I AM READING NOTES FROM THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD, a cheery tome by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, author of Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Devils, The Brothers Karamazov (which my English teacher dubbed "the most boring book ever written") and The Insulted and Injured ~ I'm sure the authors of modern misery memoirs are peeved to find that particularly evocative title already used up!
I had some drinks this afternoon and sat under an electronic posterboard leafing through the cheery tale, which is set in a Siberian hard labour camp.
Dostoyevsky's characters ~ murderers, alcoholics, gamblers ~ remind me of some of the junkies I have met in my time ... I'm not saying anything else.
I googled various topics concerning Siberian labour camps and came up with a page from a school punishment book, detailing how many lashes of the cane various miscreants received for such crimes as stabbing someone with a pear(!) and grave robbing~(!!!) Am I badly misreading things (you can click on the picture to enlarge)~? Or was the world even crazier in Victorian times (or whenever those whippings are from)..? ~ than it is now?? (Surely not!)
I thought I would invent some comedy crimes of my own ...
The only sample offences I could come up with were:
Allowing school hamster to grow too tubby.
Allowing goblin to chase school hamster ...
I don't think I'd have done too well making up school rules in the dark ages, do you?
COMPETITION TIME ~ roll up and give your guesses, educated or otherwise, please! Tell me WHAT LANGUAGE ARE THESE SCRIBBLES WRITTEN IN?
Answers in the commentary box, if yer please...
PS the end of my HAMMY AND THE GOBLIN tale of wonder is coming soon. I bet y'all are yawning with excitement!
I WAS LEAFING through my German Grimms' Fairytales when I suddenly came across this one: The Fisherman And His Wife, in an odd Low German dialect. So I looked it up, and here's the start of the tale in English... You can clickonit to get the full text...
There was once a fisherman who lived with his wife in a pigsty, close by the seaside. The fisherman used to go out all day long a-fishing; and one day, as he sat on the shore with his rod, looking at the sparkling waves and watching his line, all on a sudden his float was dragged away deep into the water: and in drawing it up he pulled out a great fish. But the fish said, 'Pray let me live! I am not a real fish; I am an enchanted prince: put me in the water again, and let me go!' 'Oh, ho!' said the man, 'you need not make so many words about the matter; I will have nothing to do with a fish that can talk: so swim away, sir, as soon as you please!' Then he put him back into the water, and the fish darted straight down to the bottom, and left a long streak of blood behind him on the wave.
When the fisherman went home to his wife in the pigsty, he told her how he had caught a great fish, and how it had told him it was an enchanted prince, and how, on hearing it speak, he had let it go again. 'Did not you ask it for anything?' said the wife, 'we live very wretchedly here, in this nasty dirty pigsty; do go back and tell the fish we want a snug little cottage.'
And it goes on and on... You can read the rest of this text here.
Here's a kiddies' TV version starring Rick Mayall:
Now for some comparative linguistics: here are the opening words in English, Dutch, the Low German original and standard High German which is the official language of Germany today... Apart from English of course, these languages form a dialect-continuum from town-to-town across Northern Europe. At no point does the spoken language suddenly change just because a national frontier has been passed... Low German is sometimes referred to as Low Saxon and if you look closely you will see how familiar the vocabulary is: Fischer (fisherman) angeld (fished) blanke Water (clear water) deep (deep)... and so on. Incidentally, the original does not appear to say they lived in a pigsty or a hovel but a PISSPOT!!
Once upon a time there were a fisherman and his wife who lived together in a filthy shack near the sea. Every day the fisherman went out fishing, and he fished, and he fished. Once he was sitting there fishing and looking into the clear water, and he sat, and he sat. Then his hook went to the bottom, deep down, and when he pulled it out, he had caught a large flounder.
Er was eens een visser en z’n vrouw, die zo arm waren, dat ze alleen maar in een pot konden wonen, vlak aan zee. De visser ging elke dag hengelen; en dan hengelde hij en hengelde hij maar. Zo zat hij ook eens bij zijn hengel en keek steeds in ‘t blanke water, en hij keek en keek. Daar dook de dobber diep onder, en toen hij ‘m ophaalde, had hij een grote bot.
