A curious recurring theme of video game and anime soundtracks is the song that speaks a different language from that of singer, perhaps also the composer. This has happened in Spanish, Italian, and Russian, to name a few, but Latin is a repeat favorite. My oh my, can Latin yield results from distressingly beautiful to merely distressing. This depends not just on the inflection (or lack) of the singer but also the skill of each writer. The latter may seem to get off easier: if not having to sing weren't advantage enough, lifting non-contextual but stirring phrases from literature is a perennially beloved cheat.
It is also easier. In perfect fairness, there are brave original compositions that have a grand sweep all their own. But the details, ever a place of devilry, are even more Satanic when a writer's love of pretty new words meets Latin's schizophrenic vocabulary, mostly obedient to a prolific set of rules, and please please please mind the exceptions (they are manifold). Mostly the errors will go unnoticed, for in the average course of playing or watching no one will hear the Latin and grab paper and pen to begin parsing. Yet there will always be pedants in the audience, some of whom will necessarily be classicists, and their curiosity once roused does not abate.
I am a pedant.
I was curious when I heard the song Somnia Memorias from the Parasite Eve OST.
This is because the song, composed by Yoko Shimomura and sung by Shani Rigsbee, has lyrics in intermittent Spanish and Latin. The lyrics can be found here with a running translation. The letras en español are simple, beginning with an existential wanderlust dissociative fit which segues into a mild attack of Spanish emo before careening into a lesson about coming to terms with your apocalyptic fever dreams.
Fine and well. But ah, the Latin. It gives the song its title, and takes peace from the pedants. It begins innocuously enough: ultra somnia, ultra memorias -- "beyond dreams, beyond memories" (or "on the other side of", if repetition annoys).
Now see Grammar and Orthography conspire to introduce the hosts of Confusion:
arbor sacra, mala dulcem, maturum ferens
Though the commas would have you parse it one way, the inflections would have it otherwise: "a sacred tree bearing sweet, ripe fruit" makes the most sense, but if mala is a neuter plural accusative, which it is, it wouldn't be dulcem nor maturum, and so it instead tells us of "the sacred evil tree carrying a pleasant early thing" which, if less mystical, is no less mystifying.
But the confusion deepens verses later, when the lyrics seem to abandon Latin altogether:
Alicubi apud memorias longinquas, aliquid intra me espergiselt
"Somewhere in the view of distant memories, something within me"...
Is a word that proves one of two things: either no official lyrics were ever released and the transcription is in error, or the composer completely invented a word, and did not even bother to dress it in a toga.
So which is it? A pedant, after compulsive repetitions of six seconds of the song, will notice that the word sounds like espergesit: closer, but still not a word... unless the pedant has a decent dictionary, which will reveal a curious verb:
expergiscor, expergisci, experrectus sum -- 3rd, dep: awake, bestir oneself
Any disciple of Wheelock can tell you: the deponent verbs are active in meaning, but passive in form. Now it is evident! Our transcription underlined above is a strangely Late Latin manhandling of giving the deponent verb an active form. It reads expergiscit in some lyric writer's forgotten notebook, and makes poppa Cato circumvolve in his fields, groaning a correction: expergiscitur. But what could defunct rotary Romans say to the next line?
Amorem indulgentiam macroem dolorem conguoscebit
Ah yes. Love, concession, and sorrow are direct objects. Repeat listenings do not help descry what macroem could be. Surely another third declension accusative? Maiorem? An older person? Or big, great? Great big sorrow? An older person? Yes, then -- love, concession, old people and sorrow, or just great big sorrow, they are the direct objects of... something that will happen in the future! Cognoscebit, could it be? Ah, but no, that'd have to be cognoscet. We leave this lying by the roadside, romantically. Omnia terminabit: it will end everything.
I can only close by noting that the final line in Latin begins with a spelling error:
luro ut esses prope me
To mean "I swear that you were near me", it would have to read iuro. Or juro, if you truly insist.
Can you spot the wild subjunctive?
