h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Haikus:
TO-CON-VEY ONE'S MOOD IN SEV-EN-TEEN SYLL-ABLE-
S IS VE-RY DIF-FIC...
(John Cooper Clarke)

I'd been wondering about multi-lingual poetic forms myself, triggered by memories of having to annotate scansion in Latin poetry. Latin poems were made up of 'long' and 'short' syllables, where length was dictated not by vowel length but by vowel-consonant combinations. Shorts and longs were arranged into different 'bars' (I forget the technical term) such as Dactyls and Virgulae which went (eg 'Long Long' or 'Long Short Short'. The various poetic meters had strict rules on how these were arranged. I remeber that the in basic one that Ovid used, the lines always ended in virgulae. BUT - I've no idea how it would have sounded when read properly. Would you or I have been able to discern the meter?

Now French poetry - French is not a 'dum-di-dum' language: All syllables are stressed equally. So how do they manage meter?

On the other hand - Italian has an unvarying stress pattern. It also has very few different word endings (eg all nouns end in -o -a -i or -e) Which must make meter and rhyming a doddle, but assonance murder ('Getting the rhyme wrong' - Julie Walters in 'Educating Rita')

And there was a recent R4 programme on Welsh poetry which has strict meter and internal rhymes.

Phew! Any answers/ thoughts/ observations? Lasciate ogni
speranza, voi ch'entrate!

PS There's the famous (apocryphal?) story about the woman who was being interviewed on the radio after becoming the first woman to win an annual 'Mucky Limerick' contest. She was asked to read her winning entry, but at first demurred, saying that some of the language was particularly bad. She finally consented when told she could substitute some of the more offensive words with 'dum-di-dums'. So she read:
Dum-di-dum di dum-di-dum ,
Dum-di-dum di dum-di-dum ,
Di-dum di-dum
Di-dum di-dum
You can't swim here, you f---ing c---!

Ancient Irish (pre-12th century) poetry also used strict meter, assonance and cross rhymes, as did Anglo-Saxon and most Northern European languages.

Look at this 9th century Irish poem about a blackbird for example:

Int én gaires asin t-shail;
álainn guilbnén as glan gair:
rinn binn buide fir duib druin:
cas cor cuirther, guth ind luin.

Without knowing what it is about, you can see patterns of consonants and patterns of vowels. There are seven syllables in each line. Here's my translation:

Blackbird from a willow sings:
Tiny beak with voice that rings.
Yellow bill, like coal his coat,
Merry music from his throat.

It's not quite accurate, but near enough. I've been able to preserve the seven syllables per line, and to put in a few assonances here and there, but it's not as tight as the original.

Which also brings us on to poetry translation: How on earth does one do it?

I've already pointed out these wonderful 'Jabberwocky' translations (anyone fancy a stab at rendering it in Irish)? http://www76.pair.com/keithlim/jabberwocky/translations/index.html In some cases there are wildly different versions for a single language.

Then there are the famous Fitzgerald translations of Omar Khayamm. On the one hand, we should be grateful to him for giving us access to a marvellous poet. On the other hand - the English of his translations is sometimes, frankly, bizarre: 'And wilderness is paradise enow' (poetic licence taken to rhyme with 'A loaf of bread, a book of verse, a jug of wine and thou')

I once heard Yevgeny Yevtuschenko at a book signing/ reading. He expressed amazement that his translator had managed to render one of his poems, which is based on a recitation of quaint Russian railway station names. I only rember the last bit: '...and at the end of the line, Onlybury'.

Douglas Hofstadter, the American Computer Scientist, wrote an excellent book on the translation of poetry, called "Le Ton Beau de Marot". He takes a simple French poem of about 20 lines of three syllables each and translates it into English in numerous different ways, each one illustrated by a long discussion of some point or other. In the course of this, he covers just about everything there is to say on the subject. His discussion of translations of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin into English are particularly good.

>> He takes a simple French poem of about 20 lines of three syllables each and translates it into English in numerous different ways, each one illustrated by a long discussion of some point or other.

One of the more interesting poetic exercises in any language is to take the same basic premise and explore it in different poetic forms.