Dar wöör maal eens en Fischer un syne Fru, de waanden tosamen in'n Pißputt, dicht an der See, un de Fischer güng alle Dage hen un angeld: un he angeld un angeld. So seet he ook eens by de Angel und seeg jümmer in das blanke Water henin: un he seet un seet. Do güng de Angel to Grund, deep ünner, un as he se heruphaald, so haald he enen grooten Butt heruut.
Es war einmal ein Fischer und seine Frau, die wohnten zusammen in einem alten Pott dicht an der See, und der Fischer ging alle Tage hin und angelte, und er angelte und angelte. So saß er auch einmal mit seiner Angel und schaute immer in das klare Wasser hinein, und er saß und saß. Da ging die Angel auf den Grund, tief, tief hinab, und wie er sie heraufholte, da zog er einen großen Butt heraus.
VOM FISCHER UND SEINER FRAU Radio performance in German
Last part:
PS I've finally found a university course where you can study BA German and translation for the entire length of a 3-year course in Germany, at Gutenberg University, Mainz (which is a beautiful town on the Rhine)...
HERE is Plattdeutsch/Low German being spoken... Notice how similar it sounds to Dutch and Afrikaans... I did German for years and years and I can't understand a bloody word of this.
Learn Plattdeutsch online at plattmaster.de ~ lessons in English
HERE's something really hilarious I found ~ and yes it is for real ~ it's the Scottish Parliament's website in the "Scots language" (which looks like dreadfully spelt English to me)... Scots would be the nearest thing we have to Plattdeutsch here in the UK
Scottish Parliament's website in PROPER Scottish ~ ie Gaelic
I GOT A BOOK out the library and stayed up all night reading it. The author is a kind of friend of a friend of mine... hopefully soon to be Conservative MP for Corby and East Northamptonshire at the next General Election. I have watched her career with interest and wish her all the very best. Louise Bagshawe "the Judith Krantz de nos jours" Her novel Glitz: four ditzy heiresses get in trouble when their evil uncle cuts them off. The resulting fight with Thai prostitute Bai-Ling takes them into all manner of adventures ~~ how I love a good read about rich people who hate each other!
The plot reminds me of another British pop novel that had me rivetted: The Moneymakers by Harry Bingham ~ in that book the owner of a cement mixture (or something unexciting) empire dies and leaves his would-be heirs a challenge: whoever can make the most money in the space of something like five years inherits his £20 million fortune. There was a strong religious undertone in that one, e.g. the baddie's name was James Belial ~ Belial rang a bell... isn't it a demonic name? ... And when they met in a London bar named Apollyon ~ I knew for sure. Apollyon is the name of the Angel of the Abyss in Revelation ... very scary!
I just looked up Belial and it is indeed a demonic name... written up in the Bible as "the sons of the uncircumcized"... but a big character in traditional demonology (where I suspect my knowledge came from)... Wikipedia says Belial is a demonic name mentioned in II Corinthians 6:15 "can Christ and Belial agree?"... but I don't think that's where I know the name from... which is kind of spooky? I've read some weird books in my time... but where on earth would I first come across a name like that?
Well I did have a fascination in the "new age" (ie occultism and the "dark arts" for quite some years... and was drawn to read some quite eerie tomes in years past, that's all I can say on the matter...
Maybe I have sleep deprivation: it's too much cotton-rich socks, or my brains are frazzled... I'd better go and "retire" for now...!
PS Here's a photo of Louise Bagshawe: with looks like that (remember I said she was a friend of a friend ~ I've never met her ~ why on earth her publishers didn't make an inside-cover of that lovely face I've no idea...!
Illustrated: Louise Bagshawe's Glitz; Harry Bingham's The Moneymakers; Belial's mouth propped open in a demonic donkey-derby; The Complete Golden Dawn System of Magic "as revealed by Israel Regardie"... which used to be my bedtime reading in one long-lost era... the beautiful Louise Bagshawe...
I AM READING NOTES FROM THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD, a cheery tome by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, author of Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Devils, The Brothers Karamazov (which my English teacher dubbed "the most boring book ever written") and The Insulted and Injured ~ I'm sure the authors of modern misery memoirs are peeved to find that particularly evocative title already used up!
COMPETITION TIME ~ roll up and give your guesses, educated or otherwise, please! Tell me WHAT LANGUAGE ARE THESE SCRIBBLES WRITTEN IN?