24 June 2013
morning noise
tuna niçoise
trituration
tiramisu
treachery
tessellated
thyroidal
tone-deaf
titillating
tulle
trituration
tiramisu
treachery
tessellated
thyroidal
tone-deaf
titillating
tulle
23 June 2013
we are pregnant
a man turns to me, arm around a girl thick with foetus, who chitters and giggles with the girls around the high table but does not take a proffered jello shot. he accepts his and removes the lid from the tiny cup. the follicles in my nose wither at the draft of alcohol fume like bus exhaust. a moment and he has polished the cup clean, saying with a dopy, sugar-glazed grin in no general direction at all: "We're pregnant!"
I do not recognize him. If I ever knew the girl, it was two trimesters and a poor dye job hence. She smiles thinly at me, and excuses herself to the ladies' room. A muffled, mumbling loudspeaker informs us that now, Leonora Borealis will sing us… something: "nur, Lirrynrruh Buhriyella gunnahingalee Blerstercut", we are assured. A sloshy short woman stumbles up to the stage on powerful legs, clad in a diaphanous yellow dress which outlines her gracious and unkempt pubic hair. The karaoke track of Blue Oyster Cult's "Godzilla" begins in tinny earnest.
The fellow pulls deeply from a plastic cup of beer, and repeats through foam and bubbles:
"We're pregnant!"
His face has begun to resemble an over-boiled potato, and I picture this man suffering morning sickness directly, horking up his stale beer and chicken biscuits at 7:13am, and then the coffee and second round of chicken biscuits at 8:49. I mean to inquire after his gastrointestinal health, but he laughs as Liranova Barbarella belts out a surprising, throaty growl:
"Widda puppusful grimmiss anna terribah sound
He pullsa spitty high tenshun whyers daown"
He looses a guffaw, loud, jarring, and beery. I notice the girl has not returned, and I picture him achy and bloated, waddling to the john every quarter hour, keeping proximity to bathrooms much as sex offenders keep distance from schools. I wonder how long he has been pregnant for, if the gestation is of differing length and severity, if it began concurrent with hers. They are the both of them pregnant! The implications of plurality demand attention, not just for the curiosity of the person, but the biological sciences, and natural order.
"Do you get much morning sickness?" I simply must know.
He laughs, and refills the plastic cup from a pitcher on the table. Another round of jello shots has arrived, all of them uncapped and reeking Mephistophelian vapors. The girl is returning from the bathroom, but halts just before the table as a look of pure nausea sweeps her face, and she makes for the toilet again. The man does not notice, but responds to me, "When I overdo it!" and swallows the unnaturally blue gelatinous cube.
Learaneara Bree Ella punctuates this magisterially:
"Ohhh no, DARE GO TOE-KEY-OH
oh-oh GAHZILLAH!
yee-eeaa-ah"
He swallows, and begins listening to another girl across the table. I cannot hear them over the sultry titanette gyrating on the stage to the instrumental break, microphone held suggestively to her chest. But then the man is cackling at whatever has been said, clapping his hands vigorously, and leans back on his stool. He slaps his thighs and, reclining too far, slides right off the back of his seat squarely onto his tailbone.
A short groan escapes him, and I see that the girl has returned from the bathroom behind him and is looking down at him. With his paunch now gathered round as he sits knees-up on the floor, I see him as a suddenly deflated ball, frayed and beaten in a flimsy gown, on his way to a gooch reconstruction after a particularly nasty parturition trauma. I realize now that the girl is laughing to herself, albeit quietly, as he moans and leans forward, rubbing his lower back. He rises slowly, heavily, as if pained with a dull, leaden ache, and gingerly returns to the stool.
"Owww… I think…" he begins, and catches a breath. She has sat down again, and is talking low and fast to the two girls at her side, one or the other at times barking a short, unmistakeable laugh.
"I think I gotta…" he begins again, and stops short.
"Go?" she asks. He nods, as does she. He rises and shuffles to the door, while another girl at table wears a smile like a hyena. Learner-A-Bury Hellas grips her gown at the left thigh, rocks backward, and roars triumphantly:
"HISSORY SHOWS a-GEN AN a-GEN
how NATURRE POINS OWT da folly of men-nn
GAH-ZIL-LA!"
