#American Literary Translators Association

[mortola]

<3 <3 <3 <3 ALTA i love you <3 <3 <3 <3 <3

[thevirginwitch]

DON'T CALL ME MABON

WHY MABON IS AN INAPPROPRIATE NAME FOR THE AUTUMN EQUINOX

by Anna Franklin

The name ‘Mabon’ as a term for the neopagan festival of the autumn equinox (along with the Saxon term ‘Litha’ for the summer solstice) was introduced in 1973 by the American witch and writer Aiden Kelly (b. 1940). His blog for 21st September 2012 explains:

“Back in 1973, I was putting together a “Pagan-Craft” calendar—the first of its kind, as far as I know—listing the holidays, astrological aspects, and other stuff of interest to Pagans. It offended my aesthetic sensibilities that there seemed to be no Pagan names for the summer solstice or the fall equinox equivalent to Ostara or Beltane—so I decided to supply them… I began wondering if there had been a myth similar to that of Kore in a Celtic culture. There was nothing very similar in the Gaelic literature, but there was in the Welsh, in the Mabinogion collection, the story of Mabon ap Modron (which translates as “Son of the Mother,” just as Kore simply meant “girl”), whom Gwydion rescues from the underworld, much as Theseus rescued Helen. That’s why I picked “Mabon” as a name for the holiday…” bd

Curiously, his own tradition, the New Reformed Orthodox Order of the Golden Dawn, did not follow him in this and instead called the autumn equinox ‘Rites of Eleusis’.  However, the term took off and was used in many American books, and by extension, the readers of those books in the UK and elsewhere.

The association of the god Mabon with the festival is certainly not an ancient or traditional despite the claims in various books and websites where you might read ‘the Celts celebrated the god Mabon on this date’.

In order to see why the name of Mabon for the autumn equinox is an inappropriate one we need to examine the tales of Mabon.

The Celtic God Maponius

There is certainly a Celtic god whose title was Latinized as Maponus, which is not an actual name but means something like ‘divine son’. He is known from a number of inscriptions in northern Britain and Gaul in which he is addressed as ‘Apollo Maponus’ identifying him with the Graeco-Roman sun-god Apollo. Like Apollo, all the evidence suggests that he was a god of the sun, music and hunting – significantly, he was not a god of the harvest or of the corn.

It is not known whether he was widely worshipped before the coming of the Romans, but with them his cult spread along Hadrian’s Wall amongst the Roman soldiers stationed there. Several stone heads found at the Wall are identified as representing Maponus.

He was also known in Gaul where he was invoked with a Latin inscription at Bourbonne-les-Bains, and on a lead cursing tablet  discovered at Chamalières, Puy-de-Dôme where he is invoked along with Lugus (Lugh) to quicken underworld spirits to right a wrong. 

It is possible that there are some place names associated with him, such as Ruabon in Denbighshire, which may or may not be a corruption of Rhiw Fabon, meaning ‘Hillside of Mabon’. be During the seventh century an unknown monk at the Monastery at Ravenna in Italy compiled what came to be called The Ravenna Cosmography, which was a list of all the towns and road-stations throughout the Roman Empire. It lists a Locus Maponi (‘place of Maponus’) which has been tentatively identified with the Lochmaben stone site.

It is possible that Mabon’s Irish equivalent is the god Aengus, also known as the Mac Óg (‘young son’).

 Literary Sources

A character called Mabon is found as a minor character in the Mabinogion, a collection of eleven – sometimes twelve – Welsh prose tales from the Middle Ages. He is called Mabon ap Modron, meaning ‘son of the mother’, which has led to speculation that his mother Modron (‘mother’) may be cognate with the Gaulish mother goddess Matrona. There are no inscriptions dedicated to her from ancient times, so this cannot be verified. Whether or not the Mabinogion tale of the hero Mabon stems from a thousand year old story of the god Maponus is uncertain, but since the stories contain the names of other known Celtic gods (transliterated into heroes) it is certainly possible.

The Mabinogion is a collection of medieval Welsh stories which would have been recorded by Christian monks. They don’t seem to have been very widely known until they were translated into English in 1849 by Lady Charlotte Guest, who invented the title Mabinogion since each of the four branches ends with the words “so ends this Branch of the Mabinogi”. In Welsh, mab means ‘son’ or ‘boy’ or ‘youth’, so she concluded that mabinogi meant ‘a story for children’ and (erroneously) that mabinogion was its plural.  Another possibility is that it comes from the proposed Welsh mabinog meaning something like ‘bardic student’.   

The stories now included in the Mabinogion are found in two manuscripts, the older White Book of Rhydderch (c.1300–1325) and the later Red Book of Hergest (c.1375–1425) and Lady Charlotte Guest used only the latter as her source, though later translations have drawn on both books.

The first four tales, called The Four Branches of the Mabinogi, are divided into Pwyll, Branwen, Manawydan and Math and each of these includes the character Pryderi. The Mabinogion scholar W.G.Gruffydd suggested that the four branches of the collection represent the birth, exploits, imprisonment and death of Pryderi.

Mabon is mentioned in the Mabinogion story of The Dream of Rhonabwy in which he is described as one of the King’s chief advisors and fights alongside him at the Battle of Badon. His biggest role comes in the story of Culhwch and Olwen (originally from White Book of Rhydderch). In it is the only known reference to Olwen, and Mabon is still a very minor character in the story. One task of the heroes is to search for Mabon ap Modron, who was imprisoned in a watery Gloucester dungeon. Arthur’s cousin Mabon had been taken from his mother Modron when he was only three nights old, and no one knew whether he was alive or dead. After asking the oldest animals,  they were finally directed to the oldest creature of all: the great Salmon of Llyn Llyw. The salmon recalled hearing of Mabon, and told them that as he swam daily by the wall of Caer Loyw, he heard a constant lamentation. The salmon took Cei and Gwrhyr upon his back to the castle, and they heard Mabon’s cries bewailing his fate. Mabon could not be ransomed, so seeing that force was the only answer, the knights fetched Arthur and his war band to attack the castle. Riding on the salmon’s back, Cai broke through the wall and collected Mabon, both fleeing on the back of the salmon.

Let us suppose for a moment that the god Maponus and the literary hero Mabon are one and the same. We must remember that all the evidence points to Maponus being the young sun god, his youth meaning that he would represent the morning sun or the sun newly reborn after the winter solstice. His theft from his mother after three days would make sense in this light – the three days being the three days the sun stands still at the winter solstice. The imprisonment of the young god underground equates to the sun in the underworld before he is ‘released’ to begin his reign as the new sun. In Culhwch and Olwen, Mabon is said to be imprisoned inside a tower in Gloucester, from which he is freed by Cei and Bedwyr. The ‘missing sun’ or ‘imprisoned sun’ is a premise found in the solar myths of many cultures to explain the night or the shorter days of winter, especially those around the three days of the winter solstice. Such tales often include themes of captivity or the theft of the sun (i.e. the god or object that represents it) and its rescue by a band of heroes, such as Jason and the Argonauts rescuing the Golden Fleece (the sun) from the dragon or the Lithuanian sun goddess Saule, was held in a tower by powerful king, rescued by the zodiac using a giant sledgehammer, or the Japanese sun goddess Amaterasu hiding in a cave.

An earlier source that mentions Mabon is the tenth century poem Pa Gur, in which Arthur recounts the great deeds of his knights in order to gain entrance to a fortress guarded by Glewlwyd Gafaelfawr. In this, Arthur describes Mabon fab Madron as one of his men and says that Mabon is a servant of Uther Pendragon. A second Mabon is mentioned, Mabon fab Mellt (‘Mabon Son of Lightning’) and this is interesting, since the sky/storm god is often the father of the sun god in myth, as Zeus is the father of Apollo.

Mabon defeats the monstrous boar, and in myth the boar is often a symbol of winter and the underworld, just as the sun after the winter solstice defeats winter. Mabon then is the divine sun-child born at the winter solstice and this is his festival – he is not the aged god of the harvest or the seed in the ground as Kore is in Greek myth. As Sorita d’Este says:

“Honour Mabon as a Wizard, a Merlin type figure, as the oldest of men and beasts, honour him as the Son of the Mother, and a hero – don’t take that away from him by ignorantly using his name as if it is a different word for Autumn Equinox.  If you really believe that the Old Gods of these lands still live, that they should be honoured and respected, then do that.  Don’t join the generations who tried to belittle the Gods in an effort to diminish their power.”[1]

© Anna Franklin, The Autumn Equinox, History, Lore and Celebration, Lear Books, 2012

[life-imitates-art-far-more]

Romaine Brooks (1874-1970) "Una, Lady Troubridge" (1924) Oil on canvas Located in the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC, United States Una Troubridge was a British aristocrat, literary translator, and the lover of Radclyffe Hall, author of the 1928 groundbreaking lesbian novel, "The Well of Loneliness." Troubridge appears with a sense of formality and importance typical of upper-class portraiture, but with the sitter's prized dachshunds in place of the traditional hunting dog. Troubridge's impeccably tailored clothing, cravat, and bobbed hair convey the fashionable and daring androgyny associated with the so-called new woman. Her monocle suggested multiple symbolic associations to contemporary British audiences: it alluded to Troubridge's upper-class status, her Englishness, her sense of rebellion, and possibly her lesbian identity.

