TadDavis wrote: ↑May 4th, 2021, 8:47 am
Hi - first time out in the Short Nonfiction category, although I've done a handful of chapters elsewhere. I'm proposing to do two essays from The Rambler by Samuel Johnson. Hope I've got all the necessary information below.
The first is from The Rambler Number 148, an (untitled) essay on parental tyranny.
The file is here:
https://librivox.org/uploads/knotyouraveragejo/snf082_rambler148_johnson_td_128kb.mp3
The length: 11m 44s.
The text is here:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11397
(Unfortunately no navigable table of contents, but a search for "148" will get you there. I didn't attempt to read the Greek or Latin, only the translated portions.)
The other essay I'd like to do is The Rambler Number 207, which is an essay about how energy tends to flag toward the end of a great undertaking, and how important it is to keep plugging away.
Hi Tad, Welcome to the Short Nonfiction Collection!
Samuel Johnson is always a good choice for an invigorating read! Johnson's thoughts in this essay, it seemed to me, comes into clear focus when he says
"To have voluntarily become to any being the occasion of its existence, produces an obligation to make that existence happy." But parents do not always abide by their parental "obligation," as Johnson goes on to detail in his essay.
I am marking your recording "PL OK" in the Magic Window. I noted only one small deviation from the text, but it did not, in my opinion, change the meaning of the text. This occurred in your reading of the ode from Horace, with which Johnson starts #148. In the English translation, the last line read reads
"In kind compassion sav'd my husband's life." You read this as "spared my husbands life."
In order for me, as proof listener, to sort out whether "spared" was an ok substitution for "saved," I was led down various paths of discovery--the Odes of Horace, the two feuding brothers in the myth of the Danaides
http://madelinemiller.com/myth-of-the-week-the-danaids/, and finally to a modern translation of Horace
https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/HoraceOdesBkIII.php#anchor_Toc40263856.
I found out that the daughter in the myth has been ordered by her father to kill her husband on her wedding night. Instead of obeying her father, she tells her betrothed to flee from her father, thus both sparing and saving her husband's life.
Thank you for your first contribution to vol. 082. We're looking forward to your second reading from the Rambler!