• Tag Archives translation

  • Hermes

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samhain                                   Waxing Moon of the Winter Solstice

    In my session with my Latin tutor today, Greg told me I’d made good progress.  For the first 4 verses or so, he had no corrections at all.  I’m learning something.

    What I’m learning now, peeling back this onion one more layer is this:  figuring out the exact or closest to exact english that conforms to the Latin often fails to  make much sense.  There is a leap, a vault between the world of Ovid and his language and the third millennium English speaking world in which I live.  I’ve always suspected/known this and part of my purpose in setting out on this journey is to learn about that leap. More.  To investigate that process in a specific text that matters to me and to my understanding of the world.  Metamorphosis is such a text.

    So, I learn the Latin, grammar and vocabulary.  Then, I apply what I’ve learned to the Latin text.  After I’ve done that, I can begin the task of translation.  It is, I suppose, exegesis and hermeneutics, my old friends from seminary classes on the Hebrew and Christian scriptures.  Each lesson I take another step on this journey.


    📂This entry was posted in Commentary on Religion Faith and Spirituality Humanities Literature Myth and Story 📎and tagged

  • Sticking It To The Man

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samhain                                                 Waxing Moon of the Winter Solstice

    File under sticking it to the man:  Wikileaks.  File under government mad, pouts, hunts down bad man and charges him with anything they can find.  Come on, guys. I’m no Rand Paulite and even I can see big government blaming somebody, anybody else for the mud in their own eye.  Let Assange go and quit acting like spoiled children.  Transparency is a good thing.   Even if it forces short term changes.  Face up to it and move on.

    File in the already fat folder:  Science fiction comes true.  A private corporation put a capsule into space and brought it back to earth safely.  Well, to ocean.  Scenes from 2001 floated before me with weightless passengers on a Pan-Am flight drinking Coca-Cola served by in-flight attendants dressed like Twiggy.

    Finished up verse 46 of the Metamorphosis.  If I did my arithmetic right, I am now one third of one thousandth of the way toward my goal.  Of course, this probably inflates the quality of my early attempts which a more adept me will have to redo.  Even so.


    📂This entry was posted in Commentary on the news GeekWorld Humanities Myth and Story 📎and tagged

  • Planting Done As Planting Moon Wanes

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                                              Waning Planting Moon

    Almost all of the seeds and transplants have gone in the ground with the exception of succession plantings of beets, lettuce and carrots.  I have butternut squash to plant and that will go in today.  After this point, the key lies in mulch, weed control, water, plant management (pinching, pruning), continuation of integrated pest management and regular attention.

    This means I have time now for the flowers, the poor flowers which have suffered from my inattention, crowded out by grass, not dead-headed and generally neglected.  Starting yesterday I’m working on that.

    A little time this morning in the tiered perennial garden just to my right outside the patio doors, then into Wheelock for chapter 17.  I realized yesterday that I’m four months or so into re-learning Latin and have already begun the task for which I took this up in the first place, the translation of Metamorphosis.  It’s nice to be able to learn and work on the translation at the same time.  It’s motivating.

    I’ve said here that my goal is translation of the Metamorphosis, but that’s only the vehicle for my true purpose.  Ovid’s many recountings of transformations occasioned by the Gods and by exigent circumstances in human lives has served for centuries as the chief repository of Greek myth.  What I want most of all is to integrate Ovid’s sensibility about transformation, mutation, metamorphosis into my own thought and apply the lesson in my own writing.

    Before that I have to work on transforming my weedy flower beds back into their former beauty.  Bye for now.


    📂This entry was posted in Garden Humanities Writing 📎and tagged

  • 1:1-20

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                                            Full Planting Moon

    This morning I had scheduled for Ovid.  I’m down to verse 20 of the first book, about 14,980 verses to go.  I’ve not checked 10-20 with my tutor, so my translations are tentative until tomorrow.  Still, I made sense of the Latin in a way that seems right.

    Now, my cold and I are going to bed.  See if we can sleep this miserable rhino virus into the afterlife.


    📂This entry was posted in Humanities 📎and tagged

  • A Long Journey’s First Step

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                                     Awakening Moon

    The weather has turned cooler and the sky gray.

    I’m proud to report that I have almost completed translating my first four lines of Ovid’s Metamorphoses.  Of course, there are thousands of lines in the complete work and my translation is far from poetic, but this journey is underway.  When I feel a bit more comfortable with it, I’ll post it.  In fact, I’ll post the whole thing in progress on its own page.

    Today is the birthday of cybermage, William Schmidt, ex-Jesuit and sheepshead connoisseur,  a combination of attributes that makes him in turn interesting, resourceful and a card shark.

    For Mammoths reading this, I have added the Wandervogel entry to my webpage about Nick.

    (Pygmalion by Gerome)

    Among other top news items today:  Madonna laid a brick (in an African orphanage) and McNabb held up a Redskins jersey while Tiger was honest in a press conference and earned credit for it.   Meanwhile back in the real world health care reform continues to make news as does a 7.2 earthquake that struck southern California and drug cartels to the south.

    I think I’m gonna go back to the first decade of the first millennium, no madonna there.  Well, ok.  The Madonna, but you know what I mean.


    📂This entry was posted in Art and Culture Humanities Letters 📎and tagged