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larryhammerWhat I've recently finished since my last post:
Velveteen vs. The Junior Super Patriots and Velveteen vs. The Multiverse by Seanan McGuire - Based on the evidence here, it's a safe assumption that McGuire has read a lot of Marvel Comics. The series embraces both the ludicrousness of certain superhero tropes and the human pain of having to live through them. We approves.
Oku no hosomichi by Bashô, here translated as A Haiku Journey by Dorothy Britton. It's interesting to reread now that I've enough background to catch many (if nowhere near all) of the historical and literary references, especially since said references were much of the point of the journey. The Sendai-Matsushima-Ishinomaki sections also gain poignancy after the 2011 tsunami. As for the translation, the prose is clean, with glosses neatly worked in, but the haiku are, um -- let's be polite and call them disappointing: not only rhymed (except when Britton couldn't pull that off) but padded with material neither in the original nor needed for scene-setting, solely to fill out the syllable count to 5-7-5. As a random sample, natsuyama ni ashida o ogamau kadode kana (roughly, "in the summer mountains, bowing/praying to high clogs -- setting off!") becomes "In the hills, 'tis May. / Bless us, holy shoes, as we / Go upon our way" -- and this is one of the better jobs. Disrecommended -- I'm keeping this edition only because it has the original text.
An Accidental Goddess by Linnea Sinclair, a reread of what is, basically, a fluffy space opera with sufficiently advanced psionics and a romance. The class-cum-species differences of the main couple are handwaved away a little too easily, but otherwise still satisfying.
Mondaiji-tachi ga Isekai kara Kuru Sô Desu yo? ("the problem children come from another world, don't they?") volume 1 by Tarô Tatsunoko - I came in expecting stupid fun, and got it. (The volume titles are amusing: this one is "YES! Rabbit called you!" with the first word in English, the next: "Oh my, a declaration of war from a Demon Lord?") Three inexplicably super-powered Japanese teenagers are "invited" to compete in a power-up tournament in another universe. Despite the pink bunny-girl on the cover (who is indeed described as dressing like that), there's less fanservice stupids than you might fear. Possibly more than you want, but that's a different bar to leap.
Poems of Places volume V, Ireland -- it would not be hard, given this selection, to conclude that the dominant Irish poetic mode is the lament, supplemented by chaste love songs -- or was as of the mid-1870s, anyway. Wales was more heroic, even in grieving over the fallen defeated. Single data points, and all that.
What I'm reading now:
Madan no Ô to Vanadis volume 8 - some battles are more tedious than others. Such as ones without either of the two main characters. OTOH, hello surprise amnesia plot.
Toddler Adoption: The Weaver's Craft by Mary Hopkins-Best, for the usual reasons.
Dramatis Personae by Robert Browning, also for the usual reasons. As usual, I'm finding this somwhat rocky going -- some brilliant poems, some slogs, and some 'oh do shut up already"s. I've also gone back to volume V of The World's Best Poetry, but once past the flowery dump quickly ran into another knot of sentimental poems, this time about animals.
What I might read next:
Mondaiji-tachi v2, just to see whether the all-too-common second-volume curse strikes this one. And, oh I dunno, just possibly some poetry.
---L.
Velveteen vs. The Junior Super Patriots and Velveteen vs. The Multiverse by Seanan McGuire - Based on the evidence here, it's a safe assumption that McGuire has read a lot of Marvel Comics. The series embraces both the ludicrousness of certain superhero tropes and the human pain of having to live through them. We approves.
Oku no hosomichi by Bashô, here translated as A Haiku Journey by Dorothy Britton. It's interesting to reread now that I've enough background to catch many (if nowhere near all) of the historical and literary references, especially since said references were much of the point of the journey. The Sendai-Matsushima-Ishinomaki sections also gain poignancy after the 2011 tsunami. As for the translation, the prose is clean, with glosses neatly worked in, but the haiku are, um -- let's be polite and call them disappointing: not only rhymed (except when Britton couldn't pull that off) but padded with material neither in the original nor needed for scene-setting, solely to fill out the syllable count to 5-7-5. As a random sample, natsuyama ni ashida o ogamau kadode kana (roughly, "in the summer mountains, bowing/praying to high clogs -- setting off!") becomes "In the hills, 'tis May. / Bless us, holy shoes, as we / Go upon our way" -- and this is one of the better jobs. Disrecommended -- I'm keeping this edition only because it has the original text.
