Category Archives: Translating Metamorphoses

Dogs, Family, Garden, Latin, The Move, Translating Metamorphoses

Spray, Translate, Box

Leave a comment

Beltane                                                          Summer Moon

Sprayed the orchard again. I’m going to have this down by the end of the season with two a weeks in the orchard and once a week in the veggie garden. The rain and the International Ag Labs program (+ plus Bill Schmidt’s super juice that I applied last fall) have combined to give much of our garden big boosts. The collard greens, egg plants, cucumbers, beans, sugar snap peas, chard, beets, garlic and carrots have all exceeded their usual growth by this time of year. The tomatoes and peppers have been slowed down by the cooler weather and we’ve lost one of each. The onions don’t look bad, but they don’t look great either.

Got back on that equus. The next few verses after those that threw me were also tricky, but with the commentary I got through them. That felt very good.

Kate came up with an excellent idea, pack two boxes a day. If we each do it, that’s 28 boxes a week. And, in just two decades at that rate we’ll be ready to go. No, much earlier than that. By next spring, lord willin and the creek don’t rise.

Today I boxed up DVDs and surprised myself by finding several that I want to take along. More, though, thank god, that I could let go.

Mission crew commander Buckman-Ellis tells me that it’s looking bad for Kep coming to join him in Korea. The housing situation there is dormitory style until the dorms fill up, then you can go off base and, presumably, have a dog. That is, however, if the dorms fill up.

Fine with us. Kep has fit in with the locals.

Latin, Translating Metamorphoses

Climbing the Cliff to the Final Plateau

Leave a comment

Beltane                                                           Summer Moon

On Friday I had a hard Latin session with my tutor Greg. And I’m glad. When we finished, he said, “You need to go back to basics, gender and number.” Oh, I thought. By god, he’s right. I’ve been pushing myself, trying to get faster so I can get this work started in earnest, thinking it’s maybe time, maybe past time for having gotten to this point. Doesn’t matter.

I am where I am. But. What I need to do to advance, to start climbing the cliff which leads, I’m pretty sure, to the last plateau, is slow down, pay exquisitely close attention to grammatical detail.  That means not entering my conclusion about a word’s grammatical identifiers until I’m sure. That often means holding all or most of the words in a sentence in my head while I try out different combinations.

Then, and I started doing this today, I translate the sentence. At that point I go to Anderson and Lee and Guanci (commentators) and Giles, a literal translation, to check my translation. After I take in that information, I go back over my translation, checking what each word means in the very best literal translation I can muster. Then, I enter the grammatical detail under the words.

Here’s what I mean. We’ll take Book I: v. 452 and v. 453 as a for instance.

Primus amor Phoebi Daphne Peneia, quem non
fors ignara dedit, sed saeva Cupidinis ira.

Under primus I wrote, adj. s. m. nom. (adjective, singular, masculine, nominative). Under fors I wrote s. f. nom. (female, singular, nominative).  Dedit got 3. perf. (perfect tense, 3rd person). And so on. When I wrote these descriptors under the word (I print out the Latin text using 5 spaces between lines and write the descriptors under the word and the translation over it.), I already had a translation done and knew that in it these words had to have these descriptors. Before this change in my process, I’d been trying to get pretty close, not worrying about being exact. Not good enough anymore.

When this comes naturally, I’ll be a Latinist on my own terms.  I can see this not very far ahead, just as, when I was deconstructing the dog crates, I knew I would get them done the next day though it didn’t look like I’d made much progress. I could see the whole and what to do next then to make it come apart. With the Latin it’s the reverse, now I’ll see the parts and make them whole.

Art and Culture, Faith and Spirituality, Latin, Translating Metamorphoses

Taking the Past to Anchor the Present

Leave a comment

Beltane                                                                    Emergence Moon

Ah, an irony. Bringing myself into the now is as simple as clicking on Perseus, opening up Book I of the Metamorphoses and starting to translate. There is no room for the past or the future (except of course the reality of the past present in Ovid’s Latin, thus the irony) when I have to consider the muddy earth, heated by the sun in the high heavens, bringing forth countless forms, some from before the flood, but also some new monsters. This is ancient science which understand the moist earth as a creative force.

(Eugene Delacroix, Apollos slays the python, 1851, Musée du Louvre, Paris, France)

As long I stay with the act of translation, I’m in the moment. That tether, established by the hour or so spent with four verses, continues to anchor me even after I’m done.

