Fall 2019
News
The Foundation Year Programme: in itself and for itself.
EIKONES EDITION
Fall 2019 — EIKONES EDITION
News
Editors: Dr. Susan Dodd (FYP 1983–84) Christopher Snook (FYP 1994–95) Student Editor: Laya Nickerson (FYP 2019–20)
The Foundation Year Programme: in itself and for itself.
CONTENTS
Design: Co. & Co.
Front Cover: Eli Diamond’s artistic rendering of Plato’s allegories—Sun, Line, and Cave—mapped onto one another. Back Cover: Five Things to Read / Watch / Listen to this Winter Break by Hamza Karam Ally
Editors’ Note: Eikones by Dr. Susan Dodd and Christopher Snook
1. Science of Icons by Benjamin Von Bredow
22.
Finding A Place To Study by Laya Nickerson
22.
Thank you, Céline! by Laya Nickerson
23.
Directing All My Sons with the KTS by Chloe Kaulbach
1. Illumination poem by Christopher Snook 2. Following a Visit to the Hermitage poem by Ata Zargarof
24. Remembering Shari Clarke
2. Women’s Compline by Madelaine Wheeler
24. Shari Clarke, Time Traveller by Eli Diamond
3. Hamlet Puppet Prince of Denmarke by Jack Smith
25.
4. Josh Dunn on Stand-up by Christopher Snook
24. Valedictory Speech by Shari Clarke
26.
5. What the Hell? by Tom Curran, Susan Dodd , Simon Kow
28.
8. Night FYP: Fall 2019 9.
Nous praktikos: Lisa Gregory (FYP 2004–05)
Faust Live! by Dawn Brandes
28.
Why The Ring of the Dove for the Missing Medieval Millennium? by Sahar Ishtiaque Ullah
29.
The Cool Kids on Campus by Sarah Sharp, Youthnet Volunteer
29.
Paradise, Indeed! by Lisa Gregory
30.
Songs of the Exiles: Old Stock at Neptune Studio poem by Roberta Barker
31. Isabelle Roach receives Rhodes Scholarship 32.
...my mind was struck by light... by Susan Dodd
33. Ash poem by Christopher Snook 34.
The year’s last, loveliest smile by Ezra Laskar
35.
On Seeing a Sappho Fragment in Florence, June 2018 by Hilary Ilkay
Contemporary Studies is going to Berlin in May 2020! by Alison Delorey
36.
Kids and Pets
Formal Meal haiku by Katie Merwin
33. violets poem by Cassandra Burbine
Classics in the Quad: Medea in the 21st Century by Lara Van de Venter
10. “Translation.” Discuss. by Assorted FYP Faculty 16. An Interview with Award-winning Translator Dr. Sarah Clift 16. Translating the Sacred by Daniel Brandes 17. Luther’s Translation of the Bible by Patricia Chalmers 18. A Festschrift in Honour of the Reverend Doctor Thomas H. Curran 18. Chapel Retreat by Alan Hall 19. On the Road with Jane Austen by Neil Robertson 20.
The University Quadrangle by Ian Wagshal
20.
Let us Make Beautiful Ruins
From left: Dr. Susan Dodd, editor; Laya Nickerson, student editor; Christopher Snook, editor; Lisa Gregory, nous praktikos.
EIKONES CHRISTOPHER SNOOK AND SUSAN DODD On Plato’s line EIKONES are the decaying shadows or reflections of the eternal Forms. Ignorant souls, enthralled by these ephemeral goods—mere EIKONES—must be shaken out of their delusion, and gradually liberated through an intellectual purification and discipline. Gradually they will be led “out of the cave,” “up the line,” to bask in the “sun” of the Good. Throughout the Platonic inheritance, the EIKONES are worthy of love, but not worthy of terminal devotion, so to speak. So, the EIKONES are both a trap from which we must be sprung, and the force that moves us to begin on our search for rest. We are attracted to them, but they do not satisfy us, and so we must
ascend, seeking higher and ever higher goods, until we become so like the Good that we enter into a union with it. Martin Luther sees precisely this investment in becoming “like” God as a one-way ticket to despair and self-delusion. He seems to demand that the Good outside the cave or at the top of Dante’s steep ascent make itself known in the mess and muck of false images and temporary fixes. As usual, FYP News took on a life of its own this semester. This time, it is about representations and their connection to “truth” or “reality.” The threads that emerged in this edition are translation, performance, and, literally icons—devotional images that are windows
onto a spiritual reality that looks in upon us in our mundane lives. For some people, words themselves are icons; they stand for realities that lie behind them and yet they have their own luminous presence. Symbols made of sounds, impressions on ancient clay tablets, or ink marks on a page, words both refer beyond themselves and they fit together in a fabric of meaning. So why can't we just translate from one language to another, say by replacing Greek with English symbols? How are icon and εἰκων and EIKONES all different? What do we lose—and gain—of the iconic resonances when we translate? In this issue we also consider the underworld, the place of insubstantial images. And we turn our
minds to living and departed friends of FYP who are ideal images of the care and creativity that inspire our community at its very best. The EIKONES of Plato lead from themselves to their stable source and reality. At King’s, the most stable reality that all our FYPish discussions point to is that of the college, “collegium”, this busy, fraught, and rich tension-filled life we lead together in, through, and around books, questions and friendships. In some sense the works that constitute our common study are not unlike the devotional icons that feature in this issue: they are windows onto other realities and new voices that both inspire, challenge, and call us into question. ❧
Science of Icons BENJA MIN VON BREDOW (FYP 2013–14) “Now it’s time to get egg on our hands,” I said, as I began demonstrating for the thirty students assembled how to separate an egg. I held the quivering yolk in my palm, then pierced it with my thumb and let the liquid yolk flow into a cup while my thumb held on to the membrane, which I threw away. Why? I was making paint. On the evening of November 8, the History of Science and Technology (HOST) Society’s “Experiments Club,” a series of hands-on workshops in the history of science and material culture, welcomed me as its first guest of the year. I am the don of Radical Bay, a part-time theology student in formation for Anglican ministry, and a part-time iconographer, and I was invited in this last capacity. Iconography is the practice of painting (or “writing”) sacred images of Christ and the saints according to the tradition of their use in Eastern Christianity. Icons were the common heritage of East and West until the Renaissance, when Western artists began using new materials and styles which were rejected in the East as unspiritual and therefore inappropriate for use in prayer and liturgy. The consequence is that a traditional iconographer paints in much the same way that an artist 1400 ce would have—or in 400 ce or 400 bce, for that matter. An iconographer’s materials are animal hairbrushes, dry pigments made from crushed rocks, water, egg, gold leaf, and a wood panel covered in “gesso,” which is a mix of chalk and rabbitskin glue. Egg is added to a pigment-water mix to make it sticky, so that, once this paint dries (which it does within seconds, although it continues to harden chemically for a year), the image can survive for centuries without fading or peeling. The image is built up using thin layers of this paint, each diluted in water again, to create smooth gradients which are highly luminous because their transparency allows bright white light to reflect off the chalky panel underneath. For the sake of sending everyone home with a finished product after only a two-anda-half hour workshop, the Experiments Club took a few shortcuts. Instead of working on wooden panels, the students painted on water colour paper, which is used by modern iconographers for practice and for drafts, and they skipped gilding altogether. I provided an image which each student transferred onto the water colour paper. We focused instead on the essentials of the
?
Illumination CHRISTOPHER SNOOK
The miracle is that the leaves outside my window eat sunlight
Left: St Andrew “written” by the History of Science and Technology Experiments Club. Right: Benjamin Von Bredow and Aidan Ingalls (FYP 2014–15) in the Trinity House icon workshop.
painting process: the students broke some eggs, mixed paint, diluted it, and applied the paint to their images with my step-bystep instruction. The results were remarkable. Almost every student completed an image by 10pm, and the few who didn’t gave it their best and enjoyed themselves along the way. The finished products demonstrate the intellectual calibre of King’s students, who were able to learn the process so quickly. More interestingly, the workshop demonstrates the students’ creative powers, because the images all used different adaptations of the Byzantine style I was teaching. At the end of the workshop, I had the fascinating experience of being able to identify in the students’ icons many of the distinctive national and historical styles from the Orthodox world, which are bound together in historical continuity with Byzantine art at the centre. Although I had been teaching a 14th-century Greek style, one student produced an icon that was distinctly Coptic (Egyptian) in its orientation, another Romanesque (medieval Latin), another 17th-century Russian. I am grateful for the opportunity to share the iconographic tradition with King’s students, and I am heartened that King’s makes spaces for experiential encounters with historical culture, such as the recent Night FYP lecture-concerts on medieval and Renaissance music. Seeing as it was such a great success, I do not believe that this semester’s iconography workshop will be the last. ❧
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just as I craved eating the illuminated page with gold leaf behind a saint I did not recognize whose face was bright like the sun and I thought if I were a leaf I could eat her brightness because I knew one thing: I was as hungry as a tree full of leaves, waiting to be lit from the inside.
— Fr Snook was the guest of the Haliburton Society Wednesday, November 27th in the Senior Common Room.
FYP – In itself and for itself
Following a Visit to the Hermitage ATA Z ARGAROF (FYP 2017–18)
Cold is the discipline of hunger. Sunlight comes to those who last the night. Knausgaard situates a childhood amid the snow. Tonight I abandon the notion that truth is beautiful. Like a fumigated butterfly, the verse falls to the floor of my brain. I scrawl down its name. I am a clump of ashes grasped, a ruby smothered in the sands.
Women’s Compline M ADEL AINE WHEELER (CHAPEL ASSISTANT, DON 4TH FLOOR ALEX ANDR A HALL)
Singing in the Monday night Women’s Compline choir always surprises me: what a difference one half hour makes! Every week the women who gather to join voices from 9:30-10:00pm experience a bond of companionship as we step into the darkness together, light each other’s candles, and look each other in the face from pew to pew. When we put on black cassocks, we put on a certain anonymity that brings us closer together. The chapel is dark, a darkness that is only emphasized by the small pools of light from fragrant beeswax candles that illuminate the faces of choristers, participants, and
Somewhere far away in the North, our bodies together interleaved beside the fireplace, a massive mouth agape, its warmth is the memory of nourishment. My bones creak in the morning; my breath is visibly a vapour in the dawn. Outside, no snow falls. Stillness as crisp and quiet as the sky. Here, a footstep could shatter the ice, could crack open the ground, could loose the mountains.
icons. In Compline you can shed the conventions of daily life: you can cry as much as you like, no matter how bad your day was, and your privacy is not interrupted but is rather supported by the prayers of the friends around you, who, as Rilke says, are guardians of each other’s solitude. The candlelit icon of Mary the mother of God greets us as we enter the choir, and we greet her in turn in the Marian Anthem which closes every service, yielding ourselves into her loving embrace. Every service is a prayer in which our prayers unite with Mary’s prayer and join us together as women. ❧
I know you like the Byzantines knew God: falsely, alone. Everything I see I want to grieve. Our love is a star that vanishes when the Light of the dawn renders obsolete these songs of pain.
'In order to experience the Renaissance and early modern periods first-hand, Section 3 Coordinator Simon Kow travelled to VieuxQuébec during the Study Break. Here he joins a porcine friend peeking into an abode from the glory days of Nouvelle-France.'
FYP News – Fall 2019 – Eikones Edition
Icon of Mary, theotokos (mother of God), King’s Chapel.
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HAMLET PUPPET PRINCE OF DENMARKE JACK SMITH (FYP 2015–16) There is actually a line about puppets in the original Hamlet. During The Mousetrap scene, Hamlet whispers to Ophelia: “I could interpret between you and your love if I could see the puppets dallying” (3.2.27071). I think it might be a sex joke. There is probably lots to say about the puppet medium and Hamlet, but I am not the one to word them all or word them properly. Hamlet is, I think, as much about fear of death as it is about fear of failure. Hamlet’s inability to act both feeds and is fed by his long journey into understanding what it really means that everyone dies. This (admittedly) is particularly poignant for puppets. An object’s ability to animate is synonymous with their ability to “live”. Failure to animate, failure to appear to be alive,
is synonymous with death, for a puppet. Going into Hamlet looking for success, achievement, or faultlessness undercuts a great deal of the play’s unique and honest value. Hamlet with puppets becomes experiential rather than rhetorical—the question of Hamlet’s obsessive interiority, the complex relations of the castle, and the mystery of death become spatial, unpredictable and passionate. I would suggest watching the spaces onstage as they group, crowd, disperse, shatter, and return. One of the gifts of the medium (and of such talented artists) is the extraordinary ability for intimacy, mockery and self-mockery within the smallest and largest scales. In the spirit of embracing failure, there is absolutely no way I can thank the tremen-
Each moment of each day working for this project held surprise, wonder, laughter and genuine inspiration. dous efforts, talent, and character of my fellow cast & crew without coming short. Each moment of each day working for this project held surprise, wonder, laughter and genuine inspiration. I have never felt so consistently humbled or lucky. I sincerely hope that you enjoy the show. The play is done entirely with marionette-style puppets. I wrote and directed the adaptation as well as designed several elements. Our chief designer/artist/puppetmaker is the tremendous Keely Olstad. And lighting was designed by Kate Ingman. The show is around 90 minutes + intermission. It is comedic, musical, and a little magical—I’ve been calling it a “puppet fantasia.” The adaptation becomes more liberal and abstract as it goes, and the language is substantially changed in order to more adequately suit the puppet medium. There is a strong trigger warning for suicide, particularly in the second half (nothing violent but the matter is discussed extensively). Audience members from opening night have described it as inspiring, comedic, sad and “ just what I needed this time of year.” ❧
Photos by Keely Olstad (FYP 2015–16)
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FYP – In itself and for itself
Josh Dunn on Stand-up CHRISTOPHER SNOOK
All of my writing is meant to be spoken so I try to find the best rhythm and flow to express my ideas.
