The Revenger’s Tragedy, a Jacobean play

1/ This is another revenge play, first performed in 1606, and published in 1607. The authorship is disputed: it was long attributed to Cyril Tourneur; some modern scholars believe it’s by Thomas Middleton (who collaborated with Shakespeare in a few plays); but the debate is never settled. 

Whoever it was, it would have been tough for him—1606 was roughly the year of King Lear, Macbeth, and Antony and Cleopatra—that’s Shakespeare at his peak. 

2/ It’s harder to read than Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, at first—the language is knottier.

There’s interesting imagery from the very first page though: 

“VINDICE […] Oh that marrowless age 

Would stuff the hollow bones with damned desires, 

And ’stead of heat kindle infernal fires

Within the spendthrift veins of a dry duke, 

A parched and juiceless luxur...” 

(Act 1 scene 1) 

Tourneur/ Middleton has some good metaphors: 

“DUKE Duchess it is your youngest son, we’re sorry, 

His violent act has e’er draw blood of honour 

And stained our humours, 

Thrown ink upon the forehead of our state 

Which envious spirits will dip their pens into 

Fater our death, and blot us in our tombs. 

For that which would seem treason in our lives

Is laughter when we’re dead. Who dares now whisper 

That dares not then speak out, and e’en proclaim 

With loud words and broad pens our closest shame.” 

(Act 1 scene 2) 

The Duke is talking about the Duchess’s youngest son being a rapist, but the thing that interests me more is that the playwright uses extended metaphors, which Shakespeare also likes (and masters). 

3/ I was surprised to come across the word “dad” in The Revenger’s Tragedy—I don’t remember ever coming across it in 19th century novels, the preferred word is “papa”—but Etymonline says “dad” is recorded from ca. 1500 and could be much older. 

Learn something new every day. 

4/ One of the main themes in the play is lust. The misogyny of some of the characters is revolting. For example, the Duchess’s youngest son is brought to court for raping another man’s wife. A judge asks why he did it. 

“YOUNGEST SON Why flesh and blood my lord; 

What should move men unto a woman else?” 

(Act 1 scene 2) 

Lussurioso, the Duke’s son from an earlier marriage, is not much better. 

“LUSSURIOSO […] I am past my depth in lust

And I must swim or drown. All my desires 

Are levelled at a virgin not far from Court…” 

(Act 1 scene 3) 

He wants to “ravish” Castiza and doesn’t realise that the bawd to whom he thinks he’s speaking is actually her brother Vindice in disguise. 

“LUSSURIOSO Push; the dowry of her blood and of her fortunes 

Are both too mean – good enough to be bad withal. 

I’m one of that number can defend 

Marriage is good; yet rather keep a friend. 

Give me my bed by stealth – there’s true delight; 

What breeds a loathing in’t but night by night?” 

(ibid.) 

That frankly makes me puke in my mouth a little. 

But it’s not just men who are full of lust. The Duchess wants to bang Spurio, the Duke’s bastard son. 

5/ The scene of Vindice in disguise acting as a bawd for Lussurioso, as a way of testing his sister Castiza and his mother Gratiana, is excellent. Here’s an example: 

“VINDICE […] Would I be poor, dejected, scorned of greatness, 

Swept from the palace, and see other daughters 

Spring with the dew o’the court, having mine own 

So much desired and loved – by the Duke’s son? 

No, I would raise my state upon her breast

And call her eyes my tenants; I would count 

My yearly maintenance upon her cheeks, 

Take coach upon her lips and all her parts 

Should keep men after men and I would ride 

In pleasure upon pleasure…”  

(Act 2 scene 1) 

Vile indeed, but Vindice is playing the role of a bawd and testing his mother. The entire scene is a fine example of rhetoric, and drama. It then ends with Vindice’s soliloquy: 

“VINDICE […] Why does not heaven turn black or with a frown 

Undo the world? Why does not earth start up

And strike the sins that tread upon it? Oh, 

Were’t not for gold and women there would be no damnation. 

Hell would look like a lord’s great kitchen without fire in’t; 

But ’twas decreed before the world began

That they should be the hooks to catch at man.” 

(ibid.) 

Vindice is the revenger of the play, setting out to destroy the family of the Duke, who are lustful, brutal, and callous, but he too is a misogynist. We’ve seen it from the very beginning: 

“VINDICE We must coin. 

Women are apt you know to take false money, 

But I dare stake my soul for these two creatures, 

Only excuse excepted, that they’ll swallow 

Because their sex is easy in belief.” 

(Act 1 scene 1) 

He is here speaking to his brother Hippolita, and “these two creatures” refers to their mother and sister—who talks like that about his female family members? At the end of the same scene, he says “Wives are but made to go to bed and feed.” 

The play presents a rather bleak view of humanity—how many good characters are there in the play?—I can only think of two (chaste Castiza and honest Antonio). Makes me think of Webster. 

6/ There is a passage in The Revenger’s Tragedy that reminds me of Hamlet’s “Now get you to my lady’s chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come.”  

The revenge scene is probably crazier than anything I’ve seen in Shakespeare, even the eye-gouging scene in King Lear or the headless body in Cymbeline. And then the grand finale—the big killing scene at the end—is quite something. 

As a whole, The Revenger’s Tragedy is a crazy play, a fun and exciting play. Do I think it’s a great work of art? Not really, no—like The Spanish Tragedy, there’s not much depth in it—it’s not a play that makes you think about evil, the nature of revenge, or “the human condition” as such. But it doesn’t matter. It’s a fun, enjoyable play—Tourneur/ Middleton has a good feel for pacing and tension, and his poetry is much better than Kyd’s. 

