The presumption that sheep are unintelligent can be found as far back as Aristotle, who asserted in about 350 bce that the sheep is said to be naturally dull and stupid. Of all quadrupeds it is the most foolish: it will saunter away to lonely places with no object in view; oftentimes in stormy weather it will stray from shelter.
Yet just a couple of paragraphs later, he remarks that ‘shep-herds train sheep to close in together at a clap of their hands’, so that ‘when a thunderstorm comes on’, they can summon their flocks back to the sheepfold. The contradictions here resound throughout history: sheep are stupid because they follow obediently, but also because they stray disobediently; they are too dull to know what they are doing, but they can learn to come on command (like dogs, in whom we consider this to be evidence of human-like cleverness).
Sheep. Philip Armstrong. Reaction books
I find the story familiar. It’s like saying women are horrid but praising men for getting two or three. Saying women are stupid but counting on them to manage the house ( sometimes one big enough to count as a company). Fiction is used to convenience when the ones below the story allow it.
Are you to use this feature in your stories? Do it wisely. Pasto kalo.
Blub blub blub, The tupper is below the kitchen’s counter. Diving I must, so I breathe. Hold it! My mind wanders and colour fish I see! Some square, some cylinders of dairy. The one I need, A blue scaled thing I retrieve. Up, up, carefree. And my knees did not protest. Cheers!
Es que los basiliscos sólo nacen de los huevos que ponen los dos gallitos de oro. Son unas aves muy bobas, sin ninguna conversación: lo único que hacen es pasarse la vida diciendo kikirikí de una manera muy fatua. En fin, que cada cien años ponían un huevo. —Pero yo creía que las únicas que ponían huevos eran las gallinas —dijo Penélope, hecha un mar de confusiones. —Las gallinas ponen huevos de donde salen otras gallinas —puntualizó Loro—. Los gallitos de oro ponen huevos de donde salen basiliscos.
El paquete parlante. Gerald Durrell
Digamos que hay cosas que la gente sabe. Cómo que para que haya más aves, necesitas dos aves. Una hembra y un macho. Pero cuando se trata de creer lo imposible; los humanos somos capaces de olvidar lo obvio. Como que los gallos no ponen huevos. O como que los ovnis no secuestran a nadie cada 15 días de modo regular.
There were many men working at Hazard’s who remained anti-Negro, and violently so. Freed blacks would threaten such men by competing for their jobs. George wished that kind of hatred didn’t exist at the ironworks, but he also knew no government could legislate it out of existence because it was rooted in fear; illogical.
North and South; Book two, Friends and enemies. John Jakes.
Like Mark Mason says, it is all about us and them. Are you able to have the reader side with your character? Can you make readers to feel like «one of us»? Have a great time making the reader afraid of them.
Urging, urging, hurrying. A bully cracking resolution. Exhilaration behind façade, the pages fell, And the insurance gone to hell.
True, I bumped you. What were you doing right behind in a street going up? Trying to gain a mere metre of vantage? Or searching for a fool to scam? Damned you and your eyes.
And I curse you ahead, To be shot in your spine. At least to discharge. Since I can't get it done out of spite.
Otra consecuencia de la vida sedentaria es que permite almacenar los excedentes alimentarios, pues el almacenamiento sería inútil si no se permaneciera cerca para vigilar los alimentos almacenados. Aunque algunos cazadores-recolectores nómadas pueden recoger ocasionalmente más alimentos de los que pueden consumir en unos días, esa abundancia les resulta de escasa utilidad porque no pueden protegerla. Pero el alimento almacenado es fundamental para alimentar a los especialistas no productores de alimentos, y sin duda para mantener ciudades enteras de ello. De ahí que las sociedades de cazadores-recolectores nómadas tengan pocos o ningún especialista a tiempo completo, figura que apareció por vez primera en las sociedades sedentarias. Dos tipos de tales especialistas son los reyes y los burócratas.
Armas, gérmenes y acero. Jared Diamond.
Los reyes y los burócratas no son un problema del capitalismo. Son un problema de vivir cultivando… Las sociedades de cazadores recolectores son igualitarias porque nadie se puede dar el lujo de no ayudar a cazar o recolectar.
In Exophony 1 and 2, I blabbed about what exophony is and reviewed a short list of writers who found themselves in a different language. Which means I’m not all lost writing in this terrible language.