Did you have a favourite text when you did the Foundation Year Program (almost twenty years ago!)? Looking back, I have to say Montaigne’s “Essays” were my favorite. They were quite a refreshing change from the certainty with which the Greeks and Neoplatonics presented their arguments. They were a great deal more readable as well! Montaigne spoke as a man without pretense. He was so wonderfully human and didn’t care for the advice of his physician. I don’t care for the advice of mine sometimes either! I really ought to read him again. Has your experience at King’s shaped the way you approach your artistic practices — from stand up to film making? My time at King’s has indeed shaped all my artistic practices. In one of the late Peggy Heller’s courses during my second year (it was either Question of the Other part 1 or Society, Politics and Literature), I was guilty of writing Hegel says this or Hegel says that in a very bland and repetitive fashion. Peggy
Peggy suggested I vary my sentence structure and gave some examples. suggested I vary my sentence structure and gave some examples. I read them aloud and they were so much more rhythmic. All of my writing is meant to be spoken so I try to find the best rhythm and flow to express my ideas. Those sentence examples written on one of my essays were more influential to me than the entire canon of western thought! This may be a very egocentric statement but
studying all these greats inspired me to try to become one myself. Of course I may not achieve such lofty status but I would like to be studied someday. I believe in a much more egalitarian world than we currently live in; a world that respects individuality, where difference is held in dynamic tension and where no one suffers the horrors of war, poverty or climate change. It remains to be seen whether anyone will listen to me or not! Have you ever returned to any of the authors you first encountered in the program? I certainly have returned to some authors. Dostoevsky is one of my absolute favorites. I need to read The Brothers Karamazov again. I have reread Dante’s Divine Comedy and Plato’s Republic. Simone Du Beauvoir’s complete and unabridged Second Sex was illuminating and I thought particularly revolutionary for discussing female homosexuality so openly in 1949. I would really like to read Gogol’s Dead Souls so perhaps a generous reader might lend me a copy. :)
it last. I have chosen to include friendship as another form of love because I don’t think its value can be overstated. While I am much more accomplished as a writer and performer, I think this presentation needs to be onscreen—the disabilities need to be seen so I am thankful to have a capable crew. For those who might enjoy some personal information, I had one relationship end just as I was applying for funding and another end just a couple of weeks ago. Hopefully the film is finished before my heart breaks again! ❧ Josh Dunn is a comedian, spoken word artist, film maker and podcast host. He was recently featured on Sick Boy and is currently working on his first documentary, Our Hearts Aren’t Disabled. He did the Foundation Year Program in 2001. https://podcastatlantic.com/191gimpin-aint-eazy-cerebral-palsy-w-joshdunn/
Can you share a word with us about one of your current project, Our Hearts Aren’t Disabled? Our Hearts Aren’t Disabled will be a 60 minute documentary about the romantic lives of those of us living with mobility challenges. It is an unapologetic examination of the challenges we face finding love and making
Josh looking good
FYP News – Fall 2019 – Eikones Edition
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INSPIRED BY THE UBIQUITY OF UNDERWORLD REPRESENTATIONS IN THE FIRST SEMESTER OF THE PROGR AM, EDITOR CHRISTOPHER SNOOK POSED THE FOLLOWING QUESTION TO THE SECTION CO-ORDINATORS FROM FIRST TERM:
What the Hell? SECTION I
Tom Curran Lucretius (a poet-philosopher of the 1st Century BCE) is completely on board with Dr Faustus’s famous exclamation: “I think hell’s a fable”—which, in a sense brings the Autumn Semester of FYP to a close. I remind my F YP colleagues that, in Section 1, we read Lucretius assertion (III. 837): “So, when the end shall come, when the close bonds Of body and spirit that hold us here shall part And we shall be no more, nothing can harm us. Or make us feel, since nothing of us remains…”
Apparently, death will serve us well with its freedom from pain; and we shall also be liberated from our endless searches for happiness and pleasure—most of which may prove to be illusory, and therefore disappointing (III.955). However, as superb essays by F Y P students have revealed—special mention to Ms Molly Britton—while we shall be freed from all the pressures of pain (and gratification), we shall also lose all memory of past goods and present pleasures, as well as the anticipation of every future happiness. From which I come to conclude: unless we “redeem our time” in FYP, there will always remain books we shall never read, discussions we shall never participate in, profound essays we shall never write, and friends we shall never learn to appreciate fully. So, please, return to King’s in the New Year (and Section 4) determined to enjoy every opportunity offered to you in FYP, and before you learn for yourself that “hell’s a fable”. ❧
The dreadful fear of hell is to be driven out, which disturbs the life of man and renders it miserable, overcasting all things with the blackness of darkness, and leaving no pure, unalloyed pleasure. —Lucretius
Continued next page...
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FYP – In itself and for itself
What the Hell?
Cont’d
Figure 2 - Ceiling mosaic, San Giovanni, Florence, c.1300
Figure 1 - Tympanum, Last Judgment, Conques, c.1100
Figure 3 - Detail, ceiling mosaic, San Giovanni
SECTION II
Susan Dodd It may come as a surprise that in the medieval period, depictions of hell were often contained within full accounts of The End. Often, the Devil was a sad figure, well-contained within an overarching hierarchical order, where Christ reigned supreme. That there would be judgement at the end was a good thing: evil-doers would be held accountable, sufferers would be consoled, and, despite humanity’s depravity, some people would be raised to glory. Evil had no positive value, it was always a perversion of good. The dissolution of the medieval hierarchy was a slow and complex process. In this highly schematized image essay, we actually see the hierarchy of medieval life give way to the seething complexity of modernity. The iconic image of Christ in a mandorla
FYP News – Fall 2019 – Eikones Edition
like this one from the tympanum at the Romanesque abbey church of Saint Foy in Conques (c.1100) is the explosion of eternity into human history. The mandorla, the almond-shape, or vesica pescis, unifies the eternal circle with temporal linearity in the ceiling mosaic of the San Giovanni Baptistery in Florence (c.1300). Christ’s bursting onto the scene unveils the order of things active in the now. Christ does not re-order but sheds light onto things as they are. This solid hierarchical order dominates depictions of the Last Judgment from the Byzantine through the Romanesque and Gothic. Christ, The Judge, has the dignified stillness of a Byzantine icon: the motion is in the figure’s eyes, the watchful presence of eternity. The hierarchy of being revealed here is of well-defined registers in dynamic meta-
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phorical relation. Christ radiates order into existence. The bands that follow the mosaic ceiling are a narrative running from Genesis to the Last Judgment. The ceiling’s centre is the point of light, the principle from which all things emanate in an exuberant flourishing of natural abundance: natura naturens. Dolphins, pairs of animals drinking at springs, vines growing and flowing: water predominates as John’s water of life, flowing into creation as a vine of life, the flood of Noah, and the shedding of blood in John’s beheading. God, the creator, stands depicted as a cloaked man with a book, a smaller figure of the returning Christ, and yet higher. The Christ is borne up on partial circles, suggesting at once a rainbow and the heavenly spheres. Under his feet directly we see reanimated bodies climbing out of their tombs. Under Christ’s right
Figure 4 - Giotto, Last Judgment, 1305
Figure 6 - Michelangelo, Last Judgment, 1536–1541
Figure 5 - Fra Angelico, Last Judgment, 1425–1430
foot they are welcomed by smiling angels, gathered among the Elect, and ushered through the narrow gate into the company of the holy. In the detail of the mosaic from under Christ’s left foot, grotesque demons push the weeping damned into the mouths of monsters, especially snakes, disfigured angels, and hybrid animals, and all-consuming flame. Satan at the false centre consumes with every orifice and seems to be girded in flame. In Giotto’s “Last Judgment” (1305), order remains well-defined, with movement between the lower registers of the judgment as experienced by those being judged up or down into the fixed hierarchy of eternity. The order of the higher registers follows the iconography of earlier apocalypses, like that of the San Giovanni mosaic. Here, though, the front figures in the celestial
choir flutter with Giotto’s characteristic fluidity. The lower registers, especially the mediating registers between Christ’s feet and the transitioning judged, are in motion. A partial vortex flows downward from Christ’s left foot, and upward from the donor-patrons at the right side of the foot of the cross to a mist carrying the rising saved closest to Christ’s right foot (which peeks out of the mandorla). The fiery blood from Christ’s entry surges down to carry the damned to Hell. Safely contained in an underground pocket, Satan reigns at a false centre, a pale, blue, bloodless monster, with the torso of an overfed man. In Fra Angelico’s 1425–1430 painting of the Last Judgment, the earthly crowds on Christ’s right hand are dancing merrily as if they’re distracted altogether from the day of judgment. The figures in the lower regis-
ter have just climbed out of the tomb, resurrected into their particular bodies. Hell is sealed in a mountain cave. Of course, the most famous early modern depiction of hell, in terms of visual art, must be the Last Judgment (1536–1541) that swirls over the altar in the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel, completing the complex water imagery from Michelangelo’s earlier ceiling fresco (1508-1512). All these naked bodies swirl around the returning Christ, like water in a vortex. The surging blue is water and sky, roaring in around Christ who seems to be calling for a charge while Mary twists away in sorrow. In the bottom right Michelangelo pays homage to his beloved Dante as Charon bats the damned into Minos’ serpent coil. They are then flung into the fiery tear in the sky, and into Hell that lies outside of the chapel space. ❧ Continued next page...
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FYP – In itself and for itself
What the Hell?
Cont’d
SECTION III
Sim on K ow “Given the decline of sedentary societies into senility and dissolution, the disunity and subjugation of Renaissance Italy, the wars of religion between Catholics and Protestants, and colonial expansion in the Americas, the answer of Section 3 to this question must be that of Mephistopheles in Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus: ‘Why this is hell, nor am I out of it.’” ❧
Left: Bosch, Garden of Earthly Delights, 1590–1610. Right: Bruegel the Elder, The Triumph of Death, 1562.
NIGHT FYP FALL 2019
Dr. Deborah Roberts “Tragedy in Translation: Words, Pictures, Performance” Monday September 16th 3:00 PM – Peter G. Wilson Common Room Peter Bryson “Classical Architecture and its Progeny” Thursday, September 19, 2019 7:30 – KTS Lecture Hall Paul and Nick Halley and Chapel Choir Medieval Chant Thursday, October 24, 2019 7:30pm – Chapel
FYP News – Fall 2019 – Eikones Edition
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Estelle Joubert “Renaissance Music: Tuning the Soul” Tuesday, November 5, 2019 7:00pm – Chapel Euripides The Woman of Troy, with a pre-show talk by Roberta Barker Staged by The Fountain School of Performing Arts Thursday November 28, 2019 7:00pm
FAUST LIVE! HALIFAX HUMANITIES 24 HOUR FUNDRAISER DAWN BR ANDES (FYP 2001– 02) Each year, we choose a work that is both epic in its proportions, and in its influence on the Western tradition. We began with Homer’s Odyssey (from the Ancient world), and then last year tackled Dante’s Divine Comedy (from the Middle Ages). This year, we wanted to consider a work from a bit later, and Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus (Renaissance) and Goethe’s Faust (18th/19thC) really fit the bill—the impact of these works can’t really be overstated, and stories of figures who make “a deal with the devil” still show up again and again in our
culture. Plus, we were looking for texts that would be fun to read, and Mephistopheles, the demon who shows up in both works, is really one of the great dramatic characters. And finally, while Dr. Faustus and Faust Part 1 are still performed, Part 2 rarely is, so this is a unique opportunity to experience Goethe’s text in its entirety. ❧ Dawn Brandes is the Director of the Halifax Humanities, and a professor of Theatre at Dalhousie.
Simon Kow, as the Pope
Daniel Brandes as Mephistopheles and Hilary Ilkay as Wagner
A tired Emma Oliver (FYP 2017–18) and her Faust: Emma was a marathon listener at the Halifax Humanity marathon reading for the third year in a row…i.e., a King’s tradition.