An Accidental Goddess by Linnea Sinclair, a reread of what is, basically, a fluffy space opera with sufficiently advanced psionics and a romance. The class-cum-species differences of the main couple are handwaved away a little too easily, but otherwise still satisfying.
Mondaiji-tachi ga Isekai kara Kuru Sô Desu yo? ("the problem children come from another world, don't they?") volume 1 by Tarô Tatsunoko - I came in expecting stupid fun, and got it. (The volume titles are amusing: this one is "YES! Rabbit called you!" with the first word in English, the next: "Oh my, a declaration of war from a Demon Lord?") Three inexplicably super-powered Japanese teenagers are "invited" to compete in a power-up tournament in another universe. Despite the pink bunny-girl on the cover (who is indeed described as dressing like that), there's less fanservice stupids than you might fear. Possibly more than you want, but that's a different bar to leap.
Poems of Places volume V, Ireland -- it would not be hard, given this selection, to conclude that the dominant Irish poetic mode is the lament, supplemented by chaste love songs -- or was as of the mid-1870s, anyway. Wales was more heroic, even in grieving over the fallen defeated. Single data points, and all that.
What I'm reading now:
Madan no Ô to Vanadis volume 8 - some battles are more tedious than others. Such as ones without either of the two main characters. OTOH, hello surprise amnesia plot.
Toddler Adoption: The Weaver's Craft by Mary Hopkins-Best, for the usual reasons.
Dramatis Personae by Robert Browning, also for the usual reasons. As usual, I'm finding this somwhat rocky going -- some brilliant poems, some slogs, and some 'oh do shut up already"s. I've also gone back to volume V of The World's Best Poetry, but once past the flowery dump quickly ran into another knot of sentimental poems, this time about animals.
What I might read next:
Mondaiji-tachi v2, just to see whether the all-too-common second-volume curse strikes this one. And, oh I dunno, just possibly some poetry.
---L.
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no subject
Date: 28 May 2014 04:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 28 May 2014 04:58 pm (UTC)That aside, I can see arguments for turning, say, epics like Homer into heroic couplets -- but only in an age when that's the expected mode for heroic poetry. But in something as tight-lined and brief and not-chiming as a haiku, no. Just -- no.
---L.
no subject
Date: 28 May 2014 04:59 pm (UTC)---L.
no subject
Date: 28 May 2014 05:05 pm (UTC)Ahem.
I agree that Homer in heroic couplets is defensible. Ultimately there's an argument to be made for trying to create the same effect in the reader of the translation that the original had on the original audience, and if "heroic couplets" occupies the same conceptual role as "dactylic hexameter," then go ahead. (Especially since I am given to understand that writing dactylic hexameter in English is a nightmare.) But the only way you can defend rhyming as "the same effect" is if you say that rhyming = poetry and poetry = rhyming, which is so horrifically reductive of English poetry, let alone anything from another part of the world, that it is just NO NO WRONG STOPPIT.
no subject
Date: 28 May 2014 05:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 28 May 2014 06:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 28 May 2014 07:06 pm (UTC)---L.
no subject
Date: 28 May 2014 08:34 pm (UTC)To say nothing of the destruction of rhyme to the art form.
no subject
Date: 28 May 2014 08:59 pm (UTC)---L.
no subject
Date: 29 May 2014 06:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 30 May 2014 09:52 am (UTC)I will admit, virtually all of the attempts at a rhyming translation of a significant number of haiku I have seen were pretty bad. But if I were to summarize the problem, I would say that it's not so much that they were translated using rhyme, but more that they were translated as light verse. (I mean, come on... "'tis"? "Bless us, holy shoes?")
--Matt
no subject
Date: 30 May 2014 02:19 pm (UTC)---L.
no subject
Date: 2 June 2014 12:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2 June 2014 01:52 am (UTC)