Diacritiques

The Guardian editorialist who writes under the pen-name Smallweed recently had to wrestle with the poetics of the Pennines. The reason was the following (true or pretended) letter to the editor he received:

Dear Mr Smallweed, Debate is raging in the letters pages about whether ‘Pennine’ is a spondee or a trochee. Surely the easiest way to settle this matter is to find the corresponding sponder or trocher and establish whether ‘Pennine’ has been troched or sponded? Yours, Luke Howard.

I’m writing this sitting on a bit of lawn under a … well, some kind of tree (there’s a chestnut and a ginkgo nearby — have I ever said that I’ve liked ginkgo trees since we planted one with my high school class?). Behind me roars the traffic, ahead of me I get a glimpse of the Seine (and hear loads of urban rumbling), on my right the Eiffel Tower, and I’m upwind from the public toilet.

It’s quite impressive how the free-for-the-moment wifi access around the Palais de Tokyo can change a stroll to the nearest mini-park.

I won’t write, or not yet, and in any case not exhaustively, about what kept me off the blogosphere for so long, or indeed entirely offline. But I’m recovering, I think. My apologies go to all e-mail correspondents whose notes I still have to fish out of the mess in my inbox, and to answer.

This blog’s first birthday is put off till when the road is a bit less bumpy.

What about the new poem in this entry’s title, you’re wondering? It is actually over 2600 years old: another one of Sappho’s works has been discovered. Just lucky that the Egyptians used poetry as mummy wrappers.

This is only the fourth of her poems that, to our knowledge, has survived the centuries reasonably complete. In the Times Literary Supplement, Martin West tells the story and publishes his translation. Enjoy its beauty:

[You for] the fragrant-blossomed Muses’ lovely gifts
[be zealous,] girls, [and the] clear melodious lyre:

[but my once tender] body old age now
[has seized;] my hair’s turned [white] instead of dark;

my heart’s grown heavy, my knees will not support me,
that once on a time were fleet for the dance as fawns.

This state I oft bemoan; but what’s to do?
Not to grow old, being human, there’s no way.

Tithonus once, the tale was, rose-armed Dawn,
love-smitten, carried off to the world’s end,

handsome and young then, yet in time grey age
o’ertook him, husband of immortal wife.

(The Reuters wire got the first line wrong and writes fragrant-bosomed instead of fragrant-blossomed.)

If I manage to get my hands on the original Greek, I’ll add it.

Since this blog is bilingual, there’s a problem now: I don’t have a French version (and will certainly not try to provide even an approximate one). Therefore, as a bonus, here is Renée Vivien’s poem Tu m’oublies, from her collection Sapho (1903):

L’eau trouble reflète, ainsi qu’un vain miroir,
Mes yeux sans lueurs, mes paupières pâlies.
J’écoute ton rire et ta voix dans le soir…
Atthis, tu m’oublies.

Tu n’as point connu la stupeur de l’amour
L’effroi du baiser et l’orgueil de la haine ;
Tu n’as désiré que les roses d’un jour,
Amante incertaine.

Want more? Go here or here.

Update: The original Greek text is here.

I have uploaded a handful of photos from the last Paris Carnet blogger meetup. Titles and descriptions will be added later. Feel free to comment, here or over there.

Via the comment thread of Language Hat’s post on yet another questionable column of the NYT “language maven” William Safire — no, I won’t link to his article; Language Hat calls it “a nasty piece of work” — I found a much more promising commenter on language in the mainstream press in Jan Freeman, who […]

Lourdeur des bras et des jambes, même des paupières (le sommeil du métro est le meilleur de tous). Je ne me plains nullement : c’est enfin assez agréable d’être physiquement épuisée, au lieu de mentalement. Ce que je suis depuis des semaines, voire des mois. Pourquoi, me demandez-vous, après un Paris Carnet ? Simplement parce que […]

The Guardian has a quiz about telling true stories from April fools’ gags [why the possessive marker? not sure, but that’s how the Guardian spells it]. I don’t want to brag, but I scored 9 out of 9. In case you haven’t noticed, the title of this entry is in German. That’s what you say to […]

Yes, I’m joining the crowd. This is an anti-anti-cat-blog blog. World, meet Voyelle, Voyelle, this is World. (Two remarks: She manages to close her eyes during my camera’s measuring flash, so I have a lot of much better pictures of her, but with her eyes closed. Second, her name means vowel in French, but it’s supposed […]

If this had been posted on about any other day of the year, I’d have loved to check out the C++ version of The Mill on the Floss. (Yet another Victorian novel I never finished. Not yet anyway. Don’t take me wrong, I am very fond of Jude the Obscure and liked Wuthering Heights quite […]

Shouldn’t we be glad that an influential bunch of religious leaders who otherwise don’t agree about much anything for once display unity when it’s about keeping “those” “dirty” people from committing “spiritual rape” of the holy city of Jerusalem? I’m getting more and more cynical about organised religion, mine included.