Beltane New (Early Growth) Moon
I passed some kind of milestone this week with the Latin. My copy of Anderson, the commentary on Ovid’s first 5 books in Metamorphoses, fell apart. I went online and found a hard back version, something that can withstand the repeated referencing, turning back and forth, putting my placeholders across it. That this should happen just as I decided to begin work on the translation/commentary seems fortuitous.
(Daphne and Apollo)
In celebration of beginning the translation I have posted a Translating Metamorphoses page on the site where the most recent work will go up. At some point I may begin posting work on the commentary, too, but that’s a ways off. Right now Greg and I have just begun to note stuff down as we move along.
Translating in this manner is harder work than what I’ve been doing up to now, which has been essentially learning through translating Ovid. Now I want to produce idiomatic English that is still faithful to the Latin text. Also, I want to know more about the problems and content that I encounter. That’s why I’ve begun reading the Ovid texts I’ve collected over the last year or so. This is close reading, a different animal from just translating to learn.
At the same time I’ve created a new page, Art: A Journey. This page will be the repository for my work on and with art following my time at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. The first published material there, two sheets of questions answered by me about Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, represent an attempt on my part to use exegetical techniques I learned studying the Old and New Testaments on art.
This draws me firmly into the realm of hermeneutics, a discipline about which I believe I may have some things to say. We’ll see. I’m still reading there.