The foreignness in translated prose

As I was reading David Copperfield the other day, I was thinking that there’s a difference between prose originally written in English and prose translated from another language into English. I can’t quite explain. English prose may be elegant or may be clunky, depending on the writer, but I’ve always noticed something slightly different in a translation—something slightly unnatural, something foreign—as the translator seeks to retain ideas and meaning across two languages with different grammar and sentence structure. 

I’m reading The Sorrows of Young Werther (translated by David Constantine), let me grab a sentence: 

“She was no longer young, he said, and had been badly treated by her first husband, did not wish to marry again, and it shone forth so clearly from his account how beautiful she was to him, how attractive, and how much he desired her to choose him so that he might expunge the memory of the wrongs of her first husband—but to make this person’s pure affection, love, and loyalty palpable to you I should have to repeat everything he said, word for word.” (Letter dated 30/5) 

Or look at this one: 

“As we danced between the rows and I, with God knows what bliss, hung on her arm and gazed into her eyes in which the purest and frankest pleasure was expressed with all possible truth, we came to a woman whose sweet looks in a face no longer young I had already noticed and thought remarkable.” (16/6) 

Or: 

“A vast dawning entirety lies before the soul, our senses lose themselves in it as do our eyes and oh! we long to make the oblation of all our being and to be filled with the bliss of a single large and glorious feeling.” (21/6)

Or: 

“How glad I am that my heart can feel the simple and harmless joy of the man who brings a cabbage to his table that he grew himself and enjoys as he eats it the morning he planted it, the evenings he watered it, the delight he had in its thriving and growth, all that, all those good days, as he eats, he enjoys them again.” (ibid.) 

Do you know what I mean? I’m not criticising the translator—I’m saying that there is an awkwardness and oddness of phrase which I think is because these sentences are translated from German into English and the two languages have different syntax and their speakers have different ways of expressing themselves.

I know I’m being vague. Let’s see some Chekhov, translated by Constance Garnett: 

“He was bewildered by the electric light, the loud music, the smell of powder, and the fact that the ladies he met looked at him.” (“Three Years”) 

That’s slightly awkward, yes? 

Or this: 

““…We were right, but we haven’t succeeded in properly accomplishing what we were right in. To begin with, our external methods themselves—aren’t they mistaken? You want to be of use to men, but by the very fact of your buying an estate, from the very start you cut yourself off from any possibility of doing anything useful for them. Then if you work, dress, eat like a peasant you sanctify, as it were, by your authority, their heavy, clumsy dress, their horrible huts, their stupid beards. . . . On the other hand, if we suppose that you work for long, long years, your whole life, that in the end some practical results are obtained, yet what are they, your results, what can they do against such elemental forces as wholesale ignorance, hunger, cold, degeneration?...”” (“My Life”) 

Shall we try Tolstoy? Here’s one sentence from Anna Karenina, translated by Rosamund Bartlett: 

“Once dressed, Stepan Arkadyich sprayed himself with cologne, straightened the sleeves of his shirt, distributed cigarettes, wallet, matches, and watch with two chains and seals amongst his pockets with a practised gesture, and, after shaking out his handkerchief and feeling clean, fragrant, healthy, and physically spry in spite of his misfortune, walked with a spring in every step into the dining room, where his coffee was ready waiting for him, and next to the coffee, letters and papers from the office.” (P.1, ch.3) 

There is nothing wrong with this sentence—it’s not at all a bad sentence—but again the sentence structure and phrasing clearly feel like a translation, not something originally written in English. It’s not the fact that these are complex sentences with multiple clauses—I’ve been reading Fielding and Dickens after all—it’s the clauses themselves. 

How about these sentences? 

“In spite of these words and the smile, which Varya found so alarming, when the inflammation stopped and he began to recover, he felt that he had completely liberated himself from one part of his grief. With this action it was as if he had somehow washed away the shame and humiliation he had felt before. […] The idea that he now, having atoned for his guilt before her husband, had to renounce her and never again stand between her and her remorse and her husband, had been firmly decided in his heart; but he could not tear from his heart his regrets about losing her love, nor could he erase from his memory those moments of happiness he had enjoyed with her, which he had so little valued at the time and which now haunted him in all their loveliness.” (P.4, ch.23) 

I know I’m not explaining myself very well. Let’s see this sentence from Tom Lathrop’s Don Quixote: 

“The husband whose wife is adulterous—even though he knows nothing about it, nor has he given any reason to be unfaithful, nor has it been in his power to prevent his humiliation by care and prudence—people will still consider him reproachable and vile, and to a certain extent he’s looked upon by those who know of his wife’s depravity with eyes of contempt rather than compassion, even though they see his misfortune is not his fault, but rather due to the lewdness of his guilty wife.” (ch.33) 

That’s an odd sentence, yes? 

“The old man was startled and so was Zoraida, because Moors have an ingrained dread of the Turks, especially the soldiers, who are so insolent with and contemptuous of the Moors, who are their subjects, and whom they treat worse than if they were their slaves.” (ch.41) 

I don’t mean that there’s anything wrong with translated fiction—many books I read and love are translated from another language. I’m just saying that I’ve noticed some difference between prose originally in English and translated prose, that a translation will once in a while have an odd sentence, that it’s the nature of translation as different languages have different sentence structure and grammar. 

What do you think? 

Between languages

1/ I have just finished reading another book of my uncle’s, a kind of memoir. Makes me sad about Vietnam, about writers in exile, about a myriad other things. 

My uncle’s a (retired) literary critic and professor of Vietnamese Studies in Australia. And a dissident. Denied entry twice into Vietnam, at the airport. 

