Augustine on the Word

Theology | Quotations

If, therefore, in order that heaven and earth should come into being, you spoke in words which sounded and then died away, and if this was the way in which you created heaven and earth, there there must have been some material thing created before heaven and earth, something which, by its motion in time, could lend itself as a mouth-piece through which those words could be spoken in time. But there was no material thing before heave and earth; or if there was, you must certainly have created it by an utterance outside time, so that you could use it as the mouthpiece for your decree, uttered in time, that heaven and earth should be made. For whatever you might have used to produce the voice by which the decree was uttered, it would not have existed at all unless it had been made by you. But to create a material thing which could be used to give voice to the decree, what Word did you speak?

It is in this way, then, that you mean us to understand your Word, which is God with you, God with God, your Word uttered eternally in whom all things are uttered eternally. For your Word is not speech in which each part comes to an end when it has been spoken, giving place to the next, so that finally the whole may be uttered. In your Word all is uttered at one and the same time, yet eternally.

St. Augustine Confessions XI:6-7.

Comments (3 Comments)

Depeche Mode

Life | Reviews

I’ve been playing lately with Pandora, creating a set of music stations custom-tuned to my tastes. The procedure is simple and addictive: seed the radio station with an artist or two that you like, then listen and give thumbs-up or thumbs-down to individual songs in order to fine-tune its preferences. My impression is that the algorithm they use for finding similar music is very good, and it has already returned me much very good music that I would probably have never found otherwise.

Most surprising so far: Depeche Mode. I had seeded a station with Xiu Xiu and was grooving out to similar indie synth-pop when I heard a track that I especially liked. When I clicked to give it a thumbs-up, I was surprised to see it was none other than Depeche Mode. Yes, they’re indie-famous, but I was only vaguely familiar with them and hadn’t liked the songs I had previously heard. So I listened for a little while longer, heard another exceptional song, and came to find out that it was Depeche Mode again. Not only that, but it was the same album as before (Playing The Angel). Then it happened a third time. At that point I took the hint and just ordered the album from iTunes.

The album Playing The Angel turns out to be pure goodness. Hooray for Pandora.

P.S. If anybody else has a Pandora station they want to e-mail me, send it to me at jaspax around gmail.com, or listen to one of my stations at that address.

Comments (1 Comment)

Liturgy via Doug Wilson

Theology | Good Ideas

An MP3 of a sermon from Doug Wilson about liturgy. It is excellent in all respects. HT: Boars Head Tavern.

Comments (No Comments)

i am a nerd

Life | Adventures of Yasmine

hey everybody-
i write from camp, which is in the lovely coastal town of el-jadida. in a refreshing change of pace, our staff is neither incompetant nor evil, and although many of the campers are spoiled rich kids who complain about the lack of scrumptious foods, camp is going phenomenally well.
my contribution to the camp experience is the running of a science club with my friend sokmala (the k is a typo on her birth certificate. true story) which has so far been fun for the whole family.
yesterday we went to the beach and made baking soda and vinegar volcanos, which is apparentely the coolest thing anyone here has ever seen. we drew a crowd of approximately 1 million onlookers, and the kids had to make up stories about their towns and volcanos (which included vengeful gods, irritable genies, and some sort of joe-versus-the-volcano-esque story of human sacrifice). the actual science portion of the class is minimal, but, hey, this is camp. today we are building bridges out of dry spaghetti and straws, and tomorrow we are building small racecars and having a soapbox derby. i hope nobody dies.

there is a rumor going around that the us will no longer send mail to arab countries. does anyone know what grain of truth spawned this (i am assuming false) rumor? it’s kind of absurd.

high fives-
jocelyn.

Comments (No Comments)

Mountains, Rivers, and Trees

Life

La Padure Aug 06 151

So what did you do this weekend? Was it as awesome as our weekend? I didn’t think so.

Back in May, Larisa and I bought ourselves a nice tent from REI hoping to go camping in a week. Unfortunately, that weekend it rained. What with one thing and another, next week turned into… August, and here we are. On Monday we were talking about how we really wanted to get up into the mountains, and I said, “What about this weekend?” So we went.

It was great. We had some trouble finding a nice camping spot, but we finally did find one next to the river and just off the road, with some neighbors up the way who were able to lend us some fire, since we had forgotten to bring matches. The tent was a snap to set up, and we subsequently proceeded to enjoy ourselves for the rest of the weekend. Yes, that is me in the picture, and yes, I am reading St. Augustine’s Confessions half-submerged into the mountain stream.