Today I’ll only quote a bit of Chantal Wright’s essay «Exophony and literary translation. What it means for the translator when a writer adopts a new language[1]«. Where she rationalizes about OWNING A LANGUAGE.
«When deliberating on the title of this essay, I initially considered calling it ‘On writing in a language which is not one’s own and what this means for the translator’. But to do so would be to uphold two stubborn myths: one, that a language belongs to a certain territory and body of people, which in fact no language does…»
German is spoken in Austria and Switzerland (besides Germany), English… that’s spoken even in my municipality. Yes, native speakers. Morocco, Switzerland and Quebec in Canada do parle le français. Portuguese is carioca too!
It might not be the everyday thing we speak or think; OURS BY CHOICE OR FORCE. Of the 62 native languages in Mexico, I speak none. I’m a child of the conquest[2]…
EXOPHONIC WRITERS THAT MIGHT NOT BE ON THE LIST
The Wikipedia listing is longer than what I initially thought. Don’t stop there. It is an old phenomenon. Authors like Flavius Josephus[3]. He didn’t make the list in spite of starting life as Yosef to end up being Titus when he was taken as an interpreter slave.
Maybe there are authors who were exophonous without anyone realizing! Or because no one knew much about them. Think a Mr. “No one really knows his real name” who wrote <<Una canasta de cuentos mexicanos>>. It is said he came from the States[4] as German or Polish or who knows where from. Spanish wasn’t his native tongue, for sure.
Hereby we are left with an undetermined number of exophonic writers. Interesting eh?
DOES ONE CHANGE LANGUAGE ONLY WITH MIGRATION?
No. It can be a retail strategy. More readers, although more competition.
IT IS POSSIBLE TO FEEL FREER IN A DIFFERENT LANGUAGE.
For Aga Lesiewicz, English was a more honest way to express herself, giving her the confidence and changing her on the way.
I prefer it because I can attain a certain musicality I wouldn’t in Spanish.Besides, it forces me to think as the character. Not what I think or want out of the situation. Why do you think the blog was born in Spanish. Just a bloody journal about what I discover about writing fiction and the noise it buzzes in my head.
To others, it is just a way to disguise themselves. To experiment with their own identity or learn to survive in their new environment. Nabokov went out riding buses to write Lolita in the right colloquial English.
We write in a different language because it makes us happy too. Prejudices or not.
DO WE WRITE WELL?
I’ve only read Gibran and Kundera[5]…in Spanish. Never in the original language. Both are great.
Me? I gotta think I do. Otherwise, I should just give up the blog and life altogether (no job, not published, just doing this cause I care for it more than I care about other stuff[6]).
Would you try? Against any prediction or prejudice?
Have fun writing in your own or whatever language you have chosen/are forced to write in. Pasto kalo.
[1] Wright, Chantal (2010) Exophony and literary translation: what it means for the translator when a writer adopts a new language. Target, 22 (1). pp. 22-39. Quotation found in https://benjamins.com/online/target/articles/target.22.1.03wri ; the original can be read through a 300 euro subscription so, no thanks.
[2] If you are thinking it is thanks to you. No. It is because of you. Not the same. Be conscientious. Just that. Thank you.
[3] Josephus, Flavius /dʒəʊˈsiːfəs/ ( c. 37– c. 100), Jewish historian, general, and Pharisee; born Joseph ben Matthias . His Jewish War gives an eyewitness account of the events leading up to the Jewish revolt against the Romans in 66, in which he was a leader.
[4] I remember some museum exhibition that featured the guy as a part of the display (don’t ask what was the title or the artist on display since I don’t remember that, nor the museum) in which it was implied he came to Mexico after passing through the States where he changed his name to Bruno Traven —maybe I’m just adding more gossip to it for my memory is not photographic— from Red Marut and even before Red Marut; there seemed to have been other changes, The point is, NO ONE KNOWS WHERE HE IS FROM, THUS NO ONE KNOWS WHAT HE ORIGINALLY SPOKE.
[5] Read The unbearable lightness of being, originally written in Czech (his mother tongue), a language I wouldn’t even dare to mess with.
[6] Hence, I’m a nobody. I’m useless to you if you send me your baby manuscript for me to read and promote. It’s me who needs you. Sorry.