[xxscarletxrosexx]

Kiss Distance: When Feelings Can't Reach | Linguistic Analyses on Rick & Rachel's lines foreshadow for TwiYor, DamiAnya, and Marthanderson from Ch. 105.5 (PART 1)

This is gonna be a take from the linguistic + literary lens regarding Rick and Rachel's lines from Spy x Family's Ch. 105.5.

Spoilers beware.

So let's talk about the film: Kiss Distance.

On X/Twitter, all I said was my analysis senses were tingling. There was a strong linguistic and creative writing/literary devices indicating foreshadow from the movie, and this just surprisingly got attention.

So now, I'm finally addressing this specific section in a long analysis post.

I cannot stress how much I love Endo-san's short chapters. There are so many things going on in terms of literary devices, and now, I think he plays with linguistics in them. I believe that the last time he did this was during Ch. 90.1 when we learned that Ania's name turned into Anya. I remember freaking the hell out that linguistics was touched upon, cuz honestly, what manga does that? Someone is finally paying attention to linguistics in a story, and it's just further pulling me into my rabbit-hole fixation and obsession with Spy x Family.

Although the chapter is only 5 pages long, it has SO MANY THINGS TO COVER. I won't be able to do that in this post, but I DID cover the entire thing in a video analysis that you can watch here:

What I will mainly cover in this post will be the film: Kissing Distance and the characters (Yor, Anya, Becky, and Martha) watching it + post-watching it. I cannot stress the ridiculous efforts embedded in just 3 pages, so I need to divide these sections into a linguistic lens (part 1) and a literary lens (part 2).

Let's start with the linguistic lens.

Spelling reflects language association + cultural history + maybe it's a meme too.

Spelling reflects language association

At the top right corner of page 2, we've got some English texts on the movie's billboard. "Interesting" and "Entertaining" are stacked on the left while "Movie" and "Theater" are stacked on the right.

Of these words, the word that stands out the most to me is Theater. English experts recognize that there are 2 spellings of this word: theater and theatre. These spelling tell you that it is either American (theater) or British (theatre).

I'm no expert on geography, but I believed that Ostania and Westalis were loosely based in Europe. I think I read someone talk about the architecture in Berlint also reflected European style houses--I'm so sorry that I can't recall who addressed it. The wars also felt like they were influenced by WWI and WWII. But what I do know is English it's my goddamn expertise. I'm not gonna be an uptight ass about pointing out every nook and cranny of inconsistent English, because that's just a whole lot of work for a creator and his team can do, realistically speaking. If Endo-san wanted perfect control in the language he's portraying in SxF, then he would need a dedicated team of linguists to help with translations. It may surprise you but there are many variations of a language (ex: English has AAVE. It's still English but used by this group of speakers--more on this later). But this is a hell hole of work, so I'm giving him so much slack on it as well as the translators handling the translations (like, really. No hate. Thank you for your services <3).

Another caveat: the English translation may also be a reflection of the translators. Maybe they favor American English than British English--who really knows? But I digress.

I'll stick to what I already know of the Ostanian language: It's English (variety is unspecificed, feels American) + Japanese.

Spelling shows cultural history

Next, let's address that these are adjectives slapped on a movie billboard. Normally, American movie theaters do not post adjectives. They post about the movie, the actors, etc. Comments about movies theaters being "family friendly" are subtext under the current film, etc. Here's an example of a movie theater from the 1950s found on gettyimages:

So this brings me to consider that English is being used as kazari eigo which means 'decorative English' in Japanese. In Chris Broad's (AbroadinJapan) words:

"... English in Japan is most commonly used as a form of cheap decorations and prestige, or value to a product and because so few people here understand it, the companies that plaster English all over their products and items rarely bother to check that it makes any sense." Reference:

Maybe it's a meme

This chapter, overall, felt really silly. There were silly drawings, silly play on words, silly foreshadows, etc. I couldn't help but think that maybe Endo-san was throwing in something amusing in these small things (cuz he's got attention to detail). Is it:

Interesting Entertaining Movie Theater OR Interesting Movie Entertaining Theater

It reminds me of:

Endo-san does have a tendency to incorporate memes into his manga/anime. Like... was Anya's jump not a Jojo's meme...? //sweats

I don't know if I'm severely poisoned by JJBA memes but, yeah, I saw it since the day this chapter came out. I just thought:

ANYA = DIO BRANDO

Anyway... whether it was intentional or unintentional (for this section), I love when mangakas incorporate something meme-y

2. Ricky's English Variety

This is where I went berzerk in this chapter with all of these small linguistic details. Ricky's speech says so much about him.

His introduction of himself is that he's a broken razor. Essentially, he's painting the bad-boy ML image. But he's not just any bad boy. He's a bad boy with issues controlling himself/the situation. In other words he's toxic and not good for us healing men/women //joking. However, out of all of these words, the one that stands out to me is shaddup. His speech suddenly changed because romance conflicts need to have a wall between the main couple. In this case, other than Ricky's pompadour, it's his speech. What we have here is a clash between English varieties.

To understand what is variety in linguistics, you might be familiar with these words: language, dialect, vernacular, and accent. Language is the most obvious, but dialect, vernacular, and accent can be a lil confusing to distinguish. So here's a definition and a chart I made to help distinguish them:

- Language: a system of communication that uses words, grammar, and spelling to convey meaning, languages can be spoken, written, or signed-- Ex: English, Spanish, Arabic, etc. - Dialect: is a variation of a language that is spoken by a specific group of people, such as a community, culture, or region. It includes differences in vocabulary, grammar, and how the language is used -- Ex: American English vs. British English vs. Australian English - Vernacular: is a type of dialect that's used by the "common people" of a region. It's a non-standard dialect that's spoken rather than written. Vernacular language is often made up of slang or regional terms -- Ex: African American Vernacular English (AAVE) - Accent: is the way people in a specific group pronounce words, which is also know as the prosody of speech. Prosody refers to the tone and musicality of someone's speech -- Ex: Boston accent

In Summary (a simplified version of the above info): Language is the standard language (aka what you learn in grammar class and in public speaking class) Dialect is born from language where it becomes variations of the language and adopts different grammar, vocabulary, and language use (like American English vs. British English vs. Australian English) Vernacular is a type of dialect used by "common people" and often include slang words and regional terms (think African American Vernacular English, or AAVE) Accent is a type of dialect that is mainly focused on prosody, or how a person pronounces a word (think Boston accent)

Now that you understand the linguistic terminologies, here's a fun exercise to show you what I see:

Ricky predominantly uses the standard English language in the film:

The moment a language's word has a (legitimate) spelling change, it automatically turns into a dialect (which touches on my previous topic about theater vs. theatre).

These are Ricky's English accents:

Finally, this is Ricky using an English vernacular:

POP QUIZ!

Now that you know what English variety is, can you guess which one Ricky has? If you guessed dialect, then you're half a step there. If you guessed accent, you're so close! But the correct answer is vernacular. This is because accent overlaps with vernacular, but accent stops at word pronunciations. Vernacular has accent and slang.

3. Discourse Analysis on Ricky's Vernacular

You should now have a good understanding of Ricky's vernacular, but now let's talk about why this is significant in discourse analysis.

Linguists who specialize in discourse analysis are responsible for analyzing why and how people speak a certain way. Many linguistic features are observed (lexicons, syntax, phonology, semantics, etc.) but what they share in common is who it's presented to. They're looking at the relationship between interlocutors (people who take part in the dialogue/conversation). In other words, depending on who you converse with, the way you speak is affected.

You may have already realized that Ricky is code-switching (a speaker switches between one or more languages and/or varieties) between standard English and his English vernacular.

Now, pay attention to who Ricky speaks to and when he code-switches.

We can observe in the above panel that Ricky uses standard English when speaking to Rachel. This is because Ricky has linguistically profiled her.

How am I so sure that he's linguistically profiled her? Well, because the majority of human beings unconsciously linguistically profile their appearances. Linguistic profiling does have a similar general word: stereotype. The only difference is that based on appearance, we make a split-second assumption and decision on how we talk to that person.

In this case, Ricky spoke first (exercising dominance through initiation) and used standard English. From a linguistic lens, Ricky is telling me: hey, I know I look like a bad boy, and you may have linguistically profiled me as someone who didn't have good education, which would have reflected in my speech, but I'm more than competent to use standard English. And because I can use standard English, I'm on the same equal playing field (metaphorically and linguistically speaking) as Rachel.

But then, notice the moment, Rachel tells him that she hates Ruffians like [him], Ricky's replies with an accent of shuddap (shut up). Linguistically, he's drawing a line between them. This also indicates that they're no longer on the same side before adding his threat: "I'll cut you!"

In this scene, notice Ricky's accent comes back again, but who is it directed to? An enemy or someone from his linguistic background. He uses this accent with an interlocutor of the same English variety background to make it clear to the person he's beaten up that he's speaking in the "language" that they both completely understand.

But, the moment Ricky speaks to Rachel, he reverts back to standard English. What this means is that Ricky is linguistically assimilating/aligning himself with Rachel to show that he's on her side. This can also mean that he's making himself appealing to her through discourse. On the other hand, Rachel makes herself appealing through physical means (her taste in clothing has changed--more on this under literary analysis).

In this scene, Ricky changes appearance (more on this under literary analysis) and he speaks using standard English. But the moment he loses his pompadour, guess what happens?

