{"id":4545,"date":"2013-08-06T13:13:04","date_gmt":"2013-08-06T13:13:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/soundslikewish.wordpress.com\/?p=4545"},"modified":"2018-08-27T21:24:25","modified_gmt":"2018-08-27T11:24:25","slug":"foreshadow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/?p=4545","title":{"rendered":"Foreshadow"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is an account of connections observed when a translator, or any writer, is absorbed in a story.<\/p>\n

This morning as I searched through a Wikipedia entry about One Thousand and One Nights <\/em>for the use of a particular phrase, I came across the sub-heading ‘Foreshadowing’, which, I learned, is a literary device used by an author to hint at certain plot developments such as a disastrous end for the hero.\u00a0 Ah, what a coincidence, I thought, having just posted a blog entry in response to the WordPress weekly photo challenge for which the prompt was foreshadow<\/a>.\u00a0 Clicking on the highlighted term ‘foreshadowing’ on the Wikipedia page took me to another page where I saw an illustration by Arthur Rackham of the Rhine maidens warning Siegfried of a curse and looming disaster.<\/p>\n

\"\"
The Rhinemaidens warn Siegfried, Arthur Rackham, 1911 (With thanks to attemptedbloggery.blogspot.com.au for this superior image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ah, I thought again, what a coincidence!\u00a0 Just a few days ago, reading up on the Symbolism of artists and writers of the 1890s, all the better to understand the story I was translating that day, I came across a painting in a large book about nineteenth-century art, a work by Albert Pinkham Ryder called Siegfried and the Rhine Maidens<\/em>.\u00a0 It surprised me at the time because it virtually depicts a particular detail in the story I was working on, Useless Virtue<\/em> (L’Inutile Vertu<\/em>) by Jean Lorrain (1895).\u00a0 Yet another coincidence.\u00a0 Here’s the painting from Wikimedia Commons:<\/p>\n

\"\"
Siegfried and the Rhine Maidens, Albert Pinkham Ryder<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The scene with Siegfried and the maidens comes from Wagner’s opera, G\u00f6tterd\u00e4mmerung<\/em> (Twilight of the Gods<\/em>), which inspired many painters and writers of the 1890s who produced stories and paintings that transport the reader or viewer, as Wagner did, to a mystical land where symbols foreshadow an unhappy destiny for the hero.\u00a0 There is often a sunless sky or a glowing moon, a mythical natural landscape of forests, mists, bodies of water, and nymphs – often in groups – who seductively invite the hero to join them.<\/p>\n

In a few paragraphs from Useless Virtue<\/em>, Jean Lorrain could have been writing about Wagner’s Rhine maidens.\u00a0 The hero, Bertram, even wears a winged helmet like Siegfried in the paintings above.\u00a0 The story is a gloomy one and quite different from G\u00f6tterd\u00e4mmerung<\/em>, but there’s a moral at the end:\u00a0 there is punishment for a man who avoids temptation all his life!\u00a0 I enjoyed translating the vivid imagery, partly because this week I’ve stumbled across these few connections to the story.\u00a0 Vive la co\u00efncidence!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is an account of connections observed when a translator, or any writer, is absorbed in a story. This morning as I searched through a Wikipedia entry about One Thousand and One Nights for the use of a particular phrase, I came across the sub-heading ‘Foreshadowing’, which, I learned, is a literary device used by … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Foreshadow”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4578,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,157],"tags":[241,26,437,317,2,226,438,439,3],"class_list":["post-4545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-not-wwii","category-french-literature-and-translation","tag-19th-century-literature","tag-art","tag-foreshadowing","tag-jean-lorrain","tag-literature","tag-postaday2013","tag-rhine-maidens","tag-symbolism","tag-translation"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4545"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11367,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4545\/revisions\/11367"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}