What Lasts Forever
Colors fade, temples crumble, empires fall, but wise words endure.
- Edward Thorndike
That's why we love words and languages?
- Edward Thorndike
That's why we love words and languages?
色は褪せ、寺院は朽ち果て、帝国は滅びる。しかし、賢者の言葉は残る。
(This isn't my translation)
What Lasts Forever?
Is that why we love words and languages?
I do agree with you:)
This is a bit off the point, but I want to share a poem written in English with you. It was written by an early 19th century British poet named Shelley.
Ozymandias
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desart. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Please ask about any phrases which are hard to understand. The word order starting with "well those passions read which yet survive" ("read those passions which still exist well") is a bit strange.
A land
B stone
A sand
B frown (slant rhyme with "stone")
A command
C read
D things
C fed
E appear (slant rhyme with "despair" and "bare")
D kings
E despair
F decay
E bare
F away
I've heard of the word "sonnet", but I didn't know what it meant.
Fixed form of poetry is common in English?
Speaking of fixed form of poetry, it always reminds me of old Chinese poetry because we Japanese learn some of them at schools.
I think this sort of fixed form poetry is really interesting.
This is one of such quite famouse poems we learn at schools.
http://lang-8.com/236512/journals/1560823/Spring-Dawn-%25E6%2598%25A5%25E6%259A%2581
I like ancient Chinese poetry a lot-- it's one of my main motivations for learning Mandarin.
Also, I googled Ozymandias and I found the Japanese translation. I've never heard of this poem and Shelly. I got only about thousand websites in Japanese for search result. This gave me an impression that this poem isn't so famous in Japan, but it's interesting.
The moment I read this poem, it reminded me of our classic military tale, 平家物語 (Heike Monogatari, The Tale of the Heike)
It seems to me that the theme of impermanence is almost universal.
Do you know about this tale?
祇園精舎の鐘の声、諸行無常の響きあり。
沙羅雙樹の花の色、盛者必衰の理をあらわす。
驕れる者も久しからず、唯春の夜の夢の如し。
猛き者も遂には滅びぬ、偏に風の前の塵に同じ。
Gionshōja no kane no koe, Shogyōmujō no hibiki ari.
Sarasōju no hana no iro, Jōshahissui no kotowari wo arawasu.
Ogoreru mono mo hisashikarazu, tada haru no yoru no yume no gotoshi. Takeki mono mo tsuwi ni wa horobin(u), hitoeni kaze no mae no chiri ni onaji.
The sound of the Gion Shōja bells echoes the impermanence of all things;
the color of the sāla flowers reveals the truth that the prosperous must decline.
The proud do not endure, they are like a dream on a spring night;
the mighty fall at last, they are as dust before the wind.
tony san, could you tell me how and when you got interested in such Chinese culture?
We learn Chinese poems and The Analects of Confucius a bit at schools. Perhaps many people just forget most of them, but some people are really interested in such oriental thoughts such as 論語 and 三国志.
Do you know about 三国志, too?
It's hard to say what started me exploring either Chinese literature or Japanese literature. I folded origami animals and played go as a child, so those activities probably got me interested in Japanese culture. Also, in New York City, where I grew up, there are people of many different ethnicities, so I knew a small number of Chinese and Japanese people as a child. I was always fascinated by Chinese characters (hanzi, kanji), which I saw in Chinatown and in books about go. In some ways, my fascination with the writing systems preceded my fascination either with literature or with language in both cases.
When I was a college student and even more so when I was a graduate student, I became interested in various kinds of Asian philosophy, particularly Zen Buddhism. This probably motivated me more than anything else to start becoming acquainted with Japanese and Chinese literature. Much later, during the time I was a college mathematics teacher, I was introduced to the Zhuangzi and fell in love with it. One of my ambitions is to learn enough Mandarin to read the Zhuangzi.
Part of my motivation for learning both Japanese and Chinese is to learn to whatever extent possible the ways of thinking about the world which are the basis of those languages. I felt as a graduate student that learning this would enable me to get past some of the assumptions and blind spots that I have just because of having done most of my learning about the world in a European language. It's now decades later, and I am only beginning to learn both languages, though. I hope I have enough time left. :-)
There are two translators of Chinese texts for whom I have great respect-- Arthur Waley and Burton Watson. I felt they gave me the possibility of seeing some Chinese literature to some extent the way speakers of Mandarin see it. I haven't found a person whose translations from Japanese to English are as satisfying. I have enjoyed many Japanese novels and poems in translation, but I always have the feeling that the translator is standing there between me and the original, and I don't know how the works have been changed in the process. It's a great pleasure to be able to begin to understand the poems of 良寛大愚 (for example) in Japanese.
僕は変な人ですよね。^^
No, you're not. 全然変じゃないですよ＾＾
It's a great thing that you have something you hope to dedicate your life to. In my case, it's sociology. I majored in it at my college but it was only shallow, superficial, so I hope to learn it again in the future and this time abroad. That's one of my goals in my lifetime and that's why I want to improve my English more:)
I feel if we have such an aspiration, life will be quite short to master it, but it just gives us continuous pleasure of learning and the life will be quite satisfactory...^^
My husband likes 三国志 very much, so you might like it, too:)
It's impressive that Japanese culture was already familiar to you as a child. Was that because your parents were greatly interested in Japanese culture?
You got interested in Asian philosophy. Was that because the equivalent of western world didn't give you satisfying answers? Or it was attractive because it was unusual, exotic, and different?
I understand what you mean. I learned Tai Chi a year ago and still want to learn it. When I practiced it, all I could do was just to follow and remember every movement, but I imagined there would be vast spiritual world behind every movement. If I could learn it, too, that would be much more fun.
日本の経済もどうなるのやら。。。 最近は将来の高齢化社会を憂えておりす。