(You see, I’m from a family of “difficult people”). 

2/ The book also makes me feel the acute pain that I have lost my roots. I still write in Vietnamese, I still speak it, my tongue is not robbed from breathing its native breath, and yet I have lost my roots. I immerse myself in English-language literature; I aim, like A. C. Bradley or Henry Fielding, to absorb Shakespeare into my bloodstream. Shakespeare rather than Nguyễn Du. Rather than any of our writers. 

3/ And yet English will never fully be my language. I can read Shakespeare, I can read Melville, some day I may read Joyce, but it will forever be a foreign tongue. 

I still sound like an outsider, still stumble over multi-syllabic words, still lose grammar together with my temper. 

4/ Past Lives is not a good film—most of the dialogue is banal—but there is one great scene. In it, the main character, a South Korean woman who in childhood migrated to Canada and then to the US, is in bed talking with her American husband and he says she dreams in Korean—“You dream in a language that I can’t understand. It’s like there’s this whole place inside of you where I can’t go.” 

5/ Studies have shown for years that multilinguals have different personalities in different languages, but it was only during my time visiting a Vietnamese writer and her family in Berlin a few months ago that I realised I was different and felt different as I switched between languages in conversation with her. In English, the hierarchy ceased to exist, the sense of intimidation disappeared. I was free. 

Bài thơ xuân 8 cách đọc (The Vietnamese poem that could be read 8 different ways)

Bài viết từ blog cũ.
Bài thơ này được truyền tụng khá lâu nhưng chưa biết tên tác giả và năm sáng tác. Bài thơ làm theo thể Đường luật, bảy chữ tám câu, luật trắc vần bằng (tổng cộng 56 chữ). Bài thơ đọc ngược hay đọc xuôi đều có nghĩa và đúng niêm luật thơ Đường, còn gọi là “thuận nghịch độc”. 

This post is from my old blog. 
This Vietnamese poem has been around for a while but author and year are unknown. It is a Đường luật poem, which is the Vietnamese variant of Chinese Tang poetry—the form is thất ngôn bát cú, meaning 8 lines, 7 syllables each line (in total, 56 syllables/ words). The poem can be read forward or backward, in 8 different ways, and still follows tone and rhyme rules. 
If you look below, thất ngôn bát cú (8 lines, each line 7 syllables) and ngũ ngôn bát cú (8 lines, each line 5 syllables) are 2 Đường luật forms, Vietnamese variant of Chinese Tang poetry. 3-syllable poetry, 4-syllable poetry, and 5-syllable poetry are Vietnamese verse forms. 
I cannot translate, so sorry about that. It is a poem about a scene in spring. If there is any Vietnamese-English translator around, please translate the 8 versions. Thanks. 

1. Bài thơ gốc (bài 1)—the original poem, in thất ngôn bát cú verse form (8 lines, each line 7 syllables): 

Ta mến cảnh xuân ánh sáng ngời
Thú vui thơ rượu chén đầy vơi
Hoa cài giậu trúc cành xanh biếc
Lá quyện hương xuân sắc thắm tươi
Qua lại khách chờ sông lặng sóng
Ngược xuôi thuyền đợi bến đông người
Xa ngân tiếng hát đàn trầm bổng
Tha thướt bóng ai mắt mỉm cười.

2. Đọc ngược bài gốc từ dưới lên, ta được bài 2—read backward, from right to left, bottom to top: 

Cười mỉm mắt ai bóng thướt tha
Bổng trầm đàn hát tiếng ngân xa
Người đông bến đợi thuyền xuôi ngược
Sóng lặng sông chờ khách lại qua
Tươi thắm sắc xuân hương quyện lá
Biếc xanh cành trúc giậu cài hoa
Vơi đầy chén rượu thơ vui thú
Ngời sáng ánh xuân cảnh mến ta.

3. Bỏ hai chữ đầu mỗi câu trong bài gốc, ta được bài 3—remove the first 2 syllables in each line, read forward, we get a poem in ngũ ngôn bát cú verse form (8 lines, each line 5 syllables), luật bằng vần bằng (flat rhyme):  

Cảnh xuân ánh sáng ngời
Thơ rượu chén đầy vơi
Giậu trúc cành xanh biếc
Hương xuân sắc thắm tươi
Khách chờ sông lặng sóng
Thuyền đợi bến đông người
Tiếng hát đàn trầm bổng
Bóng ai mắt mỉm cười.

4. Bỏ hai chữ cuối mỗi câu trong bài gốc, đọc ngược từ dưới lên, ta được bài 4—remove the last 2 syllables in each line, read backward, from right to left, bottom to top, we get a poem in ngũ ngôn bát cú verse form (8 lines, each line 5 syllables), luật bằng vần bằng (flat rhyme): 

Mắt ai bóng thướt tha
Đàn hát tiếng ngân xa
Bến đợi thuyền xuôi ngược
Sông chờ khách lại qua
Sắc xuân hương quyện lá
Cành trúc giậu cài hoa
Chén rượu thơ vui thú
Ánh xuân cảnh mến ta.

5. Bỏ ba chữ cuối mỗi câu trong bài gốc, ta được bài 5—remove the last 3 syllables in each line, read forward, we get a poem in 4-syllable form: 

Ta mến cảnh xuân
Thú vui thơ rượu
Hoa cài giậu trúc
Lá quyện hương xuân
Qua lại khách chờ
Ngược xuôi thuyền đợi
Xa ngân tiếng hát
Tha thướt bóng ai.

