Comments on: Better Translations, Part I

By: NotSoMuch

NotSoMuch — Tue, 06 Dec 2005 13:46:11 +0000

Can’t we put a fancy block on Penny so she thinks we see her comments but actually we don’t?
(joking)
About the haiku and its translations:
The image it creates in my mind is very graphic. (That’s what a good poem or haiku can do/part of what it should do.)
I see the inside of an abode. I see it is a poor man’s home. The walls are made of paper. Cannot afford to do the repairs. Various holes from pinhole to a little larger are left unattended.
So, what is being described is NOT being inside and looking out through the pinholes to see the stars. Rather being inside and seeing the galaxy created on the opposite wall by the light of the real moon and starlight coming through the holes and creating a show on the opposite wall.
It is his own unique galaxy. The show is not seen through holes. It is made through holes in the paper screen. So I like the translations that lend themselves to that. Not the ones that try to shoehorn me into another view and limit me to that interpretation. Haiku left the most open for the most different individual interpretations is the best haiku.
(Match that, Penny. Dare ya.)

By: NotSoMuch

NotSoMuch — Sat, 26 Nov 2005 15:44:13 +0000

I read this 7 months later.
Having a point is over-rated. Having a direction often is just an illusion we create for ourselves because we cannot accept that life is the chaotic nosie of musicians not organzied in an orchestra who scoff at you (or me) if you try to appoint yourself “conductor”.
It is interesting, informative and gives me knowledge of something I did not know before. That is more that I ask of most things in life and a lot more than most things are capabale of delivering.
Is scribe your old high school vice-principal or something?

By: scribe

scribe — Tue, 26 Apr 2005 02:17:14 +0000

It’s a deal.

By: Bob Offer-Westort

Bob Offer-Westort — Mon, 25 Apr 2005 20:55:53 +0000

Fair ’nuff, scribe. I do have somewhere I’m going with this, though I can’t promise that either the ride or the destination will merit the trip. But I’m not just yakking. Probably. Give me two more posts, and you’ll see where I’m headed.

By: scribe

scribe — Mon, 25 Apr 2005 19:58:46 +0000

This is all pretty academically interesting, Bob, but I feel like you’re either holding out on us, or you don’t know where you’re going. Maybe both. This is supposed to be an anthropological/ethnographic blog, right? So when are you going to bring this to something tangibly human? And then, when are you going to show us how that is politically or socially relevant? Who’s it going to help?