Book: Two Old Women

[stolen_tea]

This will be a bit roundabout, I'm afraid, traveling through a song and an interview and a digression about translations, before getting to the actual book. :)

So, first off, a while ago I stumbled on an a capella musical group called Sassafrass that is working on an album called Sundown based on Norse mythology. In particular, there's a song

Comments

mild bibliography

[buhrger]

while Christianity struggles with the problem of evil, the Norse myths face a rather different issue.
i'm reminded of the point that prothero makes in god is not one: each religion identifies something as being "this is what's worng", and then proposes a way to fix that thing. and religions generally don't agree on what's worng, and thus unsurprisingly don't agree on how to fix it.

"rights" are a thing we give to the people around us
either nietzsche or perhaps foucault through whom i encountered the concept would i think argue that rights are something we arrogate to ourselves. if we can't take our own rights, then they aren't rights. is his/their point of view. not sure i agree or disagree.

I tend to indentify two main categories of translation.
you've read hofstadter's book on translation, right?

Re: mild bibliography

[stolen_tea]

I haven't read that book, no. It sounds like something I might enjoy, though. :)

I would definitely disagree (especially in terms of the Viking Socialism framework) that rights are a thing we arrogate to ourselves. We have no more right to the things we are strong enough to take by force, than the things that are given to us by others. The most that can be said is that we have them. If there are no other people around, then that's the end of it. But if there are other people around, then we have a society and societal norms, and "rights" start to have meaning. (I leave aside a discussion of the horrors that ensue when we start redefining "people" to be "not-people"...)

(More abstractly, I'd say that if we associate "rights" with "what we can actually do", then the notion of "rights" is meaningless. Similarly to how if a physicist says "nothing is solid", they are rendering the term "solid" completely useless. :)

[buhrger]

I haven't read that book, no. It sounds like something I might enjoy, though. :)
now i'm wondering if you're referring to prothero or hofstadter :-)

I'd say that if we associate "rights" with "what we can actually do", then the notion of "rights" is meaningless.
it's a fair cop. as noted, it's nietzsche/foucault translated from the german and french by my flaky memory in any case.

[mimerki]

I've been thinking rather a bit about translation myself lately. I tend to prefer heavily glossed, literal translations, even if this makes the work difficult in English. There will be a bit about this on the rune poem filter, since my assumptions and preferences are worth noting there.

I like it

[mryt_maat]

Nice description of Norse values.

Re: I like it

[stolen_tea]

Thanks!