• Tag Archives Latin

  • Lost In Translation

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                                             Waning Bloodroot Moon

    Just wanted to post a notice here that I have several verses of Ovid’s Metamorphosis translated, about a fourth of his version of Diana and Actaeon, the subject of one of Titian’s paintings at the MIA’s current exhibition.  This level of translation is a first pass, so is not meant to be in idiomatic English.  That’s a next step.  I’m excited that I’ve gotten this far.

    The task of translation is far more complex than it appears, involving inevitable personal choices that reflect not the original work, but the mind and culture of the translator.  I suspected this, but now I know for sure.

    This work has become a hobby for me, something I enjoy picking up in spare time, a jigsaw puzzle or a model.

    Those of you who’ve mastered another language or languages, I’m getting to the place, at 64, where I may join you.  I have a lot of respect for any who have stuck the course with another language, we are so inept here in the US.  It’s been a fun ride so far.


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  • They’re just being Republicans

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc                                                          Waxing Bloodroot Moon

    Latin.  Subjunctives, indirect questions, tense sequences.  Done in a bit of a fog, almost like school.  The verb conjugations still have not taken full root in my mind, though at this point I have had exposure to all of them, for all four tenses.  I’ve had exposure likewise to five noun declensions, comparatives, superlatives, pronouns, interrogatives, adverbs, adjectives, ablative uses, dative uses, participles and participial clauses, and subordinate clauses of several types with more  to come.  I’m almost three-fourths through Wheelock and have now translated  75 verses of Ovid’s Metamorphosis.

    As unintended outcome, I have found myself metamorphosed, changed.  Just how, right now, is not all clear, but it has something to do with facing a challenge, a language, and coming to grips with it, incorporating it into myself.  Just why I waited until I was 63, I don’t know; fear, yes, time, yes, but the largest barrier was lack of purpose.  When I began to want to know what was behind the translator’s veil, and, in particular, when I wanted to know what was behind the translations of Ovid’s master work, the purpose emerged and a teacher appeared.  There is no time when we stop growing, learning.

    Later in the day I prepped for and ran the Legislative Committee for the Sierra Club’s weekly meeting.  This political season will not be kind to our lakes and rivers, our forests and wildlife, our prairies.  The burden will be laid at the foot of the Republicans, but really, they’re just being Republicans, giving political expression to the wills of those who support them.  No, the burden lies squarely at the feet of those of us who want to see our forests, rivers, moose, wolf, prairies and lakes healthy and whole now and into the future.  We have not fought with the same passion today as the Tea Party folk or the Christian Right or the Libertarians.

    Over the retreat at Blue Cloud I read two novels focused on the political life of Cicero.  At the end of a brutal period for his political perspective he said, “All regimes come to an end.”

    I agree.


    📂This entry was posted in Aging Commentary on the news Faith and Spirituality Great Work Humanities Minnesota Politics 📎and tagged

  • Walking and Talking

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc                                        New (Bloodroot) Moon

    Took a walk along the road that goes around the Monastery.  A beautiful day with a blue sky and sun.  The sun has, like me, been on retreat this last week, and it seems to have returned bright and shiny, ready to get on with its job of sending us truly elemental energy.

    While walking, I talked to Kate.  Cell phone reception is fine outside the Monastery, but inside, nada.

    It’s rare for a person to find someone whose life and lifestyle fit so well as Kate and mine do.  At least I think it’s rare.  We both enjoy time alone and we enjoy being together.

    She says the plants, the dogs and herself are doing well.  The dog are outside and  have been nearly all day.  She’s been sewing and made grandson Gabe a new shirt, this one with trains.

    Today I finished writing early, still putting out about 6,500 words.  I tried to go further but the well was dry so I’ve been reading Conspirata, the Robert Harris novel about Cicero’s Consul  year and his life immediately after.  Cicero is a favorite of the conservative classes, but he seems more pragmatic than conservative, at least as Harris portrays him.  It might be his deep suspicion of populist politics that gains their favor, but that seems more complicated in this fictional biography.

    Just as I was in a Chinese phase last summer, I’m in a Roman phase right now, learning Latin, reading Roman novels, translating Ovid.

    If our plans for a fall cruise congeal, at some point I imagine I’ll turn toward South America and its ancient and contemporary history.  Read a few travel books on various ports of call.  We’re leaning toward a 37 day cruise that starts in NYC and ends in Rio, passing through the Panama Canal and traveling around South America through the the Straits of Magellan and Cape Horn to Buenos Aires and Rio.

    My lunch table  today had Hoosiers, monks from South Bend, north Terre Haute and Indianapolis.  We talked about the old home place, Wabash College, Indy, the crazy time change rules.


