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#shimyereh translates
shimyereh · 11 months
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I love how some Wiktionary entries for Old Church Slavonic words include illustrative images helpfully captioned in Old Church Slavonic. Some of my favorites:
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“a field in summer” From the entry for лѣто/lěto [summer; year].
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“earth and sky” From the entry for землꙗ/zemlja [earth, land].
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“to take/catch” From the entry for ѩти/jęti [to take; catch; seize; arrest; cling to].
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“Rila is a Bulgarian mountain range.” From the entry for гора/gora [mountain].
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“The star Sirius, which, after the sun, gives the next brightest light visible to Earth.” From the entry for ѕвѣзда/dzvězda [star].
BONUS: …And a special shout-out to whoever wrote this caption in reconstructed Proto-Slavic:
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“clouds over pine trees” From the entry for the Proto-Slavic root *ȍbolkъ [cloud].
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Note
For the end-of-year book ask: 2, 3, 17?
end-of-year book asks | @shimyereh
thank you so much, you're my hero!!
2. Did you reread anything? What?
I reread a few books, yeah! Not too many, because I do have a to-read list a mile long, but sometimes it's nice to go back to something familiar.
I reread:
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Schaffer and Anne Barrows
The Naming by Alison Croggon
The Last Olympian by Rick Riordan
And then unsure if this counts, but I read Pride & Prejudice in French (Orgueil et Préjugés, translated by Valentine Leconte and Charlotte Pressoir,) which I have read in English before, but not in French.
3. What were your top five books of the year?
Oh man!! This is a hard one!!! I'm going to pick books that were new to me this year, since I do love the ones I reread.
Catherine of Aragon: Infanta of Spain, Queen of England by Theresa Earenfight
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Brought Up of Nought: A History of the Woodvile Family by Lynda J. Pidgeon
Old English Legal Writings by Wulfstan, translated and edited by Andrew Rabin
The Rule of the Land: Walking Ireland's Border by Garett Carr
I think I read more nonfiction this year than I ever have, and that was really fun!! #5 also has a soft spot in my heart because my dad and I have been doing a book club (to give him something to think about other than his depression -- and to give me something to think about too, I guess, except I have the advantage over him of being medicated) and I really enjoyed this one.
17. Did any books surprise you with how good they were?
Ooh!! I was really surprised by how much I enjoyed Wulfstan's legal writings, mentioned above. I also didn't expect The Black Witch by Laurie Forest to be as good and engrossing as it was -- I thought it would be sort of middle-of-the-road, pretty standard YA fantasy, so I was really impressed with the nuance in the writing of the main character.
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lenskij · 2 years
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Thanks for tagging me bestie @revedebeatrice 💚💚 You know I love talking about books!
Last book I bought: I bought a whole pile of books from Katherine Kerr's Deverry series last autumn and I've put a ban on buying anything else until I've read them :)
Last book I borrowed: Fonda Lee's Jade Legacy. It's the last book in the awesome Green Bone Saga trilogy. I'm so excited to set my teeth into it!
Last book I was gifted: Half of the aforementioned Deverry books were a Christmas gift, as well as a beautiful collection of Ursula K Le Guin's Hainish novels.
Last book I gave to someone: I and sis got our dad Kartornas historia by Thomas Reinertsen Berg for Christmas.
Last book I started: Jade Legacy
Last book I finished: Slippery Creatures by KJ Charles
Last book I gave 5 stars: I'm the kind of person who almost never writes reviews, and give 5 stars even less. The last 5 star review is for Hur mår fröken Furukura? (that's the Swedish translation of the Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata).
Last book I gave 2 stars: the lowest rating I've given a book lately is 3 stars for Kaj Korkea-aho's Röda rummet. I quit reading any book before it goes so far as to earn a 2 star. Don't have time for books I don't enjoy!
tagging: @klingonegin @ginkovskij @shimyereh @anyone!