6. Bỏ ba chữ đầu mỗi câu trong bài gốc, đọc ngược từ dưới lên, ta được bài 6—remove the first 3 syllables in each line, read backward, from right to left, bottom to top, we get a poem in 4-syllable form: 

Cười mỉm mắt ai
Bổng trầm đàn hát
Người đông bến đợi
Sóng lặng sông chờ
Tươi thắm sắc xuân
Biếc xanh cành trúc
Vơi đầy chén rượu
Ngời sáng ánh xuân.

7. Bỏ bốn chữ đầu mỗi câu trong bài gốc, ta được bài 7—remove the first 4 syllables in each line, read forward, we get a poem in 3-syllable form: 

Ánh sáng ngời
Chén đầy vơi
Cành xanh biếc
Sắc thắm tươi
Sông lặng sóng
Bến đông người
Đàn trầm bổng
Mắt mỉm cười.

8. Bỏ bốn chữ cuối mỗi câu trong bài gốc, đọc ngược từ dưới lên, ta được bài 8—remove the last 4 syllables in each line, read backward, from right to left, bottom to top, we get a poem in 3-syllable form: 

Bóng thướt tha
Tiếng ngân xa
Thuyền xuôi ngược
Khách lại qua
Hương quyện lá
Giậu cài hoa
Thơ vui thú
Cảnh mến ta.

Repetition in Little Dorrit

I’m on chapter 15, about Mrs Flintwinch’s dream. Check this out: 

“Strange, if the little sick-room fire were in effect a beacon fire, summoning some one, and that the most unlikely some one in the world, to the spot that must be come to. Strange, if the little sick-room light were in effect a watch-light, burning in that place every night until an appointed event should be watched out! Which of the vast multitude of travellers, under the sun and the stars, climbing the dusty hills and toiling along the weary plains, journeying by land and journeying by sea, coming and going so strangely, to meet and to act and react on one another; which of the host may, with no suspicion of the journey’s end, be travelling surely hither?” 

(emphasis mine) 
That sounds similar to a line in chapter 2: 

“The day passed on; and again the wide stare stared itself out; and the hot night was on Marseilles; and through it the caravan of the morning, all dispersed, went their appointed ways. And thus ever by day and night, under the sun and under the stars, climbing the dusty hills and toiling along the weary plains, journeying by land and journeying by sea, coming and going so strangely, to meet and to act and react on one another, move all we restless travellers through the pilgrimage of life.” 

(emphasis mine) 
I always get some amusement, and a slight sense of triumph, when noticing something like this. 



The key element to Dickens’s style is repetition. He creates rhythm in his sentences by using lots of repetition, especially anaphora and epistrophe, as written in my previous blog post. 
According to Wikipedia, “In rhetoric, an anaphora (Greek: ἀναφορά, "carrying back") is a rhetorical device that consists of repeating a sequence of words at the beginnings of neighboring clauses, thereby lending them emphasis.” 
Example: 

“There was the dreary Sunday of his childhood, when he sat with his hands before him, scared out of his senses by a horrible tract which commenced business with the poor child by asking him in its title, why he was going to Perdition?—a piece of curiosity that he really, in a frock and drawers, was not in a condition to satisfy—and which, for the further attraction of his infant mind, had a parenthesis in every other line with some such hiccupping reference as 2 Ep. Thess. c. iii, v. 6 & 7. There was the sleepy Sunday of his boyhood, when, like a military deserter, he was marched to chapel by a picquet of teachers three times a day, morally handcuffed to another boy; and when he would willingly have bartered two meals of indigestible sermon for another ounce or two of inferior mutton at his scanty dinner in the flesh. There was the interminable Sunday of his nonage; when his mother, stern of face and unrelenting of heart, would sit all day behind a Bible—bound, like her own construction of it, in the hardest, barest, and straitest boards, with one dinted ornament on the cover like the drag of a chain, and a wrathful sprinkling of red upon the edges of the leaves—as if it, of all books! were a fortification against sweetness of temper, natural affection, and gentle intercourse. There was the resentful Sunday of a little later, when he sat down glowering and glooming through the tardy length of the day, with a sullen sense of injury in his heart, and no more real knowledge of the beneficent history of the New Testament than if he had been bred among idolaters. There was a legion of Sundays, all days of unserviceable bitterness and mortification, slowly passing before him.” (B.1, ch.3) 

The opposite is epistrophe, also known as epiphora, which is “the repetition of the same word or words at the end of successive phrases, clauses or sentences.” 
A combination of anaphora and epiphora is symploce, “a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is used successively at the beginning of two or more clauses or sentences and another word or phrase with a similar wording is used successively at the end of them”. 
Dickens also uses them: 

“Nothing to see but streets, streets, streets. Nothing to breathe but streets, streets, streets. Nothing to change the brooding mind, or raise it up. Nothing for the spent toiler to do, but to compare the monotony of his seventh day with the monotony of his six days, think what a weary life he led, and make the best of it—or the worst, according to the probabilities.” (B.1, ch.3) 

“There was a fire in the grate, as there had been night and day for fifteen years. There was a kettle on the hob, as there had been night and day for fifteen years. There was a little mound of damped ashes on the top of the fire, and another little mound swept together under the grate, as there had been night and day for fifteen years. There was a smell of black dye in the airless room, which the fire had been drawing out of the crape and stuff of the widow’s dress for fifteen months, and out of the bier-like sofa for fifteen years.” (ibid.)

(emphasis mine) 
If this sounds too theoretical, I find this particularly interesting because I myself use anaphora (and epiphora) a lot in my Vietnamese writings. Not sure why I don’t do that much in English.

