Re: Glossing for "An die Freude"

andrew wrote:

> I should get my Symphony No 9 CD while I'm doing this.  But it's
> something that I listen to very loudly as it deserves, and I've only
> just put it back on the shelf.  I'll carry on playing Creatures of
> Prometheus instead.
I was thinking it'd be neat to work on a translation of Purcell's _The Indian
Queen_, which as baroque semi-operas go has a pretty good libretto,
by John Dryden no less; good, in the sense that it took skill to compose them.
(Most baroque libretti are about as meaningful and innovative as songs by
N'Sync or Britney Spears.)  The problem is I have never worked out
any systematic treatment of Phaleran poetics, so the result would be by
and large a literal glossing of the original, which would be somewhat boring.
I could probably take a reread of Aristotle's essay on the subject sometime.
<sigh> The subject matter is great, though, for Phalera:  it's about a decadant,
aristocratic society invading and obliterating New World societies who live
as innocent savages.  Phalerans, who are profoundly cynical in all respects,
don't think twice about abusing their own colonials, so lines like these would
really strike a chord with them:

INDIAN BOY:        By ancient prophecies we have been told
                                our land shall be subdu'd by one more old:
                                and see, that world's already hither come.
QUIVERA,
   INDIAN BOY:     If these be they, we welcome then our doom.
INDIAN BOY:        Their looks are such that mercy flows from thence,
                                more gentle than our native innocense.
                                By their protection let us beg to live:
                                they come not here to conquer, but forgive.

You even get the patronizing racism there too! Wow, it has just everything.
(Remember, of course, that I am replicating a society, not my own opinions!
Phalera is a society that just breeds Marxes and Bakunins like rabbits. They
are a people for whom Thomas Hobbes would be a radical leftist.  I have not yet
decided whether the Governor [=Emperor] should be a four-year-old who
dresses up in a leotards and a sun-outfit in his palace while singing "I am
the Rising Sun!", however.  That would add some flavor to it.  But, unfortunately,
it's already been done on Earth.)

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Tom Wier   |     "Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."
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