Quillori

Happy Birthday white_hart!

Not only were there more stories this year than any other, the standard, always very good, is higher than ever. I know I've yet to read almost half the stories where I have some familiarity with canon, and a number of those I've already read merit rereading. However, every year there are some stories which are not only excellent in themselves but can be appreciated even by those who don't know the fandom. Unfortunately, most people don't have the time to read through countless unfamiliar stories in the hope some will make sense, so I always like to draw attention to those stories I've read which I think could be appreciated by a wider audience.

( This way to the recs )

Dear Yuletide Santa,

Thank you so much for writing for me. I really will be happy with anything you've come up with, but if you're like me and prefer some prompts and general likes/dislikes, I've expanded a little on my requests below.

( Meine Liebe )

( Mythology - Chinese )

( Petshop of Horrors )

( Pu Songling - Liaozhai Zhiyi aka Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio )

( In General )

Happy Birthday, fabu.

Further to a discussion elsewhere as to what counts as OOC, it struck me that there are a number of approaches to writing fanfic, each of which aims to a have a different relationship to canon, and that there is little point discussing appropriate characterisation without considering ( what the story is trying to achieve. )

"The philologists held that their language was preserved in its purest form in the desert. Moreover, the speech of the desert Arabs abounded in marvellous lexical rarities and both poets and lexicographers went out hunting for these. For instance [...] bahlasa means 'to arrive suddenly from another country without any luggage'.

Robert Irwin, editorialising in The Penguin Anthology of Classical Arabic Literature

I have just met up with a friend who has had the misfortune to fly in transit through Heathrow four times in the last two months. And yes, she has found herself on each occasion in a position to demonstrate that the experience of desert Arabs some 1300 years ago is still relevant to today's expatriate.

In the interests of adding this excellent and necessary word to my vocabulary, are there any Arabic scholars out there who can tell me how it should be conjugated?

Happy birthday, white_hart!

I've only just heard the terrible news about Burma (Myanmar). Ten to fifteen thousand dead, according to the BBC, four thousand according to the New York Times. I always say when asked that you can't compare countries and pick a favourite, but then if I'm being honest I have to admit Burma is the most beautiful country I have ever seen, and the one I have cared about the most. Only last week I was lightheartedly advising a friend where he should eat when he went to Rangoon (Yangon) and who he should use if he wanted to ship some of the fine wood carvings home: I imagine the restaurant and the shipping agency and the furniture shop I recommended are all gone now. There was a period a few years ago when I really thought things were improving perceptibly, but so much has gone wrong since. The country really has no luck at all.

BBC article here
Local interviews here
Google News results here

Girl With The Dark Hair
Anon, trans W.S. Merwin

      Girl with the dark hair
If you are asleep, be warned:
( Half of our life is a dream )

Ulysses
Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Princes
It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

( I cannot rest from travel: I will drink )

from The Harper's Song For Inherkhawy
Egyptian, trans John L. Foster

All who come into being as flesh
           pass on, and have since God walked the earth;
                and young blood mounts to their places.
The busy fluttering souls and bright transfigured spirits
      who people the world below
                     and those who shine in the stars with Orion,
They built their mansions, they built their tombs –
      and all men rest in the grave.
So set your home well in the sacred land
           that your good name last because of it
Care for your works in the realm under God
           that your seat in the West be splendid.
The waters flow north, the wind blows south,
and each man goes to his hour.

from The Devil's Law Case
John Webster

All the flowers of the spring
Meet to perfume our burying;
These have but their growing prime,
And man doth flourish but his time:
Survey our progress from our birth;
We are set, we grow, we turn to earth.
Courts adieu, and all delights,
All bewitching appetites:
Sweetest breath and clearest eye,
Like perfumes, go out and die;
And consequently this is done
As shadows wait upon the sun,
Vain the ambition of kings
Who seek by trophies and dead things
To leave a living name behind,
And weave but nets to catch the wind.

Sir Patrick Spens
Anon

The king sits in Dumferling toune,
      Drinking the blude-reid wine:
‘O whar will I get a guid sailor,
      To sail this schip of mine?’

( Up and spak an eldern knicht )

Diffugere Nives
Horace, trans A.E. Housman

The snows are fled away, leaves on the shaws
      And grasses in the mead renew their birth,
The river to the river-bed withdraws,
      And altered is the fashion of the earth.

( The Nymphs and Graces three put off their fear )

The Seven
Anon (Akkadian), trans Jerome Rothenberg

They are 7 in number, just 7
In the terrible depths they are 7
Bow down, in the sky they are 7

( In the terrible depths, the dark houses )

To A Mouse, On Turning Her Up In Her Nest With The Plough, November, 1785
Robert Burns

Wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie,
O, what a panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi' bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee,
Wi' murd'ring pattle!

( I'm truly sorry man's dominion, )

Today’s poem, Jonson’s Hymn To Cynthia reminded me of a section in the introduction to John Brough’s Poems From The Sanskrit in which he demonstrates the difficulties of translation by ‘translating’ this same poem into various other English versions:

( Extract here )

( Hymn To Cynthia )

At The Round Earth's Imagined Corners
John Donne

At the round earth's imagined corners, blow
Your trumpets, Angels, and arise, arise
From death, you numberless infinities
Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go,
All whom the flood did, and fire shall o'erthrow,
All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies,
Despair, law, chance, hath slain, and you whose eyes,
Shall behold God, and never taste death's woe.
But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space,
For, if above all these, my sins abound,
'Tis late to ask abundance of thy grace,
When we are there; here on this lowly ground,
Teach me how to repent; for that's as good
As if thou hadst seal'd my pardon, with thy blood.

I fear this post could be entitled In Which I Hopelessly Muddle Thorny Ethical Problems With Narrative Tropes. On the other hand, there are bullet points! They don't make anything clearer, but still.

I was reading a couple of posts on what could be done with the respective villains on two different shows, where the available options appeared to number two: he remains a villain (can be killed off if no further use for his brand of villainy) or he can be redeemed (and killed off). It struck me I truly do not like conventional redemption arcs. The character concerned suffers for a while and then, for the worse acts of villainy, can get the final points towards his redemption by dying in some suitable fashion. But in what sense does this actually redeem him? I suspect I just haven't internalised the right Judaeo-Christian worldview for this sort of thing to work for me. Without a heaven or hell, without a God to judge or forgive, without the status of sinner or saved, the supposed redemption seems to hover unsupported in the air.

I think maybe what I particularly don't like is suffering as a narrative necessity? For a start, it's predictable hence boring if you don't feel there's emotional truth to it. I'm very fond of inevitable unhappy endings ( where I accept the truth of them )

from The Wanderer
trans Michael Alexander

A wise man may grasp how ghastly it shall be
when all this world's wealth standeth waste,
even as now, in many places, over the earth
walls stand, wind beaten,
hung with hoar-frost; ruined habitations.
( The wine-halls crumble; their wielders lie )