Ricky goes back to his true self and shows it through using English vernacular.

Rachel has never changed in her English, so she's always been true to herself. It's Ricky who goes through these changes. And it becomes a beautiful and romantic moment of a man undergoing change not only visually but linguistically.

4. Language parallel/mirroring between the anime and the manga

The fact that Endo-san decided to give Ricky an English vernacular in the English translation of the manga reflects his attention to details between the manga and the anime adaptation.

Linguistics in Anime (what you hear)

Maybe you've noticed, maybe you haven't, but Takuya Eguchi, Loid's voice actor, ingeniously incorporated different prosodic features when assuming roles for [redacted], Loid Forger, Twilight, and Robert. Catte-b covers this in her Leitmotifs in the Spy x Family soundtrack. Piracytheorist also provided a video demonstrating Loid, [Redacted], and Twilight's voices. In both posts, Eguchi's changing voice is called timbre (Catte-B and Piracytheorist have a music background). Timbre is defined as:

In other words, timbre is an individual's voice quality or vocal signature. It's how listeners can recognize a singer regardless of what song they sing and how anime watchers can identify a VA's voice by the character's name in another anime--there's just a certain quality in a person's voice that makes them identifiable.

Because of this definition, timbre is unfortunately not the correct terminology. Using vocal/voice timbre when describing vocal register, at the end of the day, is just pitch. Catte-B and Piracytheorist, however, are not wrong in their analyses. They have correctly identified one of the characteristics of speech and even provided vocal qualties (sharp, flat, soft, etc.) but the more appropriate term should be prosodic features.

I want to highlight the most important thing about prosodic features and it's the features that make it up: intonation, stress, rhythm, pitch, and pauses.

Intonation: is the variation of pitch across a phrase or sentence. > in a way, it's creating a melody when speaking. > its purpose in spoken language is to convey meaning. This is usually the case in tonal languages that require a specific pitch to indicate a word. However, in English, intonation is present when we ask a question (the last few words tend to be higher-pitched) vs. a statement which is either consistent in pitch or can sometimes be lower-pitched. Stress: involves giving prominence to one or more syllables in a word. This is achieved through increasing the length, volume, or pitch of a syllable, or by changing the vowel quality. > stress is important for helping listeners understand meaning / word class and distinguish words during rapid speech (ex: address, graduate, permit etc.) > it can be used to emphasize a specific word of a sentence (ex: Where did you go last night? vs. Where did you go last night? vs. Where did you go last night?) Rhythm: refers to the sense of movement and flow of speech. It's a combination of stress, length, and number of syllables. > mostly concerned with syllables and larger parts of speech rather than phonetic segments like consonants or vowels > important for making speech sound flow well and helps us understand what's being said > 2 most common types of rhythm in language are stress-timed and syllable-timed (English typically uses a stress-timed rhythm) Pitch: indicates highness or lowness of sound. > A person's pitch can reflect friendliness and warmth from the upper register (higher pitch spectrum) to mysterious and sexy with the lower register (lower pitch spectrum)--or at least, this is a consensus opinion that I've heard in English-speaking communities when it comes to the opinion of an individual's vocal pitch for both men and women. Pauses: a break in speaking or a moment of silence that can help add structure to the speech. Pauses have several functions: > gives listeners time to comprehend and digest the information > can be used to emphasize words or ideas > helps speakers transition between ideas > prevent rambling > can signal speech breaks, especially in languages that utilize pausing as a prominent cue > can denote high-information content

There are more prosodic features listed like juncture, loudness, duration, and tempo, but this is where it'll get too specific. Rhythm kinda already accounts for duration and tempo. Juncture is relating to annotating pauses (like indicate when a pause is greater than a certain milisecond), and loudness could kinda fall under the category of rhythm.

Timbre isn't listed as a feature, but I think it should simply because timbre is what makes your voice your voice. And because timbre is the "vocal signature", the shouldn't change--not unless you're as vocally talented as Tara Strong, who can easily change her timbre with different characters.

Eguchi-san does, however, have some roles where his timbre does change, specifically as Shuuji Hanma from Tokyo Revengers and Kazuya Kujou from Gosick (he does have some moments when he slips back to his familiar timbre).

Now that you have an understanding of what prosodic features are, you'll be able to hear that Eguchi-san's timbre doesn't change as [redacted], Twilight, Loid, or Robert. I believe Eguchi-san intentionally kept the same timbre for [redacted], Twilight, Loid, and Robert because they're all staying close to home. You can still recognize it's still the same person. But what changes are other prosodic features (intonation, pitch, rhythm, stress, and pauses). The following video is from Piracytheorist's post and the YouTube video is from Calle-B.

Here are my descriptions of the 4 voices:

[Redacted] - Intonation: N/A. Japanese is not a tonal language. - Stress: vowels and consonants are even for syllables - Rhythm: slow and steady - Pitch: low register, feels like it can be the middle (makes sense since this is the voice he's born with) - Pauses: frequent pauses (also, no way in hell you can convince me to measure the mili-second of his pause) - Tone: warm and soft - Other quality(-ies): reminds me of slight head-mix dominant (60% - 70%). In singing, a mixed voice is when a singer mixes his/her/their head voice and chest voice together (you might commonly know this as belting). But with mix voices, the singer can choose to make it an even mix of both head and chest, or leaning to either more head or more chest. Twilight - Intonation: N/A. Japanese is not a tonal language - Stress: consonants, vowels, syllables, and long phrases are rushed - Rhythm: his speed is fast. it's like water gushing out - Pitch: low(est) register. This is probably the deepest voice he can go while maintaining his timbre - Pauses: They only exist when a completed thought is finished. Twilight, BREATHE, man - Tone: cold and sharp - Other quality(-ies): sometimes his low register have a bassy quality to it Loid Forger - Intonation: N/A - Stress: His consonants and vowels are spoken fast in some syllables but also have a slight elongation typically towards the last few words of a completed thought - Rhythm: fast like Twilights, but has an upbeat rhythm to it - Pitch: upper register (it's the customer service voice lol) - Pauses: It's a mix of Twilight and [Redacted]'s. He has moments where he pauses after a long completed thought. Sometimes, he pauses in between a few words/syllables. Pauses feel irregular here--like he doesn't know if he should relax of speed up (as if he's being pulled to either Twilight or [redacted]'s pause pacing) - Tone: sounds cheerful - Other quality(-ies): 80% head-mix voice. The chest voice is still there, but head voice stands out Robert - Intonation: N/A. Japanese is not a tonal language. - Stress: elongated vowels and consonants -- similar to [redacted]. - Rhythm: originally slow and drawl. But as soon as he realizes that "Robert's mission is over", he starts speaking fast like Twilight - Pitch: low register and soft - Pauses: He has similar pauses to [redacted]. There seems to be a lil bit of longer pauses to indicate passiveness (reinforce the boring image of Robert) - Tone: monotone and soft - Other quality(-ies): head voice. The chest voice seems to be absent (chest voice is perceived as the power in singing and speech) as to reflect Robert as someone who is small and doesn't have much personality (as to not stand out during this identity). This voice is achieved by keeping your voice low but above a whisper. When "Robert's mission is over", the chest voice emerges and his head voice becomes head-mix.

Prosodic features are best accurately portrayed in discourse, meaning it's exclusively for speaking, not writing. So, how can Endo-san incorporate any linguistic feature in writing? We've already answered that with the analyses above: spelling.

Linguistics in the manga (what you read)

I've already went into great detail about spelling reflecting dialect, so I won't regurgitate what I've already covered. Instead, I want to focus on the fact that Endo-san actually acknowledges and uses prosodic features to mirror the 2 mediums of Spy x Family. This is significant because it reinforces the mirroring characters between Ricky and Loid. After all, it's going to be a foreshadow. Normally, I'd talk more about foreshadow under a literary lens, but for once, foreshadow is illustrated through linguistics.

In discourse analysis, the way you speak almost always portrays your identity.

Ricky's English vernacular is his real speech. > [Redacted]'s voice is Loid/Twilight's real speech, which often came out in the presence of Yor Forger.

Ricky speaks in standard English to mask his real voice and make himself more appealing to Rachel. > Loid's voice is used to mask both Twilight and [redacted].

Ricky gives up his pompadour (the most important thing in his life--which also happens to be a part of his identity) to destroy the "barrier" between him and Rachel. In doing so, he goes back to speaking with his English vernacular. > FORESHADOW: Loid will give up one or two of his identities for Yor (it might be Twilight and/or Loid). In exchange, [redacted] will come back.

Another possible foreshadow is what Rachel says about recognizing the importance of Ricky's pompadour to him. Because Rachel is a parallel character to Yor Forger, it can be implied that Yor would recognize how important Loid's identity is to him. In a previous analysis, I mentioned that Ch. 90.1, is the closest thing to an identity reveal. When Yor carved out Anya's name as Ania, she never once questioned it. She also didn't question when she had to carve another sign and spelled it with Anya. I'm aware of the caveat in this claim, such as Yor lacking education in Ostanian orthography which is why she doesn't react.

Be it grasping at straws or not, Yor has the emotional maturity to bounce back from the shock of an identity reveal. Yes, Yor would be sad and hurt to find out that Twilight is a spy from the opposition, but she would understand. They know they're both orphans because of the war. Yor already has a positive bias towards Loid based on observing his behavior at home, in his efforts to provide a better future for Anya, regardless of blood relationship. The point is, Yor is already infatuated with him and her feelings for him will influence her compassion and understanding for the person he's become, so bouncing back from feeling betrayal (not the romantic kind) would be faster for her than Loid.