To ponderous, thunderous applause.
I do not recognize him. If I ever knew the girl, it was two trimesters and a poor dye job hence. She smiles thinly at me, and excuses herself to the ladies' room. A muffled, mumbling loudspeaker informs us that now, Leonora Borealis will sing us… something: "nur, Lirrynrruh Buhriyella gunnahingalee Blerstercut", we are assured. A sloshy short woman stumbles up to the stage on powerful legs, clad in a diaphanous yellow dress which outlines her gracious and unkempt pubic hair. The karaoke track of Blue Oyster Cult's "Godzilla" begins in tinny earnest.
The fellow pulls deeply from a plastic cup of beer, and repeats through foam and bubbles:
"We're pregnant!"
His face has begun to resemble an over-boiled potato, and I picture this man suffering morning sickness directly, horking up his stale beer and chicken biscuits at 7:13am, and then the coffee and second round of chicken biscuits at 8:49. I mean to inquire after his gastrointestinal health, but he laughs as Liranova Barbarella belts out a surprising, throaty growl:
"Widda puppusful grimmiss anna terribah sound
He pullsa spitty high tenshun whyers daown"
He looses a guffaw, loud, jarring, and beery. I notice the girl has not returned, and I picture him achy and bloated, waddling to the john every quarter hour, keeping proximity to bathrooms much as sex offenders keep distance from schools. I wonder how long he has been pregnant for, if the gestation is of differing length and severity, if it began concurrent with hers. They are the both of them pregnant! The implications of plurality demand attention, not just for the curiosity of the person, but the biological sciences, and natural order.
"Do you get much morning sickness?" I simply must know.
He laughs, and refills the plastic cup from a pitcher on the table. Another round of jello shots has arrived, all of them uncapped and reeking Mephistophelian vapors. The girl is returning from the bathroom, but halts just before the table as a look of pure nausea sweeps her face, and she makes for the toilet again. The man does not notice, but responds to me, "When I overdo it!" and swallows the unnaturally blue gelatinous cube.
Learaneara Bree Ella punctuates this magisterially:
"Ohhh no, DARE GO TOE-KEY-OH
oh-oh GAHZILLAH!
yee-eeaa-ah"
He swallows, and begins listening to another girl across the table. I cannot hear them over the sultry titanette gyrating on the stage to the instrumental break, microphone held suggestively to her chest. But then the man is cackling at whatever has been said, clapping his hands vigorously, and leans back on his stool. He slaps his thighs and, reclining too far, slides right off the back of his seat squarely onto his tailbone.
A short groan escapes him, and I see that the girl has returned from the bathroom behind him and is looking down at him. With his paunch now gathered round as he sits knees-up on the floor, I see him as a suddenly deflated ball, frayed and beaten in a flimsy gown, on his way to a gooch reconstruction after a particularly nasty parturition trauma. I realize now that the girl is laughing to herself, albeit quietly, as he moans and leans forward, rubbing his lower back. He rises slowly, heavily, as if pained with a dull, leaden ache, and gingerly returns to the stool.
"Owww… I think…" he begins, and catches a breath. She has sat down again, and is talking low and fast to the two girls at her side, one or the other at times barking a short, unmistakeable laugh.
"I think I gotta…" he begins again, and stops short.
"Go?" she asks. He nods, as does she. He rises and shuffles to the door, while another girl at table wears a smile like a hyena. Learner-A-Bury Hellas grips her gown at the left thigh, rocks backward, and roars triumphantly:
"HISSORY SHOWS a-GEN AN a-GEN
how NATURRE POINS OWT da folly of men-nn
GAH-ZIL-LA!"
To ponderous, thunderous applause.
07 April 2013
Miss Rhoda Bee
It was 7:51 a.m. of a Sunday when he first crossed paths with Miss
Rhoda Bee. The parking lot of the grocery was rich with a spring
symphony of birds and circling cars, all made mazy and gracious in the
mellifluous light of an April morning, and he felt expansive and warm
for the first time in days. He would have coffee soon, and maybe even a
banana.