Aside from wallowing in the cool river water, we also drove up a forest service road almost to the top of a Evergreen Mountain, offering some jaw-dropping views of the surrounding mountains, and tried to hike the remaining 1.5 mi to the lookout tower at the peak. However, we quickly found out that we were much less prepared than we thought for a steep uphill hike, so we turned back after getting less than halfway up. Sunday morning we hiked up to the lower Wallace Falls, which was very nice, although the falls themselves were a bit of a letdown. We didn’t have time to hike to the upper falls, which may have been nicer. We also made wonderful campfire food (bratwursts, corn-on-the-cob cooked in its shucks, potatoes baked over the coals, marshmallows, etc.).

We also took a ton of pictures. I only uploaded, um, a lot, but it was less than half of the total. Take a look. They’re quite pretty.

Now we are tired, sunburnt, and our feet hurt, and we have a large pile of clothes that reek of smoke. In other words, it was pretty much the best first campfire outing that I could have imagined.

Comments (2 Comments)

The Last Jabberwocky Translation, I Promise

Geek Stuff | Linguistics

Here it is in Ancient Greek! Unfortunately, I can’t really understand it. Turns out I’m not as l337 as I thought. From this comment thread.

ΙΑΜΒΡΩΞ ΙΑΜΒΙΚΩΣ

καυσπροῦντος ἤδη, γλοῖσχρα διὰ περισκιᾶς
στρυβλοῦντα καὶ στρομφοῦντ’ ἂν εὑρίσκοις τόφα,
δεινὴ δ’ ἐπέσχε σωθρία βορυγρόφας,
ῥάθαισι δ’ ἀντιποικὸν[1] ὕμνησαν ῥάθαι
ἔκγριμμα· τὸν δὲ πρέσβυν ἐξαυδᾶν κλύω·
‘παῖ, παῖ, φύγοις ἄν ἐμπέδως Ἰάμβροχα,
ἔιτ’ ὄνυχι μάρπτων εἴτε δὴ δάκνων τύχοι
γνάθοισιν, ἀπρόσοιστον· ὣς δ’ αὔτως φυγεῖν
ὄρνιθα δεινὸν Γυπογῦπ’· οὐδ’ ἂν φθάνοις
ἐλθὼν δαφλοισβῷ πρὸς λόγους Βανδράρπαγι.’
ὁ δ’ ἐν χεροῖν εὔκοπνον ἐξάρας ξίφος
θήρας ὅμως μετ’ ἴχνος ὀλγώδους ἔβη·
τέλος δ’ ἀπειπών, πολλὰ συννοούμενος,
πλείστην ὅπου παρέσχε φλαττόθρατ σκιάν,
ἔστη δι’ ὀλίγου· χὠς ἔβοσκεν ἀργίλας
θυμῷ μερίμνας, ἐμπύροισιν ὄμμασιν
σμύζων Ἰάμβρωξ ἔπτετ’ ἐκ ψυδνῆς νάπης,
δῆλος δὲ βορβολισμὸς ἦν ποτωμένου·
ταύτην δὲ καὶ δίχ’, ὡς ἐσεῖδε, καὶ τρίχα,
ἔνθεν τε κἄνθεν διάτορον πληγὴν νέηων,
ἔσνιξεν, ἐξέσναξεν εὐκόπνῳ ξίφει,
εῖθ’ οὗπερ ἔκτα κειμένης τεμὼν κάρα
γαυχούμενος κατῆλθεν· ἀσπαστὸν δ’ ἰδὼν
ἐλθόνθ’ ὁ πρέσβυς, τοιάδ’ ἐξεφρίγκασεν·
‘ὦ χαῖρε λάμπωψ· ὡς Ἰαμβροχοκτόνον
τόδ’ ἀγκάλισμα παιδὸς ἀσμένως ἔχω.
ὦ τρισβακαρτὸν ἦμαρ· ὦ καλοῦ καλά.’
ἤδη δ’ ἐκαύσπρει, γλοῖσχρά τ’ ἐν περισκιᾷ
στρυβλοῦντα καὶ στρομφοῦντ’[2] ἂν εὑρίσκοις τόφα,
δεινὴ δ’ ἐπέσχε σωθρία βορυγρόφας,
ἔκγριμμα δ’ ἀντιποικὸν ὕμνησαν ῥάθαι.

