{"id":4098,"date":"2018-03-25T13:49:10","date_gmt":"2018-03-25T17:49:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/?p=4098"},"modified":"2020-09-26T09:21:55","modified_gmt":"2020-09-26T13:21:55","slug":"in-eternal-rhyme-as-cyberiad-draws-nigh-a-tiny-lem-shrine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/2018\/03\/25\/in-eternal-rhyme-as-cyberiad-draws-nigh-a-tiny-lem-shrine\/","title":{"rendered":"In eternal rhyme: as Cyberiad draws nigh, a tiny Lem shrine"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Stanislaw Lem<\/strong>&#8216;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Cyberiad-Fables-Cybernetic-Penguin-Classics\/dp\/0141394595\"><em>Cyberiad<\/em><\/a> is a miracle of 20th century literature, and of translation. I want to preserve parts of two stories here in as many languages as I can find.\u00a0 Sources wanted for both, if you have a copy in your language:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The poems of <em>Trurl&#8217;s Electronic Bard<\/em>, with their exquisite compact wordplay.<\/li>\n<li><sup><strong><em>(to come!)\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/sup>The story <em style=\"font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Roboto, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, 'Helvetica Neue', sans-serif\">How the World Was Saved<\/em><span style=\"font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Roboto, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, 'Helvetica Neue', sans-serif\">\u00a0&#8212; where everything beginning with a single letter is destroyed.\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"comment-copy\" style=\"font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Roboto, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, 'Helvetica Neue', sans-serif\">Douglas Hofstadter\u2019s paean to translation,\u00a0<i>Le Ton Beau de Marot<\/i>, touches on the challenges with translating this story.<\/span><span style=\"font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Roboto, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, 'Helvetica Neue', sans-serif\">\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center\"><span style=\"color: #33cccc\">English<\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Phlogisticosh. Rhomothriglyph. Floof.<\/p>\n<p>Pev&#8217;t o&#8217; tay merlong gumin gots,<br \/>\nUntle yun furly p\u00e4zzen ye,<br \/>\nConfre an&#8217; ayzor, ayzor ots,<br \/>\nBither de furloss bochre blee!<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>Mockles! Fent on silpen tree,<br \/>\nBlockards three a-feening,<br \/>\nMockles, what silps came to thee<br \/>\nIn thy pantry dreaming?<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>Oft, in that wickless chalet all begorn,<br \/>\nWhere whilom soughed the mossy sappertort<br \/>\nAnd you were wont to bong&#8211;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><em>{Responding to Klapaucius&#8217;s taunts&#8230;}<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">The Petty and the Small<br \/>\nAre overcome with gall<br \/>\nWhen Genius, having faltered, fails to fall.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">Klapaucius too, I ween,<br \/>\nWill turn the deepest green<br \/>\nTo hear such flawless verse from Trurl&#8217;s machine.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;<em>Have it compose a poem &#8212; a poem about a haircut! But lofty, noble, tragic, timeless, full of love, treachery, retribution, quiet heroism in the face of certain doom!\u00a0 Six lines, cleerly rhymed, and every word beginning with the letter s!!<\/em>&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\"><span style=\"color: #ff6600\">Seduced, shaggy Samson snored.<\/span><br \/>\nShe scissored short. Sorely shorn,<br \/>\nSoon shackled slave, Samson sighed,<br \/>\nSilently scheming,<br \/>\nSightlessly seeking<br \/>\nSome savage, spectacular suicide.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;<em>Now all in g! A sonnet, trochaic hexameter, about an old cyclotron who kept sixteen artificial mistresses, blue and radioactive, had four wings, three purple pavilions, two lacquered chests, each containing exactly one thousand medallions bearing the likeness of Czar Murdicog the Headless&#8230;<\/em>&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff\">Grinding gleeful gears, Gerontogyron grabbed <\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #0000ff\"> Giggling gynecobalt-60 golems &#8230;<\/span><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>&#8220;<em>Let&#8217;s have a love poem, lyrical, pastoral, and expressed in the language of pure mathematics.