marduk
Eagle
Release the Wogew!
Posts: 114
|
Post by marduk on May 17, 2009 10:54:42 GMT 2
Reading now "Crime and Punishment" by Fiodor Dostojewski. Just started, but saw earlier an act. It was good.
|
|
|
Post by Heer E. Tik on May 17, 2009 11:09:40 GMT 2
I tried reading "Crime and Punishment" but could only manage 25 pages of it, then stopped. There was something so sordidly desolate, dreary, and heavy about the atmosphere and environment as Dostoyevsky describes it... Make no mistake, I enjoy literature, but this book's prose brought such a heavy mood upon me that I had to put it away. In a way, this certainly speaks of its power over the reader's mind. I read it in the original, which added to the effect. Sometimes much can be lost in translation... How are you liking this book, Marduk?
|
|
|
Post by Mighty Croc on May 17, 2009 19:56:52 GMT 2
I like Dostoyevsky's novels, but they can be read only in a heavy mood. "Crime and Punisment" and others are great books, I enjoy them as I enjoy good funeral doom albums. But I can read this only in the evening.
|
|
|
Post by Heer E. Tik on May 19, 2009 0:22:06 GMT 2
Dostoevsky as funeral doom - that's an interesting comparison.. More like the actual old Russian dirges as used by Vo Skorbyah; heavy hangs the conscience and no surcease does it find from the ill gloom.. As for the last book I've read, it was a graphic novel - do these count? - of Conan the Barbarian, the new series from Dark Horse comics - "Frost Giant's Daughter", drawn/adapted by Cary Nord and Kim Busciek. Very highly recommended for any who are interested! I have never seen such vibrant colors, such boldly drawn lines come to life off a page. Those is not the pulpy black and white inks of the 70s (although those were great also!) - the art does absorb you so much that you forget you're looking through a graphic novel, it's that immediate. I'm glad that Conan is getting this kind of relaunch - more interest in Robert E. Howard's creation means even more interest will follow, and hopefully bring with it many fruitful things. Now I just have to go back and re-read REH's original Conan stories...
|
|
|
Post by Mighty Croc on May 19, 2009 7:56:27 GMT 2
Vo Skorbyah... I like their music, but I'd liked it even more, if the vocalist didn't use vocal effects. But it's the only folk funeral from Russia (in the world there are more and more funeral doom bands with a folk influence, such as Grivf). And the graphic novels are sometimes published here, but they are expensive, and it's hard to find them in the libraries.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on May 20, 2009 15:14:07 GMT 2
I'm taking a slow pace here in rereading Chaucer ,only to enjoy irony more... Someone gave me a novel (fiction, not entirely historical) bout Vlad the Impaler. I only hope tis good and that l don't have to see Vlad turned again into the bloody vampire dracula count bramstokerish stereotype!! The authour is romanian and l guess she had a decent good knowledge of history though...
|
|
|
Post by Heer E. Tik on May 20, 2009 20:35:14 GMT 2
What's the name of that book, Walkyrie? It would be interesting to read historical fiction about Vlad, maybe it's available in English too.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on May 21, 2009 8:58:53 GMT 2
, Vlad, the Son of Dragon" (dragon being translated and changed in ,drac' =evil,..another time l'll explain the etimologic mutation) and the author is Georgina Rogoz,l think..l'll check when l go home.
|
|
|
Post by Heer E. Tik on May 21, 2009 9:13:14 GMT 2
Looking forward to hearing the etymological mutation... The alluded connection between dragons and "evil" is really quite fascinating, and tells lots of the ways in which a particular generation's mentality becomes cemented in language. I take it was a later Middle Ages/early Renaissance shift, as people's interest in dragons resurfaced with the renewed availability of written material (manuscript proliferation, printing press etc) about dragons and other such *scientific* lore? There is a professor at my alma mater, who was my thesis adviser, who is an expert on dragons . According to him, the last confirmed dragon sighting took place in 1632, when a dragon was seen flying over the Alps Quite recent, if you ask me... and probably very telling of the anxieties and fears in the midst of the Thirty Years' War, as people attribute disturbances in the spheres to strange unnatural phenomena. Quite interesting, a dragon seems to appear in almost every culture in one way or another, even where there is no possible connection between some of these cultures. (Do we have a thread somewhere for quasi-mythological/folkloric discussions at large, not bound to one specific definite subject dictated by thread's heading? We could carry on in there...)
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on May 22, 2009 6:51:06 GMT 2
His name was Vlad "Dracula" ,that is the son of (also Vlad) "Dracul" - word meaning both ,,the devil" and ,,the dragon" in Romanian and used with the latter meaning as a consequence of him wearing an insignia of this beast as a knight of the crusader Order of the Dragon. PS: Yap,that's the author,lady Rogoz.
|
|
|
Post by Heer E. Tik on May 22, 2009 23:01:50 GMT 2
Thanks Walkyrie for the info, sounds interesting.