Loid, on the other hand, may have more reluctance towards accepting the identity reveal (this is also mentioned in my Ch. 90.1 analysis). This is mainly because he's been conditioned to be skeptical and overanalyzing. So, he'll definitely need time to brood and reflect on their situation. Or, maybe he just might have already reached a point where he's just tired, and deflatingly accepts the situation. He'll self-loathe himself for being Westalis's best spy only to have married a legendary Garden assassin--seeing both as a win and loss (he'd be the type to say that he should be dead right now because his identity was revealed to the deadliest enemy). The confession of their love for one another just might be the thing to smooth out the wrinkles.

Someone once commented that, technically, losing Twilight as an identity isn't technically a loss. Twilight was born from a sacrifice. Loid technically isn't a loss either since he was born as a role for Twilight to play. Which leaves [redacted]. Like the film for Ricky, [redacted]'s foreshadowed arrival is just an opportunity for him to come in full circle.

PHEW.

This was a long linguistic analysis of these few pages, and in real-time this took me 8 hours to write. I did lose a night of sleep cuz my brain hyper-fixated on writing this. Help. But we're not done yet. The knowledge that you've acquired will definitely be beneficial through a literary lens in part 2.

I'll update this post with a link when Part 2 is finished.

[fatehbaz]

Just in case, some might enjoy. Had to organize some notes.

These are just some of the newer texts that had been promoted in the past few years at the online home of the American Association of Geographers. At: [aag dot org/new-books-for-geographers/]

Tried to narrow down selections to focus on Indigenous, Black, anticolonial, Latin American, oceanic/archipelagic geographies; imaginaries and environmental perception; mobility, borders, carceral/abolition geography; literary and musical ecologies.

---

New stuff, early 2024:

A Caribbean Poetics of Spirit (Hannah Regis, University of the West Indies Press, 2024)

Constructing Worlds Otherwise: Societies in Movement and Anticolonial Paths in Latin America (Raúl Zibechi and translator George Ygarza Quispe, AK Press, 2024)

Fluid Geographies: Water, Science, and Settler Colonialism in New Mexico (K. Maria D. Lane, University of Chicago Press, 2024)

Hydrofeminist Thinking With Oceans: Political and Scholarly Possibilities (Tarara Shefer, Vivienne Bozalek, and Nike Romano, Routledge, 2024)

Making the Literary-Geographical World of Sherlock Holmes: The Game Is Afoot (David McLaughlin, University of Chicago Press, 2025)

Mapping Middle-earth: Environmental and Political Narratives in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Cartographies (Anahit Behrooz, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2024)

Midlife Geographies: Changing Lifecourses across Generations, Spaces and Time (Aija Lulle, Bristol University Press, 2024)

Society Despite the State: Reimagining Geographies of Order (Anthony Ince and Geronimo Barrera de la Torre, Pluto Press, 2024)

---

New stuff, 2023:

The Black Geographic: Praxis, Resistance, Futurity (Camilla Hawthorne and Jovan Scott Lewis, Duke University Press, 2023)

Activist Feminist Geographies (Edited by Kate Boyer, Latoya Eaves and Jennifer Fluri, Bristol University Press, 2023)

The Silences of Dispossession: Agrarian Change and Indigenous Politics in Argentina (Mercedes Biocca, Pluto Press, 2023)

The Sovereign Trickster: Death and Laughter in the Age of Dueterte (Vicente L. Rafael, Duke University Press, 2022)

Ottoman Passports: Security and Geographic Mobility, 1876-1908 (İlkay Yılmaz, Syracuse University Press, 2023)

The Practice of Collective Escape (Helen Traill, Bristol University Press, 2023)

Maps of Sorrow: Migration and Music in the Construction of Precolonial AfroAsia (Sumangala Damodaran and Ari Sitas, Columbia University Press, 2023)

---

New stuff, late 2022:

B.H. Roberts, Moral Geography, and the Making of a Modern Racist (Clyde R. Forsberg, Jr.and Phillip Gordon Mackintosh, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2022)

Environing Empire: Nature, Infrastructure and the Making of German Southwest Africa (Martin Kalb, Berghahn Books, 2022)

Sentient Ecologies: Xenophobic Imaginaries of Landscape (Edited by Alexandra Coțofană and Hikmet Kuran, Berghahn Books 2022)

Colonial Geography: Race and Space in German East Africa, 1884–1905 (Matthew Unangst, University of Toronto Press, 2022)

The Geographies of African American Short Fiction (Kenton Rambsy, University of Mississippi Press, 2022)

Knowing Manchuria: Environments, the Senses, and Natural Knowledge on an Asian Borderland (Ruth Rogaski, University of Chicago Press, 2022)

Punishing Places: The Geography of Mass Imprisonment (Jessica T. Simes, University of California Press, 2021)

---

New stuff, early 2022:

Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-fatness as Anti-Blackness (Da’Shaun Harrison, 2021)

Coercive Geographies: Historicizing Mobility, Labor and Confinement (Edited by Johan Heinsen, Martin Bak Jørgensen, and Martin Ottovay Jørgensen, Haymarket Books, 2021)

Confederate Exodus: Social and Environmental Forces in the Migration of U.S. Southerners to Brazil (Alan Marcus, University of Nebraska Press, 2021)

Decolonial Feminisms, Power and Place (Palgrave, 2021)

Krakow: An Ecobiography (Edited by Adam Izdebski & Rafał Szmytka, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021)

Open Hand, Closed Fist: Practices of Undocumented Organizing in a Hostile State (Kathryn Abrams, University of California Press, 2022)

Unsettling Utopia: The Making and Unmaking of French India (Jessica Namakkal, 2021)

---

New stuff, 2020 and 2021:

Mapping the Amazon: Literary Geography after the Rubber Boom (Amanda Smith, Liverpool University Press, 2021)

Geopolitics, Culture, and the Scientific Imaginary in Latin America (Edited by María del Pilar Blanco and Joanna Page, 2020)

Reconstructing public housing: Liverpool’s hidden history of collective alternatives (Matt Thompson, University of Liverpool Press, 2020)

The (Un)governable City: Productive Failure in the Making of Colonial Delhi, 1858–1911 (Raghav Kishore, 2020)

Multispecies Households in the Saian Mountains: Ecology at the Russia-Mongolia Border (Edited by Alex Oehler and Anna Varfolomeeva, 2020)

Urban Mountain Beings: History, Indigeneity, and Geographies of Time in Quito, Ecuador (Kathleen S. Fine-Dare, 2019)

City of Refuge: Slavery and Petit Marronage in the Great Dismal Swamp, 1763-1856 (Marcus P. Nevius, University of Georgia Press, 2020)

[metamatar]

Literature produced in the ex-colonial countries but produced directly in languages which had been imported initially from Europe provides one kind of archive for the metropolitan university to construe the textual formation of ‘Third World Literature’; but this is not the only archive available, for the period after decolonization has also witnessed great expansion and consolidation of literary traditions in a number of indigenous languages as well [...] Not much of this kind of literature is directly available to the metropolitan literary theorists because, erudite as they usually are in metropolitan languages, hardly any of them has ever bothered with an Asian or African language. But parts and shades of these literatures also become available in the West, essentially in the following three ways. By far the greater part of the archive through which knowledge about the so-called Third World is generated in the metropolises has traditionally been, and continues to be, assembled within the metropolitan institutions of research and explication, which are characteristically administered and occupied by overwhelmingly Western personnel. Non-Western individuals have also been employed in these same institutions – more and more so during the more recent, post-colonial period, although still almost always in subordinate positions. The archive itself is dispersed through myriad academic disciplines and genres of writing – from philological reconstruction of the classics to lowbrow reports by missionaries and administrators; from Area Study Programmes and even the central fields of the Humanities to translation projects sponsored by Foundations and private publishing houses alike – generating all kinds of classificatory practices. A particularly large mechanism in the assembly of this archive has been the institutionalized symbiosis between the Western scholar and the local informant, which is frequently re-enacted now – no doubt in far more subtle ways –between the contemporary literary theorist of the West, who typically does not know a non-Western language, and the indigenous translator or essayist, who typically knows one or two. This older, multidisciplinary and somewhat chaotic archive is greatly expanded in our own time, especially in the area of literary studies, by a developing machinery of specifically literary translations – a machinery not nearly as highly developed as the one that exists for the circulation of texts among the metropolitan countries themselves, but not inconsiderable on its own terms. Apart from the private publishing houses and the university presses which may publish such translations of their own volition or under sponsorship programmes, there are state institutions such as the Sahitya Akademi in India, as well as international agencies such as UNESCO, not to speak of the American ‘philanthropic’foundations such as the Rockefeller-funded Asia Society, which have extensive programmes for such publications. Supplementing these translations are the critical essay and its associated genres, usually produced by an indigenous intellectual who reads the indigenous language but writes in one of the metropolitan ones. Some of this kind of writing becomes available in the metropolises, creating versions and shadows of texts produced in other spaces of the globe, but texts which frequently come with the authority of the indigenous informant.

