IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

PRELUDE 2D: THE AWAKENING – TITHENMAMIWEN

PBeM – March 5th thru 9th, 2007
The 15th Day of Amseyl  in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

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IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

Prelude 2: The Awakening – Tee

In which our heroine elf awakes to a welcome (yet surprising) homecoming, only to discover that things are not always what they seem and the past is not so easily forgotten (even if it has been completely misplaced)…

When I pitched In the Shadow of the Spire to my prospective players the campaign didn’t even have a name yet. Actually, it didn’t have much form at all. I only knew two things:

(1) I had pre-ordered Ptolus and it would be arriving within a couple of weeks. I already knew enough about the city to know that I wanted to run an urban-based campaign there, but I (obviously) didn’t know a lot of the details.

(2) I wanted to incorporate the Banewarrens adventure into the campaign. I first read this adventure back in 2002 and I’d been itching to run it ever since. In some ways I had actually started laying the groundwork for this campaign way back then, when the players in my original 3rd Edition campaign passed through the port city of Ptolus and saw the Spire for the first time:

(That’s a player handout modified from a DM-only reference image.)

As I started wading through the Ptolus tome and the campaign began to take shape in my mind’s eye, one of the things I realized early on was that the PCs shouldn’t be from Ptolus itself. It would be more interesting, in my opinion, if their characters were exploring the city with the same fresh eyes that they were. It would also be more disorienting (for both players and PCs) to awake with amnesia in completely unfamiliar surroundings.

Those of you who have been reading the campaign journal from the start, however, may have noticed a slight incongruity here: Tithenmamiwen is from Ptolus.

No plan, however, survives contact with the enemy… or, in this case, the players.

Actually, though, trying to push this one off on the player is a bit disingenuous on my part. Tee’s player simply came to me with the idea of playing an elf. The character concept she was discussing in general terms, however, struck off all kinds of resonance for me with the work I had just recently put into fleshing out some of the elven communities in Ptolus itself.

Taking a step back, I realized that it made more sense to tap into this pre-existing development work and use it as part of Tee’s background. I also came to the conclusion that variety is the spice of life: Yes, it was interesting to have both players and PCs coming to the city with fresh eyes. And, yes, that lack of familiarity was disorienting.

But there was also something inherently interesting in the broken homecoming experienced by Tee: She had left home for reasons she didn’t fully understand and now she was back again for reasons she didn’t even know. There was a disoriention to be found there as well, and a useful contrapuntal beat to the other characters.

This decision also had some long-term consequences that I hadn’t fully considered. For example, Tee had a greater sense of ownership in the city than the other PCs… which meant that her reputation was important to her from Day One. She needed to be able to live there when all was said and done, which meant that she helped to keep some of the more radical impulses of the group in check.

Photo by Mark Vancleave

In Act I of the The Seagull, Arkadina has become upset with her son Kostya. This prompts Dorn, a family friend, to respond in this exchange:

Дорн. Юпитер, ты сердишься…
Аркадина. Я не Юпитер, а женщина.

Which can be literally translated:

Dorn: Jupiter, you’re angry…
Arkadina: I’m not Jupiter, I’m a woman.

Wait… what?

Translation isn’t an easy gig sometimes, and it’s perhaps unsurprising to find translators struggling with this line. However, I was somewhat surprised to discover how many of them — at the end of the day — get it wrong.

Let me spoil the ending here by explaining what this line is actually all about. Its source is a Latin proverb: Iuppiter iratus ergo nefas. Literally, “Jupiter is angry, therefore [he is] wrong.” Although less known in English, this old saying was apparently quite popular in Russia (appearing, for example, in the works of both Dostoyevsky and Lenin, among others). Here Chekhov is assuming that the audience will be familiar enough with the saying that they will know what Dorn is saying even though Arkadina cuts him off.

In the end, I translated this line as:

Dorn: Jupiter is angry, therefore–
Arkadina: I’m not Jupiter, I’m a woman.

This is basically a literal translation. The significant difference is adding the word “therefore” (which I hope is enough of a clue for modern audiences to realize that Dorn is offering up a maxim) and changing the ellipsis at the end of his line to a dash (Chekhov uses ellipsis to indicate both characters trailing off and characters being interrupted; in modern usage the dash is a clearer indication that Dorn is being cut off by Arkadina).

Now, translation is more of an art than a science. There are certainly other ways a translator could try to tackle this line. But the essential elements here are (a) Dorn starts to quote a maxim and (b) Arkadina cuts him off.