Simon Kow as bad angel (black hat) and good angel (white hat), Hilary Ilkay as Mephistopheles, Lisa Gregory as Faustus
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FYP – In itself and for itself
“Translation.” Discuss. ON THE DELICATE MATTER OF TAKING A WORK WRITTEN IN ONE L ANGUAGE, CULTURE, TIME AND PL ACE, AND MAKING IT ACCESSIBLE TO READERS OF ANOTHER L ANGUAGE, CULTURE, TIME, AND PL ACE…
FYP News sent this email to FYP faculty: FYP News asked our student editor, Laya Nickerson, to pose a question for tutors and lecturers, and here is her question for you. She insists that THIS is the burning question for us among students. Please reply if you can, in 300 words or less. “Only one translation is chosen to be read for each FYP text when there are sometimes many options available. Do you feel strongly about a particular translation of any work? Which one, and why?” This set off a firestorm of commentary, much of it about translation in general and the artistic rendering of a text into a form accessible to readers of English. FYP would be almost nothing without translators: even our earliest English texts have to be translated for us. And yet, translation is a fraught topic as you can see. The dream is that we could just replace one word from the source language with one word from another in a kind of mechanical way… isn’t it? Maybe the agony about translations reminds us of both the immediacy and the vast distance in our relations with other times, cultures, and worldviews… Peter O’Brien, Vice-President What of the “untranslatables”… Translation is a deeply fascinating subject that touches on the finest points of epistemology and interpretation. As a scholar, I am constantly required to think about translation and its pitfalls and opportunities. I’ve even had the opportunity to write about translation theory and practice. In my upper year undergraduate classes and graduate seminars, I always devote at least a session to these topics. In choosing translations from the Latin or Greek for teaching and lecturing, I used to be a purist. I thought there would be a definitive version that would outclass others by capturing as many of the desirable traits in a translation as possible: literal accuracy, transmission of sound patterns (so important for poetry!), conveyance of nuance, sensitivity to tone (there are many others). As I have become a more seasoned teacher and my ancient languages have gotten better, I am much less confident that any single translation can adequately convey the full experience of ancient readers in their experience of ancient texts. Too many “untranslatables” lurk beneath the surface of any individual’s reading of any text, whether in the original language or a translation, for that to be possible. As well as languages themselves, we have to consider the times and conditions in which original works—as well as translations—were and are produced by authors
FYP News – Fall 2019 – Eikones Edition
and experienced by readers. So in choosing FYP translations for my lectures on Homer or Virgil, for example, I try to keep in mind which ones will do the best job for students and tutors at the specific time and context in the FYP when they will read them. Over the years I’ve experimented with several different translations for the works I’ve lectured on. For the Odyssey, Robert Fitz-
Gini snoozing on the Snooks‘ books on Egypt
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gerald is a sentimental favourite of mine. It is a verse translation, but also a translation by a poet in his own right. Fitzgerald is intensely aware of the semantic range of words and he creates a richly nuanced verbal tapestry (even if sometimes the nuances aren’t the same as or even possible in the original!). For the Iliad, on the other hand, I’ve chosen Stanley Lombardo’s version. Like Fitzger-
In choosing translations from the Latin or Greek for teaching and lecturing, I used to be a purist. ald’s this is in verse, but it’s sometimes (and justly) been criticised for ratcheting down the “register,” or level of literary formality of the original, as well as ploughing under some detail. Yet at the same time, Lombardo preserves the wonderful rapidity and sweep of the original narrative, which surely is an important feature of a reader’s (or listener’s) experience of the poem. I have reasoned that what we sacrifice in detail and density by choosing Lombardo is compensated for in this first experience of the poem for many FYPers, and at an early point in the year when they’re being asked to read so much in so short a time. My best hope as a classicist is that students will go on to experience this text and others many times and in many different translations, if not (best of all!) in the original! For Virgil, my favourite Latin poet of all, I have sometimes used Fitzgerald’s Aeneid, which I find wonderful for the same reasons his Odyssey appeals. It may be because I know Virgil so well, but I was really disappointed when I tried Lombardo’s one year—every time I went to look for a favourite phrase or significant word the translation seemed to leave it out! For several years I actually opted for David West’s prose version—something I thought I’d never do—because he so consistently captures the “polyvalence” of Virgil’s words, the complexity of his ideas, and even the elusive register of the original, despite the fact that he translates into a sonorous prose rather than into an English metre. For the past couple of years I’ve been using Sarah Ruden’s verse translation. I was attracted to this version initially because Ruden’s was the first complete English translation of the Aeneid by a woman, and in a unit of the program of necessity limited almost exclusively to male authors, I thought that this might be one way to introduce a female voice. I like Ruden’s translation because she uses a fairly strict and formal metre, just as Virgil does. She also attempts what few verse translators have in making her relatively short blank verse lines match line for line with Virgil’s more expansive dactyllic hexameter. This, and the fact that Latin is by nature more concise than English, means that Ruden has set a difficult poetic task for herself. She’s obliged to contract longer grammatical structures into tighter ones, and this means that words and images need to bear a lot of weight. At its best, her translation has a rich density that reflects something of Virgil’s language and the movement of his thought. Whether it’s the best introduction for FYP students to this “wielder of
Elisabeth Stones (FYP administrative assistant, FYP 2005–06) and Phoebe reading The Odyssey
the statliest measure ever moulded by the lips of man,” as Tennyson called him, is a matter for continuous reappraisal. I’d be more than happy to hear what students and tutors think. Hilary Ilkay (FYP 2009–10) What kinds of lessons do our translations send? As a Classics nerd extraordinaire, I have strong feelings about almost every text in section 1, but my biggest stake is in Homer’s Odyssey. Classicists can (and certainly do) nit-pick a translation, since we have access to the original language and have read the Fagles, Lattimores, and Lombardos. Students in the Foundation Year, however, have to wade through a formidable amount of reading. The Odyssey can be a daunting text for those who are unused to epic literature—as I was, in my own FYP year. We should aim to make the process of engagement smoother, especially in the Ancient World section, when students are just getting warmed up to the rigour and pace of the Programme, by opting for translations that will make students want to “pick up and read,” rather than letting ourselves become preoccupied by our personal pedantic preferences. Wilson’s lilting iambic pentameter and playful use of language produce the most compelling translation of Homer I have encountered, and students could not get enough when I read excerpts from it alongside Fitzgerald in my tutorials. The fact that Wilson is a female Classicist is also important to Section One from the standpoint of representation. This year, for example, Sappho was the only woman we read, and there was only one female lecturer in the entire section. Amplifying women’s voices in traditionally male-dominated fields is one way to show solidarity. In addition, Wilson encourages the reader to rethink
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Odysseus’s heroism and reinterpret female characters who have received unbalanced treatment in other translations. It is not necessarily because Wilson is a woman that she translates with attentiveness to issues of gender, but because she reads with a critical feminist consciousness. All translation is mediation, and we ought to think seriously about the kinds of messages our translations are sending. Michael Bennet (FYP 2003–04) Is there a satisfactory translation? I feel strongly that, if any really satisfactory translation of Lucretius’s De Rerum Natura exists in English, I haven’t found it yet. My preference is actually for Martin Ferguson Smith’s rendering of the Latin poem, which is published by Hackett, but unfortunately it’s prose, and one of the things I wanted to communicate in my lecture is that Lucretius isn’t simply writing a philosophical treatise but a poem. I chose Melville’s translation for Oxford World Classics—despite its occasionally old-timey pompous tone—because it’s in blank verse (not to mention pretty affordable for students). That said, Alicia Stalling’s translation for Penguin Classics goes too far in the opposite direction when it puts Lucretius in rhyming couplets! Hamza Karam Ally On Two Translations of The Brothers Karamazov Being probably my favorite novel, I’ve read a couple of different translations of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. When I first read the book in my undergraduate years, it was Constance Garnett’s original 1912 translation. Though I loved it, this translation has been criticized by contemporary readers, ostensibly for being too literal.
FYP – In itself and for itself
Roberta Barker (FYP 1992–93) An old fashioned view
So when I decided to reread the novel a year ago, I bought Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky’s 1990 translation which has been widely praised for being faithful and yet readable. I was a few chapters in and some-
I somewhat blush to say it, since I know it’s now viewed as very old-fashioned, but I really love the Dorothy L. Sayers translation of the Divine Comedy. This is partially because I read her version in Foundation Year back in 1992, and I can’t help associating Sayers’ words with the voice of our wonderful teacher, the late Dr. Robert Crouse, who read them out so beautifully. But it’s also because Sayers’ translation is full of power and character. My favourite moment in Dante is the amazing instant in the Purgatorio when Beatrice finally appears…and all but kicks Dante’s rear end back to hell. “Guardaci ben! Ben sem, ben sem Beatrice,” she says; “Come degnasti d’accedere al monte? / non sapei tu che qui è l’uom felice?” A lot of translators wimp out on these lines and give us a Beatrice who speaks modestly in the first person: “Look well! I am, I am Beatrice!” (To be fair, some editors believe the Italian should read this way, with Beatrice using the first person singular, “ben son,” rather than the first person plural, “ben sem.”) Many translators also fudge Beatrice’s verb “degnasti,” having her ask Dante, “How were you able to ascend the mountain?” Sayers, by contrast, gives us this:
rima structure. That said, I can’t read the original Italian anyway, which I wish I could. Oh, and as for anything missing, I won’t rest my case until Milton’s Paradise Lost is on the reading list. The canon grows longer, the school year doesn’t. Victoria Goddard Translating during the Blitz Most of the books I love most are ones I read most often in translation. There is, of course, no substitute to reading either poetry or philosophy in their original language, and when it comes to the truly great poets such as Dante there are so many shades of meaning in the poet’s choices of words and metre that it’s hard not to wince at the idea of how much is lost in translation. Nevertheless, if one has the choice between reading the Divine Comedy in English or not reading it at all, there is no question of which is better. I learned Italian, in fact, because I love Dante; the same might be said of Ancient Greek and the Odyssey. As long as one keeps in mind the fact that all translations are of necessity also interpretations—something made abundantly clear when you start to look at English versions of the Qu’ran, for example, which are often overtly titled ‘interpreta-
I’m fascinated by the ways that scripture is “revised” in contemporary literature, and especially accounts of “The End”
Dorothy Sayers ”we are indeed, we are Beatrice.”
thing felt...missing somehow. So I decided I would listen to the audiobook instead, hoping it would affect me in the way my first reading had done. As it turned out, that’s exactly what happened. Then I realized the audiobook was the Constance Garnett translation. I bought a copy of it and went back and forth between the two translations for a few chapters, before deciding the Garnett was the one for me. The takeaway being, I suppose, that sometimes you can be personally moved by a particular version, regardless of what very serious critics have said!
I learned Italian, in fact, because I love Dante… FYP News – Fall 2019 – Eikones Edition
“Look on us well, we are indeed, we are / Beatrice. How hast thou deigned to climb the hill? / Didst thou not know that man is happy here?” Her Beatrice speaks like a queen, and with brutal sarcasm: “How wonderful that you condescended to come up here, Dante!” She is not an idealized, objectified version of the “eternal feminine,” but a figure of blistering moral authority who demands that Dante — and all humanity—rise to their full potential. I’ll always love Sayers for introducing me to this Beatrice. Judyta Frodyma Friendly advice on translation For Dante, I refer to my friend and former colleague Dr. Evan King, who lectured beautifully on Paradiso last year. His preference was always for the Mandelbaum because “it translates vocabulary consistently and conveys a good tone, solemn but readable.” Its one fault, however, was that it didn’t come with notes, which vary in quality depending on the edition. As for notes, Evan says that Dorothy Sayers is hands down the best for Dante, despite not finishing her commentary on Paradiso. I’ll have to stick with his assessment, as she tried to copy the original terza
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tions’, because the Arabic words themselves are considered holy—then there need be no problem in studying a text in another language. You can even start to unpack meanings by comparing translations and seeing how they treat particular phrases or words or moments in the original. The other thing about translations is that they are both about the original, and the translator’s understanding of that original, and also products of their own times. One of my favourite translations of Dante is Dorothy L. Sayers’, which is not perhaps the best in terms of its helpfulness to scholars of Dante (Charles S. Singleton’s version is the one I turn to on that front), or even in terms of its English poetry, but does have the great merits of having perhaps the best notes and a strong understanding of the literary arts and craft that Dante was using. Few scholars come at the Comedy from the point of view of a novelist and minor poet (Sayers makes no pretense to greatness in her poetry, though her novels have stood up to nearly a century’s worth of readers and will likely be read for many more), and I think the imaginative sympathy with which Sayers treats the Comedy is invaluable. There is also the historical fact, which never fails to delight me, that
overly ideological translations can do terrible damage. I came to this via a sociological method, “Critical Discourse Analysis” which turned literary criticism onto texts that claimed to be clear windowpanes onto empirically accessible reality. With “CDA” as we called it, we exposed the tropes (tricky turns) by which government inquiries into industrial accidents tamed the fury of the injured families and communities of the dead. I’m still interested in the social criticism that literary analysis affords, and I wrote a series on the Inquiry Report into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls this summer for my friend’s online news source “The Cape Breton Spectator.” In what we might call the “translation” of multiple interpretations of events into one single authoritative account of What happened, who is to blame, and what should be done, government reports calm the fury of the injured and divert radical criticism into projects of incremental improvements… Simon Kow Finding virtue in translation this was the second planned text in the now beloved, but then very new, Penguin Classics series (the first was a translation of the Odyssey), and Sayers began her translation of the Inferno while sitting in an air raid shelter in London during the Blitz, with a dictionary of Latin, a dictionary of Modern Italian, and a solid knowledge of Old French and medieval Christianity. “Midway this way of life we’re bound upon, / I woke to find myself in a dark wood, / Where the right road was wholly lost and gone. / Ay me! how hard to speak of it — the rude / And rough and stubborn forest! the mere breath / Of memory stirs the old fear in the blood ...” It truly doesn’t get much better than that.
There are several good translations of Machiavelli’s Prince; hence I won’t be discussing translations of Ibn Khaldun, the Jesuits on China, or Grotius’s Commentary on the Law of Prize and Booty as the choice is pretty limited. I aim for a translation of Machiavelli’s famous text which is mostly consistent particularly in rendering ‘virtù’ and ‘fortuna’, the two key concepts in the work, and is both readable and inexpensive for students. But even when the translation is inconsistent, that can be a teachable moment, e.g., the ways in which virtù encompasses skill, prowess, cunning, ability, etc.