Aijaz Ahmed, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures

[justforbooks]

The profile of longtime Johns Hopkins Professor Richard A. Macksey

Richard A. Macksey, was a celebrated Johns Hopkins University professor whose affiliation with the university spanned six and a half decades.

A legendary figure not only in his own fields of critical theory, comparative literature, and film studies but across all the humanities, Macksey possessed enormous intellectual capacity and a deeply insightful human nature. He was a man who read and wrote in six languages, was instrumental in launching a new era in structuralist thought in America, maintained a personal library containing a staggering collection of books and manuscripts, inspired generations of students to follow him to the thorniest heights of the human intellect, and penned or edited dozens of volumes of scholarly works, fiction, poetry, and translation.

Macksey loved classical literature, foreign films, comic novels, and medical narratives—all subjects he taught at one time or another. Conversations with him were marked by a tendency to leap from one topic to another, connected by his seemingly boundless knowledge, prodigious memory, and sense of humor. For many at Hopkins and far beyond, he was no less than the embodiment of the humanities, both in intellect and spirit.

"Dick Macksey was a Johns Hopkins legend," says James Harris, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, director of the Developmental Neuropsychiatry Clinic, and a longtime friend of Macksey's. "He was a teacher, mentor, and friend to generations of Hopkins faculty and students. To me, he was the most erudite, kind, gracious, and considerate person I have ever known. He will be deeply missed and always remembered as the epitome of what makes Johns Hopkins a world-class university."

Born in New Jersey on July 25, 1931, Macksey planned to be a doctor and had launched his collection of medical books by the age of 5. After beginning his undergraduate studies at Princeton, he transferred to Hopkins and earned a bachelor's degree in 1953 and master's degree in 1954, both in Writing Seminars. He went on to earn a doctorate in comparative literature from Hopkins in 1957, writing his dissertation on Proust in French. While completing his thesis, he took a teaching position at Loyola College in Baltimore (now Loyola University Maryland) and after receiving his degree, returned to Hopkins as an assistant professor in the Writing Seminars. Quickly expanding beyond the writing workshops and "modern writers" courses he taught, he soon introduced a film class and initiated the first courses at Johns Hopkins in African American literature, women's studies, and scholarly publishing.

In 1966, Macksey led the charge in founding the Johns Hopkins Humanities Center—now the Department of Comparative Thought and Literature—as a meeting ground and incubator for problems, ideas, and discussions across disciplines. A degree-granting department, the Humanities Center sponsored graduate and undergraduate courses in literature, art, philosophy, and history; ran a graduate program; and maintained an active program of visiting scholars, professors, and lecturers. Macksey served as its director from 1970 until 1982, and he was a professor on its faculty until his retirement in 2010. Macksey continued to teach several courses until as recently as spring 2018.

The same year he launched the Humanities Center, Macksey joined French literary theorist and philosopher of social sciences René Girard, then associate professor of French at Hopkins, and deconstructionist and literary critic Eugenio Donato (both of whom co-founded the Humanities Center with Macksey) in convening an international symposium called The Languages of Criticism and the Sciences of Man. It was the first time that many leading figures of European structuralist criticism—including Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, Roland Barthes, and Paul de Man—presented their ideas to the American academic community, throwing open a new conduit to avant-garde French theory and placing Hopkins at the center of an international intellectual conversation.

At the symposium, Derrida first presented his groundbreaking critique of structuralism, creating an entirely new perspective on how philosophy, literature, and language relate to and affect one another. The symposium's proceedings became the landmark study titled The Structuralist Controversy. The gathering set an intellectual standard that no U.S. humanities conference since has been able to match in intensity or intellectual stature, and heralded—or perhaps precipitated—the field's shift from structuralism to post-structuralism.

The many sides of Richard Macksey

"Everyone talks about 'interdisciplinary,' but he taught as if teaching and learning was a work of art," says Caleb Deschanel, director and Oscar-nominated cinematographer who graduated from Johns Hopkins in 1966. "[Macksey's teaching style] covered all the bases. If you were studying literature in the 19th century, it related to the music and art and sociology of the time. It's really what learning was supposed to be about. What it taught me was the fact that learning is about everything at the same time. Richard Macksey could somehow weave together all the elements and all the aspects of human existence into one thing, and that's what made him so great."

While a student, Deschanel proposed a film class to Macksey, who responded, why not? The class created a 16mm film, and Deschanel says that ever since, his work has been informed by the way Macksey taught him to question his instincts and search for the universal. He learned not to think of a piece of literature just as literature but as a work of art in a period of time, and about what we can learn from those universal ideas. "He taught you how to explode all the myths about things and come to the truth about what they were. Every time I do anything, my first thing is to doubt my first instincts about it. He saw learning and teaching the way we think of a work of art."

More than leading a life of aloof intellectualism, Macksey also existed fully on the human plane. A night owl, he was regularly spotted grocery shopping and volunteering at Baltimore's The Book Thing late into the evening and in the early morning hours; he liked to solve the trivia questions posed during Orioles games at Memorial Stadium; and he featured his cat, Buttons, as his Facebook cover photo. A fan of film and film history, Macksey was an inaugural founder and supporter of the 1970s Baltimore Film Festival, a predecessor of today's Maryland Film Festival.

It may have been partly due to his ability to exist on just a few hours of sleep that his presence had a way of being ever-present. Former student Rob Friedman, who graduated in 1981, remembers waking up at 1 a.m. to hear Macksey's voice drifting through his apartment window, and glimpsed the professor walking down St. Paul Street and "yakking with five students." On another occasion, Friedman awoke early and stepped outside at 6 a.m., only to find Macksey driving by and waving.

"He was so brilliant and had such an encyclopedic memory, and was also such an exuberant personality. He loved learning, he loved talking about what he was learning, and he also loved learning about what you had to say," Friedman says. "It's the generosity of his spirit and his contagious love of learning and excitement in sharing that learning. He might suddenly quote something in Greek."

Friedman met Macksey in 1977 when a friend advised him to get to know Macksey because of his sense of humor. Friedman left a funny note on Macksey's desk and the next day received an interoffice envelope with a humorous response. The two began sending comedic lines back and forth, and Friedman switched his major to humanistic studies so that Macksey could be his adviser.

"I was extremely unhappy during my college years, and if it hadn't been for him I wouldn't have finished school," Friedman says. "He really made a substantial difference in my life, not just academically but personally. I can't express the magnitude of my gratitude for Dick. There are probably 64 years' worth of people that—behind the scenes—he looked after."

Over the years, Macksey was celebrated for that dedication to teaching and received numerous awards. He also established awards in his name. In 1992, Macksey received the university's George E. Owen Teaching Award, given annually for outstanding teaching and devotion to undergraduates. In 1999, the Johns Hopkins Alumni Association awarded him its Distinguished Alumni Award, and the same year the Richard A. Macksey Professorship for Distinguished Teaching in the Humanities was endowed by former student Edward T. Dangel III and his wife, Bonni Widdoes. The professorship is currently held by author and Writing Seminars professor Alice McDermott.

In 2010, Macksey received a Hopkins Heritage Award, which honors alumni and friends of Hopkins who have contributed outstanding service over an extended period to the progress of the university or the activities of the Alumni Association. The Alexander Grass Humanities Institute hosts the Richard A. Macksey Lecture annually, and the Macksey Award is given each year to the graduating member of the Johns Hopkins chapter of Phi Beta Kappa who took the most academic risks.

Bridging medicine and the humanities

Famous at Hopkins for riding a Harley Davidson motorcycle to class in Gilman Hall and for the ever-present pipe between his teeth, Macksey held joint appointments in Writing Seminars and in History of Medicine at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, where he co-directed the Humanities Programs starting in 1990. With neurosurgeon George Udvarhelyi, he co-founded the School of Medicine's Office of Cultural Affairs in 1977 as a cross-campus initiative to engage in rigorous inquiry between the humanities and arts and health, science, and the delivery of care. Starting with just a few resources, the pair attracted funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts to bring in speakers with international reputations in medicine and the humanities, including Primo Levi and Umberto Eco.

"Because of Dick Macksey's legacy, we can position Hopkins as a key center of the intersection of humanities and medicine," says Jeremy Greene, professor of medicine and the history of medicine and director of the Institute of the History of Medicine. "He really blazed a path between the two campuses that many people have been able to follow since, and draw closer together the relevance between the humanities and medicine in the 21st century."

In 1992, Catherine DeAngelis, then the School of Medicine vice dean of academic affairs, received a grant to update the 75-year-old medical school curriculum. Wanting to familiarize med students with literature, poetry, theater, and the arts, she asked Macksey if he would assist in developing a four-year course called Physician and Society.

"I could think of no one better to teach in that course than Dick Macksey even though he wasn't in the School of Medicine. He really made that course so special, and I learned a lot from him by sitting in," says DeAngelis, now University Distinguished Service Professor Emerita and professor of pediatrics emerita.

"He was absolutely brilliant, but if you talked to him you would never know from him how brilliant he was," she adds. "He was approachable, and just so kind."

Generosity of spirit

Macksey was beloved for his generosity, the way he fully devoted himself to every conversation and cared about every person and his or her ideas. He thrived on engaging with everyone, eagerly giving his attention to students' thoughts and to them as people, and he never met a conversation or topic he didn't find interesting.

