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| Scholars belong to guilds held together by common opinions, attitudes, and methods
innovation is welcome Cyrus H.Gordon |
It is not who is right, but what is right, that is of importance. T.H. Huxley Another New Leaf What boots it to repeat, how Time is slipping underneath our feet ... and Lo, the Bird of Time is on the wing What is this new leaf I've overturned ? Meseems, to steal a line from the Great Cham, that in the evening twilight of my years, though necessarily of minimal genius, I have accidentally become determined to two, possibly three, particular directions; to whit, C18th marine painting; to whoo, Old Scandinavian; to three, perhaps, or maybe: Moses and Monotheism. David Burns: A Short Comparison, 2015, page 12 Twenty Years On 1995 Reckless of that, my thought is thrown The lone call wails above on wing: 2015 + Reckless of that, my thought is thrown Anon the raptor wails on wing Eighty Years Ago 1937 Therefore my mind is now soaring beyond the stronghold of my bosom, my spirit is moving over the sea-flood, travelling far and wide over the whale's domain, over the surface of the earth. It returns to me ardent and eager: the lone flier yells, impelling my soul irresistibly to set forth on the road of the whale, out over the expanse of the seas. Olof Anderson/Arngart: Although Olof Arngart proposed what is easily the best interpretation of The Seafarer it is remarkable how wrong his translation is of the poem's central key passage, lines 58-68. 1. mind: not bad, faute de mieux; the word is identical with Swedish håg; to be hågad is "to have a mind to". Anderson/Arngart is sadly in complete thrall to Benjamin Thorpe and the preceding 20 translators of The Seafarer, 1842-1937. It's as though he dare not think for himself, and be so bold as to contradict that formidable array. He is too modest, since English is not his first language, and he humbly defers to the dictionaries. But he solves the poem's structure. Wayne Leman: "Accuracy is measured by the degree to which users of a translation get the same meaning from it which the original text had." It might be thought natural to assume that a translator's overriding priority would be, first, to determine the precise meaning of the original text. However, for the majority of translators, this seems to be quite unnecessary, and very many of them apparently consider the original author's aims to be of minimal importance. Robert Graves pointed this out, with reference to Ezra Pound, in 1953. See here for The Meaning of ferð. Why do I feel as though I'm Galileo facing the Vatican ? This contains confirmation of the ancestry of an as "on", with an intriguing comment about the deviant behaviour of the proclitic preposition. Fascinating suggestion, if tenuous, about the possibly magical role played by the gowk. Modern Swedish gala tends to mean crow like a cock rather than yell like anything. But, curiously, it can also be used of the cuckoo, according to my modern Prisma Swedish-English dictionary. Could Sieper have known as much ? David Burns noted: "historians seem to dismiss, or not wish to pursue" "The greater the labour, the fewer the people who understand and appreciate it". Paul Valéry, 1871 - 1945. "Every great advance ..... has involved the absolute rejection of authority." T.H. Huxley " I have had to content myself with saying what I mean in the plainest of plain language, "A" is the same as the letter "A" See here for the Central Crux. ll.58-68. essays & papers © Charles Harrison-Wallace 2017 this page is only gradually taking shape
after a lot has been said and done
beyond my heart's cage now. Hot hunger
keenly comes again; my mind is cast
upon the sea swell, over the whale's world,
widely to course creation's coast.
it steels the unarmed soul to start
across the waters where the whale sways.
beyond my heart's cage now. My mind is cast
upon the sea swell, over the whale's world
widely to course creation's coast:
then comes a keening call
that steels the naked soul to start
upon the death-way where the whale sways
2. soaring: not good; the word hweorfeš means "turning/twisting", or "being thrown" or "cast".
3. stronghold of my bosom: the sense of hrežerlocan is singularly poorly conveyed by "stronghold" and "bosom".
4. spirit: just possibly; modsefa more accurately means "state of mind".
5. surface of the earth: completely wrong; sceatas does not mean "sheet", it means "lap".
6. returns to me: seminal error by Thorpe, 1842; eft means "then", or "anon", not "back", or "again".
7. ardent and eager: misses the element of "greed": the death-bird is avid for its prey
8. the lone flier: profoundly wrong; anfloga means "on-flier", not "one-flier".
9. impelling irresistibly: hopelessly wrong; should be "steels the vulnerable".
10. road of the whale: the road of the węl is "death"; Valhalla is the "hall of death"; not the "whale-hall".
11.expanse of the seas: how can holma possibly or remotely mean "seas" ?See here for Dr Syntax and Mr Pound
the link between Swedish and Anglo-Saxon.
than which, I suppose, there is no habit more ruinous to a man's prospects of advancement."
T.H.Huxley, Autobiography, p 1, Lectures & Essays, Watts & Co, published 1931.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
See here for more cruces
site version
commentaries: one, two, three [60 plus other versions], four, five, six
annotation main general index
more on unwearnum more and more on unwearnum
Seafarer: Veracity & Fidelity
Seafarer Birds Seafarer Cuckoo
twenty years on
frames 