swan_tower (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
swan_tower) wrote2008-09-30 11:49 pm
swan_tower) wrote2008-09-30 11:49 pm
Entry tags:
grrrr
Judging by my progress so far tonight, I have not yet found the hole that noveling buried my story mojo in.
That, or having to consult Panlexicon, the OED, or a Latin dictionary -- worse case scenario, all three -- every sentence or so is killing my forward progress.
Probably both.
I should just write the damn story and worry about the language later, but I hear blood vessels rupturing in all the prose-stylist writers of my acquaintance, at the thought that these two things are separable. Really, I should just write the damn story and give up on the stylistic experiment I'm trying to carry out . . . but where's the fun in that?
Can anybody recommend a translation of Beowulf that sounds as much like the original as possible? I don't want accessibility here; I want the linguistic knack I had back when I was translating pages of Old Norse every week, for making my English flow in different patterns. But my Norse is too rusty, and this is supposed to be Anglo-Saxon anyway. Any Anglo-Saxon text would work, I suppose; I just keep turning to Beowulf because it's the only one I know.
That, or having to consult Panlexicon, the OED, or a Latin dictionary -- worse case scenario, all three -- every sentence or so is killing my forward progress.
Probably both.
I should just write the damn story and worry about the language later, but I hear blood vessels rupturing in all the prose-stylist writers of my acquaintance, at the thought that these two things are separable. Really, I should just write the damn story and give up on the stylistic experiment I'm trying to carry out . . . but where's the fun in that?
Can anybody recommend a translation of Beowulf that sounds as much like the original as possible? I don't want accessibility here; I want the linguistic knack I had back when I was translating pages of Old Norse every week, for making my English flow in different patterns. But my Norse is too rusty, and this is supposed to be Anglo-Saxon anyway. Any Anglo-Saxon text would work, I suppose; I just keep turning to Beowulf because it's the only one I know.