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carpe-mamilia · 3 years
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Tagged by @arcticelves - thank you!
Nickname: Smol, Nubs
Pronouns: She/Her
Star sign: Taurus
Height: 5′6″
Time currently: 11:57pm
Birthday: 12th of May
Favorite groups/bands: The Young'uns, The Horne Section, Belshazzar's Feast
Favorite solo artist: Johnny Flynn, Jeff Buckley
Song stuck in my head: "Feed the birds" from Mary Poppins (because I went to St Paul's today)
Last movie you watched: Sense & Sensibility with my bf's mum
Last show you binged: Map Men and Unfinished London (if YouTube counts rather than TV; they're both hilarious and informative. Like Horrible Histories but for geography)
When you created your blog: God, can't remember. 2015 possibly?
Last thing I googled: "Financier" (a type of cake they made on Bake-Off)
Other blogs: none
Why I chose my url: pretty, musical sound combined with really silly translation
Do you get asks: Not really
How many people you are following: 290
How many followers: 182 (inexplicably, considering my reblogs are fairly random)
Average hours of sleep: eight, but only because I swing wildly between as few as four and as many as twelve. Never having a regular sleep pattern is something I've accepted as a regrettable but inevitable personal defect.
Lucky number: don't have one
Instruments: used to sing, can't really any more
Currently wearing: top that says THANK GOD IT'S FRIED EGG
Dream job: costume supervisor for theatre
Dream trip: Venice (I love Merchant-Ivory and Brideshead Revisited don't @ me), Bruges, the south of France (I imagine it's nicer when you aren't working as an au pair for two spoiled children), New Zealand, Lucca (Italy).
Favorite food: eggs, potatoes, cheese. All versatile, all delicious
Favorite song: The Lark Ascending (yes, not technically a song, but as soothing as a breeze on a warm spring day)
Top 3 fictional worlds to live in: 1.) The Shire 2.) Discworld 3.) The Wind in the Willows
Tagging (if you'd like to): @theiceandbones, @shimyereh, @truthhux, @aconissa, @glitter-and-be-gay, @phantomunmasked
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pilfered-words · 3 years
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WIP meme
@minutia-r tagged me in this last week!
Rules: Write the latest line from your WIP and tag as many people as there are words in the line. Make a new post, don’t reblog.
Line is a flexible term, so have a couple sentences from my “Tomorrow was the war” translation:
“How come everything’s fine when I’m talking to you?” he complained to Zhorka Landys, his best friend. “Nothing hurts, I don’t start sweating, I can talk about… that guy… Rakhmetov. And in class I just can’t.”
(poor artyom has stage fright. and hates public speaking. there there honey it will be all right. well. no it won’t. but not because of public speaking.)
and because line is a flexible concept, I will tag only the number of people in the last sentence, so 6:
@wolffyluna @irrealisms @thou-breath-of-autumns-being @regicidal-optimism @shimyereh @etirabys
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mr-craig · 3 years
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Tagged by @shimyereh - thank you!
Last song: I fell asleep last night listening to John Finnemore’s Souvenir Programme, so I think the last song I heard was part of his “well, since you ask me for a musical...” sketch.
Last film: Murder on the Orient Express (1974). Agatha Christie is one of my most-read authors of 2020, and I recently got a box set of film adaptations. They’re not strictly a series (though two of them feature Peter Ustinov as Poirot), but I started with the earliest one, and the only one I had already seen. It’s pretty damn faithful to the book, and the cast is brilliant. Looking forward to seeing the Ustinov ones next.
Currently watching: Working my way through Star Trek in broadcast order - I’m currently at the point where TNG season 6 overlaps with DS9 season 1. Also I’m rewatching Malcolm in the Middle, and following His Dark Materials as it airs.
Currently reading: I just finished Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (translated by Bernard O’Donoghue), now I’m rereading The Wind in the Willows.
Currently craving: More creative energy. More daylight. More physical contact. Less mortal terror.