Susan Dodd Translation bits and bytes I know this is cheating, but my favorite translation right now is a website: Digital Dante, from Columbia University. There, you can see Dante’s Italian alongside English translations by Mandelbaum (1980–1984) and Longfellow (1864–67). There is also a great collection of images, and schematizations, as well as a thoughtful commentary by Barolini. While it can never take Dorothy Sayers’ place in my heart, digitaldante.columbia.edu is pure enjoyment and immense help. Right now, I’m fascinated by the ways that scripture is “revised” in contemporary literature, and especially accounts of “The End”, the Apocalypse or Revelation. This means that I am always using a few translations of scripture: the King James Bible is a towering literary achievement and influence in English literature (I start with the Norton Critical edition), Robert Alter’s Jewish Bible is a challenging treat—the psalms, especially, are excellent poetical company. Just about any translation is helpful in some ways, though
Translation is an art form, not to be taken on lightly… Neil Robertson Not much bothered, except about the texts I lecture on At a certain level I am not much bothered about what translations we use. Certainly most of them, especially those done in the last few decades, do a perfectly good job for our purposes in FYP. The texts we use in FYP and the use we make of them, trying to deal with major works in a day or a week, means that what is really important is the underlying masterwork itself. The greatness of a work by Homer or Plato or Dante usually carries through almost any act of translation. But of course one does have to decide and deciding what translation to use for a text in the Foundation Year Program is beset with conflicting needs. It should be affordable, it should be accurate, it should be readable and hopefully have helpful scholarly supports. For some texts, it might be useful to have the original language included or perhaps diagrams or a good introduction can be really helpful. And of course, not only are there different ways to weight these various criteria, there can also be differing judgements of them. Some people have translations they are familiar with and whose formulations and phrases that seem just right aren’t there in another translation that may be newer or have other virtues. Sometimes it is good to break from a settled translation and be exposed to a different go at the text that brings out something missing or underemphasized in the traditional translation. As many have noted to translate is, however subtly, to interpret.
General Tutorial in the President’s Lodge: President Bill Lahey, Asha Jeffers, Christopher Snook, Simon Kow, Hamza Karam Ally
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FYP – In itself and for itself
Gus, the Trinity House cat, with his Fagles translation of The Odyssey
All of these issues are there in choosing among the translations of Augustine’s Confessions, one of the more fundamental texts in FYP and for me, perhaps the most important text we cover to understand what is distinctive to the western tradition. The Chadwick translation—the one I picked for this year—has lots to recommend it. It is pretty reasonably priced and is the work
equacy, by his measure, of what he found in neoplatonism. Misplaced or one-sided scholarship can distort rather than illumine. In the end, I chose to go with the Chadwick for its many other virtues. I suppose also because I know I was going to lecture on it and be able to get my own oar into the waters of interpretation.
I would like to persuade you, from my own experience, how profound an entry into a particular author’s thought this playing with languages might provide. of one of the most notable scholars of early Christianity of the last century. I think it is probably the most readable not only in its comprehensibility, but also in its ability to convey the power of Augustine’s wondrous latin. But it has one feature I am distinctly ambivalent about: its continual reference to passages in Plotinus that seem to parallel moments in the Confessions. While there is undoubtedly a scholarly claim to find influences of Plotinus upon Augustine. Of course, Augustine himself speaks of the role neoplatonism played in the movement of his mind and spirit to Christianity. But for first time readers of this work the tendency of Chadwick’s scholarship is to confuse, not clarify the argument of Augustine. What is nowhere observed are Augustine’s crucial departures from neoplatonism, especially that of Plotinus, and indeed we must look to Augustine’s own argument to see the inad-
FYP News – Fall 2019 – Eikones Edition
Ian Stewart Translation is an art form… Translation is an art form, not to be taken on lightly, and not without great learning and deep love and familiarity with the text and the language in which it was written, and the language one is translating into. All translators know this, and so, all translations have their virtues. None are absolutely better than others. Students should feel confident therefore that whatever translations are chosen in FYP, we can love the choice for its virtues; these will be enough to help us enter these new worlds. But does this mean you need not stick to FYP’s choices in getting your text? These days of mounting costs, I’d say, if you need to, let your wallet be your guide; but consider our choices seriously, since we choose carefully, including the desire to keep your costs down.
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But we do have our favorites. I lectured on Anselm’s Proslogion in FYP this year. I prefer the translation found in The Prayers and Meditations of Saint Anslem, with the Proslogion, translated by Sister Benedicta Ward (Penguin Classics, 1977). Why? Partly because as a nun she lived the life of daily prayer and meditation; if you were at my lecture you’ll know how important the lived reality of such a life-context is for understanding the Proslogion. She was intimate with all Anselm’s prayers and meditations, so her translation of the highly intellectualist Proslogion echoes Anselm’s rich literary output in the meditatio genre. And her translation captures better, in my view, the poetic quality of the Proslogion, its play with the Latin language—both his 11th c. Latin and 4th c. Latin of his Bible, and of texts like Augustine’s Confessions and other late antique authors. Perhaps next year we’ll put this version in the Handbook rather than have students buy the Hackett edition of Thomas William’s also meritorious translation? Then you wouldn’t have this gem on your bookshelf, or William’s inclusion of the tussle Anselm had with his peer, Gaunilo over the ‘ontological argument’. So it’s all good: “that our joy may be full.” (Proslogion, ch. 26, line 813). Tom Curran On the merits of “reverse translation” To the best of our knowledge, William Shakespeare attended the King Edward VI Grammar School in Stratford-upon-Avon, where he acquired a working knowledge of Latin. One of the techniques in which Shakespeare would have been trained is in the miracle of “reverse translation”. So, of course, Shakespeare, the student, would have been required to translate famous passages of the great Classical authors into confident (and grammatical English). However, once an acceptable translation into 16th-Century English was completed, the Masters at his School would then have demanded that Shakespeare render his fluid English translation back into acceptable Latin. I would like to persuade you, from my own experience, how profound an entry into a particular author’s thought this playing with languages might provide. I have repeatedly suggested that FYP students look at a 2nd translation — even if only of the passage that is the basis of the Essay Question — before they begin their essay production. Each translation is at its foundation also an interpretation, and even a single sentence may provide a whole new “store house” of vocabulary and insight. However, a trick that I have learned is how deeply we may enter into a great classic by reading the original in a second language, aside from English. I have made a point of trying to read a few great French novels in German, as well as their English, translations. I have also done the same with Cervantes’ Don Quixote — since I have no
facility in Spanish whatsoever. How profoundly this might alter our understanding of even this most pithy English aphorism is provided by a magnificent example in the poetry of W.H. Auden (died 1973), who “In Memory of W.B. Yeats” asserts: “For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives…” This has been translated into German with the following precision: Denn Dichtung bewirkt nichts; sie überdauert … This may be a translation, but it also offers an opportunity for “reverse translation” which enables this reader to sharpen Auden’s point. Following the German translation, and now rendering it back into English, what we learn is as follows: Poetry is not an instrument of “social utility”. Poetry isn’t there for anything else; it doesn’t establish anything; it doesn’t accomplish anything. Simply said: it always is. This is what W.H. Auden essentially
Suki with paw perched on the Septuagin (Hilary Ilkay’s learned cat)
makes this clear to us in his praise of Yeats. How wonderful that Auden actually wrote in German! Elizabeth Edwards We keep searching… Lecturers try to find a translation they respect—but also one that fits other criteria, such as affordability. Some of the variables are faithfulness to the original, literary merit in the translation itself and accessibility. For example, American poet Robert Lowell’s translations of French poet Stephan Mallarme are wonderful, and full of literary merit themselves, but not very faithful to the literal meaning of the French. Constance Garnett’s translations of Dostoyevsky were once the gold standard—but now their English seems a little fussy and mannered. We keep searching… ❧
FYP Tutors 2019–20
Tutors Judyta Frodyma, Ian Stewart, Christopher Snook
Hilary Ilkay, Judyta Frodyma, Hamza Karam Ally, Giulia Bonasio, Michael Bennett
Congratulations Elisabeth and Matthew Stones, and Welcome Phoebe! ELISABETH IS THE FYP ADMINISTR ATIVE ASSISTANT ON LEAVE FOR A YEAR. WE MISS YOU!
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FYP – In itself and for itself
AN INTERVIEW WITH AWARD-WINNING TRANSLATOR DR. SARAH CLIFT FYP NEWS EDITORS F Y P News asked Dr. Sarah Clift, an award-winning translator of German and French social theory into English some questions about translation. What’s your favourite thing about being an award-winning translator? The fact that publishers come to me now. My days of peddling half-finished—and half-assed—translations to prospective publishers are over. Is translating a pleasure for you? Sometimes? Almost always, even if sometimes it’s a pleasurable agony. Different stages offer different degrees of illumination (and hence, of satisfaction), but the final stage—when you’re working on very complex formulations and whack! Something falls into place and the whole thing ‘lands’ into english—a glorious moment. What is the most important thing to “get right” when you translate? I’m sure that for every translator you asked, you’d get a different answer. So, i don’t think there’s a universally important thing, since what is important to any translation is going to be quite specific to it. There is also the question of different kinds of translation: legal translations have a different set of things to ‘get right’ than technical translations do, and these are again different
Translating the Sacred Daniel Brandes (FYP 1989–90) Robert Alter’s magisterial translation of the Hebrew Bible (it is an unspoken rule that all reviews of Alter’s astonishing production must include the word ‘magisterial’ in the opening sentences) has finally appeared in its finished form. Parts of the whole—the Pentateuch, the David Story, Psalms and Proverbs—have been published along the way, and so the major interpretive decisions that inform this translation have already been picked over at enormous length— discussed, debated, lambasted, praised—in more or less scholarly journals for several years. On the whole, the translation is an outright marvel. This is because Alter
FYP News – Fall 2019 – Eikones Edition
from translations of poetry and philosophy. But, if you were begging me for an answer, at a bare minimum, a translator needs to feel confident that they have captured the significance of the original text in such a way that balances what is possible in the source language (the one you’re translating from) with what is possible in the target (translating to) language. That is, when i’m translating, there is a moment—or, with luck, many!—When the source text kind of ‘lifts off’ the page, and goes from being a work in french (or german, since those are the languages i work in) to being a work in english. At the same time, i always try to make sure it hasn’t lost its refraction of the source language, so that it maintains a little of its foreigness. For, it is actually all too possible to over-translate a text, to over-domesticate it. For me, the ideal translation of poetry, literature, or philosophy must always remain a little mysterious. Not when it’s a user’s manual, though—no one wants mystery in a user’s manual. ❧ Dr. Sarah Clift, a CSP and FYP Professor who you will meet next term, is an award-winning translator. She translates German and French Social Theory into English. She is the recipient of the French Voices Translation Award, which was given by the French Embassy in the US, for her translation of Jean-Luc Nancy’s Portrait.
(both a great Hebraist and a celebrated literary critic) has an unmatched ear for biblical syntax. Not only does he recognize the cardinal importance of repetition in Scripture (where the same verbal roots are meaningfully repeated in different variations across sentences, chapters, and books), but he also manages—miraculously—to preserve the most distinctive grammatical device in the Hebrew Bible, namely, its use of parataxis (connecting phrases with the modest and momentum-building “and,” rather than either chopping sentences into more manageable units or introducing a false narrative order with more causally-inflected prepositions). Awesomely, Alter’s account of the famous story of Rebekah at the well preserves all 15 “ands” of the original Hebrew (Genesis 24:16-21)! The main controversy sparked by Alter’s translation—his refusal to translate the Hebrew word “nefesh” as “soul” (both the concept of
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PROFESSOR CLIFT’S TR ANSL ATIONS INCLUDE: Nancy, Jean-Luc. Excluding the Jew Within Us. London: Polity Press, forthcoming 2020. (from French) Fresco, Nadine. The Death of the Jews: Photographs. Washington, D.C.: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, forthcoming w inter 2020. (from French) Assmann, Aleida. Is Time Out of Joint? On the Rise and Fall of the Modern Time Regime. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, forthcoming, Feb. 2020. (from German) Nancy, Jean-Luc. “Populism, Democracy, and Neofascism: Two Essays,” LA Review of Books, February 17, 2019. Link: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/populism-democracy-and-neofascism-two-essays. (from French) Nancy, Jean-Luc. Portrait. New York: Fordham Universit y Press, 2018. (from French) Assmann, Aleida. Shadows of Trauma: Memory and the Politics of Post-War Identity. New York: Fordham University Press, 2015. (from German)
which, and the supposed ‘salvation’ of which, he rejects as later theological conceits, essentially foreign to the Hebrew Bible—is ongoing, and it shows no sign of slowing down. But such discussions are enormously productive; indeed, the great rabbis and sages of antiquity (from whom Alter achieves a considerable distance) would have said that they too belong to the Oral Torah, the tradition of unending commentary generated by this most fruitful of all literary works. Fr. Ranall Ingalls (King’s Chaplain) There is quite a lot to consider with respect to translations of the Bible. In FYP, for example, when the Hebrew Bible is taught, the translation chosen seeks to bracket as much as possible later theological developments that shape translation, whether Jewish or Christian. In the Chapel, the translation is archaic and poetic. A prosaic translation
Luther’s Translation of the Bible PATRICIA CHAL MERS Books are physical objects which carry meaning, as well as texts that can be read. Looking at an early copy of a book can give us a sense of the age which produced it, and how that text was seen by its first readers. Among the rare books in the King’s College Library, is Martin Luther’s translation of the Bible into German, printed in Magdeburg in 1578. Luther attended school in Magdeburg as a boy, and through his later preaching it became a Protestant stronghold, and a centre for printing the reformer’s works. Luther devoted his later years to translating the Bible from the original Hebrew and Greek into the language of his people, completing it in 1534. While his translation was not the first into German, it was the most authoritative and widely-distributed, and contributed to the eventual standardization of the German language. However several dialects of German persisted, and to meet that need, Johann Hoddersen later translated Luther’s text into the Low German of our edition (Biblia Dat ys: De gantze Hillige Schrifft Düdesch, Magdeburg, 1578). This is an imposing volume, handsomely bound, and its elaborate title page, and woodcuts illustrating biblical scenes, indicate its quality and expense. The culture which produced this book placed a high value on Holy Scripture. Three hundred years after it was printed, this book was given to the King’s College Library by James C. Wilkie on October 22nd, 1858. ❧ Patricia Chalmers, Assistant Librarian, will host FYP students in viewing selections from the King’s Rare Books in Section IV.
