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Davis

2018-03-04 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

Tonight, sometime around midnight, will mark the 300th anniversary of… well… how shall I put it?

By PABLO J. DAVIS
Sunday, March 4, 2018

Tonight marks an extraordinary anniversary… of an extremely ordinary event, one that occurs millions of times a day around the world. The kind of event that has never (as far as I know) been commemorated in a public way. So I seriously doubt you will hear of this anniversary anywhere else besides this page. And I happened to learn about it by sheer accident last night, 24 hours ahead of the big day.

When Laurence Sterne’s hilarious, bawdy, and yet (why “yet”?!!) philosophical novel Tristram Shandy first came out in 1759, it was like an earthquake through the English literary world, and ultimately shook literature around the globe. Even today, the book is unclassifiable, still a challenge to readers, and still an adventure to read–much as it must have been for Sterne to write.

Tristram Shandy coverThe key to the novel might well be the phrase “That reminds me…”  Among other things, and perhaps underlying all of its other qualities, Tristram Shandy is a meditation on the human mind’s penchant for associations. Looked at in a certain light, the novel is one long series of interruptions to the telling of a story… a ceaseless chain of digressions.

Last night I happened to sit down and re-read the first few pages of the book. In it, “Shandy,” the narrator, recounts how orderly his father was in his habits. Among the regularities the old man followed scrupulously was winding a clock: He “had made it a rule for many years of his life,–on the first Sunday night of every month throughout the whole year,–as certain as ever the Sunday night came,–to wind up a large house-clock which we had standing on the back-stairs head, with his own hands.”

And, it seems, Shandy’s father had over time also “gradually brought some other little family concernments to the same period, in order, as he would often say to my uncle Toby, to get them all out of the way at one time, and be no more plagued and pestered with them the rest of the month.” And, as a result of this habit of his father’s, Shandy tells us that his “poor mother could never hear the said clock wound up,–but the thoughts of some other things unavoidably popped into her head…”

One of those “little family concernments” of the old man’s turned out to be of great import to Shandy. For, you see, he tells us: “I was begot in the night, betwixt the first Sunday and the first Monday in the month of March, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighteen.” Shandy then goes on to tell us readers how it is that he knows for certain that that was, indeed, the night.

So there you have it: a major literary anniversary. A three hundredth anniversary! Not Sterne’s birthday (that was Nov. 24, 1713); not the anniversary of the book’s publication; not even the birthday of the character, Tristram Shandy.

But rather, the date on which little Tristram was conceived.

And that, dear readers, reminds me of a story… Which will have to wait till another time.

To read Tristram Shandy free online, visit the Project Gutenberg page for the book at: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1079.

Filed Under: Interflows Language+Culture Blog Tagged With: "Pablo J. Davis", associations, birth, conception, Davis, Laurence Sterne, literature, Pablo, Sterne, Tristram Shandy

2017-12-20 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

Drinking a unique toast

Enlace para español/ Click here for Spanish

Dear reader,

In this season, many a glass is raised and “toasts” offered. The word seems to come from an old custom of using spiced toast to flavor wine; by extension it meant the person whose health was saluted.

Kroyer Peder Severin 'Hip Hip Hurrah!' 1888

Peder Severin Kroyer, Hip, Hip, Hoorah! (1888).

In Spanish it’s brindis, one of that language’s rare Germanic (as opposed to Latin) roots. From Ich bring dir “I bring you”—i.e., good wishes. (The verb brindar is “to offer, provide”.)

“To your health!” or variants thereof may well be the world’s most popular toast; Span. ¡Por su salud! or simply ¡Salud! and Fr. A votre santé! are close equivalents.

Toasts can be intricate, as in the legendary old Irish blessing: “May the road rise up to meet you. May the wind be always at your back. May the sun shine warm on your face, the rains fall soft on your fields and until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of his hand.”

But where drinking and poetry intersect, it’s hard to beat William Oldys’s 18th century “anacreontic” (poetic term for a drinking song), “The Fly”:

Busy, curious, thirsty fly!
Drink with me and drink as I:
Freely welcome to my cup,
Couldst thou sip and sip it up:
Make the most of life you may,
Life is short and wears away.

Both alike are mine and thine
Hastening quick to their decline:
Thine’s a summer, mine’s no more,
Though repeated to threescore.
Threescore summers, when they’re gone,
Will appear as short as one!

The empathy and fraternity with a tiny fellow mortal: how moving, how gently expressed! And likely inspired by a real fly on the edge of the poet’s glass.