How to approach Lewis Carroll's Alice books- For dummies, and Let's play Lewis Carroll's Word Ladder game

Going around the internet, I'm baffled by many readers' response to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There. How can they read those books that way? I mean, do they need guidelines? 
Let me help. 
- Treat them as fairy tales. 
- Don't expect a plot; don't cling to assumptions about what (Victorian) novels should do or shouldn't do. 
- Don't look for an explicit moral message; don't expect Alice to learn something (Who are you? The Duchess? "And the moral of that is..."). 
- Focus on language; enjoy the logic games, word play, puns... and the characters; just have fun. 
- Don't expect the books to be exactly like the adaptations and resent them for not being so. 
- Separate Lewis Carroll from Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, i.e. get rid of all the theories about his sexuality.
What do I see when reading the Alice books? I see a logical, mathematical mind combined with a rich imagination and love of the grotesque. Being a logician that is also interested in language, Lewis Carroll notices, and jokes about, the illogicality of the English language. And he's an inventor- he makes up words and creates worlds and invents games. What a pity it is to read books as brilliant and delightful and complex as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and see them as nothing but products of a diseased mind! Sigh. 




Come to think of it, these are of course "rules" for approaching novels in general, not just Lewis Carroll's Alice books. 




______________________________________________

For fun: 
Do you know that Lewis Carroll invented the Word Ladder game? 
Examples: 
- CAT 
COT 
DOT
DOG
- HEAD 
HEAL 
TEAL 
TELL 
TALL 
TAIL
(My solution, btw, is different from his: 
HEAD 
HEAL 
HELL 
HALL 
TALL 
TAIL)
- APE 
APT 
OPT 
OAT 
MAT 
MAN 
The Wikipedia page quotes Nabokov as saying "some of my records are: hate—love in three, lass—male in four, and live—dead in five (with "lend" in the middle)". 
From HATE to LOVE. The solution I got: 
HATE 
GATE 
GAVE 
GIVE 
LIVE 
LOVE 
Too long. Shorter: 
HATE 
HAVE 
CAVE 
COVE 
LOVE 
Finally I came up with something shorter: 
HATE 
LATE 
LAVE 
LOVE 
Not bad, hmm? 
How do you go from LIVE to DEAD? 
The solution I got was: 
LIVE 
LINE 
LANE 
LAND 
LEND 
LEAD 
DEAD 
Too long, I think. A bit googling gave me another solution: 
LIVE 
LOVE 
LORE 
LORD 
LOAD 
LEAD 
DEAD 
The number of steps is the same. Could you find a shorter solution? 

Effi Briest: "love" in 3 languages

English translation (by William A. Cooper): 
Mrs von Briest asks "Don't you love Geert?". 
Effi responds "Why shouldn't I love him? I love Hulda, and love Bertha, and I love Hertha. And I love old Mr. Niemeyer, too. And that I love you and papa I don't even need to mention..." 

Original German by Theodor Fontane: 
"Liebst du Geert nicht?" 
"Warum soll ich ihn nicht lieben? Ich liebe Hulda, und ich liebe Bertha, und ich liebe Hertha. Und ich liebe auch den alten Niemeyer. Und daß ich euch liebe, davon spreche ich gar nicht erst..."

Norwegian translation (by Lotte Holmboe): 
The mother asks "Er du ikke glad i Geert, vennen min?". 
Effi replies "Hvorfor skulle jeg ikke være glad i ham? Jeg er glad i Hulda og i Bertha og Hertha- og i gamle Niemeyer også, for den saks skyld. Og at jeg er glad i dere, ja, det behøver jeg ikke si engang..."


The reason I start with the English version is that in English the sentence "I love you" encompasses different meanings and can be used for family members and close friends as well as for lovers. In Norwegian, there's a distinction between "Jeg elsker deg", used by people in a romantic relationship, and "Jeg er glad i deg", which can be said by a mother or a father to a child and vice versa, or by a friend to a friend, etc. Spouses can also say "Jeg er glad i deg", but people definitely don't say "Jeg elsker deg" when it's not romantic love (unless it's a joke, of course, but that doesn't count).
Is this important? Yes. Because if Mrs von Briest asked "Elsker du ikke Geert?", Effi's answer would be quite different, I thought.
Therefore I decided to check the German original. All right, I don't speak German. A few helpful sites say that German, which is closer to Norwegian than to English, makes a distinction between "Ich liebe dich" and "Ich hab dich lieb", which, according to the explanations, seem to be equivalents of "Jeg elsker deg" and "Jeg er glad i deg" respectively. Now that might look odd, since Effi takes the romantic word and uses it in the unromantic sense. Looks like she deliberately bends the word to evade what she knows her mother really asks, to avoid saying that she doesn't love Geert. 
What do you think?

The Woman in White- 1st impressions

Now that the hectic period is finally over, my blog is again a book blog. I'm reading Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White. 
Here is a passage from chapter 6: 

"The lady's complexion was almost swarthy, and the dark down on her upper lip was almost a moustache. She had a large, firm, masculine mouth and jaw; prominent, piercing, resolute brown eyes; and thick, coal-black hair, growing unusually low down on her forehead. Her expression—bright, frank, and intelligent—appeared, while she was silent, to be altogether wanting in those feminine attractions of gentleness and pliability, without which the beauty of the handsomest woman alive is beauty incomplete." 

Reading these lines I thought of this woman: 



Then the lady says to Walter Hartright "You see I don't think much of my own sex..." To some extent, this seems to be true for George Eliot as well. 
As it turns out, the character's name is Marian Halcombe, and George Eliot's real name is Mary Ann Evans, also written as Marian Evans- is this a coincidence? 



