From ljm@xxxx.xxx.xxxxxx.xxxx Sun Feb 21 06:53:36 1999 X-Digest-Num: 69 Message-ID: <44114.69.346.959273824@eGroups.com> Date: Sun, 21 Feb 1999 22:53:36 +0800 From: Lin Zhemin la kris. cusku di'e > > I doubt how effective culture-neutral poetry could be. Without culture or > > history, metaphor is impoverished and symbolism in non-existent. Doesn't > > sound much like poetry to me. > {zo'osai} the fact that people _do_ write poetry in Lojban! {pe'i} Lojban is > culture-free in the sense of not being confined to any particular culture, not > in the sense of being culturally sterile. I know that western literature depends on metaphors very much. However, metaphor is just one of the three fundamental methods of making up a poem in Chinese literature. The methods are Fu4, Bi3, Xing1, which can be simply (and rudely) translated as "indicate", "compare and parallelise", "metaphor and making imaginative relation". It is very impressive to Chinese, that poems can be like this famous one: (C = Chinese, D = Directly translated, T = Translation) C: guo puo shanhe zai, hengchun cao mu sheng. (1) D: country destroy mountain river exist, spring grass trees born. T: The country is overwhelmed but the land still exists; and in the spring, grasses and trees grow and born. In (1), there is no metaphor. It's totally written in indicative form, very easy to translate into lojban. (1) is not culture-neutral. Eventually if there is someone who isn't ever moved by patriotism, (s)he won't understand this. But I think that's a biological experience. It's of human race. C: gan shi hua jian lei, hen bie niao jing xin. (2) D: Feel time flowers drop tears, hated leave birds afraid heart. T: When beings are emotionally moved by this sight, even the flowers drop their very tears. And as I'm forced to leave my country, the birds are afraid of my strong hateness. In (2), Xing1 appears. It can be translated as long as we insert some auxiliaries, as what we've done in English. This kind of poems appear in large amount in Chinese literature. However, there are naturally cultural dependant poems (which modern Chinese may even not understand w/o explanation). I just don't think culture-neutrality could ever be a problem understanding/appreciating a poem. You just need some explanations. -- .e'osai ko sarji la lojban. ==> 請支持邏輯語言。 co'o mi'e lindjy,min. ==> 再見，我是林哲民。 Fingerprint20 = CE32 D237 02C0 FE31 FEA9 B858 DE8F AE2D D810 F2D9