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  • Union, Yes

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc                                                              Waning Bridgit Moon

    This week had a lot of Latin time.  I made it through ten lines of Diana and Actaeon which Greg and I discussed at length during my tutoring session today.  I need to pay more attention to the verb and its object; when I get that, I get the translation; when I don’t, I make it fit anyhow, the Procrustean bed of my mind.  The work of translation, at least in Latin, lies within my competency level, I can see that now.  All it will require is ongoing attention.  All.  Well.  Good thing there’s a lot in Latin that interests me.

    Madison, Wisconsin.  Politics, the way they work in our country, allow this mercurial swing from one perspective to another in the course of one election.  Republicans seem to need two things in the public arena:  enemies they can flog and to be the enemy themselves.  It’s a peculiar combination, like group sado/masochism with both aspects of S&M in action at the same time.  Enemies right now:  public sector unions, bloated budgets and those that love them, perverters of the constitution–at least they one they read, environmentalists, the environment.  Being the enemy right now:  ruling with a peculiar maliciousness–witness the Wisconsin Governor’s “conversation” with billionaire David Koch,  acting as if the nation were a one party system, theirs, with a pesky group of liberals who act like horseflies and insist on inhabiting seats in their government, choosing a mainstream way of interpreting the constitution, the living document school, and pushing it, in their minds, to the dustbin of history as if it had never existed.

    We need parties that represent different communities and different interests, that’s what politics is for, the mediation of disputes, but our politics don’t work unless respect for the others existence stands as a given. Continue reading → Post ID 9807


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  • Latin and Clergy

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc                                                         Waning Bridgit Moon

    Another opportunity to spend some quality time with Ovid.  Two days in a row with considerable focus on Latin.  I like the continuity, the carry over from one hour to the next, one day to the next.  It feels like things have chance to cement themselves, take  hold.  On the other hand this is still very hard for me, a lot of uncertainty, guess work.

    Spent time today, too, with Leslie, the intern from United Theological Seminary whom I’m mentoring this year.  Learning is such a difficult task, especially at this point, second or junior year, of seminary.  Occupational formation, especially for something as fuzzy as ministry, takes a long time.  Years.  At this point its more confusing than enlightening.


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  • The Holly King Still Reigns

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc                                                            Waning Bridgit Moon

    The snow has well begun and the winds howl outside, evidence that the Holly King has not yet been defeated by the Hawthorn Giant.  Even so, the snows of this time of year do not last long, even when they come in depth.  The sun vaults higher and higher in the sky each day, already 11 degrees higher at 33 than it was on January 1st at 22.  This elevation concentrates the sun’s rays, warming the days faster and faster until finally the Holly King will retire to his growing season abode far away in the ice of the northern regions.  I don’t know what he does there, but when he returns after the crops have been harvested and the land left fallow, he will be rested and ready to reassert his dominion.  Today he shows that his reign has not yet ended for this year.

    Translating Ovid has been slow, as it always is, looking up individual words in the Latin dictionary, investigating verb forms and the declensions of nouns and adjectives.  The trickiest part, for me anyhow, remains holding the various words and their possible conjugated and declined meanings in my mind, assembling and reassembling them until, like the keystone into the arch, the sentence or phrase hangs together.

    I like being in my lower floor study, half below ground, windows opening at ground level show the wind and the snow.  In here I have created a library set up for my needs:  art history references, philosophical texts, books on the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, Sierra Club and environmental politics, travel guides from Greece, Cambodia, Turkey, Rome, Great Britain, Cambodia and Thailand among others,  texts, little read, on neuro and cognitive science.  Files for objects at the MIA, old presentations, short stories, novels and research material on the Great Wheel, the ancient Celts.

    This is a peaceful place where concentration comes easily and hours can pass without leaving.  I suppose it’s also a meditation room.  Now the snow and the work of the morning have me leaning toward a nap.  Kate’s at work this Sunday, so I’ll sleep alone.  Unusual these days.


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  • 68. My Driver’s License Will Be Good Until I’m 68? Hmmm.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc                                                      Waxing Bridgit Moon

    There are those moments.  Drove over to Ramsey city hall (municipal center sounds much more… what?), walked through the glass doors and the 20 foot high atrium, all in stone and glass, followed the signs and found the License Center.  I filled out a form, missing four questions, handed to the nice lady and she clipped the ear off my current driver’s license, collected my $24 (a fee, not a tax) and took me over to the vision machine.  Wonder of wonders, for the first time in 8 years, I passed.  How about that?  Up against the blue wall, smile.  “Great picture!” the nice lady said.

    The real shocker?  This new license will be good until I’m 68.  68!  How did that happen again?

    Tonight I’ll get a call from the network guy to see if he can walk me through the problem that’s keeping my printer from shaking hands with my two new computers.  Well, sorta new.  Decided I’m going to RTFM the backup stuff.  I really oughta know how to work this stuff, otherwise, what’s the point of backing stuff up?

