new posts

I've pretty well finished updating Euripides for the Brief Hist - basically a list of all the known plays, with some sparse reflections. This has been my delight over the past year, though it's hard to explain why. I don't know a word of ancient Greek - I can barely decipher the alphabet. One of the translators wrote: "The highest ideal of a translation from Greek is achieved when the reader flings it impatiently into the fire, and begins patiently to learn the language for himself." (This was in 1956, when the reader had an open fire and was tranquilly deemed to be masculine.) That isn't how it worked out in my case - the very availability of so many translations meant that learning classical Greek seemed quite a low priority compared with learning a few modern languages to the various levels of incompetence that I've managed to attain.

Also, recent articles on Intercapillary Space: Elizabeth Willis and John Gay. Very soon forthcoming: Catherine Daly, again.

I have future plans for pieces on Hjalmar Söderberg (Doktor Glas, of course), rob mclennan, Aase Berg, Pentti Saarikoski & Gunnar Björling. But if I'm off to Spain I might just translate some more Bécquer... - coincidentally there´s a translation of the whole of the Rimas just published by Shearsman, but I won´t look at this yet; it would spoil my fun.