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Sunday, October 28th, 2007
When we moved into this house 5 years ago, I set up my stereo temporarily on the floor in a corner of the living room. And there it has been these 5 years, until yesterday when in a fit of organizing, I moved it into a more permanent-seeming location, on a wire rack in the next room, which I am currently thinking of as the "music room" (before it was the "play room", but Sylvia is doing most of her playing these days in her own room). The problem had always been my perceived lack of a suitable shelf. But Friday night while I was turning over various stuff in my mind, I realized that the wire rack in the garage would be just right. So yesterday morning, I sponged the cobwebs off it, brought it inside, and moved everything around. Well: my records have a home now, on a shelf where you can thumb through them instead of stacked on the floor! You don't have to crouch down to put in a CD or record! I threw out my non-working cassette player! And best of all, the sound is much, much clearer with the speakers off the ground. Spent last night with Bob, listening to old Robyn Hitchcock and older Pink Floyd. (Bob, a longtime Floyd fan, had never heard of Piper at the Gates of Dawn or indeed even known there were any records before Atom Heart Mother -- it was a privilege to introduce him to Syd Barrett's music.)
posted afternoon of October 28th, 2007: Respond
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Saturday, October 27th, 2007
This recipe is way better than I could expect it to be based on the amount of effort I put into making it. Specifically the ratio is Extremely good/Minimal effort. Bacon and Parsnip Soup- 2 or 3 yellow onions.
- Several strips of bacon
- A couple of cloves of garlic
- a head of flat leaf parsley chopped roughly
- 1 head fennel
- A half-pound or pound of parsnips
- carrots
Sweat the lightly salted chopped vegetables in the bacon, over low heat, for about 45 minutes. You could also add a bit of spice at this stage -- I used about a teaspoon of fennel seed, allspice or coriander might be good too. Add enough chicken stock to cover. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and let simmer uncovered for an hour and a half or longer. You may need to add more stock (or water, or white wine) while the soup is cooking. If you want to make the effort, it would not hurt to skim off some of the foam that will develop at the top of the soup after it has cooked an hour or so -- I did not, just mixed it back in, and the result tasted great -- the soup has a strong enough, rich enough flavor that the bitterness of that foam does not impact the overall taste of it much.
Update: Leftovers are also very good, though not quite in the league of the first serving.
posted evening of October 27th, 2007: Respond
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Friday, October 26th, 2007
I've been thinking a lot lately about translation of poetry and how difficult it is, and whether it is worth doing. I'm glad to say that tonight I read an utterly sublime specimen of the genre. It is Tove Jansson's Book About Moomin, Mymble, and Little My, translated by Sophie Hannah and Silvester Mazzarella -- it might be better to say something like "translated by Mazzarella and composed by Hannah" -- in any case they have done a phenomenal job. The book was written in 1952 and not translated until 2001. (In any case this version came out in 2001, and no reference is made to any earlier translation.) The text is integrated flawlessly with the illustrations -- whoever did the lettering ought to have been credited -- the result looks sort of like Dr. Seuss, sort of like Walt Kelly, sort of like Edward Gorey, but mostly like Jansson. Many thanks to Redfox for recommending that I check out Jansson's picture books. I had known of their existence for a couple of years but never sought them out.
posted evening of October 26th, 2007: 3 responses
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Sunday, October 21st, 2007
Debate on how to translate the opening line of Hymns to Night is making me wonder if a bit of English grammar was lost (in my idiolect I mean) before I learned the language -- is "wake"/"awake" intransitive and "waken"/"awaken" transitive? That would make sense; but the four verbs seem totally synonymous to my ear -- I can't distinguish between when to use one or another. (Except I guess I would hardly ever use "awake" as a verb -- sounds very archaic -- except in the past tense.)
posted evening of October 21st, 2007: Respond
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Saturday, October 20th, 2007
I am a little surprised at the progress I am making with Hymns to the Night -- I was mentioning to a friend today that when I pick up projects like this, I usually map them out in detail, then translate a sentence or two and lose interest. Today I've got working translations of the first and second hymns, and I think they read reasonably well. I have borrowed heavily from MacDonald's translation but I think mine is more pleasant of a read -- you have to spend less time and effort on diagramming the sentences in your head to make them make sense.I think a combination of telling everybody I'm working on this and the effort I put into programming the translation page is making this feel like a higher priority to actually put in the time and do it. We'll see about the verse sections of hymns 4, 5, and 6 -- I think it is going to be really difficult to come up with anything. Update: I'm no longer a one-man band! The first outside contribution to the project comes from Greg Woodruff, and it's a good 'un. Update: Another translation, from Gary.
posted evening of October 20th, 2007: 6 responses
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Thursday, October 18th, 2007
Trying to translate a poem I don't really understand out of a language I don't really speak fluently might seem, well, a little Quixotic. But listen -- I think it is worthwhile. It is I guess at root a way of making myself spend some time trying to get the sounds and meanings of the poetry. I have traditionally had a hard time with poetry because I pass over it too quickly and miss nuances. An exercise like this, assuming I can stick with it, will work to correct that tendency.
posted evening of October 18th, 2007: Respond
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Want to help me come up with a new translation of Hymns to the Night? I've set up a page for translating. Update (Friday evening): Hm, haven't seen anybody else over there yet. But I have a working copy of the first chapter, and I think it sounds pretty good. I have copied MacDonald's translation quite closely in places, and introduced changes in other places. See what you think.
posted afternoon of October 18th, 2007: Respond
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Wow, that was fast! Guess I will hafta come up with some kind of security thingy. Update: Well I wrote a script for quick deletion of spam. What should I do about blocking it? A captcha?
posted morning of October 18th, 2007: Respond
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Wednesday, October 17th, 2007
So this: Abwärts wend ich mich zu der heiligen, unaussprechlichen, geheimnisvollen Nacht. Fernab liegt die Welt - in eine tiefe Gruft versenkt - wüst und einsam ist ihre Stelle. doesn't sound nearly as odd to me as this: Aside I turn to the holy, unspeakable, mysterious Night. Afar lies the world, sunk in a deep grave; waste and lonely is its place. Possible reasons: - It is normal to invert elements of a sentence like that in German, where in English it sounds archaic -- I cannot vouch for the truth of the first clause here but that's what they told me in high school German. It may be that the construction would sound archaic to a native speaker of German.
- The German sounds foreign to begin with, and my ears do not pick up enough nuance to tell anything more than that; whereas the English is my own language, and I can tell straight off that it is not the kind of thing you would say, if you were speaking about turning to the holy, mysterious Night.
I am trying to figure out here, whether a more colloquial translation would be a good thing -- if the German sounds stilted in the original, then a comfortable translation would not be true to the source material.
posted evening of October 17th, 2007: 2 responses
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Tuesday, October 16th, 2007
Ok: All the time I've had a blog I've wanted to host comments. And now I do, at least in a rudimentary fashion. You need to put <br> and/or <p> tags in your text if you want paragraph separations. html is allowed for now; indeed security is almost entirely lacking. It would probably be possible to break my software; please don't try. Or at least, send me a note if you have an idea for something that could break it. Update: I fixed it so you do not have to markup your paragraph separations. Yay me! Update as of Wednesday morning: Here are some more things you can newly do: Include apostrophes in your name/handle, and not have them show up backslash'd; include apostrophes in the body of your response, and not have the whole thing chucked out; include links in your response and not have them stripped out. I am using tidy to clean up the html in the comments and it is a temperamental thing. Powerful tho'.
posted evening of October 16th, 2007: 10 responses
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