    End of the week.  Another legcom meeting under my belt, the Titian walk through and some quality time with the exhibit yesterday and today Latin.  My Ovid work drew nice remarks from my tutor.  He essentially agreed with my translation.  As a rough draft.  Which it was.  My English to Latin was a little more fuzzy, showing that I whipped through it faster than is required to do good work.  I’m still working on Diana and Actaeon.  I’d like to finish it before the show leaves.

    Each segment, the legcom, the Titian preparation and the Latin, requires serious prep work.  Makes me feel good, sorta like exercise.  Which, by the way, I gotta go do.


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  • Disassembled

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc                                         Waxing Bridgit Moon

    Looks like I’ll get a chance to peek into the colonies this weekend.  Got my fingers crossed on survival.  Best guess?  Two dead, one alive.  Very glad to be wrong.

    Got my second Gateway part way disassembled and still not sure I can get at the pint sized disc I stupidly inserted into the DVD drive vertically.  It fell out of the holder, as I could have guessed it would.  Have to get this in though to make the computer recognize the cable to USB cord.  That will shift my old HP printer to the new gateway, making it accessible directly from the network rather than through my old, now terminally ill, Dell.  Once I’ve accomplished that I can bring online the new HP multi-purpose printer.  When that’s up, I can scan in my Ovid commentary and send it to Greg so we can both have the same info.  I need both of these printers working, but there are these other steps I have take.

    On to Latin.  This chapter, chapter 27, contains this section heading:  Adjectives Having Peculiar Forms in the Superlative.  Peculiar forms, eh?  Maximus peculiar.

    More Latin today, some Titian, too, in advance of the walkthrough tomorrow with Patrick Noon, the painting’s curator.  I’m looking forward to this since I haven’t seen the paintings yet.  In the evening there is a lecture on Ukiyo-e prints, another favorite genre for me.  A feast of art education, tomorrow.


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  • Deeper Into The Text

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Winter                                                                 Waning Moon of the Cold Month

    We woke up to a new snow, sparkly and still coming down like flour from a flour sifter, gentle but persistent.  These kind of snows freshen up the scenery, cover up the dirty layers with fresh white linens.

    Business meeting.  We’re still feeling our way into retirement finances.  Not doing too bad, but we’re both a bit edgy since its new.  We’re fine, but until we have experience under our belts we’ll have some doubts.  Irrational.  Yes.  Ignorable?  No.

    Finished my English to Latin today and am now about to embark on a new adventure.  I’m going to work on the Ovid behind the two Titian paintings in the new MIA exhibit that reference the Metamorphosis:  Diana and Acteon in book 3:138-255 and Diana and Callisto Book 2:401-503.  This means I’m jumping over the intro for now and going straight into the text about the changes.  Since these paintings will be here a while, they will add some energy to my work.  Should be fun.


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  • Externally, We Swim In the Same Ocean, but…

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Winter                                              Waning Moon of the Cold Month

    “Man must cease attributing his problems to his environment and learn again to exercise his will — his personal responsibility.” – Albert Schweitzer

    Schweitzer was a favorite of both my mother and my father, his “reverence for life” must have rung loudly in the ear of the WWII generation.  I find his Christianity, though unorthodox, still too orthodox for me these days.  This quote seems to lean against the interrelatedness voiced by MLK and quoted here recently and put that inflection point back on the individual.  In most ways I agree with it from  a personal perspective, a focus on the existential predicament decided by emphasizing personal choice rather than the web of influences from genes and nurture.

    As I’ve reflected on the notion of interrelatedness over the last month or so, and commented on it by using the idea of inflection, that is a mental tick by the perspective most important at the moment, this dialectical, tension of opposites approach, seems more and more sound to me.  What I mean is that, yes, we are in this together and that, yes, the fate of even the most vulnerable and neglected bears on our own, while at the same, yes, we live alone and will die alone, never really bridging the gap between our interior and that of the Other.  Externally we swim in the same waters as one larger organism, a sort of super-0rganism, while internally, we paddle alone in our single kayak traversing the vast expanse of the inner world.

    On a less abstruse note, well, a bit less abstruse anyhow, I did very well on my Latin session today.  I’ve decided it takes me 4-6 hours to get through a Wheelock chapter and the particular grammatical points presented there, along with exercises.  Greg said that was about right.  So, I might as well lean into it and learn it right the first time.  Then, he says I have to read, read, read.  I’m thinking about picking up some Caesar and maybe some Tacitus since they write in prose and that’s easier than the convoluted word order of poets like Ovid and Virgil.  I’m sticking with Ovid as my Northstar in all this, but reading some stuff where I’m not stumbling over words and phrases lines apart that belong together might be fun.


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