\u00a0 Tensor algebra mainly, with a little topology and higher calculus, if need be. But with feeling, you understand, and in the cybernetic spirit.<\/em>&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\"><span style=\"color: #800080\">Come, let us hasten to a higher plane,<\/span><br \/>\nWhere dyads tread the fairy fields of Venn,<br \/>\nTheir indices bedecked from one to <em>n<\/em>,<br \/>\nCommingled in an endless Markov chain!<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">Come, every frustrum longs to be a cone,<br \/>\nAnd every vector dreams of matrices.<br \/>\nHark to the gentle gradient of the breeze:<br \/>\nIt whispers of a more ergodic zone.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">In Riemann, Hilbert or in Banach space<br \/>\nLet superscripts and subscripts go their ways.<br \/>\nOur asymptotes no longer out of phase,<br \/>\nWe shall encounter, counting, face to face.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">I&#8217;ll grant thee random access to my heart,<br \/>\nThou&#8217;lt tell me all the constants of thy love;<br \/>\nAnd so we two shall all love&#8217;s lemmas prove,<br \/>\nAnd in our bound partition never part.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">For what did Cauchy know, or Christoffel,<br \/>\nOr Fourier, or any Boole or Euler,<br \/>\nWielding their compasses, their pens and rulers,<br \/>\nOf thy supernal sinusoidal spell?<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">Cancel me not &#8212; for what then shall remain?<br \/>\nAbscissas, some mantissas, modules, modes,<br \/>\nA root or two, a torus and a node:<br \/>\nThe inverse of my verse, a null domain.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">Ellipse of bliss, converge, O lips divine!<br \/>\nThe product of our scalars is defined!<br \/>\n<em>Cyberiad<\/em> draws nigh, and the skew mind<br \/>\nCuts capers like a happy haversine.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">I see the eigenvalue in thine eye,<br \/>\nI hear the tender tensor in thy sigh.<br \/>\nBernoulli would have been content to die,<br \/>\nHad he but known such <em>a\u00b2cos2\u0444<\/em>!<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><em>{And found among the poet&#8217;s papers&#8230;}<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">Arms, and machines I sing, that, forc&#8217;d by fate,<br \/>\nAnd haughty Homo&#8217;s unrelenting hate,<br \/>\nExpell&#8217;d and exil&#8217;d, left the Terran shore&#8230;<\/p>\n<h2>Russian (kiberiada)<\/h2>\n<p><em>(via <a href=\"http:\/\/194.8.8.217\/cgi-bin\/lat\/LYNX\/LYNX\/LEM\/kiberiada.txt#2\">bad OCR<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">Obshchekotovicharohristofornaya hryashchetvorobka.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">Lopotuj golomozyj, da bundet gryvchato<br \/>\nV koch&#8217; turmel&#8217;noj bychahe, chto kozdroj usnit,<br \/>\nOkoshel by nazakroch&#8217;, vysvirya glazyata,<br \/>\nA porsaki korslivye vychat namryd!<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">Tri, samolozh vyverstnyj, vertyashku sum vozdlinem,<br \/>\nSeklivoj apelajde i borovajka knetsya,<br \/>\nGrenit malopoleshnyj tem perezlavskim trinem,<br \/>\nI otmurchitsya bamba, i goloyu vernetsya.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">Gryznotvuroga zhuzhdya, golenistyj lolen&#8217;<br \/>\nSamoshpaka mimanku&#8230;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">Zavist&#8217;, chvanstvo, egoizm, po slovam Konfuciya,<br \/>\nDo dobra ne dovedut &#8211; znaet eto i bolvan.<br \/>\nSlovno kraba gruzovik, tak i Klapauciya<br \/>\nMoshch&#8217;yu zamyslov razdavit duha velikan!<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">Kot, kaverznik kovarnyj, kiberotoman,<br \/>\nK koroleve kafrov kradetsya Kiprian.<br \/>\nKak klavesina klavishej, korsazha kasaetsya.<br \/>\nKrasotka k kavaleru, konfuzyas&#8217;, kidaetsya&#8230;<br \/>\n&#8230;Kaznitsya kralya, kisnet: kanul Kupidon,<br \/>\nK kuzine korolevy kradetsya kiberon!<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\"><em>Groznyj Gen&#8217;ka-generator grubo gryz goroh gorstyami&#8230;<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong><br \/>\nLove and Tensor Algebra<\/strong>:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">V ekstremum kibernetik popadal<br \/>\nOt robosti, kogda kiberiady<br \/>\nNemodulyarnyh grupp iskal on integral.