"Dick, of course, was brilliant, with a superb and elegant command of language, and that extraordinary memory," says John Astin, theater program director and Homewood Professor of the Arts. "Beyond that, he was a cherished companion, possessing infinite kindness whom I shall miss always. The world is less without him but much better for having had him for a time."

Friedman remembers one student who had discovered an obscure Portuguese poet, read a translation, and wanted to learn more. The student approached faculty in what is now the Department of German and Romance Languages and Literatures, but no one was familiar with the poet. Someone advised him to ask Macksey if he'd heard of him. "He said, 'of course,' and handed him an entire file of research and the poet's life history," Friedman says.

"I visited him two weeks ago when he was still able to talk and even laugh despite being bedridden," says Richard Chisolm, a documentary filmmaker whom Macksey hired to teach film at Hopkins in the 1980s and '90s, and a friend of Macksey's for 40 years. "He was a one-of-a-kind intellectual giant and a joyful teacher who was never self-centered; always filled with good humor, curiosity, and an intense love of conversation—in over a dozen languages."

A legendary library

In 1972, Macksey and his wife, Catherine Macksey, converted the garage of their home into a library. But his sprawling collection was never confined to its walls, spilling into bookshelves throughout their home and even occupying the steps of the ladders intended to access the upper shelves. "Chez Macksey," as it was fondly known, was where he frequently held classes and film viewings and subsequent discussions, and Macksey and his students would compete with those books for space around a table late into the night, often fueled by cookies and pipe smoke, while works of fine art looked on.

"Students for decade after decade have reveled in the life of that house: To be around a world of learning, enthusiasm, watching movies in the wee hours, listening to this expansive mind firing off in seven directions at once, and learning something they never knew before," Friedman says.

The collection holds not only an impressive number of diverse titles but also, scrawled in the margins, insights into Macksey's mind. He would frequently write on the pages, creating a sort of correspondence with the authors. His wife, a French scholar at Hopkins who died in 2000, also annotated her books, and Macksey told author Jessie Chaffee several years ago that he continued to "find" Catherine in the annotations she'd made in books.

"He was always engaging with the author, either in agreement or in argument," says Winston Tabb, Sheridan Dean of University Libraries, Archives and Museums. "[What you see is] essentially two minds operating together in one text—the author and a very intelligent reactor."

Equally impressive, says Tabb, is the fact that no current catalog exists: "The catalog was in Dick's mind."

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[the-intellectual-journal]

Cléo from 5-7: How the French New Wave Brought a Disruption to Commercial Cinema

Image Courtesy of Mubi

Cléo from 5-7 is a 1962 film directed by filmmaker Agnès Varda and is one of the most notable films associated with the French New Wave movement. The New Wave movement emerged in the late 1950s and was characterized by its rejection of conventional modes of commercial cinema. The formal elements of the New Wave embraced unconventional aesthetic techniques such as discontinuous editing, location shooting, and deviating from the 180-degree rule. On the contrary, mainstream French cinema aesthetics were marked by continuity editing, adherence to the 180-degree rule, and glamorous sets seen in films such as Romance de Paris (1941). Varda incorporates New Wave techniques, particularly discontinuous editing combined with recurring visual motifs of mirrors to provide a spectacle of Cleo’s existential state as she awaits her medical diagnosis. 

The origins of the French New Wave can be traced back to young filmmakers who rejected “Traditional de qualité” — the commercial state of the French film industry around the mid-20th century. Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, and Jacques Rivette were among a few of the critics who became respected figures within the New Wave movement and emphasized the value of realism, innovation, and subjectivity. The emerging filmmakers who opposed “Traditional de qualité” referred to them as “cinema de papa,” translating to “daddy’s cinema.” Moreover, the conventions of “Traditional de qualité” were often marked by their literary adaptations of classic novels, high production values, and conventional editing techniques. 

Along with this, the New Wave brought variety to its movement, defined by the Cahiers, (filmmakers previously mentioned) and la River Gauche (Left Bank) composed of figures such as Agnés Varda, Chris Marker, and Alain Resnais. The Cahiers group was associated with the French film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma and were heavily invested in American cinema, particularly the works of Charlie Chaplin and Alfred Hitchcock. On the contrary, filmmakers associated with la River Gauche possessed a background in documentary production, literature, and left-wing politics. Similarly, in Cléo from 5-7, these characteristics are manifested through the film’s documentary elements, including location shooting and a sense of real-time to give the spectator a realistic representation of Cleo’s psyche. 

The New Wave filmmakers viewed the mainstream films of France during their time as old-fashioned and associated them with the preferences of an older generation, hence the term “cinema de papa”. Filmmaker Truffaut expanded on this perspective, stating, “This school [of film] which aspires to realism destroys it at the moment of finally grabbing it, so careful is the school to lock these beings in a closed world, barricaded by formulas, plays on words, maxims, instead of letting us see them for ourselves, with our own eyes. The artist cannot always dominate his work. He must be, sometimes, God and, sometimes his creature”. Truffaut believed conventional French cinema was rigid, artificial, and often adhered to formulaic conventions, which prompted the birth of the New Wave movement.

Agnés Varda’s Cléo from 5-7 embodies the sentiments Truffaut speaks of and attempts to diverge from a conformist approach to filmmaking. The film heavily employs discontinuity editing, particularly through the use of jump cuts that capture the disarray Cléo experiences. In the opening scene, Cléo visits a tarot reader who envisions an unfavorable fortune about her health, setting the tone of the film. As an emotionally distraught Cléo leaves the building, she is depicted descending a staircase through a series of jump cuts. The use of jump cuts in this particular scene represents not only Cléo’s fragmentation of her life but also a descent toward an existential crisis. After she makes her way toward the floor, Cléo makes her way toward a mirror, admiring her beauty in the uncertainty of death. Moreover, the sentiment of existentialism and fragmentation is solidified through Cléo’s experiences of intensive emotions, prompting her to reconsider the fabric of her existence. Additionally, this sentiment is also displayed in the second act, when Cléo takes off her wig in front of the mirror as she spirals in anger while demanding to be left alone. Cléo’s decision to remove her wig represents the unmasking of herself as she looks into the mirror and the uncertainty of death. Additionally, this scene is a manifestation of the visual motif of the mirror intensifying the spectator's awareness of Cleo’s perception of reality.

Varda invites the spectator into Cléo’s inner turmoil and existence through recurring visual motifs of mirrors, in addition to jump cuts. The mirror forces both Cléo and the spectator to confront her identity and reality. In one scene, in particular, Cléo and her friend Dorothee descend a staircase resulting in Dorothee accidentally dropping a mirror and shattering it. Cléo is shaken up by what occurred, as she believes it is an interpretation of an omen of death. This recurring theme of fragmentation, instability, and superstition is symbolized by the camera’s focus on the broken mirror pieces revealing Cleo’s reflection. Film scholar and historian Sandy Flitterman-Lewis expands on this particular scene, “As Cleo bends down toward the scattered pieces of a pocket mirror… the only portion of her reflected face visible in these Jagged fragments is her eye. This is the last image of a mirror to appear in the entire film; significantly, it announces that this image has ceased to function for Cleo as a reassurance of identity as it confirms the priority of her own vision of the world”. The motif of the mirror is employed by Varda as a technique that embodies Cleo’s complex relationship with her identity and is a reminder of her fragmented self-perception.

Varda’s use of discontinuity editing and the broken mirror symbolizes a significant shift in Cleo’s relationship with mirrors. The mirror is no longer something that reassures Cléo as it did in the opening scene, rather, it forces her to confront a new perspective on her identity. Additionally, jump cuts are employed to intentionally disrupt the continuity of the film in conventional modes of commercial cinema. The use of discontinuity editing in Cléo from 5-7 however, creates a distinctive approach to both filmmaking and continuity. The discontinued editing mirrors the fragmentation that her health status brought into her life. Although the fate of Cléo is never presented at the end of the film, as one would assume, it concludes with a sense of a transformative outlook on how she perceives life. As the spectator witnesses Cléo deal with existential concerns, she becomes more self-assured in herself, even with the fear of death looming over her.

 The discontinuity editing and recurring motif of the mirror in Cléo from 5-7 becomes a means to visually express the complexity, tragedy, and uncertainty of the human condition through Cléo. Along with that, the pieces of her life are captured through jump cuts that attempt to construct Cleo’s fragmented existential state, as death may be near for her. Varda's filmmaking techniques prompt the spectator to put the pieces together to reflect the philosophy of life’s continuity found in discontinuity. Additionally, the ambiguity of the film’s conclusion also prompts the spectator to reflect on the broader sentiments while considering the chaotic uncertainty of existence. Ultimately, Cléo from 5-7 is a visual manifestation of Varda’s unique approach to filmmaking, demonstrating a nuanced narrative of life through disrupting conventional modes of cinema. 

[wyrmfedgrave]

Pics: Bert Terhune related notes.

1. Mary Virginia Haws, Bert's mom was a writer of novels, travelogues, memoirs, domestic manuals, etiquette booklets & cookbooks.

2. Cover of 1 of her house 'running' books.

3. Who doesn't recognize a Lassie poster? This being for 1 of her many movies.

4 & 5. Covers of some of Bert's many works.

