On pathos

The failure of the Tocharians and Indo-Iranians to meet up during their early eastward migrations fills me with almost as much sadness as does the Ents' hopeless search for the Ent-wives.

Not quite as sad, though, because the Tocharians do later come into contact with both Iranian and Indic. But the poor Ents....

German Love

Oh, Max Müller, I never knew you had it in you! Thank you, interwebs, for ever bringing me new delights.

While perusing wikipedia this evening, I noted that Max Müller, after moving to England, "supported himself at first with creative writing, his novel German Love being popular in its day."

Now, I can't speak to the quality of the translation, and there are at least two different 19th cent. English translations available on google books, but this is definitely my favorite sentence I've come across so far: "When the rosy dawn of life opens the secret calyx of the soul, it is filled with the perfume of love."

Oh, and now I find that there is also an edition of the German text available on google books with English intro, notes, and vocab by James Chapman Johnston. Here's the above sentence in the original: Wenn das Frührot des Lebens den heimlichen Kelch der Seele öffnet, so duftet alles im Innern von Liebe. Besides the lovely purple prose, the highlight of this particular document is, perhaps, the pink finger-gloved, wedding-banded hand of the poor sap who scanned the book in, visible on the very first page.

This all reminds me a bit of the Classicist Erich Segal, who is perhaps best known for the novel and screenplay of Love Story, and who also wrote the Yellow Submarine screenplay.

I think a trashy novel or two may be in my future...

Today's Haul

My very own Greek and Latin etymological dictionaries! Thank you, book stipend!

Bye-bye, present tense. I am arrived.

I am arrived, indeed.

So I've decided to start a blog to help facilitate and focus my various academic and pseudo-academic ponderings. My hope is both to keep myself engaged with what fascinates me and to tap into the larger online community of historical linguists (and especially those concerned with Indo-European poetics!)

Also, this blog should provide a certain guilt factor if I realize it has been especially long since my last post of note.

Bonus points if you (whoever you are) know where my title comes from!