<br \/>\nProch&#8217;, edinichnyh vektorov zasady!<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">Tak est&#8217; lyubov&#8217; il&#8217; eto lish&#8217; igra?<br \/>\nGde, antiobraz, ty? Voznikni, slovo molvi-ka!<br \/>\nUzh nam proreducirovat&#8217; pora<br \/>\nLyubovnicu v ob\u017dyatiya lyubovnika.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">Polumetrichnoj drozhi sil&#8217;nyj tok<br \/>\nObratnoj svyaz&#8217;yu tut zhe obernetsya,<br \/>\nTakoj kaskadnoj, chto v nedolgij srok<br \/>\nKorotkoj yarkoj vspyshkoj cep&#8217; zamknetsya!<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">Ty, transfinal&#8217;nyj klass! Ty, edinica sily!<br \/>\nKontinuum ushedshih prasistem!<br \/>\nZa proizvodnuyu lyubvi, chto mne darila<br \/>\nOna, otdam ya Stoksa nasovsem!<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">Otkroyutsya, kak Teoremy Tela,<br \/>\nTvoih prostranstv vetvistye glubiny,<br \/>\nI gradienty kiparisov smelo<br \/>\nPomnozheny na stai golubinye.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">Sediny? CHush&#8217;! My ne v prostranstve Vejlya<br \/>\nI topologiyu projdem za laskoj sledom my,<br \/>\nTakih krutizn raschetam robko vnemlya,<br \/>\nCHto byli Lobachevskomu nevedomy<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">O komitanta chuvstv, tebya lish&#8217; znaet<br \/>\nTot, kto uznal tvoj rokovoj zaryad:<br \/>\nParametry fatal&#8217;no navisayut,<br \/>\nNanosekundy gibel&#8217;yu grozyat.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">Lishen golonomicheskoj sistemoj<br \/>\nNulya koordinatnyh asimptot,<br \/>\nPoslednih lask, &#8211; v proekcii poslednej<br \/>\nNash kibernetik gibnet ot zabot.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">T&#8217;ma. Vo t&#8217;me zakruzhilis&#8217; pustoty.<br \/>\nOsyazaem, no prizrachen sled.<br \/>\nVeter dunul &#8211; i vzora kak net.<br \/>\nSlyshen shag nastupayushchej roty.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2>More languages<\/h2>\n<p>French, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish: <a href=\"https:\/\/homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk\/rmayr\/cyberiad.html\">Love and Tensor Algebra<\/a>\u00a0(bad charset)<\/p>\n<p>Polish, Czech, Hungarian: <a href=\"https:\/\/homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk\/rmayr\/cyberiad2.html\">Love and Tensor Algebra<\/a> (bad charset)<\/p>\n<h2>\nRelated essays<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Hofstadter, Douglas: <em>Le Ton Beau De Marot<\/em> &#8211; discusses the challenges in translating <em>How the World was Saved<\/em><\/li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"bp-group-documents-title\">Hoel, Camilla: <a href=\"http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.17613\/M66P99\"><em>Fascinasjonen ved det utilgjengelige: &#8220;Love and Tensor Algebra&#8221;<\/em><\/a> &#8211;\u00a0Discusses Michael Kandel&#8217;s English translation, and the choice to abandon both form and content, in order to remain true to the original.\n<\/p>\n<p class=\"bp-group-documents-title\">\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>https:\/\/caa.hcommons.org\/deposits\/item\/hc:11291\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Stanislaw Lem&#8216;s Cyberiad is a miracle of 20th century literature, and of translation. I want to preserve parts of two stories here in as many languages as I can find.\u00a0 Sources wanted for both, if you have a copy in your language: The poems of Trurl&#8217;s Electronic Bard, with their exquisite compact wordplay. (to come!)\u00a0The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1202,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[210,205,78850,214],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chain-gang","category-glory-glory-glory","category-noetic","category-poetic-justice"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iVvB-146","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1202"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4098"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4098\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4394,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4098\/revisions\/4394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}