Biblia Dat ys: De gantze Hillige Schrifft Düdesch (Magdeburg, 1578)
might help support the illusion that one had understood finally, doing away with the necessity of engagement, struggle and continual growth. Reading alone more flatfooted translations can sometimes be helpful. But they can go very wide of the mark. In one, for example, after Peter has made the most remarkable claim to be found in the Christian New Testament, Jesus responds by saying, ‘Good for you, Peter!’ It doesn’t quite cut it. Traditionally, ‘eisegesis’ has been the bogey contrasted with ‘exegesis’. Eisegesis ‘reads into’ the text what is not there. That’s bad. Exegesis finds in the text only what is there—that is, what was there two or three thousand years ago for the first hearers. That’s good. But recent reflection has called all this into question. Certainly, it is possible to read the text in a way that tramples all over it instead of attending to it. But with the Bible as with any text worth the time
and effort to try to make sense of it, it may be that ‘eisegesis’ is precisely what we seek, and rightly. We want to find ourselves in the text—to read ourselves into the text, or find ourselves in the text, in all its strangeness, its otherness. Others here at King’s have thought about these kinds of questions much more profoundly than me. I simply want to point to the importance of the questions. Can we read the Bible (or any text) in such a way that we can find ourselves in it or read ourselves into it, without doing violence to the text? In the case of the Bible, if the end in view when we read it in Chapel, for example, is participation in Wisdom, what considerations with respect to translation are most important? ❧
Simon Kow, Co-ordinator Section Three and Asha Jeffers Dalhousie English Department, lecturer on Encounters with the “New” World
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FYP – In itself and for itself
A Festschrift in Celebration of the Reverend Doctor Thomas H. Curran FYP NEWS EDITORS Do you wonder what F Y P faculty do for fun? We write books for our colleagues… well, we wrote one, for t he Reverend Doctor Curran. This “Fest schrift” is a kind of writing festival, and a collection of essays to honour Dr. Curran… this was a surprise (mostly) that marked a significant birthday. The scope and diversity of offerings in this collection match Dr. Curran’s own expansive interests and enthusiasms. Contributors include many of your lecturers this year, the President of King’s, past presidents, former students, the brilliant Curran children, Tom’s spouse, Kara, and general admirers. Dr. Victoria Goddard designed the book itself, including the cover which features “The Evening” by Caspar David Friedrich, and the book’s remarkable three phrase title.
Academic Musings: the legacy of the Euro-Meditérranée: A Festschrift in Celebration of the Reverend Doctor Thomas H. Curran is available at the King’s Co-operative book store. Peter Bryson (FYP 1973–74), from “The Reverend Dr. Thomas H. Curran: A Clerk in Holy Orders”. … Tom doesn’t like to gamble. So he goes to Las Vegas. Not to gamble. Las Vegas is the perfect “fake or facsimile” exemplar. One can stay in Caesar’s Palace and view the Casa di Livia; visit Venice; dine French; enjoy a Turkish steam bath; and watch Cirque du Soleil or listen to Celine Dion. And there are no students; at least, not Tom’s.… Tom is dedicated to his students, painstakingly re-reading and commenting on their musings—worthy or otherwise. Tom wants them to learn and cares that they thrive. And they know it. Student reviews of Tom’s teaching invariably repeat a common them that Tom is the most “caring” professor they have had. This care animates Tom’s philosophic purpose. He wants to engage students in the post-modern where he finds them and introduce them to the dialectical reconciliation of past and present by which they more fully find themselves. ❧
Chapel Retreat AL AN HALL (FYP 1993–94) It was my great good fortune to be asked to be a part of the Chapel Fall Retreat this year. As before, the retreat was at the Mersey River Chalets just outside Kejimkujik National Park. I was asked by the Chapel to give a few short talks on brokenness and community, inspired by a short book, From Brokeness to Community by Jean Vanier, the founder of L’Arche. Though partly inspired by my time in a L’Arche community my talks were more directly concerned with a short excerpt from a poem by William Blake. . . . It is right it should be so Man was made for Joy & Woe And when this we rightly know Thro the World we safely go Joy & Woe are woven fine A Clothing for the soul divine Under every grief & pine Runs a joy with silken twine
FYP News – Fall 2019 – Eikones Edition
For me, the retreat was a wonderful time out of time. It is such a great joy to spend time with such a thoughtful and intentional group of people. I also need to say that the food was delicious (really amazing) and the company very best. As before, I returned home with a deep sense of gratitude that by some weird chance I ended up at Kings all those years ago, a place that I certainly can’t imagine my life without. A deep thank you to Fr. Ranall and the Chapel community. ❧
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Other titles that might be of interest to FYP students: Pres. William Lahey, “Top Ten.” Simon Kow, “Messing About in Books: Intertextual Visions in The Wind in the Willows”. Elizabeth Edwards, “Perilous Gifts and Hospitality” Daniel Brandes, “On Klopstock and Tom Curran the Teacher” Alan Hall, “Art to Enchant” Roberta Barker, “Game of Thrones as Schillerian Drama” Ranall Ingalls, “A Sermon for Evensong” Peter O’Brien, “nec, nate, tibi comes ire recurso: Classical Formation and Latin Verse at King’s in the 19th Century” Christopher Snook, “’…the final stroke of nine’: Reading The Waste Land with Thomas Curran” Susan Dodd, “Communing with the Deep: Water as Reciprocity in the Divine Comedy” Evan King and Neil Robertson, “The Structure of Ascent in Dante’s Paradiso”
Diptych with the Coronation of the Virgin and the Last Judgment
Jane Austen, “A little bit (not two inches wide) of ivory”
On the Road with
Jane Austen NEIL ROBERTSON Yolana Wassersug, FYP alumna and Assistant Registrar Recruitment, and I have been travelling the country recruiting for King’s in the company of Jane Austen. Austen’s Northanger Abbey has been the subject of the mini or sample lecture I have been giving to prospective students and their parents, first in Halifax at the annual Open House and then in Vancouver, Calgary, Ottawa and later today—Toronto. Jane Austen is a deceptive writer. She describes her own writing as like working on two inches of ivory: that is to say it is both done on a small scale and with enormous care and refinement. It seems to be the portrayal of the privileged and idle world of English gentry that has passed away and can say little to the great questions of our day. But what has struck me on this trip is just how relevant and profound Austen’s work is: it seems to speak directly to fundamental questions of our time. One way to see this is that for Austen and her time novel writing and reading was a relatively recent phenomenon and that it might be a genre capable of artistic greatness was by no means settled. It seems a “weak” and “bourgeois” art form that is all too reflective of the prosaic character of the emerging
social life of late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Europe. But of course these tendencies toward mundane settled social existence have only become more powerful and pervasive in our own time. What Jane Austen does is to show, without disrupting it, that there is—or at least can be—great depth of humanity and personality to be found in this world of social
I would argue Catherine’s soul is at stake in this most unexceptional of circumstances.
recognize as heroism. But in the midst of all manner of currents of social pressure and manipulation, I would argue Catherine’s soul is at stake in this most unexceptional of circumstances. The relevance of Jane Austen today is precisely that she gives us a way to think about moral sources and personal integrity that is to be found not outside of but within the social world that has grown so powerfully around us since her time. In those two inches of ivory can be found the very truth of our lives. At least that is what I have been trying to tell the students and parents we have encountered in our travels. ❧
exchange and reflection. At least this is the point I am trying to make to our students. The crucial moment in Part 1 of Northhanger Abbey is whether its heroine, Catherine Morland, should keep her engagement to go on a walk: that’s it. No one’s life is in danger, no revolution or act of death-defying courage is being called upon. None of the things that Catherine Morland herself, addicted as she is to Gothic novels, would
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FYP – In itself and for itself
ARCHITECTURE SPEAKS!
The University Quadrangle IAN WAGSHAL
Did you know that architecture speaks? Studying architecture is like learning a wonderful new language that communicates through forms, spaces, and materials. The more you listen with both your head and your heart, the more beauty and meaning you uncover. The King’s quadrangle is an iconic element of our University. A quadrangle is an exterior courtyard, circled by several buildings. This form has strong historical antecedents. Consider the following images:
LET US MAKE BEAUTIFUL RUINS Email from Angus Johnston to Adriane Abbot, Director of King’s Advancement, on the dedication of the garden between the New Academic Building and the Breezeway to Prince Hall, in memory of his dear friend, the architect of the NAB, Link, and Library, Roy Willwerth.
Early Modern (1819) Figure 1 - “The Lawn” University of Virginia
Dear Adriane, Our talk yesterday touched on some King’s memories and I thought I would share one. One evening as the sun was setting Roy Willwerth and I were looking across the building site of the new academic building and the little quod he had created. Cement forms had risen up and we were expecting the major supports for the roof, coming in that night or the next. In the fading light you could see the arched empty window openings and feel how the new link had already altered the space and presence of the main building and Prince Hall. Roy commented that he was already very happy with the buildings because he could see from their “bones” that they were going to make “beautiful ruins.” At that moment they became, not forms looking forward, but ruins, before our eyes. Roy said that there is a stage in the construction of every good building when this should happen. Architecture, he said, is the art of spatial living forms and must always recognize that such beauty is larger than our lives and indeed larger than the life which buildings house, the various uses which institutions, King’s, in this instance, will have for them. The art must bring out to the full the living use for now, but be aware that the most important life of some buildings may be as beautiful ruins. The centuries confirm how true this is. And how important is that sense of the past and the future, for education generally and for King’s? Celebrating the Willwerth Garden, brought about by the College and Janet Willwerth, was so fitting, on the 225th anniversary of our little living institution. And a garden! He inspired us and inspires us still, with an oddly infectious joy and yet a profound humility, to make our lives and the life of this institution as full as it can be. Roy, in his person, and in his library, his academic building, and now in his garden, reminds King’s that part of that fullness comes from the odd hope, in the midst of life, that we are crafting a beautiful ruin. Fond regards Angus
FYP News – Fall 2019 – Eikones Edition
Late Medieval (c. 1250) Figure 2 - Cloister at Salisbury Cathedral, UK
Hellenistic Greece (c. 150BCE) - Figure 3 - Stoa Attalos, Athens
Archaic Greece (c.500 BCE) Figure 4 - Athenian Treasury at Delphi
Bronze Age (c. 3000 BCE) Figure 5—Wood and Stone Hut
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King’s Quad
If these forms could speak what would they say? If these forms could speak, they would probably talk about enclosure, protection, and conservation. They would express a need to cultivate something internal while protecting from something external—like parents who are trying to both protect and nurture at the same time. If these forms could speak, they would have a logical and coherent vocabulary, perhaps bordering on rigid and inflexible. Looking at the images above, the logical progression through the forms is clear: a. A dd columns to the hut and you get a temple. b. Add a series of temples together in a straight line and it becomes a Stoa. c. A dd a Stoa four times in a square and it becomes a cloister. d. A dd a cloister into multiple buildings and it becomes a quadrangle. e. A dd quadrangles together to form campuses, neighbourhoods, and cities.
If these forms could speak, they would discuss the need for systematic organization, and would guide the conversation towards straight lines of thought. They would probably talk about the value of order, rhythm and measurement, and their love of history, classical music, and sculpture. Maybe the conversation would get a little repetitive at times, but it would always be very well educated. If these forms could speak and I spoke the same language, I think we would get along just fine. But how easy would it be to communicate with these forms if I did not speak that language? Would they make me feel welcome? How would we find a common ground and start a meaningful conversation? How would we ensure that our quad protects and nurtures all members of our community equally? What are your thoughts and feelings about the architecture at King’s? Send me an email at ian. wagschal@ukings.ca or come say hello at Facilities Management in the basement of the Tri-Bay. ❧ Ian Wagshal is King’s Director of Facilities Management
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FYP – In itself and for itself
A HERO’S STUDENT’S JOURNEY
Finding A Place To Study L AYA NICKERSON (FYP 2019–20) As a Day Student, I frequently find myself on campus in between classes or events. I decided very early on not to return to my apartment during these gaps, and to study instead. Little did I know that decision would send me on a journey, the closest I’ve come to that of a hero of the Ancient World. Read on for my story and to get some ideas for study spots yourself:
In her eerily empty campus, a day student and FYP News editor…
The first place I tried was outside. It worked well for about two weeks. Then, like the protagonist of a Greek tragedy, I was turned against by nature. It got colder. Pros: • Nice view. • Lots of places to sit. Cons: • COLD!