P.S: There is a word, Japanese and untranslatable, that perfectly fits Marian as described by Hartright: Bakku-shan, "a beautiful girl, as long as she is viewed from behind".

Answering questions (including one about my name)

Originally published on 19/5. 
I want more, but okay... Thank you, Caroline and Anna, for your questions. 


What's your MBTI? 
I don't know. In recent years I generally avoid labelling myself, mostly because of my self-contradictions and inconsistency, though perhaps you could say it applies to everyone else too- human beings are too complex for that. 
This is an interesting article: http://www.wired.com/2010/08/the-personality-paradox/
For example, between introversion and extroversion, I'm more like an introvert. But living in small country of very quiet, introverted people has made me realised that I'm not as introverted as I thought- I still prefer cities to towns, being surrounded by people to being alone in a cabin in the mountain, talking to people to staring at my phone all the time... I like hanging out and talking to people and discussing things, and can talk continuously for hours. Sometimes I even feel that maybe by nature I should be more like an extrovert but experience has made me more introverted, more withdrawn, because back then in elementary school I was in some ways a leader, was also a storyteller, liked being the centre of attention, had no fear of public speaking... 
(About the last point, there was a time when I became terrified of public speaking, but I've more or less overcome that). 
Between sensing and intuition, it's hard to say. Depends, perhaps. Probably intuition, because I love literature, cinema, photography and music more than the sciences. 
Between thinking and feeling, generally speaking I'm rational, though I try not to be rigid, inflexible, extreme. I do have my principles and can till recognise good traits or talent of people I personally dislike and foibles and weaknesses of people I like. But the word "level-headed" can't be used for me because I can be short-tempered or irrational, sometimes even ridiculous, impulsive, melodramatic. If you think of Jane Austen's heroines for instance, I share Fanny's attitude about men and relationships (and many other things) but often tell people that I see myself in Marianne rather than Elinor. 
Between judging and perceiving, again it's not possible to say. Generally I respect deadlines and, if having to write an essay for instance, prepare carefully outlines and such things. But I like spontaneity too, changes, surprises (dislike repetitiveness, homogeneity and monotonousness) and am not exactly a planner. 

What Hogwarts House do you identify with? 
Don't know. So I cheated. I've taken 3 random quizzes on the internet and 2 of them sort me into Gryffindor, the other into the boring Hufflepuff (maybe it isn't boring, what I mean is that I remember nothing, absolutely nothing about it). 
Update on 20/5: According to this quiz http://www.gotoquiz.com/results/pottermore_sorting_quiz_all_possible_question, my result is 79% Ravenclaw: 
"You have been sorted into Ravenclaw, the house of intelligence, curiosity, individualism, and wit. You are amongst other Ravenclaws, such as: Cho Chang, and Luna Lovegood." 

How is it you live in Norway but don't like Ibsen? 
I've read only 1 play by Ibsen, A Doll's House (Et dukkehjem). That was in my 1st year in Norway, and at the time it didn't make an impression on me, except that I remember not liking the way Nora leaves her children. But I'll come back to Ibsen sometime. 

Favorite line from Wuthering Heights?
How can I choose? 1 example: "It was not the thorn bending to the honeysuckles, but the honeysuckles embracing the thorn." 
Or this wondrous line: "I lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths fluttering among the heath and harebells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth." 
Or this line: "My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff - he's always, always in my mind - not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself - but as my own being; so, don't talk of our separation again - it is impracticable." 
Wuthering Heights of course is not a love story, not a beautiful one anyway. It's about obsession, dominance, hatred, revenge, it's also about class, gender, childhood trauma, abuse, animal cruelty, etc. But the image of foliage and "the eternal rocks" is just so beautiful. 

Is your name pronounced with a long E, like indeed, or a long I, like Diana? 
My name Di is pronounced more or less as /jɪ/. Like the English "yi" or the Norwegian "gi". 
The consonant D is /j/ as in "yes" /jɛs/ or "Yiddish" /ˈjɪdɪʃ/. 
The vowel is slightly longer than the short /ɪ/ and shorter than the long /iː/. 
People often pronounce it as the English "die" /dʌɪ/ or the German "die" /dɪ/ and both are inaccurate, though I do allow people to call me /dɪ/ (I can't go on correcting people every time, you see). 

Do you read biographies? If so what are your favourites? 
I rarely read biographies. But I do read autobiographies, memoirs and diaries, though not as much as novels. What comes to my mind right now is that back then as a kid I loved a book about the lives of Hollywood film stars like Vivien Leigh, Katharine Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, etc. 

Are you good at reading people's characters from photographs? 
Can't say because I haven't tried that. Probably not, photographs are stills and I prefer to guess nothing until seeing facial expressions, gestures, manners... Besides, several incidents that have occurred over the past few weeks have made me realise that I have to get rid of the habit of overthinking, interpreting things in too many ways and getting carried away in my analysing and assuming to the point of almost ruining relationships. 

What fictional characters do you identify with (other than the ones you've already mentioned)? 
Objectively speaking, I don't see identification with characters as a criterion of literary merit. But I can see some of myself in Zooey and Franny Glass, Holden Caulfield, Erika Kohut, Sula Peace, Okonkwo, Esther Greenwood, Emma Woodhouse, Caroline Helstone, Anna Karenina, Emma Bovary, Gwendolen Harleth, Frédéric Moreau, Joe Trace, Ursa Corregidora, Pechorin, the underground man, Natasha Rostova... (Yes I do notice that some of these characters are horrendous- I don't like them either. I also know that they're very different from each other, but, as written there, there's a bit of myself in each of them and I'm a bundle of contradictions). 
There's 1 person that I used to strongly identify with, not a literary character, and that was Anne Frank. 