Beneath an old crape myrtle not yet in bloom, she stood resolute, aflame in wrath, a five-foot colossus -- excluding her hair, a sentry tower of twists and sharp outcroppings, itself vaguely foreboding. she roundly, colorfully berated a father who had sat his child in a buggy festively made to resemble a police car by way of pieces of cardboard zip-tied to the sides.
"I'm just..." he began, waving one hand halfheartedly, but she cut him off, firing as might a Gatling.
"Just getting young Junior acquainted with the dominance hierarchy whose lineage he's been so lucky to have? Readying his unknowing hands for the cold mercy of the department standard-issue? Or aren't you a police officer yourself?"
The man shook his head, looking hopelessly toward the grocery's cool, inviting entrance. Ah, reposeful heads of lettuce, cheery tomatoes, quiet tubers. She grew truly incensed.
"Ah, a happy turncoat, then! Familiarity breeding a rich complacency. Either gross or a simpleton, you! Marring the tabula rasa with the hateful code of men! Tainting the easy freedom of innocence with the noxious repression that poisons the flower of life! And on the day you damned Saxons insist the Lord himself favors!" She drew in a breath here and stopped abruptly. He had drawn close to them, and stopped for a moment.
"The zip-ties even remind one of handcuffs," he offered reasonably.
Her glare went supernova. Her quarry had taken a vague resemblance to a turtle.
"Ah… but I'm a Unitarian?" the man ventured uncertainly. Apoplexy ensued.
"And all of this from a damned hippy-dippy bohemian bourgeois animist!" she spat. "Sacre merd de chevre! Fils de putin! Bonté! You, sir, are a shameless protozoan, and I pray that whenever you go seeking your quinoa, fair-trade certified organic Brazilian cocoa, and kefir, you find only Cream of Wheat, Hershey's, and drinkable yogurt for the lunchboxes of the youth condemned to follow in your sad footsteps."
The child looked uncertain, but amused. The man nodded, then blinked, as if astonished, and quickly wheeled the putative cop cart off, a refugee seeking sanctuary among the produce. She followed him with her withering stare.
He suddenly thought that he must also buy ginger ale. There was a hand-basket on the ground beneath the myrtle's branch pointing toward the entry. He nodded to her as he picked it up.
"Ma'am."
VII aprilis MMXIII scripta hoc plostro ante Rousem viso
Beneath an old crape myrtle not yet in bloom, she stood resolute, aflame in wrath, a five-foot colossus -- excluding her hair, a sentry tower of twists and sharp outcroppings, itself vaguely foreboding. she roundly, colorfully berated a father who had sat his child in a buggy festively made to resemble a police car by way of pieces of cardboard zip-tied to the sides.
"I'm just..." he began, waving one hand halfheartedly, but she cut him off, firing as might a Gatling.
"Just getting young Junior acquainted with the dominance hierarchy whose lineage he's been so lucky to have? Readying his unknowing hands for the cold mercy of the department standard-issue? Or aren't you a police officer yourself?"
The man shook his head, looking hopelessly toward the grocery's cool, inviting entrance. Ah, reposeful heads of lettuce, cheery tomatoes, quiet tubers. She grew truly incensed.
"Ah, a happy turncoat, then! Familiarity breeding a rich complacency. Either gross or a simpleton, you! Marring the tabula rasa with the hateful code of men! Tainting the easy freedom of innocence with the noxious repression that poisons the flower of life! And on the day you damned Saxons insist the Lord himself favors!" She drew in a breath here and stopped abruptly. He had drawn close to them, and stopped for a moment.
"The zip-ties even remind one of handcuffs," he offered reasonably.
Her glare went supernova. Her quarry had taken a vague resemblance to a turtle.
"Ah… but I'm a Unitarian?" the man ventured uncertainly. Apoplexy ensued.