I won’t bother tagging people, so... if you want to join in, consider yourself tagged!
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shimyereh · 3 months
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We’re really not so different, you and I —       Death’s arrow cut you down; love’s fatal aim Has laid me low. The shroud in which you lie       Is dark as my despair. We know the same Confined rigidity. The candles by       Your tomb blaze shamelessly; my inner flame Burns just as bright. (I suffer — yet, I trust, I’ll not so soon disintegrate to dust.)
[Very loosely adapted from Jan Andrzej Morsztyn’s “sonnet to a corpse” (Leżysz zabity i ja też zabity…).]
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shimyereh · 2 years
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More thoughts on the art of translation
What is translation? It’s that tension Between semantics, sense, and sound; Interpretation and invention, Analysis and art. I’ve found There has to be a balance to it. Of course, there’s no one way to do it — But dropping structure? What a loss! That’s not translation; that’s a gloss. And though the displaced roots are muddy With human meaning — still you strive To keep the dratted thing alive, Not just preserved for future study. Or else — at best — your efforts fall Like shadows cast upon a wall.
What is the essence of a poem? And how do you transplant that bloom? I’ve mapped the xylem and the phloem, Examined how the leaves consume The sunlight, how each thorn, each petal Emerges and begins to settle Into its designated role; And how each part informs the whole. It is no act of desecration To work within the full tableau, To mind the function and the flow And reinvent them in translation, Subjective as such efforts are. And so: behold, my cultivar.
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shimyereh · 1 year
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Nil nisi bonum
Pushkin belongs not only to his near and dear, but to his fatherland, and to history. His memory must be preserved with clarity and complete truth. —Vyazemsky, in a letter to A. Ya. Bulgakov (February 5, 1837)
Have you no shame, sending me a copy of that classical, academical, prim-and-proper description of Pushkin’s death, that article worthy only of Prince Shalikov writing for the Moscow News. —N. I. Krivtsov, in a letter to Vyazemsky (June 5, 1837)
Be careful what you say about the dead: Their stories call for sensitive curation. Perhaps some things are better left unsaid, And unrecorded. Too much information Is chaos. Where’s the underlying curve? The clarity that comes with retrospection? To dwell on every petty imperfection Denies the dignity that they deserve.
You might not even call it a revision; Just cleaning house, removing dust and lint. The lines are drawn with surgical precision: Here’s what we saw — and here’s what’s fit for print. Loose threads are snipped, untidy implications Are scrubbed away, as if they were unclean. A tale retold takes on a polished sheen Across the centuries and generations.
Their stories are no longer theirs to tell. But must the false starts and the indiscretions Be lost? The quiet hopes and fears, as well? The strange asides and trivial digressions That skew a storyline — must these be shed To find the truth? Or does such prim insistence Erase the human core of an existence? Be careful what you say about the dead.
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shimyereh · 10 months
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One final tale, and then my work is done;      The midnight lamp burns low. What frantic motion Consumed the past! How richly it would run      In waves on reckless waves — a seething ocean Of faces, names, events. Now almost none      Remain, except a swiftly-fading notion Of something lost. Before all memories fail, There’s time enough to tell one final tale.
[Loosely adapted from part of Pimen’s first monologue in Pushkin’s Boris Godunov.]
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shimyereh · 1 year
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I. When all my short existence is but ash,      And I lie hid beneath the grass and loam; When I am but a shade, a sound, a flash      Of memory, ephemeral as foam; When, at my name, young pals no longer splash      A glass of wine to call my spirit home — Take out this simple harp: it holds the key To buried dreams; it was a friend to me.
II. Go, hang it by the window, where the raw      Untempered touch of autumn winds may play Across its strings, to even faintly draw      The distant echo of a bygone day; But all your ardent efforts cannot thaw      Its frozen voice — you strum, and strum away… Those silent strings are but an aspect of The slumber of the one who sang your love.