6. At least 1 of Bert's short stories focused on the danger that spies & assassins posed to General George Washington.

7. Poster for the "Ogre" TV movie, with a great tagline!

8. Bust of Cleisthenes, the Father of Athenian democracy.

9. Bust of Alexander Pope, the English poet, translator & satirist on society & politics.

10. John Dryden painting, an earlier English poet, literary critic, translator, satirist & playwright.

Notes (on yesterday's post):

1. The Adventurers Club of NY was a private men's club founded in 1912 by one A. Hoffman.

Its main functions were monthly dinners & a weekly lunch.

Their main rule was that "No one talks about Fight Club!"

There's complete silence on most of their activities.

Yet, for a secretive group, they certainly went out of their way to announce their events.

First, they published The Adventurer, a monthly newsletter that ran until 1960!

Then they had a weekly radio show, the Gold Seat Associates, where club members spoke of the most exciting moment of their lives.

The Adventurers Club finally faded out during the 1970s.

2. Lassie is the star of an American TV series (1954 to 1973) & several movies.

'She' (actually male dogs were used!) is a smart & fearless collie living in a Virginia farm with her companions - human or otherwise.

Later in the show, Lassie worked with forest rangers - out in the wilderness!

There's also an animated series that brought Lassie's heroic acts into the 2000s.

Lassie's latest film came out in 2022...

3. Mary V. Haws wrote several novels set in the southern states before the Civil War, which began in 1861.

(But, this was actually only after many decades of rising tensions - mostly on the subject of slavery.

It only ended after 4 years & some 610,000+ deaths!!)

Haws completed her last book at the age of 88 - while she was quite blind!

4. Other books by Bert Terhune are: "World's Great Events", "Famous American Indians", "Wonder Woman in History", "Around the World in 30 Days" & "Superwomen."

5. Scribblers are people who write for hire or as a hobby. Usually, scribblers worked for newspapers & magazines.

It's just that readers don't actually like their articles!

6. The American Revolution lasted from 1775 to 1783. Its causes were British taxes, the Boston Massacre & the Intolerable Acts.

Only 45% of colonists supported this war - as it forced neighbors against each other!

In Ben Franklin's case, it permanently tore his family apart...

7. Don't know why Lovecraft equates the famous folk he mentioned with ogres - except for Bonaparte, maybe.

Ogres are hideous looking, human eating giants from fairy tales & folk- lore.

It's no better in slang, as it describes "a person who's monstrously ugly, cruel or barbarous."

(Shrek they are not!)

Ogre comes to us thru France. But, it's actually from Etruscan (ancient north Italian nation & language) "Orcus", God of the Dead & punisher of oath- breakers.

8. "Where freedom 1st arose..."

A. This would be ancient Athens, in Greece on 508 BC. That's when Cleisthenes 1st set up a democratic government there.

(But, Howard could be referring to the American Revolution again.)

B. In that case, Congress did approve in becoming independent on July 2nd, 1776, thru the Lee Resolution.

We now celebrate when our politicians started signing the official Declaration of Independence, on July the 4th.

But, it took some time before all of the congressmen actually did so...

England didn't really 'recognize' our victory until the Paris Treaty of 1783!

Even then, Britain tried to 'reacquire' its 13 colonies during the War of 1812...

9. HPL seemed aware of his writing limits.

His evoking of imagery & emotion rested upon his skill at following strict poetic structures & his own aesthetic taste.

Lovecraft thought it more important to be formally correct, rather than to be creatively interesting.

10. As to Howard's personal writing style, it's actually his own copying of the forms of A. Pope & J. Dryden.

Pope was 1 of the most prominent writers of the 1700s.

Dryden was the 1st Poet Laureate of England & is chiefly responsible for introducing heroic couplets & the triplet into English poetic structures...

END.

[the-grove]

There is a very valid reason that the whole 5-7-5 thing is the modern american/western understanding of Haikus. It's been awhile but basically translating poetry betwen languages is very difficult, translating writing is already difficult but especially poetry because there are so many things that can go into. Structure, rhyme scheme, use of literary tools like metaphors and alliteration, and other such examples. Languages are also all pretty different and are impacte dby the socieies they are used in. Cultural refrences, casual phrases all of that are hugely important. So when trying to translate poetry or forms of poetry from one langauge to another, new rules are sometimes forms/style of poetry, to try and keep the vibes/meaning of said poem or style. 5-7-5 if I remember correctly is exactly that with Haikus. There are other aspects but thats the one everyone remembers.. because its also very easy to teach that kids!!

Its a very basic rule that can be easily be seen in practice, while harder or more nebulous rules around theme or more complicated structures can be harder to teach younger kids. And since not everyone goes on to become an expert poet, most Americans associate the 5-7-5 with haikus. And thats ok.

Honestly i fell in love with the concepts of translations in poetry in college and if we were actually good at picking up languages it would have been something we would have loved doing.

I left a lot out because again not an expert and just wanted to get the basics across. But yeah, translation is a beautiful thing.(it can also be a scary thing. Because biases and such can also come into play. But its all fascinating).

[grandhotelabyss]

What do you make of the absolute MANIA for novels of 200K+ words among postwar American authors? The form didn't really exist outside of Melville, Dreiser, and Dos Passos before the 50s, but at a certain point practically everyone started doing it, whether in single or multiple volumes. It's faded, but it hasn't gone fully away. Beyond commercial considerations, why were so many novelists attracted to this kind of writing?

In the 19th century, novels were as long as they were both because of serialization and because the subscription lending-library system demanded three volumes per one novel so a single novel could circulate more readily among multiple subscribers, akin to the old DVD-lending Netflix model where a TV season would be six discs. When the lending-library system ended in the late 19th century due to competition from cheaper alternatives, short novels had a renaissance and became the backbone of modernism. I believe, however, that the legacy of the 19th century "baggy monsters" (as Henry James called them) persisted. First, on the level of artistic ideals, the long novel was still associated with the greatness of authors like Scott, Dickens, or indeed James (and novelists-in-translation like Balzac or Tolstoy, though I know less about the publishing context in those countries); no doubt length had a further prestigious association with the epic going back before the 19th century in Homer, Dante, Milton, etc. Second, on the less idealistic level of marketing, audiences still wanted, or were at least thought to want by publishers, a long immersive experience in exchange for their hard-earned money, especially in an era when there were fewer forms of media competing with books; I think this is why the pop bestsellers of the mid-20th-century, no less than the literary masterworks, were also monstrously long. That's my best guess anyway! Major Arcana, people may be interested to know, is long, but not that long: just short of 160K.

[theoffingmag]

The matter I’d been tasked to investigate had to do with Kan’ichi and the nature of his return. Kan’ichi Hiraizumi came home after the bureau sent out a notice, entirely separate from the first and second waves of repatriation. He had been admitted to a military hospital during his duty. After the war, he had also been detained as a prisoner of war in a place that was well-known—even to those with limited knowledge like myself—for having far from humane conditions. Still, he sustained no major injuries or infections, and with his mental and physical health cleared, he returned home on foot, alone. Although it was a miracle worthy of celebration, this kind of story wasn’t particularly rare at the time. The problem was with how Kan’ichi looked since returning. There was little to no resemblance between photos of Kan’ichi from before the war and his current appearance, so much so that it seemed likely that a complete stranger could do a better job at mimicking him. In short, he had returned a completely different person.

Keep reading

Haneko Takayama is a writer, born in 1975 in Toyama prefecture, Japan. In 2010, she won an honorable mention in the Sogen SF Short Story Prize for UDON (Unknown Dog of Nobody); in 2016, she won the Fumiko Hayashi Literary Prize for "The Island on the Side of the Sun"; and in 2020, she won the Akutagawa Prize for A Horse from Shuri. Her works include Where I Was, "Come Gather ‘Round, People," and Lenses in the Dark. Alisa Yamasaki is a writer, translator, and interpreter based in Brooklyn, originally from Tokyo. Her writing has appeared in The Japan Times and Vice among other outlets. She was part of the 2022 cohort of the merging Translators Mentorship Program by the American Literary Translators Association.

[theangryman]

The Hobbit has an entire segment about the invention of golf

Also, one of the most common (and best supported imho) interpretation is that LOTR is a mythology for our world - these are things that supposedly happened in our past. The books even tell us that Hobbits are still around in our time - they use magic to hide from us Big Folk. Me own dad’s interpretation - and he’s not a literary scholar - was that Tolkien was explicitly wanting to make some mythologized past Britain akin to Wagners version of Norse mythology.

I think this is a debated topic among Tolkien aficionados, but I’ve always understood it as the Red Book of Westmarch was copied down by a Gondorian scribe from Bilbo’s manuscripts. Edits were made by that scribe to render the Hobbit’s names in a more common tongue. Then Tolkien purports to translate this ancient manuscript, just as he did many medieval Anglo Saxon texts, into English. He also makes changes in his translation (which is true of *any* translation. translation is a creative process)

So you see here two clear explanations:

They weren’t actually potatoes, that was just the easiest way to refer to a starchy vegetable. Culinary it serves the same purposes, and probably tastes the same. People are wildly imprecise with common names for fruits and veggies.

They are potatoes. Tolkien had a strong grasp on western history; unfortunately, I doubt the finest of intellectuals in the 20th century west really put much thought into South American cultures - so we can’t really fault him for slighting the accomplishments of the potatoes’ domestication. (I surprise a lot of people when I tell them ketchup, pizza and pasta didn’t really have tomato sauce until roughly the late 19th century - people thought tomatoes were poisonous!) Potatoes are such a ubiquitous foodstuff by Tolkien’s time that maybe Eru Iluvatar sang them into existence for a bit and then they were remade later by awesome ancient Peruvian people.