"And all of this from a damned hippy-dippy bohemian bourgeois animist!" she spat. "Sacre merd de chevre! Fils de putin! Bonté! You, sir, are a shameless protozoan, and I pray that whenever you go seeking your quinoa, fair-trade certified organic Brazilian cocoa, and kefir, you find only Cream of Wheat, Hershey's, and drinkable yogurt for the lunchboxes of the youth condemned to follow in your sad footsteps."
The child looked uncertain, but amused. The man nodded, then blinked, as if astonished, and quickly wheeled the putative cop cart off, a refugee seeking sanctuary among the produce. She followed him with her withering stare.
He suddenly thought that he must also buy ginger ale. There was a hand-basket on the ground beneath the myrtle's branch pointing toward the entry. He nodded to her as he picked it up.
"Ma'am."
VII aprilis MMXIII scripta hoc plostro ante Rousem viso
25 March 2013
epistle to a social worker
Kay-kay,
The
days of late have had a surreal quality, almost as if a fog were
burning off, but taking a measure of colour and saturation along with
it.
Then I wake to find that things are still maraudingly vivid here in the Most Serene Republic of Atlantis-upon-Mississippi.
Meanwhile: a communiqué from our Esteemed Directress.
Good morning all
I made these cupcakes http://www.yourcupofcake.com/
I am going to put the all names of the Walk for Babies Team volunteers in a basket and draw one name to apply the $$ to.
If you would like to “reserve” one of these cupcakes, shoot me an e-mail—first come, first served!
It
is almost enough to make my heart weep, the sheer absurd poesy of it
all. Nero only raped burning Rome with his own theatrical
compositions. Eat your heart out! Here we sit, a Bastille in
the making (though not a shred so populist), and the Directress,
instead of answering a few nice questions from the feds, bakes cake!
O, let them eat cake, sweet lemon mascarpone cupcake for babies, as little Brucie goes into the crucible!
Sometimes I wonder if the Latin American republics couldn’t take a lesson or two from us.*identifying markers redacted from the letter.
22 December 2012
it's all terribly interesting!
my translation of an abstract by the inestimable Katherine Parys:
Common salvinia, Salvinia minima Baker, is an aquatic invasive fern that obstructs waterways and impacts water quality throughout the southeastern United States. In an effort to establish populations for classical biological control, the weevil, Cyrtobagous salviniae Calder and Sands, was released at multiple sites across Louisiana. Many of the release sites were lost due to a variety of ecological and anthropological disturbances. In 2008, C. salviniae was found to have successfully overwintered on S. minima in Gramercy, Louisiana. Attack by Cyrtobagous salviniae significantly increased the number of damaged terminal buds and decreased the fresh weight biomass of S. minima.La salvinia común, Salvinia mínima Baker, es un helecho acuático invasor que obstruye vías fluviales y afecta la calidad de agua por el sureste de los Estados Unidos. Para fundar poblaciones de control biológico clásico el gorgojo Cyrtobagous salviniae Calder y Sands fue introducido en múltiples sitios por toda Louisiana. Fueron perdidos muchos sitios de introducción debido a varias alteraciones ecológicas y antropológicas. En 2008 fue notado que C. salviniae invernó exitosamente en S. mínima en Gramercy, Louisiana. El ataque de Cyrtobagous salviniae aumentó apreciablemente la cantidad de brotes terminales dañados y disminuyó la biomasa fresca de S. minima.
given that common salvinia is one of several invasive species found in Louisiana waterways, I can't help but feel like I'm in an awesome biological fantasy, (albeit a bit more understated). Ms. Parys has also done research on the impact of red imported fire ants on the weevil mentioned above(PDF link), the abstract for which I had the fortune to translate as well.
ain't science grand?
19 December 2012
he's gonna babble about trolleys
the six sentence structure makes for nice, quick prose when you've the attention span of a goldfish.
your incipient megalomania is arresting, I confess. but I can't remember your name. is it that you haven't told me?
no matter, do be still. I am trying to draw the back of your head in pen, and I haven't margin for error. not with the streetcar rocking so.
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