for thinking people
April 18, 2020
Lord Byron’s “Prometheus” is one of my favorite poems. Once, in a discussion about poetry, someone asked me why. I impulsively replied: “Because ‘Prometheus’ teaches you about not giving a fuck”.
Needless to say, the discussion became lively and several arguments and counter-arguments followed – all polite and civilized, which is rare these days.
I was asked to explain myself. I did. And I decided to transfer the conclusions from that discussion here.
April 12, 2020
Translating can be challenging – some words simply don’t have a direct equivalent in another language. Translating prose (a novel or short story) is even more challenging, as the translator needs to also convey affect – literature is more than a sum of its parts, remember. But learning how to translate poetry must be the ultimate challenge for a translator.
With poetry, it’s not just about translating the text in question, conveying the meaningIn the context of this post, meaning refers to the word-by-word meaning; what the narrative talks about.. It’s not even about merely conveying affect, as with prose. Instead, to translate poetry you need to worry about several things at once: meaning, affect, meter, and possibly rhyme.
If you put all these elements together, you might wonder how on earth can poetry be translated at all!
As someone who has translated poetry, I can tell you it’s possible. But yes, it’s super hard to do properly. In today’s post I’ll share with you some tips that will help you translate poetry effectively, intelligently, and – above all – respecting the original author.
April 5, 2020
Foreshadowing is a very powerful tool for a fiction author. This literary device gives the reader advance hints about what will occur later in the narrative. Learning how to use foreshadowing in your fiction can give you a significant boost in terms of affective power.
The above description of foreshadowing might make you think it’s only relate to crime or mystery fiction. This is not true. As I’ll show you in this post, I use foreshadowing all the time in my literary-fiction novels.
More importantly, I’ll show you how I use foreshadowing and – even more importantly! – I’ll show you why I use it; what I can achieve with it.