My next plan was the library, but that felt too quiet. I wear loud shoes and can fidget as I read. No rest for the restless here. Pros: • Quiet. • Comfort. Cons:
• A little too quiet • Kind of intimidating
Inspiration struck, and I thought of the Wilson Common Room. This is an excellent spot to hang out, but conversation proved too distracting for me to use it for studying. Pros:
•M ost comfortable place I found.
Cons:
• Can get noisy. • Isn’t always open. (Pictured)
Almost ready to give up, I saw it. Just as if in an ancient play, I returned to where I began, armed with a bit more knowledge, and found rest. My window ledge! Pros:
• Nice view. • Good noise level. • In winter, the heat comes and warms your seat.
Cons:
•N ot as comfy as the common room.
If any reader would like to join me, there are plenty of window ledges to choose from. Alternatively, try out other places on this list. You could even begin your own quest for a place to study and hang out on campus. I wish you luck! ❧
THANK YOU CÉLINE! L AYA NICKERSON (FYP 2019–20) Céline Beland came to the University of King’s College as a general manager in 2004. She had already held this position in a handful of other school environments, and prior to that had even more experience with the industry in a more office-like environment. When she arrived, she was meant to stay only until 2006. Now it is 2019, and she is getting ready to retire from the position she has since worked her way up to—that of Dining Services Director. “I fell in love with Kings.” Céline said, explaining how an expected two years turned into an eventual fifteen. “It feels
FYP News – Fall 2019 – Eikones Edition
like a big family. If you want to be part of it, you just have to get involved.” She is heavily involved with creating this family-like atmosphere herself, as her own description of her job shows. On the more intense end of what her work entails, she recounts the events during Hurricane Dorian: how a staff member who lived within walking distance came to help; how a handful of staff members stayed on-site from Saturday morning until Sunday at lunch time, even sleeping there, herself included. Remembering this, she smiles, saying that “Between the five of us here, we fed
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the students. We had a good time, it was fun. The students were thanking us so much for being here and feeding them.” However, even in less-stressful times, her passion and true care for her job shines through. “My favorite part is just seeing the students out there eating and being happy,” she says. She also takes care to emphasize the role that the entire team plays in keeping things running, and the incredible amount of effort that each put into their jobs. Although she is retiring from her fulltime position in December, she has offered to stay on for two days a week afterwards. This is to train the person that would next take her position, to ensure that they will be able to keep the students happy and well-fed. Overall, in her own words towards her job, “It’s about the students. It’s about Kings.” ❧
Directing All My Sons with the KTS CHLOE K AULBACH (FYP 2017–18) In September of 2019, Natalie Forth and I proposed Arthur Miller’s play All My Sons for the KTS and we were ecstatic when we heard that it was chosen. In order to propose a play we had to fill out the proposal form. The form asked us a series of questions about our vision for the play and how we planned on executing our ideas. We were lucky enough to get a director’s interview with all the executive members of the KTS. After the interview we were called and told that our play had been chosen. The following weekend we held auditions and we casted ten people.
My involvement in the KTS has helped me find my passion. This opportunity with the KTS has definitely sparked joy in our lives. We both have a history in theatre and in film making. When I was younger I used to write, film, and edit short skits. I often had to force my brother to act and play along with my ideas. The KTS has opened up a space for people who are equally passionate about theatre to work together. I am so thankful to have the opportunity to work with my extraordinary co-director, amazing actors, producers, costume and set designers, lighting and sound technicians, and stage managers. The KTS helped me recognize my love for theatre on a more concrete level. To have a chance to act and direct has taught me that I want to pursue theatre professionally. My involvement in the KTS has helped me find my passion. Everyone who has worked on All My Sons with us has been incredible. Directing this play is the highlight of my year. ❧
Céline Beland
Natalie Forth (FYP 2017–18) and Chloe Kaulbach (FYP 2017–18)
Cast
Production crew
Sam Barringer as Joe Keller (Father) Katie Lawrence as Kate Keller (Mother) James Ersil (FYP 2018–19) as Chris Keller Kate Urquhart as Ann Deever Christian Laroche (FYP 2017–18) as Dr. Jim Bayliss Maddy Kendall as Sue Bayliss Mia Denison (FYP 2018–19) as Lydia Lubey Pilar Guynot de Boismenu (FYP 2017–18) as Frank Lubeu Dylan Jackson (FYP 2017–18) as George Deever Laya Nickerson as Bert
Producers: Emily Smiciklas (FYP 2018–19), Noah Harrison, and Brookes Woodworth (FYP 2018–19) Stage Manager: Cassidy Nesbit Costume Designer: Hannah Plater Set Designer: Philip Ouellet Sound Technician: Daniel Halpern (FYP 2016–17) Lighting Technician: Faith Saar (FYP 2019–20) Poster Design: Olivia Ersil
Sam Barringer (FYP 2018–19) and Katie Lawrence (FYP 2017–18)
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FYP – In itself and for itself
REMEMBERING SHARI Shari Clarke, the Vice-Chair of the Halifax Humanities Society passed away earlier this term. Shari was valedictorian in her year of Halifax Humanities 101, a co-editor of a collection of essays Each Book A Drum: Ten Years of Halifax Humanities, and most recently served as the ViceChair of the Society’s Board. Shari will be sorely missed by her many friends at King’s.
From the Symphony Nova Scotia website
Valedictory Speech, Halifax Humanities 101, 2013 SHARI CL ARKE We have listened in awe with Odysseus to the wondrous song of the sirens, and wrestled many monsters along side of him in a twelve-year journey home. Along the way we have cheered every new self-discovery which he made. We have suffered along with Job and marvelled at his strength, tenacity, and resilience through adversity. We have stood on the battlefield with Roland surrounded by his dying army. Would we have made the same fateful decision in his place? If we came to this program hoping for answers
Shari Clarke, Time Traveller ELI DIA MOND, PROFESSOR OF CL ASSICS AT DALHOUSIE UNIVERSITY (FYP 1995–96) Shari came to the Dalhousie Classics Department by way of Halifax Humanities. Her valuable contributions to the Halifax Humanities 101 class that year were recognized when she was named valedictorian of the class by her fellow students. Her lovely address to her fellow students was since published in an anthology of writings by teachers and students in the Halifax Humanities seminar, Each Book a Drum (it involves what is definitely the most tasteful and poignant quoting of Kelly Clarkson song
FYP News – Fall 2019 – Eikones Edition
to life’s big questions, we would be disappointed. Instead, we were offered the opportunity, through the reading of great authors, to ponder and reflect on some of life’s great questions, and perhaps to re-define some questions in light of our own experiences. Many of the world’s great visionaries and thinkers have grappled with profound questions: What is the nature of the universe? What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to believe or not believe in God? It is astonishing how closely some of these questions relate to: How will I pay my
bills? How will I feed my children? What can I do to become whole? The seekers of knowledge, and the askers of questions: these people have become role models for us. In many cases, the fact that they dared to question, to take risks, and ultimately to have the courage of their convictions has changed the world, and how people think: Descartes, St. Theresa of Avila, Martin Luther, George Elliot, George Elliot Clarke, Hannah Arendt... [and we must add, Shari Clarke] ❧
lyrics anyone has ever pulled off). Shari’s encounter with ancient and medieval texts in the first section of the 101 class inspired her to start studying ancient languages (both Greek and Latin) in the Department of Classics at Dalhousie University. Let me tell you, these are not bird courses—they are hard, work-intensive, gruelling classes— not everybody’s idea of fun—but they were Shari’s idea of fun—and she was so much fun to have in those classes. Her presence served to remind our often stressed-out students— and profs—to have fun in their classes; she told me many times what an unadulterated joy it was to be part of the academic and social life of the university. Over many years, Shari went on to audit numerous classes in history, literature and philosophy in our Department. Shari was a hard worker, a generous spirit, and generally a delight to have in class. Over the years she became a constant presence in and a valu-
able member of our small, tight-knit intellectual community, appreciated by faculty, graduate students and undergraduates for her enthusiasm, friendship and seemingly bottomless intellectual curiosity. But her contributions to our Department went far beyond the classroom. At every reception we have for our graduating students and their parents, Shari came and provided beautiful musical accompaniment with her violin. She was never asked to do this—one day she just showed up, popped opened her violin case and started playing— which seems to me to be VERY Shari—she thought of it herself as a kind of offering of friendship to the students and the Department as a whole. Her love of the ancient world also permeated her art and craftsmanship in making her astonishing musical instruments—on numerous occasions Shari would storm into the Department with her newest recreation of some ancient Greek
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Why The Ring of the Dove for the Missing Medieval Millennium? TEACHING IBN HA ZM’S RING
OF THE DOVE IN COLUMBIA U’S “MASTERPIECES OF WESTERN LITER ATURE AND PHILOSOPHY” SAHAR ISHTIAQUE ULL AH At the intersection of Post-Colonial and Medieval Studies, scholars have written about the problematic ways in which the past is viewed as an exotic foreign country that parallels ways in which the Global South is imagined as distant and exotic. Interrogating the implications of how the term “medieval” is deployed to connote the barbaric and unenlightened, medievalist scholars have demonstrated how popular conceptions of the European Dark Ages are misleading. Moreover, Post-Colonial scholars have demonstrated how non-European archives have been used to inaccurately understand and analyze developments outside of European Christendom. For example, nineteenth- and twentieth century modernists adapted the Enlightenment discourse regarding the medieval period which they referred to as ʻAṣr al-Inḥiṭāṭ or the Age of Decline. Such periodization not
instrument, the product of serious historical research, beyond the artistic and musical expertise each of her works reflects. She even performed with one of her own instruments at our annual Pythian Games, our annual Dalhousie Classics poetry and performance competition, earning a prize for her compelling performance she called “Time Travels”. Shari was an open, generous, thoughtful, kind person. I have spoken here of Shari as a student, but I think anyone who knew her will remember her as a teacher of how to appreciate life in the face of all the challenges and adversities it sends your way. She will be deeply missed by her many friends in Dalhousie Classics, but I speak on behalf of so many faculty and students when I say that her presence and contributions to the Department will not soon be forgotten. ❧
only continues to impact Arabic and Islamic Studies, although scholars have extensively and thoroughly debunked the notion, but it remains a part of modern discourse that will characterize the disliked actions of certain contemporary groups as “medieval.” Although few medievalists now go along with these very outdated views of the Middle or “Dark Ages,” the ideas continue to shape popular discourse about the past. There are numerous texts that could be included in the syllabus to represent, what I call, the Missing Medieval Millennium. I decided the best strategy for an alternative syllabus design would be to include a medieval Arabic-Islamic love treatise from the Iberian Peninsula—or al-Andalus as it is called in Arabic—that is within the geographical parameters already created by the syllabus. […] The fiction of an essentially white, European, Judeo-Christian west holds as long as only parts of the west speak and other parts are silenced. The inclusion of a medieval Arabic text among other works considered western masterpieces is also one way to make more clearly visible the globally transformative events of 1492 including the expulsion of Muslims and Jews from the Iberian Peninsula, the banning of Arabic, and the development of a racial and blood purity discourse which students eventually encounter in Don Quixote among other texts. By providing students with the opportunity to engage with the absent voices of a western literary canon, it may pique their curiosity after they leave the class. It may inspire them to ask questions of other absent voices in western canons of which there are many— including the indigenous voices of the Americas and the trans-Atlantic slave narratives. It may cultivate the desire for learning, inspire better scholarship, and communicate knowledge that leads to a better understanding of
others—and achieve the ultimate goal of strong scholarship-based teaching. ❧ (This is an excerpt from a longer essay by Dr. Ullah that you can find here: https://once-and-future-classroom.org/ teaching-the-ring-of-the-dove-inmasterpieces-of-western-literature-andphilosophy/) Dr Ullah holds her doctorate in Arabic and Comparative Literature from Columbia University where she teaches in the Western Civilization and Public Humanities programs.
