The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor WitShall lure it back to cancel half a Line,Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.KHAYYAM/FITZGERALD
Nineteen
March 2, 2017
|In Daily Post
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor WitShall lure it back to cancel half a Line,Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.KHAYYAM/FITZGERALD
Great shot, Dev. The “Rubaiyat” quotation from Khayyam, about one-way motion, fits perfectly. Also in the poem, as in the photo, it’s cyclical motion — the arc of life and death always returning to its starting point. There’s another line from the same poem about “a Noose of Light”! Lots of tie-ins.
On a more literal note: The Ferris wheel in the background is self-explanatory. But do you know the name of the ride that’s blurred out in the foreground? Not that it matters, but I’m curious.
Thanks Gary. Rubaiyat is one of my favorite anthologies. Of course, I don’t know what the original Arabic sounds/reads like but the Fitzgerald translation is absolutely wonderful in its own right. There are allegedly 1000s little 4 line verses (doublets? couplets?) but the translation only has 100+ May be this isn’t the comprehensive collection… I have to check. But anyway, those poems are sublime despite their brevity, and I have no problem connecting with the poet across thousands of years and miles.
The ride in the front is called “kiss your sanity adieu and lose your dinner too”. I wouldn’t know if it had another name. I keep my distance from these diabolical contraptions.
Diabolical indeed! Sometimes I wonder whether I’m the only person who can’t even stand to ride a Ferris wheel. Roller coaster? Shoot me first! Wilder rides? Forget it! On nearly all of these, I undergo vertigo so extreme it’s truly torture.
That said, I learned, as a kid, that there was one ride called the Tilt-A-Whirl that I enjoyed. I found it relatively mild, although my reaction puzzled some friends: They insisted it was much more intense that a Ferris wheel. It consisted of enclosed, saucer-like seats that would whirl around on a lightly tilted conveyor belt. None of the flying-through-the air slingshot effects I’ve seen on other rides like the one in your photo.
I too love the Ruyaiyat. Poetry (like sacred scripture) is very hard to translate, because the translator is seeking to render both the meaning and a certain literary aesthetic. And in the poetry case, the style, flavor, structure, perhaps even rhyme and meter. Someone like Fitzgerald must be both a genius poet and a linguistic expert. Not many translators combine those talents. He essentially composed a whole new poem, using the original Arabic as his template. So it’s a translation, yes — but also, in many ways, an original creation.
In college I was taught that there are two great classics of English translation in which the translated language is better than the original. By “better” meaning more beautiful, more rhythmic, more euphonious — that sort of thing. One is the Rubaiyat; the other is the King James Version of the Bible. Of course, I can’t read the originals to compare. But I love both in English — and can’t help noting that both have profoundly influenced the development of English vernacular. I doubt the same can be said of othe translations such as, say, Clive Barks’ renderings of the Persian mystic poet Rumi. (Although I greatly admire his work.)
On rides: well, as someone who goes to Disneyland once a year at least (I say at least because we have gone twice in the same year although I doubt we’ll do that too many times with two kids now!) I go on a fair number of rides. I didn’t like roller coasters at first but I have come to like a few of them. I discovered that I don’t mind going fast, really fast. In fact, I enjoy it. What I don’t like is sudden giant drops and almost any kind of circular motion. I couldn’t go on the ride that drops you from a 10 floor building height and you fall for 2-3 seconds before it catches the fall. That’s a terrible feeling of weightlessness inside your stomach. You’d have to train for it. Or this ride at the fair that spins you around at high speeds. I could never do it. There is a ride in Disneyland where you sit in a giant teacup (Mad Hatter’s Tea Party!) and it spins you round and round. It’s meant for little kids (of all ages) but it made me feel nauseated afterwards. OTOH, the Star Wars motion simulator ride was super cool and I loved it but my wife didn’t like it one bit.
On translations/poems…: On reading your comment I realized that it never occurs to me that the KJV of the NT is indeed a translation. But obviously it is, I know that. But when I read it, it never feels that way. It seems Jesus Christ himself is speaking in his native language when delivers his sermons, or just plain talks to his people. And it is very poetic too. I have heard the quip that translation is second creation, so what you said above is all true. Now, Rabindranath Tagore won the Nobel for his anthology Song Offerings, which is his translation of his own poetry/songs from Bengali. Apparently Yeats was completely taken aback by the English versions. As someone who has read both the original and the English translation by the original author, I can tell you that the English versions are childishly shallow. If Yeats was so stricken by the translation, I wonder what he would have done if he could read the original versions. He may have died from emotional overload. It certainly leaves me breathless and takes me out of my body.