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

From:Matt Pearson <mpearson@...>
Date:Friday, May 14, 1999, 7:37
>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. ------------------------------------ Matt Pearson mpearson@ucla.edu UCLA Linguistics Department 405 Hilgard Avenue Los Angeles, CA 90095-1543 ------------------------------------