or, if I noticed it, I passed it by.

    It did make me think when I ran across it recently.  What would be worth spending that much time to polish?  First question, is there anything I’ve done repeatedly, for hours at a time, over several years?  Yes, writing.  Being a student.  Engaging in political activity.  Studying Art.  And most recently, translating Latin.

    Second question.  Are there any of those that I want to continue that I might pursue at a pace to reach 10,000 hours or so?  I’ve already reached that level in being a student and, I’m sure, in political work.  That pares the question down to writing, art and Latin.

    I will continue writing, so writing at an increasing pace makes sense to me.  Studying art is fun, but I’m never going to put in 3 hours a day at it.  Just not that interested.  But.  The Latin?  Maybe so.  Maybe so.

    That would mean pruning my close attention and active time to two activities, writing and Latin.  Might make sense.  Hmmm.


    Art and Culture Translating Metamorphoses Writing

  • When It’s Time to Live, Live.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer                                                          Under the Lily Moon

    “When it’s time to die, go ahead and die, and when it’s time to live, live. Don’t sort-of-maybe live, but live like you’re going all out, like you’re not afraid.”

    Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees

    With Paul and Sarah on the road, this quote jumped out at me. (oh, toby, too) I so want to live on the very edge of my life, risking it all, trying to be the best me that I can be.

    It probably doesn’t look like it from a moving to the wilds of the Maine coast position, but for me learning Latin and keeping bees put me out there, in a place no longer familiar, on lands foreign and challenging.

    If I’m honest, and why wouldn’t I be, the big challenge for me is getting my work out there into the world.  It terrifies me and excites me, just not in equal measure.  The terror easily swamps the excitement.

    Those of us with quiet treks, ancientrails walked alone or in private, can fall prey to adventure envy when the adventure has a physical component.  Climbing.  Skiing. Moving. I’m acquainted with this envy and envy is bad for the soul.  It diminishes the envier and the envied with a false comparison, a comparison between different journeys, neither more nor less profound or difficult.  Just different.

    Traveling fills that adventure component for me, but I like returning to the familiar.  In fact, for me to walk my own ancientrail, I need a quiet home, peace during the day and a place to work.  With Kate I’ve found all these things.  A blessing in my life.

    Now there’s that submitting my writing.  That’s an adventure.


    Bees Translating Metamorphoses Travel Writing

  • Searching for Ovid

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                                    Garlic Moon

    Ovid on the third phase:  At times it is folly to hasten at other times, to delay. The wise do everything in its proper time.

    Searching for Ovid.  Gone now.  2000 years ago.  An unhappy man, yet he went on, did not stop, wrote, lived.

    Of course, his statue is here.  He looks suitably serious, dignified, the man some Romanians take as their first national poet.  But what of the man, not bronze?

    If I limit myself to the Roman mosaic, the material objects in the museum, the remains of the wall across from Hotel Class, the ruins of the homes and the butcher shop, the promontory views from the high coastline overlooking the Pontus Euxinus, the Marea Negra; if I image Ovid carrying a small oil lamp to light his way and his night, drinking from the glass vessels in the museum, turning a cynical educated Roman eye towards depictions of gods and goddesses; getting water from the clay and lead pipes also on display, walking over those intricate mosaics while looking out at the sea, a slave stigiling off his sweat and dirt with the small curved tool I saw here, then I have begun to see him.

    To populate this place in the very early 1st century a.c.e., to get the small things right and the people and the matters under consideration, I wonder how much that would take, how much research?  A lot, I imagine.  Still, it would be worth it, if the time was available.  Why?  Oh, for the same reason, evoking 2012 Bucresti is worth it.  Because we’re strange creatures, but often the same and we can reach across time and space to be with each other.  That’s a gift and it makes us more.


    Humanities Latin Literature Third Phase Translating Metamorphoses Travel

  • A Solid Day

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                                                   New Garlic Moon

    Got outside a bit.  Ate lunch with Kate at that hotspot of haute cuisine, Applebys.  We got there just before the after church crowd.  Later on I transplanted a clump of hosta from its exposed location under the cedar I had to cut down (it split in a storm.) to a new location under our still  young bur oak out front.  Took me a bit longer than I planned because I forgot the correct placement of the spading forks to break up the heavily rooted clump.  Had to figure it out all over again.

    (a Roman mosaic, ruins of Tomi in Constanta, Romania)

    Rest of the day, Latin.  I made progress.  Am very close to the end of Pentheus and my goal is to finish it before I leave for Romania.  I think I’ll make it.  The translation comes much more easily now, a couple of years of hard work to get here though.  Still not facile, but much more so.

    It does look like the Latin will help me in Romania with pronouncing Romanian.  There’s the oddities each language has, but the phonetics are very similar.


    Garden Latin Translating Metamorphoses