#siggi rambles

Also got Station Eleven, the tv adaptation of which I hear is very much in dialogue with the original. So look forward to comparing those, too

To Silver stories are a means to an end and while Flint also uses stories this way, they’re much more to him than a simple rhetorical tool. They’re how he makes sense of the world, how he keeps on going, how he justifies his own actions in the face of his morals.

Silver initially wants wealth, then becomes loyal to people. Flint, on the other hand, is always working in service of an ideal, a story, a version of the truth. Initially it is Thomas’ version of the truth he wants to see become realised, he wants Thomas’ story to go on beyond his death, he wants to give his words power over a reality he is no longer able to shape. Later, it is Miranda’s story of Peter Ashe’s actions and of the fate of Charlestown that leads him to act -- he goes about realising her story as well.

I wonder if the reason Flint’s so adrift in early season 3, beyond his grief, is not also because he’s not sure yet what the new story is. He has made himself the villain of the new world, has set in motion a story about his name and his evil deeds, but there is no room for his own truth at this point in time. In allying with Maroon Island, he is given a new story to work on, a story where he no longer has to be simply a monster meant to scare off those who would attack Nassau. In allying with Maroon Island, he manages to formulate the story of revolution, of injustice and the victims of it standing up in solidarity to oppose it.

“Well what posters do you have on your walls, then?”

I answered that I had posters of fictional characters.

I didn’t specify what posters I had to him, but the way I remember it, at this point it was one of movie!Eowyn, one with a few Naruto characters, the cover of a danish fantasy book... and, most prominently, three different Harry Potter ones. I had the danish covers of book 5 and 7, picked up along with the pre-ordered books at a little local bookstore that no longer exists, and I had a big movie poster from the 3rd movie, gifted to me by my aunt and uncle after they’d been to the premiere with my older cousin when I was too young.

He answered, in essence:

“That is smarter, actually. Fictional characters can’t disappoint you the way real people can.”

Well

There’s some irony there, all things considered

btw this is the funniest video ever made about scandi relations

Basically Norway’s independence from Denmark but it‘s a divorce

The English subs translate the Danish as a Norwegian would hear it. Here are some explanations:

2:37 - “Incomprehensive danish” = “I’m ready for a day of work, my friend”

2:52 - This whole exchange hinges on the verb “må” meaning different things in Danish and Norwegian. The Dane says “May I?” and the Norwegian hears “Do I have to?” and consequently the Norwegian says “You don’t have to” and the Dane hears “You’re not allowed to.”

So I was reading Vol 4 Book 8 Part 1 in my Danish Les Mis translation today and fell upon the word “skæbnegud” which means “god of fate” seemed to me like a very Danish word choice rather than a more literal translation, so i decided to look it up.

Original:

L'amour n'a point de moyen terme; ou il perd, ou il sauve. Toute la destinée humaine est ce dilemme-là. Ce dilemme, perte ou salut, aucune fatalité ne le pose plus inexorablement que l'amour. L'amour est la vie, s'il n'est pas la mort. Berceau; cercueil aussi. Le même sentiment dit oui et non dans le cœur humain. De toutes les choses que Dieu a faites, le cœur humain est celle qui dégage le plus de lumière, hélas! et le plus de nuit.

Hapgood:

Love has no middle course; it either ruins or it saves. All human destiny lies in this dilemma. This dilemma, ruin, or safety, is set forth no more inexorably by any fatality than by love. Love is life, if it is not death. Cradle; also coffin. The same sentiment says "yes" and "no" in the human heart. Of all the things that God has made, the human heart is the one which sheds the most light, alas! and the most darkness.

Danish (Lund):

Kærligheden kender ingen middelvej; det er fortabelse eller frelse. Al menneskelig skæbne ligger i de to muligheder. Ingen skæbnegud stiller det mere ubønhørligt op end kærligheden. Kærligheden er livet, hvis den ikke er døden. Vugge; men også kiste. En og samme følelse siger ja og nej i menneskets hjerte. Af alle de ting, Vorherre har skabt, er menneskets hjerte det, der udbreder mest lys, ak! og mest mørke.

