Emptiness Memory Mind and Language Tatyana Solomonik-Pankrashova The credentials (Lund, Stockholm, Oxford) of Junichi Toyota, Marina Shchepetunina, and Pernilla Hallonsten, the editors of Sense of Emptiness, were highly attractive to me, being very appreciably more respectable than any institutions further west. However, "emptiness plays a key role in identifying socio-cultural diversity" caused me considerable unease, mental discomfort and serious uncertainty. What is "cognitive linguistics" ? What is "diachronic change" ? What is "kaleidoscopic grammar" ? What is "typology" ? Forgive my ignorance. I pressed on. There is a substantial section dealing with The Seafarer in Sense of Emptiness, and I at first assumed this part was written by Pernilla, who is Swedish. I had discovered these comments in Google Books. Now, November 2017, that the book itself, 2012, has come into my hands I realise this section was written by Tatyana Solomonik-Pankrashova, Vilnius University, see above. Tatyana reveals some familiarity with Old Scandinavian myth and idiom, and has a refreshingly pan-European interest in these areas, unlike the average Anglo-American Anglo-Saxonist. It is a great pity, though, that the seafarer's central crux translation is by S.A.J.Bradley. As follows: Sadly, Bradley's crux translation is not bad, it's atrocious. It might be called a scrutiny to one's intellectual alacrity. Virtually all the key words are given faulty interpretations: hyge and modsefa are not interchangeable; hweorfeð doesn't mean wanders; mereflode doesn't mean ocean tide; eorþan sceatas doesn't mean earth's expanses; cymeð eft doesn't mean comes back; gifre ond grædig may imply avid, but not covetous; anfloga doesn't mean lone flier; gielleð and hweteð don't mean calls and urges; onwæl weg is seriously mis-emended here, and doesn't mean on the whale-path; hreþer unwearnum certainly doesn't mean spirit irresistibly; ofer holma gelagu doesn't mean over waters of oceans. Bradley reads the text to suit his preconceived purpose. I am repeating my comments here, just so that their truth will come to be appreciated. Within the pages of The Sense of Emptiness, nevertheless, when once what Mark Griffith has called the verbal junk of cognition has been jettisoned, and the bewildering bafflegab of emptiness has been erased, we get down to some revealing information about wæl-weg. See here for the arguable links of wongas with sceatas, and come thus to appreciate the arguable links of sceatas with wæl weg. A further substantial extract, relevant if somewhat confusing, from The Sense of Emptiness is given here val means death; kyrie means choose. Now let us get on with Memory, Mind and Language, edited by Hans Götzsche. This was actually published in 2010, before Sense of Emptiness. No matter. It's the article by Tatyana I'm after: the concept of soul in Anglo-Saxon. Lovely to see usage of Anglo-Saxon. Recent makers of Anglo-Saxon dictionaries, especially The [! ! !] Old English Dictionary, strongly resemble people setting out to fill in crossword puzzles without reading the clues. It can be done, but makes very little sense.
Hans Götzsche
anfloga means on-flier.