What are your favorite movies? 
Here is 1 list: http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/04/10-films-that-im-crazy-crazy-about.html
Here is another list: http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-best-films-of-40s-50s-60s-70s-80s.html
However, the 2nd list needs to be amended- I need to find room for Witness for the Prosecution. 
Because both lists lack films from the 2010s, my favourite films from the period are The Artist, Silver Linings Playbook, Birdman, The Imitation Game, The Sessions, De rouille et d'os, The King's Speech, Black Swan, Les Misérables, Intouchables, etc. I think very highly of Nymphomaniac, though I personally don't like it. 

What do you think would have happened if Catherine had managed to bring Heathcliff back after the "I am Heathcliff" scene? 
I have to think more about it. 
What can be said now is that Catherine and Heathcliff can't be completely happy together. Their kind of love is the can't-be-without-you-can't-be-with-you kind of love. There is love and passion and understanding, but also obsession, control, torment... 

Have you ever felt like you were 'drift compatible' with someone? (as in the movie Pacific Rim) 
I don't know what that means. 

What are your feelings on feminism? 
I am a feminist. We still need feminism because gender inequality still exists; because prejudices against women still exist; because around the world lots of women are being raped, beaten, abused, discriminated against, deprived of education and employment, punished in the name of honour...; because I come from a country where 1 of the 2 words for "woman" is considered 1 of the worst insults; because even in Western democracies women still suffer from double standards, slut-shaming, victim-blaming, discrimination, condescension, doubt, lower wages... 
At the same time, feminism should be about equality, not sameness, and definitely not misandry. Men and women are different, that the differences come from upbringing, culture, society... doesn't necessarily mean they should be dismissed altogether and I don't see the point in making men and women completely the same. Then there are women who see men as "the other", as enemies, misogynists, animals, potential rapists... and I don't agree with that. That kind of thinking is extreme, narrow, restrictive. 
I don't like the way some people do, or advocate, stupid things in the name of feminism either. 

Do you have a favorite era? 
In literature, I love the 19th century: Jane Austen, the 3 Bronte sisters, Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Gogol, Lermontov, Chekhov, Flaubert... 
In films, I like the 40s- 60s, though I like films produced in that period more than films about that period. 
In music, my interests are all over the place and unsystematic, but generally speaking I'm not very fond of contemporary pop music. 

Do you ever read fanfiction?
I used to read fanfic, because a friend of mine wrote Harry Potter fanfic. But not much. I do enjoy parodies, however. 


____________________________________________________________

I do realise that some of my answers are vague and probably unsatisfactory, but hopefully they can lead to some interesting discussions. 

The Bronte sisters and stylometric analysis

http://alanabeeblog.wordpress.com/2013/11/11/computational-stylistics-and-the-bronte-sisters/
http://alanabeeblog.wordpress.com/2013/12/19/the-bronte-sisters-a-stylometric-analysis/

You can click the 2 links above to read the whole thing. 
Cluster analysis when there are only books by the Brontes: 

(http://alanabeeblog.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/brontecluster.png)

When some works by Jane Austen and George Eliot are added: 

(http://alanabeeblog.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/bronte2.png)


(http://alanabeeblog.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/bronteconsen2.png)

Charlotte, Emily and Anne are, to me, distinctive, but now according to this analysis, they appear like a single author. Not sure if it's reliable, but this is interesting. 

Nabokov and football

On the eve of the day on which Victor had planned to arrive, Pnin entered a sport shop in Waindell's Main Street and asked for a football. The request was unseasonable but he was offered one.  

'No, no', said Pnin, 'I do not wish an egg or, for example, a torpedo. I want a simple football ball. Round!'

(Pnin) 

This passage is funny in itself, but also because of this: 

When saying "football", I mean football, the game that involves feet (running, kicking) and a ball. Not handegg*. 
If you're interested in the origin of the word "soccer", here is a nice explanation: http://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2014/06/soccer.html
Also, back to Nabokov, he played football back then at Cambridge, by the way. A goalkeeper. 
http://putnielsingoal.com/2013/06/25/the-wandering-attention-of-vladimir-nabokov/
http://tomclarkblog.blogspot.no/2010/05/vladimir-nabokov-keeper-of-secret.html
Who knew. 







*: Just so you know, I also dislike the American date format and measurement systems, for logical rather than personal reasons. But then that's another story. 

Từ "đàn bà" và cách nhìn khinh miệt với phụ nữ

Vừa diễn ra lúc nãy trên fb (https://www.facebook.com/seven.why/posts/826112614066099):


