The Alamo and poetry
Jul. 23rd, 2005 11:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ionelvSo, far some strange reason I'm reading about the Alamo, right? And I discover two odd things:
1. "Remember the Goliad!" would have been a more appropriate memorable expression than "Remember the Alamo! Remember the Goliad", which unfortunately got shortened to "Remember the Alamo!".
2. At the Battle of San Jacinto (which more or less confirmed Texas' independence from Mexico), the Texans managed to kill 630 Mexican troops, and wounded 208, while suffering only 9 kills and 30 wounded, after crossing an open field distance of one thousand yards while shouting "Remember the Alamo!" and "Remember the Goliad!". Were the Mexican conscripts that terrible shooters or were the Texans that much better?
On a similar surrealist note, after thinking that it would be really cool to write a paper on the cultural semiotics of chainletter jokes, I found a paper called Palindrome semiotics. Now, the interesting thing is that I love palindromes, so I start reading this paper which mentions Oskar Pastior as "the outstanding contemporary German palindrome poet", so I immediately look for some of his work, which unfortunately is mostly in German (duhh!), but I do find out that he was from Hermannstadt/Sibiu, Romania, and that he did not emigrate from Romania until the late '60s (when he was already in his 40s). So, I'm intrigued and I look further, hoping to find some of his works in Romanian. I don't find any, but I did find a website in the memory of one of his acquaintances, Gellu Naum, a Romanian surrealist. I liked Gellu's poetry so much, that I translated one of his poems:
1. "Remember the Goliad!" would have been a more appropriate memorable expression than "Remember the Alamo! Remember the Goliad", which unfortunately got shortened to "Remember the Alamo!".
2. At the Battle of San Jacinto (which more or less confirmed Texas' independence from Mexico), the Texans managed to kill 630 Mexican troops, and wounded 208, while suffering only 9 kills and 30 wounded, after crossing an open field distance of one thousand yards while shouting "Remember the Alamo!" and "Remember the Goliad!". Were the Mexican conscripts that terrible shooters or were the Texans that much better?
On a similar surrealist note, after thinking that it would be really cool to write a paper on the cultural semiotics of chainletter jokes, I found a paper called Palindrome semiotics. Now, the interesting thing is that I love palindromes, so I start reading this paper which mentions Oskar Pastior as "the outstanding contemporary German palindrome poet", so I immediately look for some of his work, which unfortunately is mostly in German (duhh!), but I do find out that he was from Hermannstadt/Sibiu, Romania, and that he did not emigrate from Romania until the late '60s (when he was already in his 40s). So, I'm intrigued and I look further, hoping to find some of his works in Romanian. I don't find any, but I did find a website in the memory of one of his acquaintances, Gellu Naum, a Romanian surrealist. I liked Gellu's poetry so much, that I translated one of his poems:
| Ciclu În fiecare toamnă şi în fiecare primăvară bunicul străbătea cu oile spaţiul caropato-balcanic dus-întors şi oile făceau beee exprimând astfel legile tăcute ale migraţiei Într-o bună zi oile au murit În transhumanţa lui solitară bunicul a lăsat să-i crească nişte mustăţi lungi şi s-a apucat să mâne o turmă de pietre Apoi bunicul a murit şi el mustăţile i-au crescut şi mai lungi pietrele au intrat în pământ şi au început să-i roadă mustăţile |
Cycle Every fall and every spring grandfather walked the Balkans with his sheep round-trip and the sheep bleated bahh thus expressing the mute laws of migration One good day the sheep died In his solitary transhumance grandfather grew a long mustache and started to lead a flock of rocks Then grandfather died too the mustache grew longer still the rocks sank in the soil and started to gnaw on his mustache |