Lund in English

Love knows no middle road; it is perdition or salvation. All human fate lies in those two possibilities. No god of fate* sets it up more inexorably than love. Love is life, if it is not death. Cradle; but coffin too. The exact same feeling says yes and no in the human heart. Of all the things Our Lord has created, the human heart is the one that spreads most light, alas! and most darkness

*You could reasonably render this as Moira too, as it ultimately derives from a ref to the Moirai or the Norns

So despite not actually knowing French, I can tell that Hapgood’s translation is a lot more literal than Lund’s. The word I stumbled on, skæbnegud, is “fatalité” in French and “fatality” in Hapgood, which is also a reference to fate, but in a disembodied sense rather than the (I would presume) rather Danish word choice of referring to some vague god(s) -- e.g. in Danish one will similarly attribute good or bad weather to “the weather gods” with no clear sense of who these weather gods are supposed to be, as it is merely a linguistic flourish.

Personally I really like this choice. It’s a mild localisation which gives the Danish text more poetic gravitas than a direct literal translation would have had and I suspect he emphasised it reading well in Danish rather than being literal.

The other difference that stands out to me is “Vorherre” (Our Lord) rather than “Gud” (God) which would be the direct translation of “Dieu”. I think here Lund was likely trying to match older, more poetic language, and again I think he made a good choice. It would have felt somewhat unnatural to use “Gud” in that context imo.

Tangent section:

Which also reminds me, Lund renders the beginning of Grantaire’s Back Room of the Café Musain rant as “Jeg er tørstig. Kære dødelige, lad mig drømme” ie “I am thirsty. Dear mortals, let me dream” which I absolutely adore.

In French this is “J'ai soif. Mortels, je fais un rêve” which as I understand it is somwhere between “I have a dream” and “I am dreaming” (maybe in the sense “I’m thinking up a dream?). Hapgood goes with “I am dreaming.”

This means that Danish!R is asking for permission to dream & announcing that he’s about to embark on a hypothetical scenario, while Original!R is either announcing that he has a dream he wants to tell the listeners about or that he is in the process of/about to embark on the process of elaborating on a hypothetical scenario.

The more literal translation into Danish might have been something like “jeg gør mig en drøm” (I think up a dream/I create a dream [mentally]) or simply “jeg sidder og drømmer” (I am dreaming).

“Yet Thórr has (as far as our late records go) a very marked character, or personality, which cannot be found in thunder or in lightning, even though some details can, as it were, be related to these natural phenomena: for instance, his red beard, his loud voice and violent temper, his blundering and smashing strength. None the less it is asking a question without much meaning, if we inquire: Which came first, nature-allegories about personalized thunder in the mountains, splitting rocks and trees; or stories about an irascible, not very clever, redbeard farmer, of a strength beyond common measure, a person (in all but mere stature) very like the Northern farmers, the boendr by whom Thórr was chiefly beloved?”

and later

“So we must freely admit that a tale of love is more likely to be told of a prince in history, indeed is more likely actually to happen in an historical family whose traditions are those of Golden Frey and the Vanir, rather than those of Odin the Goth, the Necromancer, glutter of the crows, Lord of the Slain.”

I know “Odin the Goth” refers to the Germanic people but I’M CACKLING

The absolute TENSION from Flint the moment Thomas is brought up, his immediate “He didn’t.” when Silver starts spinning the story of Thomas’ survival...

Also, obviously this is both foreshadowing of how things end, with Silver choosing Madi’s survival over the war AND of Flint being dragged away from it by Thomas’ survival

But I think more than that, we also have Flint’s “I think if [Thomas] knew how close we were to the victory he gave his life to achieve... he wouldn’t want me to” which is, in many ways, much more about Madi than it is about Thomas in a literal sense. The line is prophetic about both what Silver ends up doing and about Madi’s reaction to it.

Thomas "gave his life” trying to make a symbolic point about reform and Progress through the pardons, there is no literal way in which he has anything to do with the pirate + slave rebellion Flint, Silver and Madi are fighting, his only real relationship to it is as Flint’s motivation.

There’s definitely also a false equivalency going on from Silver’s side. The loss of Thomas was so traumatic for Flint not just because of the loss itself, but because of how it happened. The loss itself was awful, of course, but the reason it’s Flint’s entire character motivation is because of the circumstances -- the political motives for getting Thomas out of the way, the homophobic way it was justified, the ways James’ own father figure describes their relationship, their love, as “profane”, James’ feeling that they abandoned Thomas when they could still have saved him... It’s all of it. It’s not just Thomas’ death.