¡Buenas palabras!
Pablo

 

Pablo J. Davis is an attorney, translator, and historian. A version of this essay was originally published in the Dec. 24-30, 2017 issue of La Prensa Latina (Memphis, Tennessee, USA) as No. 262 of the weekly, bilingual column “Mysteries & Enigmas of Translation” [Misterios y Enigmas de la Traducción].

Filed Under: Interflows Language+Culture Blog Tagged With: "Pablo J. Davis", "The Fly", brindis, Davis, mortality, Oldys, Pablo, toast, traducción, traductor, translation, translator, William Oldys

2017-12-10 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

The violent alienation of “ajeno”

Enlace para español/Click here for Spanish

Dear reader,

Recently your faithful servant stumbled across a recording of a song he had heard from time to time, but has now had a chance to listen to closely. It is a jewel. Beautiful… but painful. Composed by César Calvo, sung in the bell-like tones of Susana Baca, leading exponent of Peru’s Afro musical traditions: “María Landó” is a hypnotic chant evoking the back-breaking, mind-numbing, and most of all soul-deadening work that is the title character’s lot in life. And still that of most of our kind, humankind.

After singing of dawn breaking with its wings of light over the city… and noon with its golden bell of water… and night with its long goblet lifted to the moon… the lyric turns to María “who has no time to lift her eyes, her eyes wracked by lack of sleep, by sorrows… María who has no dawn, no noon or night… For María there is only labor, only labor and more labor… y su trabajo es ajeno: her labor is not her own.”

What power, what violence, what understanding of the world is compressed into that single word ajeno “belonging to another or others, alien, foreign, unfamiliar.” Its root, Lat. alienus, also yields Engl. “alien.” (Think of how the latter word is applied to immigrants.)

Argentina’s incomparable troubador Atahualpa Yupanqui sang of the exhausted herdsman driving cattle in the hills: “Las penas y las vaquitas/ se van por la misma senda./ Las penas son de nosotros,/ las vaquitas son ajenas” (Sorrows and cattle/ moving along the same trail/ The sorrows are our own,/ the cattle belong to another).

The Roman playwright Terence gave us this moving expression of compassion, of solidarity with all our fellow mortals: Homo sum, nihil humani me alienum est—I am human, and nothing that is human is alien to me.

¡Buenas palabras!

Pablo

Pablo J. Davis, Ph.D., CT, J.D., is a historian, translator, and attorney. The essay above was originally published in La Prensa Latina (Memphis, Tennessee) in the Nov. 20-26, 2017 issue, as No. 257 of the weekly, bilingual column “Mysteries & Enigmas of Translation” [Misterios y Enigmas de la Traducción].

Filed Under: Interflows Language+Culture Blog Tagged With: "Pablo J. Davis", ajeno, alien, Atahualpa Yupanqui, Certified Translator, Cesar Calvo, Davis, labor, Lando, Maria, Maria Lando, Pablo, Terence, traducción, traductor, translation, translator, women, work

2016-11-06 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

Grammar and the “president elect”

Enlace para español/Link here for Spanish

Dear reader,

By the time these lines (written on Sunday) reach you, the election will be over—and all I can say is, I told you so. Which reminds me of the brilliant quip by St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Dizzy Dean who said, before the 1934 World Series against Detroit, “This Series is already won”—then added, “I just don´t know by which team.”

ballot-into-ballot-boxSo, as you read this, there will (presumably) be a president-elect. The term’s a bit odd: if a candidate is “elected,” why the form “elect”? (Spanish similarly has presidente electo where you might expect elegido.) The answer lies in the difference between “strong” and “weak” verbs in Germanic grammar, which is the main structure for how English works.

A weak verb forms the participle by adding an ending, typically “ed,” to the verb stem without changing the stem. Thus “bake” becomes “I had baked” and the participle can also act as an adjective: “baked chips.”

On the other hand, strong verbs like “seek,”  “sink,” and “bind” form irregular participles, short and punchy: “sought,” “sunk,” and “bound.” So, in English, the verb “elect,” while normally weak, in the phrase “president elect” behaves as a strong verb.

In Spanish, the equivalent principle derived from Latin grammar refers not to verbs, but rather to participles, as strong or weak.  Many verbs have both forms. Elegir (to elect or choose) yields me habían elegido (they had chosen me) in weak form, and presidente electo (president elect) in strong form, as an adjective. Habían freído las papas (they had fried the potatoes) but papas fritas (fried potatoes). Span. conquista and Engl. “conquest” both embody a strong form of verbs derived from Latin conquirere. Span. convencer gives convencido (convinced) but the strong form convicto (convicted); the English noun “convict” also derives from the strong form.

