Tuesday, 19 June 2012

Saussure injured Song

Question- Who am I translating here?
When Right and Wrong were conceived
Such Injury Song received
Love became Complete
 As Existents' Defeat.

Choose
a) Qoheleth (Ecclesiastes, in the Bible) by means of an ironic textual reference to the Psalms highlighted by the Baal Shem Tov.
b) Shantideva (translating 'Samsara' as Existence)
c) Bedil (taking 'Sukhan' in the sense of Logos (vide Gibb's translation of Sheikh Galip)
d) Chuang Tzu- (translating 'Tao' as 'Song')
e) Nobody. because, my dear Vivek, you're a crap poet and too ignorant to translate anything.

Answer.

I guess you all went for (e). You are all wrong because this was a trick question. Being ignorant & a crap poet is no longer a bar to translating stuff. Wake up and smell the coffee!

The correct answer is (d).
Here is the original-
'Because Right and Wrong appeared, the Way was injured. Because the Way was injured, Love became complete. But do such things as injury and completion exist or do they not?'

To be clear, I'm not making the point that there's no Scriptural Tradition to which, mutatis mutandis, this poem could not be attributed & thus Structural Linguistics is wrong, but rather, all mathos such pathos, my plaint is that I Loveless remain though Saussure injured Song.

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