Now, considering the move is not enough to draw me away from the present once my tether has been fixed. In the moment I can identify tasks related to the move that I can handle now. And do them with no propulsion into the future. Ah.

Latin, Myth and Story, Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

Inspiration

Leave a comment

Beltane                                                                 Emergence Moon

The Inferno Ballet and the courage it took to tackle the project has inspired me. I have an Ovid/Metamorphoses novel in me, one that excites me. I’m not ready to write it and won’t be soon, too much translating and reading yet to do, but I’ve decided that unless or until Missing gets representation and sells, I’m going to work on the Ovid novel.  Who knows how much time any of us has as we move toward what friend Tom Byfield calls the Great Perhaps.  Once the little Medicare card goes in the wallet you know the sand will run out. Not might. But will. So, I don’t want to die not having tried to tackle a big, the big, project I have in me. And that’s how Ovid feels.

(Turner, Ovid Banished From Rome)

I’m still going to work on the short stories, revising and submitting, and I’m still going to go back and revisit other novels, revising those that seem worth it and submitting them, too, but from now on my primary creative energy has a Roman stamp on it. This will create synergy between my Latin work and my writing, a synergy I wanted way back four years ago when I started learning Latin. Now I’m able to make it hum.

 

 

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

1001

Leave a comment

Spring                                                                        Bee Hiving Moon

Usually I would do Latin in the afternoon after the nap since I spent the morning on the America Votes meeting, but instead today I began to nose around in another favorite locale of mine, the 1001 Nights.  I’ve read two different translations of the tales of Scheherazade, both entertaining, but I’ve learned through two new books in my library, “Stranger Magic”by Maria Warner and “The Arabian Nights-A Companion,” by Robert Irwin, that both of the translations have significant flaws.

So I found two new translations, one with only 271 tales but the other, with an introduction by Irwin himself, that is three volumes long.  When I finish up with Malcolm X, I intend to get back into the Arabian Nights.  Between Ovid and the Arabian Nights the tales are endless and well told. There’s something profound in the types of stories a culture folds into itself, makes significant through reception. The same is true, I suppose, of individuals. I’ve had djinn and Dionysus running around in my head since high school.

Then there’s that whole matter of the biblical stories, too.  The narrative lenses through which we come to understand our lives and the lives of others.  Those three: Bible, Metamorphoses and the Arabian Nights are more key to me than most of the greats of Western literature, perhaps with the exception of Kafka and Hesse.  The other work that stands with these in my own inner world is the Chinese classic, Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

This is the way my life goes lured by political change, entranced by stories of the divine and the magical, enfolded in the life of plants and dogs, wrapped up in the world of art. There are worse ways to live.

GeekWorld, Latin, Literature, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Science, Translating Metamorphoses, World History

Emergence, Complexity and Augustan Rome

Leave a comment

Spring                                                                 Bee Hiving Moon

Two projects are pushing themselves forward, aspects of work already underway.  After reading a recent batch of articles arguing against a crass materialism and insisting on looking at the world not only through reductionist goggles, I have decided now is a good time to reimmerse myself in the world of emergence.  Emergence is a concept that identifies emergent properties, things not predictable by the sum of a thing or processes immediately preceding a particular phenomena.

(Garni_Gorge Symphony of the Stones carved by Goght River at Garni Gorge in Armenia is an example of an emergent natural structure.)  wiki, emergence

The example that is most familiar to me is culture.  Culture is that society based phenomenon that weaves language, place, kinship, food choice, divisions of work, art, music and play into a whole that shapes the individual, makes them part of something, a culture, larger than themselves.  Culture does not follow from an examination of an individual or even a small group of individuals, it only begins to emerge in a larger group over a period of time.

Another and easier to grasp emergent phenomenon is the transition of a caterpillar to a butterfly.  Am I a butterfly or am I a caterpillar dreaming I’m a butterfly?

This also relates to the complexity movement in science.  Science proceeds by breaking things down to their most basic components, then discerning law-like behaviors.  Physics is the paradigmatic science in this respect.  But there are many phenomena, like emergence, that appear not as things are reduced to their simplest parts, but as things combine to create more and more complex materials and organisms.  Science has historically ignored those areas because they are difficult to quantify and/or difficult to study using usual scientific methods.

I’ve flirted with learning these two areas:  emergence and complexity theory, but have never devoted the necessary time to it.  It’s time.  This fits in my reimagining my faith project.