From “president elect” to “convict” in the same column—sadly, in 2016, regardless of who won, it doesn’t seem like such a big leap.

Filed Under: Interflows Language+Culture Blog Tagged With: "Pablo J. Davis", Davis, elect, elected, grammar, Pablo, Pablo Davis, participles, president, president elect, strong, translator, verbs, weak

2016-09-05 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

Word of a thousand disguises: the long, strange career of “freak”

Enlace para español/Link here for Spanish

Dear reader,

Words change across years and generations. They change spelling, sound, and especially meaning. But some follow such long and winding paths, so full of surprises, it can be incredible. One of these is the English word “freak.”

Circus poster photo, Ala., Walker Evans [1935] [AmMemory LOC id- fsa1998017988(slash)PP]

A key association of “freak” is with the circus, where it meant a person displayed due to some unusual (even hideous) characteristic such as extreme height, extra fingers, etc. This photo of a circus poster was taken in Alabama in 1935 by Walker Evans. (Source: Library of Congress, American Memory website)

Brave, fierce warrior.  From Old English, this sense dates to A.D. 900 or before.

Sudden fancy, whim.  This use was well established by the early 19th century. “A sudden freak seemed to have seized him” (Jane Austen). Spanish equivalents: capricho, locura. Not much used anymore. But freak out is—meaning a highly nervous or irrational reaction to a situation: “I need you to stay calm—don’t freak out on me.”

Enthusiast.  From the sense of “whim” arose that of “enthusiast.” It’s still common to hear, “She’s a health freak.” Spanish: Es una maniática de la salud.

Abnormal or extreme specimen. From “whim” came, too, the idea of the abnormal. A very tall person could be called “a freak” or “a freak of nature.” Around 1920 the term “circus freak” began to grow in use. It referred to an unfortunate person or animal fated to be exhibited in a circus, fair, or carnival. Spanish has fenómeno del circo. Typical attractions might be “The Bearded Lady” or “The Two-Headed Calf.”

Unusual, odd, rare. Similar to the previous sense, but distinct, is this broader one: as an adjective, “freak” can simply mean “unusual, odd, rare.” For instance, “a freak early-summer snowstorm” or “a freak occurrence.”

Drug user. In the 1960s and 1970s, it was commonplace to hear “freak” for an enthusiastic drug user, usually of marijuana or LSD.  It was also associated, in men, with beards and long hair. The combination “hippie freak” was common. An underground comic of the era was The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers.

Nymphomaniac, hypersexual person. The drug-related sense began to give way to a new one. Rick James used it when he famously sang, “Super freak, the girl’s a super freak!” The meaning is that an individual is presumably insatiable in the sexual realm. Spanish has ninfómana and many slang terms, including loca (the feminine form of the adjective for “crazy”), much used in Argentina and Uruguay.

Copyright ©2016 by Pablo J. Davis.  All Rights Reserved. An earlier version of this essay originally appeared in the May 8-14, 2016 edition of La Prensa Latina (Memphis, Tennessee) as number 179 in the weekly bilingual column, “Misterios y Engimas de la Traducción/Mysteries and Enigmas of Translation”.  Pablo Julián Davis, PhD, CT is an ATA (American Translators Association) Certified Translator, Engl>Span; a Tennessee State Courts Certified Interpreter, Engl<>Span; and an innovative trainer in the fields of translation, interpreting, and intercultural competency, with over 25 years experience. He holds the doctorate in Latin American History from The Johns Hopkins University, and is a Juris Doctor Candidate at the Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law, University of Memphis (May 2017).

Filed Under: Interflows Language+Culture Blog Tagged With: "Pablo J. Davis", certified, Davis, derivation, etymology, freak, origin, Pablo, translation, translator, word

2016-07-23 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

What good translation is “for”!

Enlace para español/Link here for Spanish

Dear reader,

 “Latinos para Trump” read signs at the GOP Convention. Clearly it meant “Latinos for Trump” but it didn’t say that: Spanish para can mean “for” but it’s not the same “for” used to indicate support of a candidate. (An even more unfortunate version of the sign, also seen at the convention, was  “Hispanics para Trump” which didn’t even use the Spanish word for “Hispanics”: hispanos.)

Latinos-Hispanics para Trump

Scenes from the Republican Convention held in Cleveland, Jul. 18-21, 2016.

