Re: Hell hath no Fury (was: war and death are in my hand)

At 3:05 pm -0500 12/6/01, Wade, Guy wrote:
[snip]
>
>But Raymond has a good point.
Thanks  :)

>Whoever translated "Hell" may have lost the
>original meaning that made sense to the writer & his audience, unless the
>writer used an idiom that meant 'fiery place of torment.'
He didn't.  He merely says "the abode of the fearsome sisters".  The three
Fates were said to live Erebus which, itself, is pretty vague.  It seems to
be the darkest & lowest place of the underworld - certainly not fiery, nor
a place of torment for mortals.

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At 4:54 pm -0400 12/6/01, David Peterson wrote:
[snip]
>
>    Well, I'm not reading it in Latin.  In fact, I have a cheap Dover edition
>(cost me two bucks!  How about that?), so I make no apology for the
>translation I used (from the Latin).  I just liked the lines, whether true to
>the text or not.
Sorry if I seemed to be casting any blame your way - it was certainly not
intended.  I realized you were reading a translation & just liked the two
lines.

>And of course, I think everyone should've known this had
>nothing to do with judeo-christianity since I said it was from the Aeneid.
You most certainly did.

I merely intended to remind people about what you rightly said, as it
seemed to me that at least some hang-ups in the translation were being
caused by post-Vergilian concepts (I remember in my youth hearing an
'evangelical' preacher wax lyrical over a word in the King James version
which was, in fact, completely absent in the Greek!).

I thought in this context it might be helpful to give the Latin original.
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At 7:03 pm -0400 12/6/01, Roger Mills wrote:
[snip]
>
>We should take the translator (not you) to task for introducing the word,
>and so the concept of, "Hell", which was, clearly, not in the original.
>Even if the original had had "infernus" 'the nether regions???'
It didn't.

>(is that
>idea Roman, or a later Xn invention?)
Neither - far more ancient than both - going back, in fact, to a time when
the earth was flat and above it was the bright vault of the sky.  On the
earth lived men & beasts; but there were other beings.  On or beyond the
vault of the sky lived, bright celestial spirits/deities; on or beneath the
earth was a dark, mysterious world where other 'chthonic' spirits/deities
dwelt and here also resided, generally, the spirits of the dead.

In the ancient Greek religion, the bright celestial deities were the
Olympians; but there were other chthonic deities, including the three
Furies.  Both sets of deities, however, were to be feared; indeed, the
Olympians seem rather more arbitrary & capricious in their behavior than
the chthonic deities.

But by Vergil's time the simple flat-earth idea was long, long dead; the
Romans believe it was spherical and had started to develop more
sophisticated ideas.  Vergil just uses the traditional mythological for his
own ends.  The point in this passage is that Alecto is not a mortal, like
the arrogant young man who has just insulted her - she is otherwordly and
terrible!

I guess the translator used "Hell" to get across the idea of the Latin
'dirarum' (gen. pl); the adj. _dirus_ means 'frightening, terrible, to be
feared'; it had also developed a secondary meaning of 'ominous,
portentous'.  The point is that Alecto is not the feeble, minded old woman
Turnus supposed her to be, but a powerful, other-wordly being who is to be
feared.  I guess s/he used "Hell" to convey the sense of otherwordliness
and of fear.

Unforunately, 'Hell' has also accrued to itself meanings of 'fiery pit'
(quite out of place here) and 'place of eternal punishment (quite
irrelevant and, indeed, misleading here); also some translations seem to
have picked up on the idea of "evil", which is most certainly not there in
Vergil.
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At 3:48 pm -0400 12/6/01, Mia Soderquist wrote:
[snip]
>
>I made no such assumption. The information you give is
>interesting, but still completely inapplicable to this
>non-Earth culture. The underworld of ea-diwe is the
>afterlife of the warrior caste.
Yes, but whether the abode of the 'terrible sisters' (i.e. the Furies) is
beneath the earth is IMHO not relevant here.  The point is that Alecto is
(a) not of this mortal world, and (b) is to be feared.  It seems to me that
one's Conlang will have difficulty in translating the line and half from
Vergil only if the Conculture associated with it has (a) no concept of
otherworldliness, and/or (b) has no concept of fear.
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At 10:29 pm -0400 12/6/01, Sally Caves wrote:
>David: the Romans had a netherworld, indeed, as did the
>Greeks.  Vunggya, in Teonaht, refers to an underworld
>of ice and punishment that is NON-Christian.
...except, of course, in the lower circles of Dante's Hell  :)

[snip]
>
>Ray: the translations of this text from the Aeneid are
>charmingly reminiscent of the Relay Games that many
>of us are engaged in.  :)
They are, indeed.

Ray.

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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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