Re: [ga] Olympic Hymn [arete]

["Richard Henderson" <richardhenderson@ntlworld.com>]

Sotiris!

What a tangled web we weave... and how strange to be touched by your poem in
this barren ghetto with its endless attrition.

"O saeclum insipiens et infacetum"

You fret over your poem, and yet seem to overlook the knowledge it imparts,
in itself and of itself.

Knowledge comes imparted like that, sometimes. When I recall a particular
encounter, an unsolicited encounter ten years ago, what resides and
resonates in my memory is not the spectacular technology and unimagined
power of advanced minds, but simply an awareness:  awareness of
communication, of an untaught knowledge imparted whole. Just suddenly there.

Plato understood this too, in a separate way.

Your poem captures something of the wholeness of another place. it is an
achievement.

Do you seriously think you can control and contain your excellent
translation, once it has been created? Don't you realise the nature of this
web, its repetition of repetitions? Soon, even this forum, this ICANN, will
exist only as one of innumerable parallel worlds.

...or as Borges said:

"The Governor of Yunnun renounced all worldly power to construct a
labyrinth - a labyrinth in which all men would become lost. I imagined it
inviolate. I imagined it infinite. I thought of a labyrinth of labyrinths
that would encompass the past and the future. An invisible labyrinth of
time. To me, a barbarous Englishman, has been entrusted the revelation of
this diaphanous mystery. I read, uncomprehendingly and with fervour, these
words written by a man of my blood : I leave to the various futures my
garden of forking paths. The forking in time. Diverse futures, diverse times
which themselves also proliferate and fork."
"In a riddle whose answer is chess, what is the only prohibited word? I
thought a moment and replied: the word Chess. To omit a word always, is
perhaps the most emphatic way of stressing it."
"In contrast to Newton and Schopenhauer, your ancestor did not believe in a
uniform, absolute time. He believed in an infinite series of times, in a gro
wing, dizzying net of divergent, convergent and parallel times. We do not
exist in the majority of these times; in some you exist and not I; in others
I, and not you; in others, both of us. Time forks perpetually towards
innumerable futures."
"The least things in the universe must be secret mirrors to the greatest.
Every man is on Earth to symbolize something he is ignorant of. I do not
know what right we have to that continuity which is time. Each moment is
autonomous. My life is a flight and I lose everything and everything belongs
to oblivion."

But the significance of your Hymn is that it reaches out from another place.
Inviolable. It has a classic timelessness and dignity.

Just let it go, and the path will fork, and fork. Maybe it is not yours.
Maybe it was given to you.

Outside, the sun shines bright - and your fingers can trace the rough bark -
and a breeze as ancient as Thermopylae feels ardent against your cheek.
Offerings are given up in honour of the gods. You can smell their fragrance
but you cannot bring them back. That is part of the dignity. Part of the
arete or excellence.

Richard H

----- Original Message -----
From: Sotiris Sotiropoulos <sotiris@hermesnetwork.com>
To: <ga@dnso.org>
Sent: Sunday, January 19, 2003 7:49 PM
Subject: [ga] Olympic Hymn [continued]


> Using an interesting facility called "The Wayback Machine"
> I have found the following regarding the British Olympic
> Association's webpages (specifically the contents of the
> page now found at:
> http://www.olympics.org.uk/olympicmovement/olympicmovement.asp
> that is, the page where they are currently displaying my
> uncredited translation of Costis Palamas' Olympic Hymn).
>
> Please go here to see what I mean:
>
http://web.archive.org/web/*/www.olympics.org.uk/olympicmovement/olympicmove
ment.asp
>
> The first archived instance of the web page in question is
> from Jul 14, 2001, and in the section "Olympic Hymn" it
> contains a DIFFERENT translation from the one currently
> displayed (i.e. my own).
>
> The second available archive instance is from Aug 05, 2001
> and again, it does not contain my version of the
> translation but rather, it contains the same one as the
> preceeding date.
>
> On Aug. 6, 2001 I sent the following message (containing
> my translation) to the Classics-L academic list:
>
http://omega.cohums.ohio-state.edu:8080/hyper-lists/classics-l/01-09-01/0217
.html
> As well, I have a copy of an email I sent to Isidoros at
> ioniccentre@hol.gr from Aug 6, 2001 which contains my
> translation.  Also, on Aug. 7, 2001 I sent a digitally
> certified email to the publisher Aristide Caratzas (as
> mentioned in my previous email) which contained my
> translation.  On Aug. 8, 2001 I responded onlist on
> Classics-L to questions about my translation from Dr.
> Rudolph Masciantonio.
>
> The third referenced copy from the "Wayback Machine"
> archive of the same BOA web page from Oct 31, 2001 is
> unavailable.
>
> The fourth archived instance of the same web page is from
> Feb 22, 2002, and it contains MY translation (without any
> credit to myself)!
>
> So, my transltion has been on their web site for about 1
> year, for sure.  They replaced a previous translation with
> my own.
>
> How do you like that?
>
> Sotiris Sotiropoulos
>
>
>
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