I am normally wary of publishing my stuff here, but I regard these as exercises rather than poems:

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Draft - I

It used to be
that star-crossed love was young;
the privilege of teenage girls
and gangling adolescent boys:
Pyramus and Thisbe, Tristram and Iseult,
separated by unyielding parents
whose only function in the tale
is to create the legend
of their children's pain.

Doomed love still exists of course,
but now family duty flows the other way.
The secret lovers
weeping furtive tears
concluding they must part
are Montague and Lady Capulet.

Draft - II

Star-crossed love is like a minuet
danced in darkness, tripping feet upset,
happiness a half-glimpsed silhouette,
all hope askew;
love which brings a lifetime's deep regret
and bitter rue.

Legends tell of parental wrath and threat,
"Iseult's no child of my beget!
"Faithless viper! Whore! Coquette!"
Her father's view.
Gangling boys and teenage girls ill-met,
their love taboo.

Present times it's parents who forget
family duty, playing love's roulette
of secret joys, until the loving net
binds them anew.
Parted now, are Lady Capulet
and Montague.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

What I found interesting whas how stylised and frankly gothic the Burns Stanzas forced the poem to become. It is also interesting that the two different versions explore different aspects of the same theme. When I can get around to it, I might rework it in other forms.

B

And now for something completely different - one of my favourite limericks:

There was a young lady of Bude
Who went for a swim in the sea
A man in a punt
Stuck his pole in the water
And said 'you can't swim here it's private'.

Quite.

B

What was the original last line?

"And something naughty ensued"

Poetry is all very well in its place, but where's the Wittgenstein?

Which reminds me, Wittgenstein was ridiculously bashful about his own talent, though he was remarkably gifted not only in maths and language, but visually and musically as well. He said once something like "If I wrote two lines and they rhymed, that would be an accident". I think as a child he had had a hard time from his mother over being less good on the piano than some of her other children.

>> ..some of her other children <<

Now there's a tangent someone might go off on. It goes to the heart of the creative impulse and the driving need to be seen as outstanding in one's field. To be original and innovative is also of course the energy behind new and creative ways of expression and as such it impacts on language variation and change (an important aspect of our subject topic).

Historically, families in 'western cultures' had lots of offspring while today we see 2.2 children as the average. Whatever the reasons (health, life expectancies, economics, birth control) todays children do not face as much sibling rivalry.

My grave thought is that because of this change in the nature of the environment in which children are raised and eductaed, we may never again see the likes of Dickens, Bach, Shakespeare, Freud, Kafka or Wittgenstein or any other examples of ancient genius forged in the dynamics of large nuclear families and huge 'dynastic' extended families.

The budding genius needs to be recognised as worthy, to establish a distinctive individuality. Large family environs forced them to rise above the standard of their peers (dozens of siblings, cousins and neighbours). It gave them a competitive edge. Today we're probably only getting spoiled brats who thoroughly expect to be given attention for the most mediocre accomplishments.
(examples deleted)


~jwf~

Emm . . . Newton was an only child wasn't he?

Anyway the latest research suggests that the effect of your family on your personality and performance is negligible compared with the effects of (a) genetics and (b) your peer group.

Newton maybe, but Jesus wasn't.
And Romulus had Remus.
But no doubt the odds of a genius being an only child are probably on par with the odds of just being an only child, back in them good old days.


The phrase 'latest research' always reminds me of the old truth that the more a lie is told the more believable it becomes.

I won't argue against the 'suggested' conclusions they want us to accept. Except to say that during the important development years, the first five to seven formative years of life, Parents and Siblings are the only peer group we really have. Being family they know how to get under our genetically endowed skin and push our familial belly buttons. By the time we're old enough to have an external peer group (of non-relatives) we have already become who will have to be for the rest of our lives. With about the same rate of exception as your Newton example of an only child genius.

~jwf~

Of course, in them days, your children were your pension. You needed to have a lot because they would tend to die off too soon. So I'm somewhat puzzled as to what squigglejwfsquiggle wants. A return to The Golden Age?

I'm not sure if this has any more relevance to Language and Linguistics than the baking of Barm Brack. (Dead easy, by the way. Cup of dried fruit. Soak it in tea overnight. Add a cup of SR flour and an egg. Bake. As a variant, you can use prunes as the fruit and Liffey water as the 'tea'.)

