Pause for station identification

[larryhammer]

"This is lnhammer-LJ, coming to you live every week or so. Every weekday on our sister station prettygoodword-LJ, we broadcast a pretty good word of the day -- and every day of the week you can tune into our other sister station, prettygoodlog-RSS for a pretty good daily link. Or you can stay here and listen to the news and reviews and linkage."

Speaking of which:

• Geoffrey Chaucer has been reading The Harley Lyrics, among other things.
  
  
• Personally useless advice: How to write an ode to math.
  
  
• Plaster cast of an ant colony. (via Making Light)
  
  
• Solved: whether it's hard work or talent. (via lilrivkah)
  
  
• My latest addiction: kakuro.

Meanwhile, my reaction to the Nibelungenlied is overshadowed by the jolt of such phrases as "the fortress of the queen of Iceland." I'm too steeped in Icelandic history to take that seriously. It helps if I mentally substitute Thule, or Tir nan Og.* A little. Also, I never was much taken by the whole King/Brynhilde/Siegfried/Gudrun/Attila triple-love-triangle -- aside from, yanno, the idea of transforming Attila the Hun into a character of medieval romance.

* The poet's conflating Netherlands and Norway and Nibelungland into one country is easier to take. A little.

---L.

Comments

[gillpolack.livejournal.com]

I want a recording of Chaucer's waxing wood song :).

[packbat.livejournal.com]

Those are pretty good words.

[larryhammer]

So do I.

---L.

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

[... I never was much taken by the whole King/Brynhilde/Siegfried/Gudrun/Attila triple-love-triangle ...]

I never was either. But in the last 3 - 4 years, all that has a far more interesting psychological, emotional interest than previously.

Maybe it's related to how I've developed a love for December late afternoon skies, which I didn't used to have either.

Love, C.

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

Etzel-Attila functions somewhat like the Pasha in the (much later, and independently composed) Entführung aus dem Serail, the role Robertson Davies called "fifth business".

[larryhammer]

And in some ways, Etzel's the most interesting of the bunch -- you can play him in more ways than the other four: doting husband, supporter his wife's revenge, eager for his wife's former husband's gold, out to use his wife for political ends, and so on.

---L.

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

Exactly. This seems to be one of the characteristics, so to speak, of the character type: being more ambiguous, it allows one to read more into it or to perceive depths which are neither implied nor needed for the love leads. Etzel in particular comes literally in from outside the story framework, outside the mythology, as he is a real person, and so he is more substantial than the others, a human being coping with inhuman icons.

[larryhammer]

I like to think so. Or at least, ones worth noticing.

---L.