Elisaveta Fen, on the other hand, translates this exchange as:

Dorn: Jupiter! You are angry, therefore…
Arkadina: I’m not Jupiter, I’m a woman.

By sticking that exclamation point after “Jupiter!”, Fen turns it into an odd ephitet quite separate from the maxim that follows.

The Marian Fell translation (which is reproduced by Project Gutenberg without proper credit) has:

Dorn: Thou art angry, O Jove!
Arkadina: I am a woman, not Jove.

This, honestly, doesn’t even make sense. Dorn referring to Arakdina as “Jove” looks like a complete non sequitur.

George Calderon, one of the earliest translators of the play, gives us:

Dorn: (singing) “Great Jove, art angry yet”…
Arkadina: I’m not Jove, I’m a woman.

Having Dorn break out into song is not as much of a non sequitur as you might think if you’re not familiar with the play: Dorn frequently interjects snippets of song into conversation.

My point with all this is not to talk about how clever I am. (Well, not primarily anyway. I have an over-abundance of ego.) But I think it’s a notable example of the ways in which translations can (and do) go astray. I’ve met lots of people who have written off Chekhov or Tolstoy or Hugo or Dumas on the basis of bad translations, bad productions, or bad adaptations.

Of course, not everyone is going to like Chekhov, Tolstoy, Hugo, or Dumas (or the thousands of other foreign authors like them). But I think it’s worthwhile to remember that not all translations are created equal. If it turns out that you don’t like the works of a foreign author, it might be worth your while to give them a second chance in a different translation. And this is a maxim that extends beyond the classical.

Walking Shadow Theater’s production of David Grieg’s translation of Albert Camus’ Caligula opens tonight!

I’ve only got a small role in the show, but it’s a really beautiful and thought-provoking piece of theater. Often when I see Camus’ work performed it is done devoid of passion or life. These empty productions had previously left something rather akin to the taste of ash in my mouth when thinking of Camus’ work, but Walking Shadow’s production — realized by the talents of a remarkable cast — brings the characters to life… and thus reveals powerful and moving truths.

I’m a sucker for non-traditional narrative structures.

Start in the middle of the story and then have two narrative tracks — one going forward in time and one going backwards in time — with matching revelations at the end of each track? Awesome.

Six different characters without any apparent connection to each other but experiencing events which are clearly interconnected? Awesome.

In terms of Brust, this trend actually started in Teckla — a novel in which a literal laundry list is used as prelude, omen, and outline. (It’s actually quite difficult to give this proper justice, but it’s really, really clever.)

In Taltos, Brust goes in a completely different direction: He has three different narrative threads, all starring the same character, and all taking place at different times during the character’s life. In some ways, he’s taking the non-linear meta-structure of the series and realizing it in the confines of a single volume.

Of course, the most important thing with a non-traditional narrative structure is not the oddity of the structure — it’s the effectiveness of the use to which it is put. In Taltos, that use is subtle, but effective. A lot of it is about thematic resonance and characterization — I show you X in timeline A and then I show you Y in timeline B. By juxtaposing the two concepts or the two thoughts or the two actions, what conclusions can you draw?

But there’s also a practical side to the structure, as exposition dropped in timeline C will suddenly crop up in timeline B (or even vice versa). This creates, in a very specific way, a complexity of character that isn’t possible in a more traditional narrative structure — because it highlights the fact that a person is not merely a sequence of events or a static entity.

And while the book stands by itself in some regards, the entire narrative is deeply enriched by the knowledge that we — as readers — bear with us from other books. The revelations of Taltos reshape our understanding of events we have already witnessed; and the revelations of previous books (as yet unknown to the Vlad of this story) shape our understanding of Taltos.

That type of multi-layered, interconnected resonance is not easy to create, but it’s very satisfying to read.

All of this is evidence of Brust’s continuing maturation as an artist. And that growth can also be seen in other aspects of the work. For example, one of the comments I made in my reaction to Yendi was that Brust had failed to raise the stakes from the previous volume in the series: “The first time you show me a rocketship? Awesome. The second time you show me a rocketship? Nifty. Now, what are you going to do with it?”

In Teckla, he used the rocketship. In Taltos he uses the rocketship with his left hand while building brand new rocketships with his right hand.

In short, he takes his existing tableau of characters, history, and mythology and builds upon them in new and interesting ways. Simultaneously, he is creating whole new swaths of hitherto unseen mythology which is not only creative in its own right — but which is then immediately pressed into service on a deeper narrative level, as well.

GRADE: B+

Steven Brust
Published: 1988
Publisher: Ace
Cover Price: $7.99
ISBN: 0441182003
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