Comments (3 Comments)

Translating Jabberwocky

Linguistics | Limba română

So in the previous two posts I presented two different translations of Jabberwocky into Romanian. They’re both good, although they are good at different things. I preferred the Trăncăviciada, for example, because I thought that its wordplay was superior and it has some absolute gems of combinatoric vocabulary–but Larisa found it incomprehensible. The number of nonce words was simply too large for her to understand the thread of the story, while I was able to get through based on my knowledge of the English original. Bîzdîbocul, OTOH, is a more straightforward translation, but Larisa was able to understand it and appreciate the humor.

It’s too bad, because Trăncăviciada has some wonderful gems. Some of my favorites are:

• vrag fiu, translating “my son”, but vrag is a wonderful bit of allusion. It mixes drag (dear)with a whole set of v-words referring to power or energy: viteaz (brave), voinic (lively youth), etc.
• volvor, which occurs in the translated line “And burbled as it came”–but the translation is literally “[it came] volvor through the thick brush.” Volvor is meant to mimic “burbled”, but it has changed from a verb into an adverb!
• fruslavă, my favorite of them all, translating “frabjious.” It’s a blend of frumos (beautiful, good) and slavă (glory).

The Bîzdîbocul version has fewer outright inventions, and in many cases translated nonsense English with perfectly normal Romanian. This appears to be the price of making the poem intelligible. It’s not devoid of its charms, though: harpiduc is an excellent word for “vorpal sword.” (I have a theory about why the Romanian translation cannot support as many nonsense words and remain intelligible. First, Romanian morphology demands that many of the supporting syntactic words from English are absorbed into verb endings and the like. Second, once they are so absorbed they no longer work much to disambiguate the parts of speech, since the endings for Romanian nouns and verbs are phonetically identical. As a result, the more “faithful” Romanian translation is also much more ambiguous and difficult to parse.)

Anyway, here’s a discussion of translating Jabberwocky into Japanese to finish up.

Comments (No Comments)

Another Jabberwocky Translation in Romanian

Linguistics | Limba română

Bîzdîbocul
tr. Nina Cassian

Dădeau în plopot ţopi asprili
Trombind, borţind prin ierboteci.
Stifoşii stupureau sporili
şi muimele zglăveci.

«Băiete, fugi de Bîzdîboc,
De fălci şi ghiare care-nşfacă,
De-naripata Cotîrjacă
şi de hidosul Croc!»

El apucă un harpiduc
şi-n murmur prunic, de coprus,
Se tăvăli sub pomul Huc
Căzînd pe gînduri dus.

Pe cînd statea cu gînd luptor,
Cel Bîzdîboc cu ochi de pară
Veni dinspre pădurea rară
Hulbărisind de zor.

Un-doi! Un-doi! şi-aşa, şi-aşa!
Cu harpiducul îl sfîşie
şi-l lasă fără scăfîrlie
şi ploncăie în şa.

«Pe Bîzdîboc l-ai crust! Ce zi!
Te-mbrăţişez, băiat frumos,
Sorinescent. Calc! Calos!»
şi vesel, sfîrcoti.

Dădeau in plopot ţopi asprili,
Trombind, borţind prin ierboteci.
Stifoşii stupureau sporili
şi muimele zglăveci.

Comments (1 Comment)

Jabberwocky, Romanian Translation

Linguistics | Limba română

Trăncăviciada
tr. Frida Papadache

Era friglind, linsoase zăvi
Se tot gyrau, gimblau în ob;
Numai ninsoare-n borogăvi,
Cînd momii sor deşciob.

Păzea, vrag fiu, de Trăncăvici!
Fălci care-nhaţă, Gheară-Rea,
Hîdul Bolbor zboară spre-aici,
Frumoaznicului! Păzea!

El spada-o lua cît ai clipi–
Lung il cătă pe scîrţălat,
Popas făcut la Dum-dum-tri,
Pe gînduri cufundat.

Şi cît pe gînd el sta hătduş
Cu ochii-n flăcări, Trăncăvici,
Suflînd venea-n galop pe sus,
Volvor prin gros desiş.

Un-doi! Un-doi! Ca-n oase moi
Graval tăiş străpunge: zgrunţ!
Mort îl lăsă şi tigva-i luă
Glapă’napoi zglobunţ.

Şi-ai omorît pe Trăncăvici?!
O, fătul meu gloluminos!
O, zi fruslavă! Ohei! Ohu!
Hulubăia voios.

Era friglind, linsoase zăvi
Se tot gyrau, gimblau în ob;
Numai ninsoare-n borogăvi,
Cînd momii sor deşciob.

Found here. I added in the diacritics and corrected a few things that I’m sure were typos. I have a commentary on some of the word choice forthcoming.

Comments (No Comments)