But mostly, I disagree with Tolkien making his world fundamentally alien to ours. He’s presenting to us pseudo-historical documents of a world he has created, which must inherently draw from his own experiences (another famous connection is his experiences of war and his descriptions of Orcs; World War 1 is a part of the work)

Insinuating Tolkien was writing some sort of xeno fiction flattens his work. They ultimately eat potatoes because potatoes are what Tolkien ate growing up, and he associates with home. Everything associated with the Shire is based on his childhood.

Tolkien was a scholar, and he wrote like a scholar who has translated and interpreted tons of historical primary texts. He puts poems in because he loved poems.

not even JRR Tolkien, who famously developed the concept of the Secondary World and firmly believed that no trace of the Real World should be evoked in the fictional world, was able to remove potatoes from his literature. this is a man who developed whole languages and mythologies for his literary world, who justified its existence in English as a translation* simply because he was so miffed he couldn't get away with making the story fully alien to the real world. and not even he, in extremis, was so cruel as to deny his characters the heavenly potato. could not even conceive a universe devoid of the potato. such is its impact. everyone please take a moment to say thank you to South Americans for developing and cultivating one of earth's finest vegetables. the potato IS all that. literally world-changing food. bless.

[abneyconsult]

“MidnightRose serves as a vibrant platform that highlights the diverse voices of multigenerational and multicultural writers from the Washington Metropolitan Region and beyond. This initiative is brought to life by Esther Productions Inc., in collaboration with The Institute for African American Writing and The Black Student Fund. The series aims to celebrate the literary talents within the community, showcasing a variety of poetic and prose works that reflect the rich tapestry of experiences and perspectives that define the region.

Attendees of MidnightRose can expect to engage with a dynamic array of award-winning poets and authors, each bringing their unique narratives and artistic expressions to the forefront. The event not only serves as a performance space but also as a gathering that fosters dialogue and connection among writers and audiences alike. By immersing oneself in the powerful words and stories shared during the series, participants are invited to explore themes of identity, culture, and resilience, all of which resonate deeply within the community.

The essence of MidnightRose lies in its ability to inspire and empower individuals through the art of storytelling. As the series unfolds, it creates an atmosphere where creativity flourishes, and the voices of underrepresented writers are amplified. This initiative not only enriches the cultural landscape of the Washington Metropolitan Region but also encourages a deeper appreciation for the literary arts, inviting everyone to partake in the transformative power of poetry and prose.” Sep 14, 2024, 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM EDT

Tenley-Friendship Library, 4450 Wisconsin Ave NW, Washington, DC 20016, USA

About the event

MidnightRose is a showcase of the multigenerational, multicultural writers in the Washington Metropolitan Region and beyond. Experience the richness of the community through the presentations of award-winning poets and authors. Come allow the words to inspire and empower you.

E. ETHELBERT MILLER is a literary activist and author of two memoirs and several poetry collections including his baseball trilogy: If God Invented Baseball, When Your Wife Has Tommy John Surgery and How I Found Love Behind the Catcher’s Mask published by City Point Press. He hosts the WPFW morning radio show On the Margin with E. Ethelbert Miller and hosts and produces The Scholars on UDC-TV which received a 2020 Telly Award. He is Associate Editor and a columnist for The American Book Review. He was given a 2020 congressional award from Congressman Jamie Raskin in recognition of his literary activism, awarded the 2022 Howard Zinn Lifetime Achievement Award by the Peace and Justice Studies Association, and named a 2023 Grammy Nominee Finalist for Best Spoken Word Poetry Album. On March 2, 2024, Miller received a Lifetime Achievement Award for his contribution to African American Literature and DC’s literary community from Esther Productions Inc. On September 18, 2024, he will receive the Furious Flower Lifetime Achievement Award.

NAOMI AYALA is a Puerto Rican poet, educator, and translator who’s published three poetry collections—Wild Animals on the Moon (Curbstone Press, 1997); This Side of Early (Curbstone Imprint, Northwestern University Press, 2008); and Calling Home: Praise Songs & Incantations (Bilingual Press, 2013). She’s the translator of La sombra de la Muerte/Death’s Shadow, a novel by His Excellency José Tomás Pérez, the Dominican Republic’s Ambassador to the U.S., and of Luis Alberto Ambroggio’s poetry collection La arqueología del viento/The Wind’s Archeology. She’s the proud recipient of artist fellowships from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities as well as Special Recognition for Community Service from the U.S. Congress.

BRIAN GILMORE is a native of Washington DC. Bard and Barrister, he is the author of four collections of poetry, including come see about me marvin (Wayne State University Press), a 2020 Michigan Notable Book Award recipient. Gilmore is also the author of the forthcoming cultural history, No More Worlds To Conquer: The Black Poet in Washington DC Since Dunbar, to be published in 2025 by Georgetown University Press. He practiced public interest law for 28 years in Washington DC and Michigan and served as a Clinical Law Professor at Howard University School of Law and Michigan State University College of Law. Presently, he is Senior Lecturer at the University of Maryland - College Park in the Law and Society Program (MLAW).

For those interested in learning more about this literary event, please feel free to reach out via email at midnightrosereadingseries@gmail.com.

Additional details can also be found on the official website of Esther Productions, Inc. at the provided link - https://www.estherproductionsinc.com/events-1/midnightrose-a-reading-series-of-poetry-prose.

Esther Productions Inc. is supported by generous contributions—past and present--from Kerry S. Pearson LLC, Emmanuel Bailey, Veterans Services Corp, Pepco, an Exelon Company, A.Scott Bolden, David Jannarone, HumanitiesDC, Lesa Warrick, Rosalind Blunt, Betty Nyangoni and Esther’s Friends.

[arablit]

Translated Work By Iman Mersal, Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi Make ALTA Longlists

SEPTEMBER 5, 2024 — A work translated from Arabic made both of the twelve-book longlists announced today by the American Literary Translators Association for the 2024 National Translation Awards: in prose and poetry. The book that made the prose longlist — which was judged by Philip Boehm, Shelley Fairweather-Vega, Will Forrester, Joon-Li Kim, and poupeh missaghi — was Iman Mersal’s Traces of…

[afrikaabneyconsultant]

Sept. 14, 2024, 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM EDT

Tenley-Friendship Library, 4450 Wisconsin Ave NW, Washington, DC 20016, USA

About the event

MidnightRose is a showcase of the multigenerational, multicultural writers in the Washington Metropolitan Region and beyond. Experience the richness of the community through the presentations of award-winning poets and authors. Come allow the words to inspire and empower you.

E. ETHELBERT MILLER is a literary activist and author of two memoirs and several poetry collections including his baseball trilogy: If God Invented Baseball, When Your Wife Has Tommy John Surgery and How I Found Love Behind the Catcher’s Mask published by City Point Press. He hosts the WPFW morning radio show On the Margin with E. Ethelbert Miller and hosts and produces The Scholars on UDC-TV which received a 2020 Telly Award. He is Associate Editor and a columnist for The American Book Review. He was given a 2020 congressional award from Congressman Jamie Raskin in recognition of his literary activism, awarded the 2022 Howard Zinn Lifetime Achievement Award by the Peace and Justice Studies Association, and named a 2023 Grammy Nominee Finalist for Best Spoken Word Poetry Album. On March 2, 2024, Miller received a Lifetime Achievement Award for his contribution to African American Literature and DC’s literary community from Esther Productions Inc. On September 18, 2024, he will receive the Furious Flower Lifetime Achievement Award.

NAOMI AYALA is a Puerto Rican poet, educator, and translator who’s published three poetry collections—Wild Animals on the Moon (Curbstone Press, 1997); This Side of Early (Curbstone Imprint, Northwestern University Press, 2008); and Calling Home: Praise Songs & Incantations (Bilingual Press, 2013). She’s the translator of La sombra de la Muerte/Death’s Shadow, a novel by His Excellency José Tomás Pérez, the Dominican Republic’s Ambassador to the U.S., and of Luis Alberto Ambroggio’s poetry collection La arqueología del viento/The Wind’s Archeology. She’s the proud recipient of artist fellowships from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities as well as Special Recognition for Community Service from the U.S. Congress.

BRIAN GILMORE is a native of Washington DC. Bard and Barrister, he is the author of four collections of poetry, including come see about me marvin (Wayne State University Press), a 2020 Michigan Notable Book Award recipient. Gilmore is also the author of the forthcoming cultural history, No More Worlds To Conquer: The Black Poet in Washington DC Since Dunbar, to be published in 2025 by Georgetown University Press. He practiced public interest law for 28 years in Washington DC and Michigan and served as a Clinical Law Professor at Howard University School of Law and Michigan State University College of Law. Presently, he is Senior Lecturer at the University of Maryland - College Park in the Law and Society Program (MLAW).

IT'S ALL FREE. REGISTER NOW at estherproductionsinc.com/events

For more information: midnightrosereadingseries@gmail.com

Esther Productions Inc. is supported by generous contributions—past and present--from Kerry S. Pearson LLC, Emmanuel Bailey, Veterans Services Corp, Pepco, an Exelon Company, A.Scott Bolden, David Jannarone, HumanitiesDC, Lesa Warrick, Rosalind Blunt, Betty Nyangoni and Esther’s Friends.