selenak

If you are, like me, a non-American Farscape fan trying to keep distracted and spoiler free until various nefarious sources might or might not get you a download, and if you're fond of fandoms and things other than FS as well, here are a couple of nice distractions:

1) Watch the trailer for the Extended Edition of RotK. Faramir & Eowyn! Mouth of Sauron! Aragorn revealing himself to Sauron via Palantir! Saruman! Sqeee!

2) Read highly entertaining professional Shakespeare fanfic, to be specific, "Gertrude Talks Back" by Margaret Atwood. (I saw Judi Dench recite that once on a charity matinee where various actors did what you could call Shakespeare cabaret stuff. Glorious.) For all of us who always thought Hamlet needed to be bitch-slapped.

3) Read some great Jossverse meta.

londonkds reposted his great essay about Warren Mears. One of the (many) controversial aspects of BTVS' sixth season was the use of the Trio - three alienated boys next door, one of whom had been a popular semi-recurring character before - as villains for the majority of the season, as opposed to the kind of charismatic and/or über-powerful villains the viewers were used to. Personally, I thought they were the best thing since the Mayor, precisely because of the psychological realism employed. Of the many points KdS makes here, his observation that Warren (without intending to) manages to transform Willow into the kind of comic book super villain he was trying to be but never was inspired two subsections of my "Five Things Which Never Happened To Warren". (No, he doesn't get to be Darth Mears in either.)

Taking another member of the Trio, the Andrew essay at

idol_reflection is a wonderful example of analysing a character one is very fond of without prettifying or whitewashing the awful things he did, or his weaknesses. Reminds me again that Andrew started out as the member of the Trio everyone was sure would be killed off first, the one with the least backbone, the one most easily manipulated, etc. It was one of ME's surpising and inventive twists to pick him as the one to develop further and as the survivor of the lot. It's also a signifier of the fluidity of the Jossverse. In a world of absolutes, like Tolkien's, or, to pick a less exalted example, J.K. Rowling's, Andrew would have been Gollum or Peter Pettigrew. In either case, he'd ended up dead for sure. (Does anyone care to place bets on Peter surviving volume 7?)

Only in three episodes but a well-realized character was Warren's ex-girlfriend Katrina, who got her own essay. It reminds me of one of the many good things about fannish creativity: There are no such things as minor characters in the fandom. Sooner or later, everyone inspires either fanfiction or meta, or both. (Witness the rather bemusing fanfic existence of Devon, for example.)

4.) Savour all the great poetry posted by everyone. I found some old favourites, sure, and they were a joy to reread. But more often I discovered poems and/or poets new to me. And my, does the popularity of this meme ever disprove the cliché of the internet preventing people from reading books. Just as lj offers the opportunity to strike up acquaintances with people from all over the globe, it allows sharing and discoveries of love for texts, "texts" being anything from poetry to fanfic to books to TV shows.

5.) Because there can never be enough poetry. Let's quote some more. Firstly, some poets have eras in which their work is hardly read and they're more known for their life. Byron comes to mind, though in his case it's even worse: his actual life is less on the public mind than the cliché he admittedly helped creating, the Byronic Hero. Which is a pity, since what gets completely missed this way is that the man had a great sense of humour and, far from being entirely self-absorbed, cared very much about the politics and wrongs of the day. Some quotes illustrating why Byron is worth reading:

'Tis to create, and in creating live
A being more intense, that we endow
With form our fancy, gaining was we give
The life we image, as I do even now.
***

I want a hero: - an uncommon want,
When every year and month sends forth a new one,
Till, after cloying the gazettes with cant
The age discovers he is not the true one
Of such as these I should not care to vaunt,
I'll therefore take our ancient friend Don Juan.
***

There the still varying pangs, which multiply
Until their very number makes men hard
By the infinities of agony
Which meet the gaze, what'er it may regard -
The groan, the roll in dust, the all-white eye
Turn'd back within its socket, these reward
Your rank and file by thousands, while the rest
May win, perhaps, a ribbon at the breast!

Yet I love glory; glory's a great thing;
Think what it is to be in your old age
Maintain'd at the expense of your good king:
A moderate pension shakes full many a sage
And heroes are but made for bards to sing,
Which is still better, thus in verse to wage
Your wars eternally, besides enjoying
Half-pay for life, make mankind worth destroying.
***

"England! with all thy faults I love thee still,"
I said at Calais, and have not forgot it:
I like to speak and lucubrate my fill;
I like the government (but that is not it) ;
I like the freedom of the press and quill;
I like the Habeas Corpus (when we've got it);
I like a parliamentary debate
Particularly when it's not too late;

I like the taxes, when they're not too many;
I like a sea-coal fire, when not too dear;
I like a beef-steak, too, as well as any,
Have no objection to a pot of beer;
I like the weather, when it is not rainy,
That is, I like two months of every year.
And so God save the regent, church and king!
Which means that I like all and everything.

Our standing army, and disbanded seamen,
Poor's rate, reform, my own, the nation's debt,
Our little riots just to show we are free men,
Our trifling bankruptcies in the gazette,
Our cloudy climate, and our chilly women,
All these I can forgive, and those forget,
And greatly venerate our recent glories,
And wish they were not owing to the Tories.

One problem poets have is that to find an adequate, let alone really good translator is very difficult. However, sometimes you can strike gold. Shakespeare had lots of good translators into German, but the legendary Schlegel/Tieck translation managed to enter into dictionaries as a work of literature on its own, and rightly so. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, like Byron one of those poets hardly anybody ever reads these days, scored even higher. Her Sonnets from the Portuegese were translated by Rainer Maria Rilke, one of our most famous poets ever. There is even some debate whether his translation doesn't surpass her original. I wouldn't go that far, but some lines I do like better in what he came up with. But make up your own mind. In any case, both are beautiful poems unjustly neglected:

When our two souls stand up erect and strong,
Face to face, silent, drawing nigh and nigher,
Until the lengthening wings break into fire
At either curved point, - what bitter wrong

Can the earth do to us, that we should not long
Be here contented? Think. In mounting higher,
The angells would press on us and aspire
To drop some golden orb of perfect song

Into our deep, dear silence. Let us stay
Rather on earth, Beloved, - where the unfit
Contrarious moods of men recoil away

And isolate pure spirits, and permit
A place to stand and love in for a day,
With darkness and the death-hour rounding it.

Wenn schweigend, Angesicht in Angesicht,
sich unsrer Seelen ragende Gestalten
so nahe stehn, daß, nichts mehr zu verhalten,
ihr Feuerschein aus ihren Flügeln bricht:

was tut uns diese Erde dann noch Banges?
Und stiegst du lieber durch die Engel? Kaum; -
sie schütteten uns Sterne des Gesanges
in unsres Schweigens lieben tiefen Raum.

Nein, laß uns besser auf der Erde bleiben,
wo alles Trübe, was die andern treiben,
die Reinen einzeln zueinander hebt.

Da ist gerade Platz zum Stehn und Lieben
für einen Tag, von Dunkelheit umschwebt
und von der Todesstunde rund umschrieben.