• Category Archives Translating Metamorphoses

  • Workin’

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                                                                       Beltane Moon

    Flagged off my Latin tutor for this Friday.  Bees, garden, retreat, finishing Missing combined to soak up my good work time.  To do well at the Latin I have to have a full day; it takes me awhile to turn on the neural network that recognizes cases, remembers Ovid’s peculiarities and enjoys the play of connotation and denotation.  Once I get in that place, which may take as much as a morning, then I can translate faster, with more facility.  But.  I need that unbroken time.  Just the way I work.

    Rain kept me out of the garden last Thursday so I’ve got to out there right now and plant potatoes and chard.  The garden’s looking good, daffodils and tulips, bleeding heart and hosta, pachysandra and maiden-hair ferns greeting the strawberry blossoms, the asparagus spears, the green shafts of the allium family:  onion, shallot, garlic and the small leaves of the emerging beets.

    Today, too, is another round in the Can I keep Gertie in the yard game?  I added another wire and plan yet more moves.  I’m smarter; she’s more persistent.  An equal match so far.


    Garden Latin Translating Metamorphoses 📎and tagged

  • What Now?

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                                                Beltane Moon

    Now what?  First draft put to bed.  In Kate’s hands now.

    Kate asked how I was doing this morning during our business meeting.  I’m not an immediate answer to that sort of question kind of guy.  So, I paused, reflected.

    “I always knew I would mature late,” I said.

    Long ago I read a monograph on the development of people in various fields.  The longest was the philosopher/theologian, somewhere in the 50’s.  Since I’ve battered my through more than one field, I figured I’d be later.

    “With Greg (Latin tutor) asking me to collaborate on the commentary (Ovid’s Metamporphoses) and the completion of Missing’s first draft, I’m feeling like I may be hitting my maturity at last.”

    I’m beginning to feel grown up, as if I’ve retrieved my birthright from the convoluted labyrinth of my life.  This is not, interestingly, about achievement, but about individuation, about becoming who I am and who I will be.

    “So,” I told Kate, “I’m feeling pretty good.  Not jump up and down, yippee good, I’m too northern European for that, but pretty good.”

    That’s how I am this morning.


    Aging Faith and Spirituality Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Third Phase Translating Metamorphoses Writing 📎and tagged

  • A Comment-ary

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                                                  New Beltane Moon

    An interesting proposition.  Greg, my Latin tutor, and I have talked off and on about  writing a commentary for new learners of Ovid’s Metamorphoses.  Today he asked me to think about it with an eye toward moving our teacher-student relationship more toward collaborators.  It sounds fun and worthwhile to me.

    Ovid’s text serves as the headwaters for most of Greek mythology as it enters the Western literary stream.  In that sense it is an important work in the historical study of Western literature.  A great read, too, it’s full of stories, captivating narratives that have a major twist at the end, so it is, as well, an excellent example of Western literature itself.

    And commentaries last.  A good commentary on The Metamorphoses, even one that covers only part of the 15 books, could introduce students to this elegant citizen of Augustan Rome for decades, even centuries to come.


    Latin Translating Metamorphoses 📎and tagged

  • Latin

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                                New Bee Hiving Moon

    Worked on Latin this morning.  Greg (tutor) wants me to prepare for sight reading.  That is, I read the Latin out loud, then translate it, using my memory of the work I’ve done in preparation.  This is very demanding and requires, for me at least, going through the same material at least twice, once checking out definitions and grammar, putting together a more or less good literal translation, then going back over the same material a second time–which is what I did this morning.

    (Pentheus has real mommy issues.  That’s mommy to his right.)

    The second time I check my first translation with my notes and sight reading, correct for errors, display considerable frustration where I miss obvious things or, more fruitfully, where I identify things I just don’t get and then try for an idiomatic translation.

    I’m still not what I’d call fast or reliable, but I’ve improved a good deal over the place I started two years ago.

    At my age I have to block out the mornings completely so I can get into flow with these projects.  I’m no good with shifting out of them into something else.  Maybe I never was, now I’m sure I’m not.


    Humanities Latin Translating Metamorphoses

  • The Week Ahead

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc                                       Woodpecker Moon

    Hello.   Another week of spring is upon us.  If puddles are here, can mosquitoes be far behind?  We may have to suck it up and adapt, folks.

    The Great Comet of 1996, Hyakutake as photographed from latitude 56 north near Ketchikan Alaska. As noted by the photographer “By including the north star in this short time exposure, Hyakutake and the night sky are given a real sense of motion”. Chip Porter

    Tomorrow morning the novel gets first pick of time and attention, this time until I’ve finished this draft.  Then Stefan’s paper will go in the printer and I’ll crank out the first complete rough draft.  I know already things that need attention, amplification, cutting, but I’m going to leave those alone for now.

    My new schedule with the Latin:  an hour or so on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, Sundays and a full day on Fridays seems to be good.  In the paper this morning there was a story about a kid, 16, who is a hyperpolyglot, who knew there were such people?  He learned the arabic alphabet in four days, then it took him, he said, a week to read fluently.  That’s just one of many languages he reads and speaks.

    Well, he’s him and I’m me, still slogging through the grammar and the vocabulary almost two years on.

    Reimagining has not got much attention this last week or so, but it will pick up again.  I plan to work on it episodically over the next couple of years.  I do have to crank out 3,000 words or so Groveland by April 1st.  That’s a good target.

     


    Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Translating Metamorphoses Writing