The preposition para mainly means “for the purpose of, in order to, to be used by.” Papel para fotocopiadora, “paper for  photocopier, photocopy paper”; vegetales para ensaladas, “vegetables for salads, salad greens.”

“Latinos para Trump” says something like “Latinos to be used by Trump.” It should read: Latinos por (or con) Trump.

(We’ll revisit por/para again in the near future.)

The mistranslation unintentionally said some other things, too: “This sign was not made by a Latino” or (more accurately) “was not created by a native Spanish speaker.” Even worse: “We don’t care about Latinos, we just want their votes.”

Poor translation is poison: it undermines your message; makes you look foolish; and sends adverse signals—the worst being, “We don’t care enough to do this right.”

Every time an organization assigns a translation to some employee who happens to (it is believed) “speak Spanish,” the result will almost certainly be unfortunate—and maybe deadly: imagine the mistranslation of a safety warning!

Few of us would let our brother-in-law “who fools around with electrical stuff” do the wiring of our house. Or have the neighbor who once took a CPR course operate on our liver. But, in essence, that’s what’s routinely done with translation (and its spoken cousin, interpreting). These are professional, technical skills requiring training and experience, not something you can do just because you (sort of) know a second language—and not even just from being bilingual.

Filed Under: Interflows Language+Culture Blog Tagged With: "Pablo J. Davis", Certified Translator, Davis, Donald J. Trump, error, Hispanics, Hispanics para Trump, latinos, Latinos para Trump, Memphis, mistranslation, Pablo, translation, translator, Trump, wrong

2016-07-10 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

The position must be filled

Enlace para español/Click here for Spanish

Dear reader,

We’re about to see two political conventions whose result may not be foreordained. Many find this strange, even unthinkable. But it’s how conventions used to be—before they became blockbuster TV specials with lots of flash but no real drama.

A bilingual look at some words of the season:

Roman white toga

“Candidate” comes from the Roman custom of those seeking public office wearing a white (candidum) toga, symbolizing purity. It’s unclear if this would make apt electoral attire today.

Convention, from Latin convenire “to come together.” Spanish convención has been widely used for such gatherings for some time; in the early/mid 20th century it surpassed an older term still not entirely obsolete: asamblea (assembly).

“Convention” can also mean a broadly accepted custom, as when broadcasters say a show starts at “9PM/8PM Central” it’s understood 9PM means Eastern time. Spanish “Convengamos en que…” (Let’s agree that) uses this sense of “convention.”

Span. convenio, from the same Latin root, means “agreement” as in an international treaty or a legal settlement.

Candidate and  candidato go back to a Roman custom: aspirants to public office wore white togas. Lat. candidum meant “white, pure.” Engl. “candid” took French’s sense “frank, sincere.” Span. cándido takes up a different sense: “naïve.” Neither “candid” nor cándido generally spring to mind when thinking of politicians.

Nominee. This sense is old in English, from at least the 1680s. The Spanish equivalent: candidato, simply, or titular (el titular del partido Republicano, the Republican Party nominee). A quaint term is “standard-bearer” (“standard” a term for “flag”); Span. has an equivalent, abanderado.

Running. Candidates “run” for office (or “stand” in the UK). In Spanish se postulan or se presentan, which are both also ways of saying “to apply”—as for a job. The electorate is a strange employer, though, as it is forced to hire someone even if not satisfied with the applicants.

¡Buenas palabras! Good words!

Pablo

Copyright ©2016 by Pablo J. Davis.  All Rights Reserved. An earlier version of this essay originally appeared in the Jul. 17-23, 2016 edition of La Prensa Latina (Memphis, Tennessee) as number 189 in the weekly bilingual column, “Misterios y Engimas de la Traducción/Mysteries and Enigmas of Translation”.  Pablo Julián Davis, PhD, CT is an ATA (American Translators Association) Certified Translator, Engl>Span; a Tennessee State Courts Certified Interpreter, Engl<>Span; and an innovative trainer in the fields of translation, interpreting, and intercultural competency, with over 25 years experience. He holds the doctorate in Latin American History from The Johns Hopkins University, and is a Juris Doctor Candidate at the Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law, University of Memphis (May 2017).