[Loosely adapted from Lermontov’s poem “The harp” (1830 or 1831).]
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shimyereh · 1 year
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It’s time, my friend, it’s time! The heart requires      Some peace — the days, the hours swiftly fly, Eroding our existence. Life aspires      To find its place — and then, too soon! — we die. Tranquility exists; they are but liars      Who claim that joy does, too. I won’t deny: My weary dreams (they come with great persistence) Are — refuge in my work, and at a distance.
[With apologies to Pushkin. Very loose adaptation of this poem.]
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shimyereh · 1 year
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No, there’s no way to tell, to comprehend,      To parse this thing: a curse? or benediction? Where does the one begin, the other end,      When song and doom combine? What strange conviction Compels this sacrifice of time we lend      To sound? Is song the source of our affliction, The fatal flaw that’s doomed us, all along? Or is it that our doom inspires song?
[Loosely adapted from a fragment dated 1926-7, among Khodasevich’s posthumously published work.]
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shimyereh · 2 years
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I have now encountered two different 19th-c. Russian words for “to act like Lord Byron”:
байроничать/bayronichat’, in a letter from Pushkin to Pletnyov (Dec. 4-6, 1825), reacting to a recent novel by B. M. Fyodorov:
И он байроничает, описывает самого себя!
[And he’s pulled a Byron, he’s just describing himself!]
байронствовать/bayronstvovat’, in Part II, Ch.3 of Goncharov’s A Common Story (written 1844-7, pub. 1847), one of the main characters describing an acquaintance:
И теперь малый байронствует, ходит такой угрюмый…
[And now the fellow’s acting all Byronic, walks around so gloomily…]
Interestingly, the instances of байроничать in Google ngrams all seem to be references to Pushkin’s letter; and the instances of байронствовать are either dictionary entries, or references to Goncharov’s novel.
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shimyereh · 1 year
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That word, “forsaking” — what does it imply      About the nature of our separation? What doom is written in the rooster’s cry,      When from the citadel’s steep elevation A flame burns bright against the dawning sky      Of some new life, and bovine murmuration Fills drowsy barns — why is it that he calls, And beats his wings atop the city walls?
[Loosely adapted from the second stanza of Mandelstam’s “Tristia” (1918).]
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shimyereh · 1 year
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More things that remind me of other things! I was reading a 15th-c. hagiography for class, and came upon this passage: [my translation below]
Приѣхалъ тогды князь Дмитрей Юрьевич в Новъгород и приѣхалъ на Клопско у Михайла благословится. И рече: «Михайлушко, бѣгаю своей отчинѣ — збили мя с великого княженья!» И Михайла рече: «Всякая власть дается от Бога!» И князь вопроси: «Михайлушко, моли Бога, чтобы досягнути мнѣ своей отчинѣ — великого княжениа». И Михайла рече ему: «Княже, досягнеши трилакотнаго гроба!»
[There came at that time Prince Dmitri Yuryevich to Novgorod, and came he to the Klopsky Monastery to receive a blessing from Mikhail. And he said: “Mikhaylushka, I flee my ancestral lands — they have driven me from the Grand Duchy!” And Mikhail replied: “All power is given by God!” And the prince asked: “Mikhaylushka, pray to God, that I might attain my ancestral lands — the Grand Duchy.” And Mikhail said to him: “Prince, you shall attain a three-cubit grave.”]
This reminded me of a few instances where Shakespeare uses a similar device, contrasting the space of kingdoms and graves. Prince Hal reflecting on Hotspur’s death in 1 Henry IV:
When that this body did contain a spirit, A kingdom for it was too small a bound, But now two paces of the vilest earth Is room enough. [V.iv.91-4]
Also relevant, from King Richard’s “worms, graves, and epitaphs” speech in Richard II:
Our lands, our lives, and all are Bolingbroke’s, And nothing can we call our own but death And that small model of the barren earth Which serves as paste and cover to our bones. [III.ii.156-9]
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