The second is broadening the scope of my learning about Ovid, his time, the Augustan period, other tellings of the same myths Ovid works with, and Augustan poetry more generally.  This is in service of the commentary/translation I plan to begin in earnest after this growing season ends and of a big novel still forming itself.

 

Latin, Myth and Story, Translating Metamorphoses

Repopulating the Earth

Leave a comment

Spring                                                          Bee Hiving Moon

Had a down few days, not really sure why, maybe just chemical tides among the synapses, but they seem to be receding now.

The morning was with Ovid, pushing almost to the end of the Deucalion and Pyrrha story, the repopulating of the earth after the flood.  The stones which this pair threw over their backs have now begun to soften, become supple and transform into the bodies of men and women.

Deucalião_e_Pirra   Giovanni_Maria_Bottalla_-_

Garden, GeekWorld, Great Work, Latin, Myth and Story, Translating Metamorphoses, World History

An Afternoon

Leave a comment

Spring                                                             Bee Hiving Moon

Moving deeper into Book I of the Metamorphoses.  Next week I’ll set a schedule for translating, so many verses a day.  Plus I plan to set a schedule for certain additional research that will go along with this task, things like comparing Ovid’s stories with other accounts of the same myth, investigating key grammatical or etymological points and, the big one, getting deep into Roman history of the late Republic and early Imperial era, Ovid’s time.  Over the last couple of years I have purchased books about Ovid and his poetry, Roman poetry and comparative literature between and among Ovid and his peers.

(Deucalião_e_Pirra   Giovanni_Maria_Bottalla)

I’ve not been too willing to get into these areas in any depth until I felt the translating had reached some point, though I didn’t know what that was.  Well, now I’ve reached it.  And I’m ready to go the next step.

I spent a half an hour today and translated 5 verses, so my speed is picking up, though to be fair the difficulty varies, usually with regard to the length of a sentence.

Also in the mail today.  The nitrogen for the vegetable garden and my new Lenovo laptop. This replaces my old Hewlett-Packard, a sturdy and reliable machine that has been outstripped by cheaper processors and memory and the retirement of Microsoft XP.  It doesn’t have enough juice to run Windows 7 or Windows 8.  Tomorrow I plan to start it up and see what’s what.

Art and Culture, Faith and Spirituality, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase, Translating Metamorphoses, Weather +Climate

Solar Lighting

Leave a comment

Spring                                                           Bee Hiving Moon

sun calendarThe days are getting longer.  The large calendar I have with the yellow egg-yolk like mass in the center and the months around it in a circle grows closer to the calendar’s inner circle day-by-day. The yellow mass represents hours of sunlight, thicker and closer to the calendar as we grow close to the summer solstice, then gently beginning to pull away until a large gap exists by December 21st, the winter solstice.  It’s a clever way to visualize a prime seasonal driver, hours of sunlight per day.

My order for nitrogen is on the way and I’m hoping the soil will at least be workable enough to plant the cool season crops before we leave for Denver.  Kate and I look forward to the gardening time, though we’re also glad for the break during the winter.

I moved further into Book I of the Metamorphoses today.  Deucalion, the son of Epithemus, the sole male survivor of the deluge, says, “Earth is the great mother (and)…the bones in the earth’s body are stones.”  He and Pyrrha, daughter of Prometheus, and the sole remaining female after the flood, will repopulate the earth by throwing stones behind themselves as they walk and the stones will become humans.

[Deucalion and Pyrrha Repeople the World by Throwing Stones Behind Them, c.1636 (oil on canvas)  by Rubens, Peter Paul (1577-1640)]

Her bones are still turning into people today.

 

Latin, Translating Metamorphoses

The Sound of Silence

Leave a comment

Spring                                                       Bee Hiving Moon

An unusual time with my Latin tutor, Greg, this morning.  I started translating, that is, I read the Latin which I had annotated, pronouncing the Latin words in the order in which I would translate them, then gave my translation into English.  Nothing.  I went a little further, still nothing.  The silence unnerved me.  “Greg,” I said, “Are you there?”  Oh, yes. Just listening.  Usually, Greg would say something like, well, let’s look at this, what about here?  That would signal, in his gentle way, that I had gone astray somewhere.

Today I read through over ten verses in a row, translating as I went and he said nothing. When we were finished, after he had explained the one place I faltered, a tricky part of Latin grammar and only at the very end, he said, “The best yet.  You’ve really got it.”

His silence meant assent.  I was doing fine and just needed to keep going.

Wow.  That felt good.