Filed Under: Interflows Language+Culture Blog Tagged With: "Pablo J. Davis", candidate, Certified Translator, convention, Davis, elections, Pablo, party, political, translation, translator

2016-07-05 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

Of masks, minds, sinners, and the word “person”

Enlace para español/Click here for Spanish

Dear reader,

What is it you and I, and everyone we know, are all examples of? So many words for it: “individuals,” “human beings,” just plain “humans,” “persons,” to name just a few. These are plurals; in the singular, each of us is an “individual,” a “human being,” or simply a “human,” or a “person.”  That last word may be the most common of all.persona máscara classic mask

“Person” has an interesting history: it comes from Latin persona, with a root sense of “to sound through”—the reference is to an actor’s mask, possibly with some means of voice amplification, as with a horn. Persona, then, came to mean “role” or “character,” gradually acquiring the further sense of “person, individual.” Engl. “persona” (with the “a” hanging on at the end just like in Latin) still means an assumed role or personality.

Persona’s descendants are found throughout the Romance languages (Sp.. It. persona, Fr. personne which can also mean “nobody,” Port. pessoa, etc.), but also Ger. Person, Swed. person, and many others.

The Slavic languages use a wholly different word: Rus. chelovek (pronounced “chel-a-VYEK”) appears to derive from words for “mind, thought” and “time, eternity”—thus the word for “person” would mean something like “eternal mind,” a lovely and spiritual sense Plato no doubt would have savored. (Engl. “man” seems, likewise, cognate with “mind” and originally meant any human being.)

Depending on the context, a whole series of terms can be more or less equivalent to “person”: “citizen,”  “subject”, “taxpayer,” “voter,” “resident,” and “consumer,” to name just a few. Of course their connotations differ pretty dramatically. There is an assertion of rights implicit in “citizen” that’s not quite there in “consumer,” though the latter has legal rights too.

Then there is “souls” with all its mystery and sometimes pathos—think of a phrase like “the 1,517 souls that perished on the R.M.S. Titanic.”

A curious and fascinating word for “person” is pikadur in Guinea-Bissau Crioulo, a tongue with a strong Portuguese core plus West African elements. Pikadur is from Port. pecador (sinner). Pecado (sin) is related to the second syllable in “impeach” which originally meant “to find fault, to find sin.”  In this word for “person,” the hand of the Christian missionary is not hard to see!

Theology meets language: in Crioulo you may mean “person” but you’re saying “sinner”!

¡Buenas palabras! Good words!

Pablo

Copyright ©2016 by Pablo J. Davis.  All Rights Reserved. An earlier version of this essay originally appeared in the Jul. 8-14, 2016 edition of La Prensa Latina (Memphis, Tennessee) as number 188 in the weekly bilingual column, “Misterios y Engimas de la Traducción/Mysteries and Enigmas of Translation”.  Pablo Julián Davis, PhD, CT is an ATA (American Translators Association) Certified Translator, Engl>Span; a Tennessee State Courts Certified Interpreter, Engl<>Span; and an innovative trainer in the fields of translation, interpreting, and intercultural competency, with over 25 years experience. He holds the doctorate in Latin American History from The Johns Hopkins University, and is a Juris Doctor Candidate at the Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law, University of Memphis (May 2017).

Filed Under: Interflows Language+Culture Blog Tagged With: "Pablo J. Davis", certified, Davis, etymology, individual, Pablo, person, persona, translation, translator

2016-06-26 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

The whole megillah

Enlace para español/Link here for Spanish

Dear reader,

A friend was recently telling us about his first time on a plane: “Después la azafata nos explicó lo del cinturón, las salidas de emergencia y todo el rollo.” (Then the flight attendant explained about the seat belts, the emergency exits, and everything.)

megillahThe last phrase, y todo el rollo, is a common idiom in Spanish to refer to the whole of something, with a sense of thoroughness and detail. Colloquial English has equivalents including “the whole nine yards,” “the whole shootin’ match” and others.

Spanish rollo means roll (e.g. of paper). How is it that it can also mean  mean something like “the whole nine yards,” with the sense of completeness or tedium?

Before books became commonplace, documents were written on parchment arranged in rolls. The most famous of these was the Torah, the Hebrew Pentateuch (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) that is the origin and ancestor of what we know today as the Bible.

Here’s where a colloquial English expression, slightly outdated but still common, comes in: “the whole Megillah.” The phrase, carrying the same sense and tone of todo el rollo, undoubtedly arose among Yiddish speakers (as were nearly all Ashkenazi Jews, that is, those of European origin, as distinct from the Sephardim of Spanish and North African origin) using the deeply-familiar Hebrew word. The expression in Yiddish: gantse megillah.

The cartoon character “Magilla Gorilla” derives its name from the colloquial use of this word.

