{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2957",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
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  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 2957,
    "subject": "paracelsus, italian translation of BOTNS",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2002-02-12T18:32:37+00:00",
    "last": "2002-02-12T18:32:37+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0202-151@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "maa32",
        "address": "maa32 at dana.ucc.nau.edu"
      },
      "date": "2002-02-12T18:32:37+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) paracelsus, italian translation of BOTNS",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Since Paracelsus came up, and the elixer applied to swords that can heal or \nharm, I was reminded of the scene in Castleview which talks about the healing \nproperty of scabards and of the book I am in the middle of right now:\nUmberto Eco's \"Island of the Day Before\".  I have been reminded of Wolfe the \nwhole time I've been reading it, and Paracelsus' sword and other alchemical \ntidbits are important to the work, which is science fiction as it might have \nbeen written in the 17th century (crossing the date line [to restore a slain \nfriend to life] and discovering longitude with accuracy seems similar to \ndiscovering faster than light travel or something).\nThere are several parallels between Severian's narrative and the Island of the \nDay Before (we should remember that the book of the new sun is popular in \nItaly).  There is a wounded dog that is kept wounded so that the time may be \naccurately known (the blade used to wound the dog is exposed to irritants at \nnoon in Europe, while the dog is taken on the journey and his wound constantly \nflayed with salt so that it will not heal - the alchemical sympathy between \nthe blade and the wound allow the men on the ship to know the time and \ndetermine where they are based on the stars or something).  It really reminded \nme of Triskele.  The hero falls down the stairs in a ship like Severian falls \nwhen he is discorporated, cutting himself with a weapon that seems to be based \noff of Paracelsus, with the ability to heal or destroy.  It has gotten awful \nreviews on amazon.com, but I like it tons more than \"Foucalt's Pendulum\", \nwhich I felt deep down was a waste of my time.\n\nALSO, since I have some experience reading Italian (but wouldn't consider \nmyself fluent by any means), I actually have the Italian translation of Book \nof the New Sun (mainly to see how the words were translated).  If we accept \nthat a translation can accurately approximate the \"spirit\" of the original \nwork, there are some interesting things that happen.  The rhyme that Severian \nuses to hide his little coin is COMPLETELY different than the rhyme he speaks \nwhen he picks it up at the end of Citadel of the Autarch in the Italian \nversion.  Scarcely two words are the same.  It is fascinating how much words \ncan change in just a simple poem like that -> That really made me wonder about \nthe possibility of translating an author like Wolfe, where the devil is really \nin the details.  I wonder if some of my favorite foreign authors should really \nbe attributed to good translators ... but then again, the Book of the New Sun \nclaims to be a translation anyway.\nMarc Aramini"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}