Puzzling about a matter of translation. Lucretius, the great Latin poet, wrote ON THE NATURE OF THINGS some time around 58 BC, giving us a book-length rendering of the views of the Greek atomists. The matter of translation I have in mind is Lucretius' decision to refer to "atoms" as "primordia." That word in turn gets translated into English as "first beginnings." This is odd. "Atom," as even a flunk-out of languages like Christopher Faille knows, means "indivisible." Isn't there some word in Latin that would be a better translation for that then "first beginnings"? Oh, I don't know (he looks up the etymology of the English word "indivisible") -- indivisibilus? Well, "primordia" has only four syllables and "indivisibilis" has six. That may have made it easier to use in verse -- easier to rhyme, and to work into the meter as necessary. A further investigation of that would take wa...
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Mystery solved! As some of you may remember, I've long been intrigued by a passage in Dorothy Sayers' introduction to her translation of Dante's Inferno. The passage, written in 1949, includes allusions to roughly 60 different people who played a part in English social history in the century or so before that date. Some she refers to by full name, most by part of a name, some by an allusive phrase. Her point is that an intelligent reader five centuries later will need help understanding a poem that makes such allusions, and she tries to provide analogous help in her notes on Dante. Roughly two thirds of a century has passed, and even for Anglophilic Americans, her prediction had been amply verified. Some of the references are obvious, some take some digging, some left me confused for a long time. But I believe I have cleared up the most confusing example. She refers to "Brown and Kennedy." Those are quite common names, so googling didn't help The arc...
A new translation of Dostoevsky's classic novel, NOTES FROM A DEAD HOUSE, is available from Knopf. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky did the translating. This gives Christine Smallwood an opportunity to offer her observations on the novel in the March issue of HARPER'S. "The book is largely plotless, a record of institutional habits and routines, though little scenes and colorful dramas emerge....Toward the end of the book, two prisoners run off intending to escape for good, and for eight days it seems they have succeeded. They are celebrated and admired until they are found and returned, when they are mocked, humiliated."
The original French lyrics were as follows: Minuit, chrétiens, c'est l'heure solennelle, Où l'Homme Dieu descendit jusqu'à nous Pour effacer la tache originelle Et de Son Père arrêter le courroux. Le monde entier tressaille d'espérance En cette nuit qui lui donne un Sauveur. Peuple à genoux, attends ta délivrance. Noël, Noël, voici le Rédempteur, Noël, Noël, voici le Rédempteur! De notre foi que la lumière ardente Nous guide tous au berceau de l'Enfant, Comme autrefois une étoile brillante Y conduisit les chefs de l'Orient. Le Roi des rois naît dans une humble crèche: Puissants du jour, fiers de votre grandeur, A votre orgueil, c'est de là que Dieu prêche. Courbez vos fronts devant le Rédempteur. Courbez vos fronts devant le Rédempteur. Le Rédempteur a brisé toute entrave: La terre est libre, et le ciel est ouvert. Il voit un frère où n'était qu'un esclave, L'amour unit ceux qu'enchaînait le fer. Qui lui dira notre reconnaissa...