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The Periodic Table of Storytelling, graphically indexing many major parts of TV Tropes. (via)

On misunderstanding the first line of Beowulf. Per one scholar's argument, anyway. (via)

"A Night on a Boat," the only surviving poem by Buddhist nun Haiyin.

---L.

Subject quote is the first line of "A Hamlet on the Rhine" by Ferdinand Freiligrath, which also has such gems as "Thou hidest tremblingly, O wondrous maid!" and "A simile! It entered full my soul". Content Warning: exclamation-mark abuse.

You must defeat Sheng Long

Date: 16 November 2013 12:06 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rymrytr.livejournal.com


Take a look at number 8
http://mentalfloss.com/article/48795/9-little-translation-mistakes-caused-big-problems

From: [identity profile] rymrytr.livejournal.com


The words are a beautiful painting - the pictures that I see as I read, are these:

The trip starts out (awareness comes), in the late evening. The darkness of the water (the past) and the color of the sky as the light (and life) fade, become the same. The "years past" join together in a sameness.

The wind, (the flurry of youth - the beginning), is gradually lost to the domination of the sound of the oars, (the never-ending responsibility of daily existence, of keeping "body and soul" together) in their repetitious interaction with the water (time).

The traveler is torn between concern for home (the past) and traveling at night (the unknown future)... there is a longing for simpler times, and the lessened responsibilities of youth.

The fisherman, (we who strive; who make the trip), spends his time in a state of blank meditation, an unawareness of the daily passage of time, through the rote of the "rowing". Suddenly there begins a nearing to the end of the journey.

Raising the oars, (stopping to actually think about life), causes him to look up and in that awareness, realize that the morning sky is just light enough to see what we had never allowed ourselves to acknowledge - the beginning of the end...

Maneuvering the boat those final strokes, we/he sees the reflection of the moon and its light (a vague, rippling shadow-dance of the past), in the wake behind his boat, (our lives).

The (our) song is sung; the poem at an end; the journey is complete. For him/us, the distance traveled, the time spent living, seems both extreme and brief. The mountains, circumstances, struggles, -- all these things, seem to be exactly as they were, in the beginning.



Edited Date: 16 November 2013 01:36 am (UTC)

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