Above: Statue of Ibn Hazm. Left: Sahar Ishtiaque Ullah
(from Each Book A Drum, Halifax Humanities Society 2015, p37-39) https://symphonynovascotia.ca/ about/who-we-are/our-people/ shari-clarke-on-the-nyckelharpa-project/
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Shari Clarke and Chris Purcell
FYP – In itself and for itself
CL ASSICS IN THE QUAD 2019–2020
Medea in the 21st Century ONE OF THE MOST REMARK ABLE EVENTS OF EACH AUTUMN IS THE MOUNTING BY STUDENTS OF A COMPLETE ANCIENT GREEK TR AGEDY IN L ATE OCTOBER ON THE STEPS OF THE LIBR ARY. L AR A VAN DE VENTER (FYP 2018–19) Medea is a Greek tragedy written by Euripides. The production provides an emotionfilled experience, following Medea, as she seeks revenge against her husband Jason, who has left her and their children to marry the royal princess. Medea is a piece that conveys strong feelings of anger, heartbreak, revenge, and desire which all add up to a powerful sorrow-filled rage. In a current context, the play tackles feminist themes important to reflect upon
FYP News – Fall 2019 – Eikones Edition
in any community. Throughout the play, Medea becomes an example of how patriarchal inflicted suffering cultivates a motive for women to turn against one another. The piece, for me, ultimately stands as an example of the suffering that can be inflicted, on both self and others, when women are pitted against one another within the patriarchy. As a director, my priority is to translate the emotion of the piece to both the audience and the actors. The production used
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different mediums, such as visuals, devised and physical theatre, as well as music, to provide this effect! The cast began rehearsing in September and showed great dedication. I am very proud of all the work the cast and crew put into the show. ❧
Classics in the Quad took place on Saturday, October 19th at 5:30 pm. This year we put on Medea by Euripides. The production was directed by Adrianna Vanos, stage-managed by Alex Retzer, and produced by Lara Van de Venter and Luke Cameron. The production also included live music, performed by Sarah Moore and Abigail Mercer. Cast (by appearance, from FYP 2019–20 unless otherwise noted) Nurse: Marianne Lassonde Chorus Members: Jessica Hannaford, Siobhan Best-Roberts, Ella Macdonald, Sam Sharp, Tessa Hill, Gaby Miller Tutor: Gwendoline Chant Medea: Zia Shirtliffe Creon: William Poetker Jason: Hal Rotman Aegus: Benjamin Burchell Messenger: Joanna Daley (FYP 2018–19) Glauce: Victoria Gibbs Production crew Director: Adrianna Vanos (FYP 2017–18) Stage Manager: Alex Retzer (FYP 2017–18) Producers: Luke Cameron (FYP 2018–19), Lara Van de Venter (FYP 2018–19) Musicians Piano: Sarah Moore (FYP 2017–18) Violin: Abigail Mercer
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FYP – In itself and for itself
ON SEEING A SAPPHO FRAGMENT IN FLORENCE, JUNE 2018 HIL ARY ILK AY (FYP 2009–10)
My attempt to photograph the ostrakon in the exhibit. Not pictured: my tears of awe.
Last June, I had the opportunity to visit a special exhibition at the Laurentian Library (the library of the Medici family) in Florence, entitled, “voci di donne,” or “Women’s Voices.” The exhibit featured a number of the collection’s star holdings of manuscripts and books either written by women or dedicated to powerful women. The first artifact on display was a small ostrakon, or potsherd, containing four stanzas (18 lines) of Sappho 2, an invocation of the goddess Aphrodite that begins, in Anne Carson’s translation, “here to me from Krete.” Composed in Egypt and dating from the 3rd or 2nd century BCE, this is one of the oldest preserved Sappho fragments. The fact that it is written on an ostrakon implies that it was part of a routine school exercise, probably a dictation that was hastily and inaccurately completed, with several words and syllables missing (similar to my performance in French dictée exercises in high school). One of Italy’s most famous papyrologists, Medea Norsa, was responsible for transcribing and translating the poem, publishing her findings to great acclaim in 1937.
Now, when I entered the exhibition gallery, drenched in sweat from the characteristically unbearable Florentine summer heat, I was not expecting to come face to face with a Sappho fragment right off the bat. Like the true nerd that I am, when I saw the didactic panel underneath the potsherd, I gasped audibly, jumped on the spot, and, I won’t lie, cried a little bit. I must have stood in front of that ostrakon for 10 minutes. Despite having read all of Sappho’s fragments countless times, I had never seen a physical remnant of her poetry in person. What struck me most was a sense of fragility, of both the piece of pottery—broken off of a once complete vessel—and the verses scrawled onto the surface of the clay, an incomplete version of a longer poem. Squinting to identify the faint Greek characters also renewed my admiration for and appreciation of papyrologists, especially the brilliant work of Medea Norsa herself. When I read Sappho for FYP this semester, I felt a deep sense of gratitude to this anonymous, harried student in Egypt who unknowingly gave us the gift of Sappho’s verses, however incompletely and imperfectly. ❧
Formal Meal A HAIKU
Piper processes Gowns unify, equalize Together we dine
—by Katie Merwin, Dean of Students (FYP 2007–08)
FYP News – Fall 2019 – Eikones Edition
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The Cool Kids on Campus KING’S AND YOUTHNET SAR AH SHARP (FYP 2017–18), YOUTHNET VOLUNTEER Each Monday since September, twenty kids from St. George’s YouthNet, a non-profit youth organization based in Halifax’s North End, come to King’s campus after school to learn and play with one another and their respective King’s tutors. Comprised of students in FYP and beyond, the YouthNet tutors work one-on-one, each with the child they have been matched with, on any homework or on-going project ideas their particular kid may have. Current FYP student and YouthNet tutor, Hannah Monger says that tutoring “is something [she] really looks forward to each week” and that “the energy and enthusiasm the kids bring always brightens [her] day.” In providing the opportunity for one-on-one connections between students at King’s and children from YouthNet, the tutoring program hopes to foster a meaningful relationship between each child and their tutor. Hannah says, “I really love how each of the tutors is matched with just one kid. Having that consistency really allows us to develop a friendship.” As the kids practice their skills in a wide variety of school subjects like math, reading, and art, and work on projects like constructing a board game and writing a series of short stories, the tutors learn a thing or two about the world of TikTok and Dragon Ball
Z (though no one really knows what exactly a ‘VSCO girl’ is). Despite the discrepancy in their age, and general taste in media, the King’s tutors and the children from YouthNet have, for the most part, no trouble finding common ground. Andrew Wiley, FYP 2017–18, says “if you treat a child like they’re just a normal person and you take interest in whatever it is they are in that moment interested in, then you can form a real connection with them.” He and Anthony, one of the kids from YouthNet, are working on a comic book together. Like Hannah, Andrew recognizes how Anthony and his peers bring a youthful energy to King’s campus that would otherwise be missing. The tutoring program between King’s and YouthNet has been running for three years now. Sarah Griffin, F Y P 2015–16, began the initiative while she was still a student here. Having graduated from King’s this past April, Sarah is now the executive director at YouthNet. She, along with program coordinator Joe Blackwood, continue to strengthen the connection between King’s and YouthNet. This September marked the beginning of a new music program at YouthNet where each child is matched with a music tutor, with whom they meet each Tuesday, to develop their skills in a particular instrument such as guitar, piano, and vocals. Along with volunteering in the regular after school programming from Wednesday to Friday, many King’s students are involved in YouthNet’s music tutoring program as well.
YouthNet kids enjoying a post-tutoring treat. Photo by Sarah Griffin (FYP 2015–16)
Andrew says, “It’s very interesting to hang out with kids and see how they view life. It brings you right back to what it was like at their age—I’ve also gotten some great stand-up material out of it.” In particular, Andrew enjoys listening to Anthony talk about his life; “I love to tell stories, and I love when kids tell stories. There’s such a kid way of telling a story; there’s no direction and it’s all over the place . . . I just love it. It’s so full of energy. I’ve been recently noticing how that energy, for myself and for a lot of my peers, is not always here anymore.” Hopefully the connection between King’s and YouthNet will continue to grow and strengthen over the course of next semester and in the years to come. If you’re interested in learning more about YouthNet please check out their website: https://www.stgeorgesyouthnet.ca ❧
Paradise, Indeed! LISA GREGORY, FYP ADMINISTR ATIVE ASSISTANT 2019–20 I love to sing. Since rediscovering this just a few short years ago, I’ve found every excuse possible to make music, performing regularly with my friends at the Halifax Music Co-op, singing as part of my church choir and getting involved in the odd side project. This is how I came to learn and perform three very distinct Requiems in the span of a year—the first by Gabriel Fauré, the second by contemporary American composer John Rutter and the last a work-in-progress by local composer and friend-of-a-friend, Emmanuel Serra. After hours spent alongside my fellow choristers fine-tuning harmonic structures and perfecting pure Latin vowel sounds (not an easy task for those of us accustomed to the stretched-wide sounds prevalent in the dialects spoken across Atlantic Canada), it seems to me that learning a Requiem is a transformative journey from the depths of despair to divine bliss. At the beginning, the task seemed
impossible. As I leafed through Fauré’s seven movement take on the Medieval Catholic Mass for the Dead, and looking wide-eyed at my fellow choristers, it occurred to me that we may all be thinking the same thing. As a group of community-based hobbyist musicians, we simply might not be up to the task of performing this music. And at first, we weren’t. As a choir, we descended into deep recesses together, banging out difficult passages on the piano, getting together in each other’s living rooms to work through trouble spots and doing out best to get the Latin just right. And little by little (perhaps through some sort of divine intervention), we changed. Our harmonies began to lock into place, our text and rhythms grew more precise and beautiful, polished music emerged, culminating in a performance where we were able to share our journey. Paradise indeed! ❧
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Hildegard’s Choir of Angels
FYP – In itself and for itself
Songs of the Exiles OLD STOCK AT NEPTUNE STUDIO ROBERTA BARKER (FYP 1992–93) Since its Halifax premiere in May 2017, 2b Theatre’s production of Old Stock has enjoyed international acclaim. Co-created by playwright Hannah Moscovitch, singer-songwriter Ben Caplan, and director Christian Barry, it has played to full houses and admiring reviews in Edinburgh, New York, London, Sydney, and Utrecht; it has been embraced in most of Canada’s major cities, and most recently it was the winner of the 2018 Nova Scotia Masterworks Award. In Fall 2019, Old Stock returned in triumph to its home city, playing to sold-out houses at Neptune’s Studio Theatre. On the night I saw it, the audience greeted its final notes with a genuinely adoring standing ovation. What is it about Old Stock that excites such love and admiration from spectators? On the surface, it is a simple piece of work: one that 2b Theatre’s website describes as “a humourously dark folk tale woven together with a high-energy concert.” About half of its 80-minute length is taken up by a series of two-person scenes exploring the courtship and marriage of Moscovitch’s great-grandparents, Chaya (Mary Fay Coady) and Chaim (Eric da Costa), who meet in the immigration queue at Halifax’s Pier 2 in 1908. These sequences are interspersed with the “concert” portion of the evening, in which Ben Caplan—one of King’s College’s most beloved alumni—all but lifts the roof off the Studio Theatre with a series of brilliant Klezmer-inspired songs about love, trauma, faith, sex, rage, and parenthood. Arguably, it’s the dialectic between Caplan’s wild charisma and the wry, subterranean emotion of Coady’s and Da Costa’s dialogues that allows the show to offer such a moving window on the immigrant experience. “We made it! You made it! Others were not so lucky,” Caplan’s character, the Wanderer, tells the audience as the show opens. Playful, tender, and defiant, his songs call upon multiple powerful strains of the Jewish spiritual, poetic, and musical tradition to pay tribute to the resilience of exiles and survivors. The joyously bawdy “Minimum Intervals” reminds us of the Talmud’s instructions regarding the appropriate frequency of conjugal relations, while the bleakly scatological “Plough the Shit” acknowledges the necessity of compromise in a world that often looks more like an “overflowing gutter” than like the Promised Land. In ballads like “Fledgling” and “What Love Can Heartbreak Allow?”, Caplan gives
FYP News – Fall 2019 – Eikones Edition
Ben Caplan (FYP 2005–06)
poignant voice to the hopes and struggles of first-generation immigrants determined to make a life for themselves and their children despite the wrenching loss of their old lives and the nigh-on insurmountable challenges of their new ones. Perhaps the show’s pivotal song, though, is “Truth Isn’t Found in
Caplan gives poignant voice to the hopes and struggles to firstgeneration immigrants a Book,” a homage to the Jewish tradition of “intensive, rigorous, and constant interpretation” of the Scriptures that culminates in the assertion that “the good book is only a lens to focus the view […] / You have to live in the world to get to the truth.” Song by raucous song, Caplan’s generous, self-mocking presence seems to affirm the rightness of this assertion. With Caplan as their irrepressible MC and Chorus, Coady’s Chaya and Da Costa’s Chaim take the audience on a journey that re-affirms the value he places upon lived experience. Both have fled from anti-Semitic
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pogroms in Romania, but as the Wanderer tells us, “Chaya got out before it was too late. Chaim got out after it was too late.” Having lost his entire family to a horrific act of violence that we—and Chaya—come to understand only halfway through the play, the irrepressibly hopeful Chaim “looks forward because there’s no looking back.” Chaya has a far more complicated relationship to her Canadian life; she mourns her old home, the dead husband she lost on the road out, and the young bride she will never be again. One of Moscovitch’s greatest creations, Chaya seems at first sight to be the opposite of Caplan’s ebullient Wanderer. She is sardonic, chronically unimpressed, tough as nails—and as played by Coady with a wry stylization that somehow renders her all the more human, astonishingly moving. As she slowly opens herself to a new life and a new love despite the heartbreaks of the old, Coady’s performance turns out to have a great deal in common with Caplan’s, after all. Both embody the idea that only by learning to look with compassion, forgiveness, and humour at ourselves and others can we find a way to survive and thrive, wherever our home may be. ❧
Isabelle Roach (Photo courtesy of University of King’s College)
ISABELLE ROACH (FYP 2016–17) RECEIVES RHODES SCHOLARSHIP 32ND KING’S STUDENT TO BECOME A RHODES SCHOL AR “In her four years at King’s and Dalhousie, Isabelle has made an indelible mark on her academic community, excelled at athletics, and created opportunities for her fellow students to become environmental stewards,” said King’s President William Lahey. “We are incredibly proud of her many accomplishments.” Isabelle said: “I was taught to question everything I was learning, as well as how and why I was learning it,” Roach said. “I have never learned more…I became a more open-minded, considerate and diligent student with every new reading.” Congratulations, Isabelle! ❧
FYP News asked our Rhodes Scholar Isabelle what her favourite FYP text was. Here’s what she said: I had three favourites texts in FYP! I can’t choose just one… it is hard to simplify how I felt about FYP : ) My favourite texts were: To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, because it was absolutely beautiful and I thought the structure was so interesting. Inferno (and all of the Divine Comedy for that matter) because Dante created a whole new world of heaven and hell and it was fun to read.