I am just starting a new non-fiction book called "Runic Amulets and magic Objects", by Mindy MacLeod and Bernard Mees [Boydell Press, 2006]. This is not some neopagan mumbo jumbo, but a credible academic inquiry into the actual archaeological artifacts from Northern European countries that bear runic inscriptions. Admittedly, we can know very little about the original makers' or owners' intent in choosing their words and staves, but quite often such inscriptions can speak for themselves... Some clearly take the form of spells, with the maker's intent being spelled out on the object's surface; others invoke various spirits and deities; yet others are a cryptic series of particular runes that are interwoven beyond linguistic logic - clearly some very personal meaning known only to the one who cut those runes... A great asset of this book is the actual spelling out of all the numerous inscriptions it examines, in their respective original runic rows as well as a transliteration and a translation for each. Each chapter is a category in which artifacts/inscriptions have to do with its subject - protective and enabling charms, fertility charms, healing charms and leechcraft, pagan ritual items, christianized amulets, rune-stones/deaths/curses, etc. It's not an attempt to invent anything or attribute some new "meaning" to the hard evidence at hand - it's simply an attempt to situate those inscriptions in the historical context of the times, and see what insights they may shed on the everyday reality and mythological consciousness of the people who made and used them. An added interest it is to me because some of the inscriptions on amulets/objects found in Germany (c.a. 100-500 C.E.) appear to be as close to the original Proto-Germanic as we can get to today, when hardly anything survives that can give a glimpse into what those dialects sounded that pre-dated Old High German/Old Saxon - indeed, just a few of those inscriptions is all the original evidence we have. Even the names for most of the runes of the older futhark have been linguistically reconstructed - which isn't quite the same.
Reading those original inscriptions really strikes one with the power of their makers' intent - indeed, that is the basis of magic and their very function.
A sample curse for your enemies, as found on a rune-stick from Bergen, Norway (c.a. 1250-1300) :
Sezt niðr ok ráð rúnar: rís úpp ok fís við!
"Sit down and interpret the runes; rise up and fart!"
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on May 23, 2009 12:33:53 GMT 2
Always here, Hjalagh! What you read now sounds captivating and tempting for me... Why aren't we neighbours/coworkers/relatives sth ;D to borrow books? Ha,ha! I had problems with runes chains as l am bad with those translations, so l crave for a complex book like yours....
|
|
|
Post by Heer E. Tik on May 24, 2009 5:11:25 GMT 2
Yes, why indeed not.. Borrowing/sharing books was almost like a custom for me back in Russia, books always traveled between friends' houses. Where I live now there's nobody within close distance who could be interested in the strange obscure subjects that make up my library today. Runic rows may be problematic because there were several of them, and these weren't so regulated as we may think today... Runic inscriptions could move from left to right, right to left, upwards and downwards, and of course the absence of standardized spelling adds to the difficulty in interpreting those old dialects. Most of the surviving inscriptions are written in younger futhark characters, and originate mostly from Denmark or Sweden. Continental Europe was the first place where runes fell out of use (due to a plethora of other literary influences); second by rough estimate came England, where the Norman invasion quenched and overtook the Anglo-Saxon traditions. In Scandinavia runic rows underwent many mutations, including an emergence of a "staveless" runic row that consists simply of notches and nicks, where the vertical lines of the letters are removed. Other variations involved putting dots next to some runic characters to indicate different sounds. There are even some runic inscriptions that have explicitly Christian references. In some obscure rural parts of Norway, a quasi-runic row intermixed with some Latin characters survived as far as into the later part of the nineteenth century. If you've a question regarding the rune rows or translations, feel free to send them my way
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on May 24, 2009 7:42:50 GMT 2
We still do that here, fortunately. We a few,but we borrow ,give and talk bout books still, which is great! Indeed ya know l'll ask help, Hjalagh...
|
|
Crystiannia
Clansman
"Here is the deepest secret nobody knows..."
Posts: 384
|
Post by Crystiannia on May 25, 2009 7:42:09 GMT 2
Just reread Heinlein's "Stranger In A Strange Land." Was never big on sci-fi lit (I'm a fantasy gal through and through), but was always so fond of this story. I loved it again!
Also, not sure if it's available yet to all, but I read this interesting and odd tale called "The Secret History of Moscow" by Ekaterina Sedia. I read an advance copy so I don't know if that's been changed, but it was really crazy -- in a good way. It dealt with people turning into birds, forgotten pagan deities, and just so much other odd stuff. Very cool if you can find it!
|
|