SR flour hardly counts as barm . . . but no doubt that's how it's done now. Thanks.

I've been through the discussion of parenting before, so I'll just refer you to Steven Pinker "The Blank Slate" for the figures on peer-group-vs-family-influence.

I would also suggest that in the old days there was an element of no-choice in the number of children people had?

Not so much an element of no-choice as clumsier methods of control. Crude contraceptives and abortificants were available, but admittedly were better known to the whoring community than to the nice girls who got married.

B

Perhaps the most wonderful thing about the English language is the way it allows almost anyone to use metaphor and analogy to describe certain truths in simple language without any scientific gobbledygook. Refined and repeated over the centuries, these 'old sayings' are an education in the ways of life, our oral tradition passed from generation to generation.

Examples:
As the twig is bent, so grows the tree.
A chip off the old block.
The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
Blood will tell.
A leopard can't change his spots.

These old expressions are sometimes called folk wisdom. Sadly, today we are constantly pressured to dismiss their simplicity and rustic nature in a most prejudicial way. We are told not to listen to what mere 'folks' had to say because we have real 'experts' now.

But these old sayings represent a long history of collected observed truth about the human condition. In the case of all the examples (above) it would appear that the traditional view of how one's character is shaped is almost entirely based on who-you-are in terms of the family-in-which-you-were-born-and-raised.

'Folks' may have known nothing about genetics or conditioned behaviour but they observed that family traits will always be a major factor in the development of any individual. The number of foundling tales and stories of paupers who were really princes should add convincingly to the argument.

If (as we see by the examples) experience has shown again and again that this is true, why would anyone bother to try and prove otherwise? Perhaps like in so many other things, we simply don't like who we are, and in denial we cling desperately to the false hopes of almighty Science to assure us that we are not doomed to be our father's sons.


>> ..in the old days there was an element of no-choice..<<

You say that like it's a bad thing.



~jwf~

"As the twig is bent, so grows the tree" is an example Pinker cites as being comprehensively disproved by studies of how children turn out. Some respond to discipline with enthusiasm, others with rebellion. How they will respond is very largely genetically determined. "Help, I'm turning into my mother" is more to the point.

That sounds like a great book, Gnomon. I was just listening to the BBC WS (about the election)and heard a program about Russian and Serbian poets writing in English and the translation of Native Canadian poetry into English... All I can say, is, I wouldn't attempt it!

>> How they will respond is very largely genetically determined.

But surely philanthropic adoption is a 20thC phenomenon?

In the 19thC in the UK and before you either had children or didn't - that element of no-choice. If you were rich and needed children for dynastic reasons you would adopt an impoverished nephew, as happened to one of Jane Austin's brothers.

But the point that I am making is that up until the 20th century you would be raised either by close or more distant blood relatives or else by the parish, so it is hardly a surprise that there isn't a pool of received folk-wisdom about raising non-family members in a family situation.

Actually there is of course. Changelings.

B

There have always been plenty of rich men having children outside their marriages; the unfortunate offspring (and others) must have often had an inkling, either from their mothers' unguarded hints or from a suspicious feeling, that they were being denied a deserved destiny, princes in pauperish situations.

The Ugly Duckling scenario: "You are/ Your child is/ the inheritor of [insert species/wealth/nobility/deity]".

(struggling to pull the thread back towards Language and Linguistics)

I've just finished reading a chapter in Francis Wheen's 'How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered The World' about the excesses of post-strucluralism (Derrida, and all that). There's some amusing stuff about, for example, the Sokal Affair (A2671733) which show the stupidity of taking a useful tool for analysing literature and applying it to the social and physical sciences.

However...even left-wing critics aren't necessarily suggesting throwing the baby out with the bathwater. There is talk, for example, 'ways carving up the world [into]...the sign systems they we have at our command, or more precisely, which have us at theirs'

Is this latter view - tat our thoughts are shaped by sign systems - reasonable? I'd say partly so - although it seems to ignore the strictly biological origins of many thoughts (eg 'Want peanuts!'). Is it the same as saying that thought and language are the same? I'd say not. Language is simply (simply?!!) the means by which we transmit underlying signs between brains.