http://s28.postimg.org/b9pp1ec71/image.jpg

http://s28.postimg.org/dd0492bzx/image.jpg

http://s28.postimg.org/gikpz9um5/image.jpg


Trong tiếng Anh có 1 từ "woman", với "female" chỉ giống cái/ phái nữ nói chung.
Trong tiếng NU có 1 từ "kvinne".
Tiếng Việt có 2 từ "phụ nữ" và "đàn bà", trong đó "phụ nữ" là từ khách quan, formal, còn "đàn bà" có hàm ý miệt thị, khinh bỉ tiếng Anh lẫn tiếng NU đều không có, và tôi tin nhiều ngôn ngữ phương Tây cũng không có. Tất nhiên, trong tiếng Anh người ta có thể nói "Oh women!" (khi phụ nữ làm những thứ typical của riêng phụ nữ, VD: mất vài tiếng đồng hồ chuẩn bị trước khi ra đường, xem đá banh chủ yếu chú ý cầu thủ đẹp trai, v.v...), nhưng ngược lại người ta cũng có thể nói "Men!" (VD: cẩu thả sơ sài chi tiết, để con cái bẩn hoặc ăn thức ăn nguội lạnh, v.v...), nhưng chỉ trong tiếng Việt, từ "đàn bà" mới có connotation rất tiêu cực và rất thường xuyên được sử dụng để phỉ báng. Trong tiếng Việt, "đàn bà" bao gồm đủ thứ tính xấu: điệu đàng, nói nhiều, lắm chuyện, chuyên nói xấu, tọc mạch, bẩn tưởi, nhỏ mọn, thù dai, hèn hạ, yếu đuối, tiểu nhân, bần tiện, tủn mủn, tính toán trong chi tiêu, không thể làm chuyện lớn, vân vân và vê vê. Và chỉ trong tiếng Việt, không có trong tiếng Anh và tiếng NU, "thằng đàn bà" mang tính sỉ nhục rất nặng. Ngược lại không có- nói 1 đứa con gái như đàn ông không tích cực, nhưng không tiêu cực đến mức đó. 
Hễ 1 gã có các tính xấu như vừa kể, người ta nói ngay, "thằng đàn bà". Những lúc ấy, người ta dịch sang tiếng Anh thế nào? ("cunt", trong trường hợp ai đó đề nghị, theo tôi không tương đương; và ngược lại trong tiếng Anh người ta có thể chửi nhau bằng từ "dick" hoặc "dickhead"). 
Chỉ có thế thôi đã thấy, sâu xa trong tiềm thức, người Việt có cái nhìn rất khinh miệt với phụ nữ. Nó đi sâu vào suy nghĩ tới mức người ta không còn nghĩ đến sự phi lý đó nữa, và từ "đàn bà" gắn chặt với ý xấu, không thể dùng theo nghĩa hoàn toàn neutral được. Mà lạ hơn, rất nhiều phụ nữ cũng dùng chính từ "thằng đàn bà" để chửi bới hạ nhục ai đó.
Cứ như thế, bao giờ phụ nữ mới được tôn trọng và bình đẳng ở VN? 





PS: Làm nhớ tới 1 bài đọc hôm nọ, "Làm đàn bà đã khổ, làm đàn bà VN còn khổ hơn": https://www.facebook.com/Mr.Sexy.Clown/posts/10152228928843877?fref=nf

Jennifer Lawrence's Vietnamese in the new "X-men" film

is bad.
I didn't watch the film, and won't. Someone was kind enough to upload the video clip here: 
http://vimeo.com/96963613



A few foreigners here and there on the net praise her Vietnamese, saying it's "legit", "uncanny", spoken "well", "must be dubbed", etc. 
With Vietnamese as my 1st language, I couldn't make out what she said except 1 sentence ("Không, tôi đến đây 1 mình"), no matter how many times I watched the clip. Neither can I say if she learnt some specific lines and tried to speak them, or memorised and reproduced a bunch of sounds that might have sounded Vietnamese to the American ear (more like Thai to me). The Vietnamese audience have the same reaction. 
Note: I'm commenting, not criticising (if I have problems with anything, it's not with Jennifer Lawrence, but with the people who say she spoke well a language about which they know nothing). 
Finally: có ai biết nguyên văn các câu Jennifer Lawrence nói trong film "X-men" là gì không ạ?

Phonetic punctuation and other videos of the brilliant Victor Borge

Just saw this hilarious video on All Things Linguistic. This is a must-watch.



I 1st knew about Victor Borge from this act:


And here are some other videos:

More photos of Audrey Hepburn (P.3), with some thoughts on "My fair lady"

I/ Audrey Hepburn:

























II/ "My fair lady":
The 2nd part of this post, contrary to your expectation, is not about Audrey Hepburn's performance in "My fair lady".
The film, based on a play by George Bernard Shaw and directed by George Cukor, can be summarised that Henry Higgins, a professor in phonetics, has a bet with Hugh Pickering that he can teach the flower girl Eliza, who has a strong Cockney accent, to speak English properly so that he can pass her off as a duchess at an embassy ball. It is 1st of all a lovely, entertaining film, a charming combination of musical, comedy and romance, with marvellous performances by Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison as Eliza Doolittle and professor Henry Higgins respectively.
But that's not all.
1st, from the linguistic point of view, "My fair lady" is interesting to linguists as well as students of linguistics, especially phonetics. As a matter of fact, my phonetics professor showed us a video clip (the scene in which Eliza practices pronouncing the initial /h/).
2nd, from the political point of view, it's a great polemic, an attack on the British class system, and on the fact that an Englishman's destiny is largely determined by his accent.
3rd, from the feminist point of view, "My fair lady" has a strong, determined, independent and proud female character, in spite of her social status and helpless situation. Though I've written above that the idea is Henry's, Eliza takes the initiative, comes to his house of her own accord and signs up for the lessons, declaring she's ready to pay. Later, she's again the one to take action, as she leaves him when finding herself not respected. Everything she does is her own choice, her own decision.
4th, from the rational point of view, the ending argues that the kind of sentimental love expressed in many words may not be deep, strong or lasting.
5th, from the romantic point of view, Henry Higgins is 1 of the most fascinating male characters in cinema, who in spite of his pride and snobbery and big ego turns out to be more emotional and vulnerable than he dares to acknowledge, and more vulnerable precisely because he finds it difficult to express his emotions. And Rex Harrison steals the show.
Finally and most importantly, from the film critic's point of view, it's simply wonderful. No wonder "My fair lady" won 8 Oscars. 
I haven't watched such a great film for quite a while.