CHAT: IDLE CHAT: Re: Spoilers for Verimak and Zeyli

>At any rate, since no one guessed the author, I thought I would
>give a hint with what I assumed to be a much more well-known
>poem.  This other one, which I like twenty-times better, Pablo,
>is from _The Tempest_,  and Ariel, the too delicate sprite, is
>the singer.
I've always liked Laurie Anderson's little word collage, where
she replaces the final couplet with another famous reference
to disaster at sea...

            Full fathom five they father lies:
            Of his bones are coral made;
            Those are pearls that were his eyes;
            Nothing of him doth fade
            But doth suffer a sea change
            Into something rich and strange...
            And I alone am left to tell the tale.
            Call me Ishmael.

Would it be sacrilege to say that I like that ending couplet
better than Shakespeare's?
(For what it's worth, I also like the reworking of "What a
Piece of Work is Man" from the musical "Hair" better than
the original passage in "Hamlet".  Call me a philistine, but
there it is...)

I actually saw a production of "The Tempest" for the first
time a couple weeks ago.  Enchanting!  I've loved Shakespeare
since before I was old enough to understand him, but the
language in "The Tempest" just blew me away.  I can't believe
I've overlooked it all these years.

I suppose I should do a Tokana translation of "Full Fathom
Five".  They're a sea people, who associate the open ocean
with the afterlife, so it's certainly culturally appropriate.
Unfortunately there are no words for pearls or coral in
Tokana.  Guess I should invent some...

Matt.

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Matt Pearson
mpearson@ucla.edu
UCLA Linguistics Department
405 Hilgard Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1543
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