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Lastly, Frankenstein, because it prompted an amazing discussion in tutorial about how we address the “social other” and it had a big impact on me (my tutor, Caleb Langille, facilitated this discussion so well).
FYP – In itself and for itself
...my mind was struck by light... SUSAN DODD My FYP tutor told me and my friends a story about the long-time Dante lecturer, the Reverend Doctor Robert Crouse. Fr. Crouse was tending his rose garden when some religious canvassers stopped by. “Glorious day.” “Yes. Glorious.” “Wouldn’t you like this to last forever?” “No. No. No.”
Catherine Campbell (FYP 1983–84) painted this to illustrate a quote from a Tidings article about me being hired as a FYP tutor: “Sometimes I look over my shoulder and I see my friends from when I did FYP. Not as we are now, but as we were then. There’s something a little wild about that.” Figured: Rachel Haliburton (my roommate), Catherine and Mary Campbell (the girls next door in Alex Hall), spooking younger Tutor me.
This story came back to me this spring as I was studying Dante with a view to F YP lectures, and as I hung out with my closest friends from my FYP year as one of us, Cath- around with Catherine who was intensely erine Campbell, lived out her final days, blissed out by life. She had always been dying of cancer and blissed out by the world. cheery, “a happy camper” as her partner As we sat looking out on the misty Bras Ken put it. But in her last months, she saw D’or Lake in early spring, I also worked on beauty—divinity—all around. Catherine the best surprise project ever, and that was followed a daily routine until her transfer aFestschrift in honour of the Rev Dr Thomas into palliative care. She would step out each Curran. That volume includes an article by morning to welcome the dawn, check the Neil Robertson and Evan King that I found weather, and survey the small Cape Breton at once irksome and illumicommunity noting whose nating. Irksome because, car was where, who was visitat first reading, it seemed ing, who was away… then so familiar that it was as if she’d work, translating from some common good was Japanese to English, as she being privatized…the FYP had done since her cancer springwater bottled for sale; d iag nosis brought her illuminating because, as Fr. home from Japan in 2009. Crouse emphasized, one She would read magazines must always read the three and novels, delight in food, canticles of theDivine Comedy especially ethical meat, and in mutual relation. Drs King take in the chatter of visiReverend Doctor Robert Crouse. and Robertson were making tors. In the long insomniac explicit and developing a reading of thePar- hours Catherine reread the defining novels adiso that I felt I had carried unconsciously, of our extended youth: Dostoyevsky, George via Robert Crouse’s teaching. Elliot, Henry James, and kept reaching into Of course, unconscious intuition is only new-for-us literature, Virginia Woolf, James a shadow of possible knowledge, and would Baldwin, Elena Ferrante… Sunset was a have remained dormant without King and grand event and each firefly, a revelation. Robertson’s elegant essay. They bring Fr. Nobody was allowed to admit that CathCrouse’s distinctive account of Dante’s jour- erine was dying; we were, as our friendMaryney through Paradiso into a new relation with put it, “palliative adjacent” for months. We other commentators’ accounts, especially got spring and summer out of it, made it to as the development of the virtues integrates Labour Day, and on September 1, Catherine the theologies of Thomas Aquinas and relaxed into death in a way that would have Bonaventure (the opposed but complemen- been unthinkable back in February when tary figures in the Heaven of the Sun, and her lungs started to fill. A beautiful death, two of Dante’s guiding theological lights). strange to say. The irksome combined with the illumiPreparing the Dante lectures for FYP nating as it dawned on me that the Robert- through these blissed out final months was son and King article onParadisochallenged amazing. Irksome. Illuminating. me into a renewed reading of the PurgatorioI realized that the question for us in the and especially the Earthly Paradise. Twenty-first century is something like: Why I was reading the Divine Comedy with isn’t the Earthly Paradise our home? or Even if the refreshed scholarly interest and hanging Earth healed from our injuries to it, would we be
FYP News – Fall 2019 – Eikones Edition
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satisfied here? Dante’s Divine Comedy is one of those works that can speak to us so vividly that we forget that it is a high medieval poem, in many ways alien to our modern sensibilities. But reading this work in the Cape Breton countryside, and living with death coming closer and closer, the poem seemed immensely true. The visions of the Earthly Paradise reveal to Dante a fundamental ambivalence between his natural self, even at its best, and his supernatural yearnings. For all the reform of the trek up mount Purgatory, and passing through the wall of flame, Dante still feels caught in contradictions. The character of these contradictions is revealed to him in the visions of the parade, the pageant, and especially the figure of the Griffin. The Griffin, the eagle-lion who pulls Beatrice in her triumphal cart stands for Christ, and also church and empire, revelation and reason, divine and human, eternal soul and physical body. Dante can see the reflection of the Griffin when he looks into Beatrice’s eyes, but he can only ever see one of its natures: Eagle. Lion. Eagle. Lion. At the same time, he knows that she sees the whole Griffin. Where he sees division, she sees completion, and in her person, in her example, she offers him illumination and reconciliation. In the journey through Paradise Dante’s dividedness is healed. Dante is drawn out by vigorous discussion with Beatrice, and the blessed souls that engage with them, especially Aquinas and Bonaventure. Dante comes into his own and is ready for his oral exams. As he professes the interrelation between Faith, Hope, and Charity, Dante himself now exemplifies a reconciliation between his human and divine sides. His mortal life and his eternal life are united: the apparent duality of the Earthly Paradise is, in fact, a trinity; two natures—human and
divine—unified in reciprocity, in love. In the Inferno, Dante saw the world in its most factual aspect, stripped of love. In thePurgatorio, Dante saw the world as work, as the reform of human frailty. In theParadiso,Dante’s intellect is flooded with divine light: perfected, he now sees lovingly and lives each moment with joy. When it came time to actually stand at the front of Alumni Hall to offer you, the FYP class of 2019-2020, this most beautiful poem on the human condition, I felt the company of all the people who’ve lectured on Dante and all the students—including the me I used to be, and all my dear FYP friends—for whom theDivine Comedyhas been an invitation into communities that defy exploitation, consumerism and eco-cide. It’s a formidable company—exacting yet (I hope) forgiving—because nothing matters more… This poem is God speaking through the medieval poet across time and culture, to us,
Ash CHRISTOPHER SNOOK
And in the end is all ash, the translation of our praise to ruin, and to long days and nights at the window, the sash drawn tight against the dark — cold outside and colder still the stone, the hearth, the sill of an old house of bleached, stark bone? What is and what might have been tumble towards the grave. The house is split wood and staved in, the yard two trees and an unnamed blight. What lasts? What ruins remain? Miniatures on the mantel in fine bone, dreams of mad-faced wheels in the sky and the great heels of the gods touching sea and stone. But what gods now? Which gods among the ash? We have endings, short or long, but no drum, no Orphean song in Stygian night where fires flare and flash among ruins so beautiful, so immense, hope greens against all good sense.
as flesh, blood and spirit. Dante invites us to be blissed out. Right now. And to know that even in its irksome moments, our contradiction-filled common life is infused, saturated, and drenched with divinity. As theCommedia ends: …my mind was struck by light that flashed and, with this light, received what it had asked. Here force failed my high fantasy; but my desire and will were moved already—like a wheel revolving uniformly—by the Love that moves the sun and the other stars. ❧ Requiescat in pace, Catherine Campbell FYP 1983–84
“Asher and Angus.” Portrait of the late Angus Johnston, long-time FYP tutor, Director, and King’s VicePresident, by Anne Barrett, 2017. On loan to the FYP Office from Susan Dodd.
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FYP – In itself and for itself
Keji trip. Photos by Aaron Shenkman
PARKS CANADA AND KING’S UNIVERSITY - AUTUMN KEJIMKUJIK CAMPING RETREAT
The year’s last, loveliest smile EZR A L ASK AR (FYP 2019–20) Monday, November 18, 2019 I think of the New Year as beginning in September; while nature prepares to lie dormant, students are doing the opposite by preparing to get back to work. The transition into university marks a new and exciting period for any student, but it also brings its own unique challenges. It is natural to feel nervous or overwhelmed by such a significant change and it can be a while before
you feel like you have found your footing at university. To make this transition easier, Parks Canada and the University of King’s College organized a weekend retreat to Kejimkujik National Park and National Historic Site. During the trip, students embarked upon various journeys of discovery and community-building, which were fostered through activities such as canoeing trips and hikes. These were not only instrumental in allow-
ing students to build and strengthen relationships, but also greatly aided in their understanding of Mi’kmaw culture. Experiencing nature with their new friends gave King’s students a chance to talk and learn without distraction, which even persisted into the late hours of the night under the panorama of tens of thousands of stars. There is no better way of experiencing the outdoors and reaping the benefits of nature than camping. Spending the weekend under vibrant autumn leaves and bright constellations was the easiest and most rewarding way of returning to the regular university environment feeling rejuvenated, healthy, and happy to boot. King’s empha-
There is no better way of experiencing the outdoors and reaping the benefits of nature than camping. sizes the importance of fostering deep and critical thought, and the tranquility of a natural environment just made the retreat that much better in this respect. In this, and overall, it is clear that the Kejimkujik retreat was not only one that was instrumental in encouraging student growth and relaxation, but also one that practically encouraged students to embrace the spirit of King’s. ❧
FYP News – Fall 2019 – Eikones Edition
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CONTEMPORARY STUDIES IS GOING TO BERLIN IN MAY 2020! ALISON DELOREY, KING’S ADVANCEMENT OFFICE CTMP3610 is a month-long, six-credit, study-abroad course offered through the Contemporary Studies Program. “So many definitive 20th century events happened there,” says Assistant Professor in Contemporary Studies and course instructor Dr. Sarah Clift, citing historical, cultural and political events such as the Holocaust and construction/destruction of the Berlin Wall. Dr. Clift also says Berlin is a youthful, energetic city. “Inherently interesting,” she calls it. Students will actively engage themes such as collective memory, public space, and historical trauma in Germany’s capital. They will be encouraged to develop a practice of reflective engagement at public sites and think about how an immersive experience of city parks, memorials, street protests, and museums reflect, refract, or challenge our critical discourses about collective responsibility, shame, and national identities. Students will also finetune their understanding of social memory as a dynamic and risky process. The program runs from May 3-30, 2020. Students who’ve completed King’s Foundation Year Program or at least five courses (one full year) in another program are eligible to apply, and applications will be available from the Contemporary Studies Office in the NAB (3rd floor) or online starting on Dec. 6th. For more information, check out the course website at ukings. ca/course/memory-politics-place-berlins-20th-century/ ❧
Chapel Cape Split Hike, 2019. Photo courtesy of King’s Chapel Website.
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FYP – In itself and for itself
The Snooks’ Gini
Eli Diamond’s Poh
Casey in the Quad
Devouring Books:
Daniel Brandes and Sally
Iconoclast Lil Buddy ate Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale in the morning, and her Testaments in the afternoon.
FYP News – Fall 2019 – Eikones Edition
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violets CASSANDR A BURBINE (FYP 2019–20)
rest beneath my skin like blue vessels blooming in darkest mornings and pink sky nights they go away then they return glowing like street lamps and brighter than stars when I hear her laughter
Jannette Vusich’s Maya with Alison DeLory’s new novel. Congratulations Alison!
Rupert (Jordan Roberts’ son)
Elizabeth Edwards’ Panda
Welcome Jordan, our new Sexualized Violence Prevention and Response Officer.
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FYP – In itself and for itself
Five Things to Read / Watch / Listen to this Winter Break HA MZ A K AR A M ALLY
2 Charles Frazier- Thirteen Moons, A beautiful and strange book which I associate with winter. The Civil War and the Cherokee Removal. A nineteenth century man who is defeated by the railroad and the advent of the telephone. I remember it every time I encounter an app or device I cannot understand (which is often).
4 HBO’s Chernobyl, Always good to remember how close the species was/is to complete and total annihilation. Deeply unsettling but it might make your everyday concerns (like FYP essays) seem somewhat smaller by comparison. Incredibly well made and enthralling.
1 Fyodor Dostoevsky- The Brothers Karamazov, Probably still my favorite novel of all time. Three Russian brothers who stand in for the tripartite human soul (think Plato, but only if you really want to!). In the spirit of crazy overstatements, this book contains everything I’ve ever learned about anything. I first read it a decade ago and I thought I was Ivan. I reread it a year ago and I thought I was Alyosha. I’ll read it again in ten years.
Simone Felice- From the Violent Banks of the Kaaterskill, A wonderful but obscure live album. Three brothers (that’s becoming a theme of this list) making a racket in a barn in the Catskills. Best enjoyed beside a fireplace, preferably also in a barn.
3
5 The War on Drugs- Lost in the dream, A sonically brilliant and moving album. I drive a lot and this is the driving soundtrack I reach for most often. The back half is some of my favorite music of the 2010s and I require very little prompting to go on and on (and on) about it.
Stay warm and have a wonderful break!