Megillah offers a fascinating case of a word whose origin is sacred and which takes on a colloquial meaning that is profane (in the strict sense of worldly, non-religious) and humorous.

¡Buenas palabras! … Good words!

Pablo J. Davis

Filed Under: Interflows Language+Culture Blog Tagged With: "Pablo J. Davis", culture, Davis, expressions, Jewish, Jews, megillah, origin, Pablo, rollo, the whole megillah, todo el rollo, translation, Yiddish

2016-05-30 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

Memorial Day

Enlace para español/Link here for Spanish

What Memorial Day was: in the beginning, a century and a half ago, a commemoration of the Union and Confederate dead in the Civil War. It was called Decoration Day, because its ritual heart was remembrance of the war dead by visiting and adorning their graves. There were distinct days in the South and North; eventually they merged into a single national holiday instituted in hopes of bringing reconciliation after the shattering carnage of the conflict’s four years.

What Memorial Day became: a broader commemoration of the fallen in our wars. The name began to be used in the late 19th century and was made an official federal holiday after World War II.

Decoration Day, Kearney Neb. 1910

Memorial Day commemoration, Kearney, Nebraska, 1910. Photo courtesy of US Library of Congress, American Memory.

What Memorial Day often is: a celebration of all who have served in the armed forces of the United States, though there is a day set aside for that purpose every November, Veterans Day.

What Memorial Day should never be: a celebration of war itself. True, some conflicts were forced upon us, advanced human liberty, and had their moments of nobility. Defending our homes, hearths, and freedoms is just. But merely saying a war is right doesn’t make it so, and as painful as it can be to realize, the spilled blood of one of our own doesn’t automatically make the cause just, either.

It seems those who know war best hate it most. Those who merely fancy they know war, from the pages of books or from great deeds projected on silver screens, often seem the most eager to plunge their country (but not themselves) into that hell.

And it is a hell. Even a just war kills, mutilates, and destroys, sowing seeds of cruelty, disease, and ruin. Neither warriors nor civilians truly escape its scourges.

We’re often told Memorial Day is a day of gratitude, a day when we thank those who paid the ultimate price for our freedom. I know that’s what we’re supposed to think. It’s politically correct, in the true meaning of political correctness: it’s the most comfortable interpretation of this holiday, from the standpoint of those who’ve had the power to send our young people off to fight, and used it.

And sometimes, I agree, “Thank you” is the most fitting sentiment. But I don’t know that anyone has the right to tell us as Americans what to think and feel. Maybe sometimes the words that come from deep down are “I’m so sorry.” And, sometimes—always, really—the words written on our hearts, the only words that really matter, are: “We love you, we miss you, and we remember.”

Ninety-eight years ago this month, the English soldier-poet Wilfred Owen wrote these verses about a fallen soldier whose comrades move him into the sun, hoping he will recover under its warmth.

Move him into the sun—
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields half-sown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.

Think how it wakes the seeds,—
Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides,
Full-nerved—still warm—too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
—O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth’s sleep at all?

Owen entitled this poem “Futility.” Two months after writing it, he suffered a gunshot wound to the head. Four months after that, as the “Great War” we call World War One was ending, Wilfred Owen died. He was twenty-five years old.

Pablo J. Davis

Filed Under: Interflows Language+Culture Blog Tagged With: "Pablo J. Davis", CIvil War, Davis, Decoration Day, Futility, history, holidays, Memorial Day, memory, Pablo, poem, poet, soldiers, United States, war, Wilfred Owen

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    • Tonight, sometime around midnight, will mark the 300th anniversary of… well… how shall I put it?
    • Drinking a unique toast
    • The violent alienation of “ajeno”
    • No “mere drudge” or slinger of words: Our teacher and friend, Samuel Johnson

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    3.4.18 Tonight, sometime around midnight, will mark the 300th anniversary of… well… how shall I put it?

    By PABLO J. DAVIS Sunday, March 4, 2018 Tonight marks an extraordinary anniversary… of an extremely ordinary event, one that occurs millions of times a day around the world. ...

    12.20.17 Drinking a unique toast

    Enlace para español/ Click here for Spanish Dear reader, In this season, many a glass is raised and “toasts” offered. The word seems to come from an old custom of using spiced ...

    12.10.17 The violent alienation of “ajeno”

    Enlace para español/Click here for Spanish Dear reader, Recently your faithful servant stumbled across a recording of a song he had heard from time to time, but has now had a chance ...

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