tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Jun 28 16:30:27 1994
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Klingon Poetics (was Re: Why Klingon Poetry...)
- From: [email protected] (Nick NICHOLAS)
- Subject: Klingon Poetics (was Re: Why Klingon Poetry...)
- Date: Wed, 29 Jun 1994 18:26:54 +1000 (EST)
Hu'tegh! nuq ja' [email protected] jay'?
Congratulations on finally getting your message out!
As you say at the end of your message, neither of us is going to change
each other's mind; being an adherent of the "get the last word in"
philosophy ;) , here's my rejoinder anyway.
[Esperanto example deleted]
=Aside from being more than a little snide (or cutesy, perhaps?), this
=argument still doesn't hold water. I pointed out that you CAN rearrange
=things in English, which you can't do in tlhIngan nearly as well. I didn't
=say this was a complete bar to rhyme, just that it makes it not as easy to
=do. I think that point still holds.
Ok, a tad snide. But your demands on rhyme are inconsistent. You don't want
it too easy (because then it becomes trivial), so you bar suffix rhyme.
But then, you don't want it too difficult, and you think Klingon's restrictive
syntax will make rhyme impossible. Well, I stand by my argument. Compared
to Esperanto, or Greek, or Russian, or even German, English syntax is
*very* restrictive, and this does not stop people from rhyming. Make it
more difficult? Sure. That's the whole point: that's where the skill lies.
Rhyming is (and should be) a challenge, not a facile ornament. The same
response goes for the limited vocab argument.
=[example deleted]
=Just the sort of thing I don't think Klingons would do, though.
=Adjusting... reorganizing... etc. etc... Adjusting a poem to have more
=emotional impact, yes, I can see that happening. Adjusting it to fit
=into iambic pentameter, I can't.
Oh, we really do have a different understanding of poetry, then. To me, the
*whole point* of poetry is the adjusting, the marshalling of meter, the
structuring of language. The alternative to such adjusting and reorganising
is what I regard as babble, not art. (And free verse is a *very* recent
phenomenon in human cultural history, borne of unique cultural circumstances
--- rebellion against tradition etc. --- which seem unlikely to be duplicated
by Klingons. So the current, free-verse preferring understanding of poetry
that *I think* your espousing, one in which craft is secondary to emotion,
is actually something relatively novel on this planet.)
I mean, I don't see Klingons as capable of sitting still long enough in order
to think hard enough to develop spaceships either, but given that they have,
I suppose they can take the time to nut out sonnets too.
(Actually, I *have* heard Trekkies wonder how a culture like the Klingons,
who hate scientists according to TNG, could develop spaceships. But that's
another debate.)
=I am NOT measuring rhyme in Klingon by contemporary Anglo standards. I'm
=saying that rhyme is a tool, which you pick up when it suits you. Put
=down when it doesn't. And in Klingon, it seems TO ME, that it would be a
=pretty poor tool to use at the best of times.
Well, why? I've used rhyme in Klingon a lot, and I just don't see that. The
proof is in the pudding. I mean, the whole reason I got that defensive in
the first place, is that I suspect you simply haven't tried yourself to
write rhymed poetry in Klingon. It's really no drama, believe me.
=And again, I am relating to what MY belief about Klingons would be. I
=can't see them sweating out Shakespearean sonnets ... I
=just can't. I can see, and agree that couplets might be something that
=they would do. But entire sonnets or longer poetry? Not bloody likely.
Actually, I was thinking about that, and you're right. I can't see them
doing sonnets either. But that's really beside the point; we have a brief
to restore Shakespeare to the original Klingon, and the only way to tackle
the sonnets with any artistic honesty is to use the sonnet rhyme scheme.
And I also think you're again bringing cultural judgements to bear on the
form. *Nowadays*, in this society, the sonnet is a precious, refined,
adulated thing. Not so in Shakespeare's time, when every man and his dog
would write the things, from England to Italy to Cyprus. Not so for similar
fixed rhyme forms like the vilainelle and the rondel, which started life as
folk songs. (Not to mention the outpourings of classical verse in mediaeval
and modern China, where every member of the society had to cough up a *shi*
to be considered civilised). Sonnets, rondels, shi and haikus are all
unspontaneous, art-language products; I just cannot see why one is more
likely for a warrior race than another. If you find haikus easier to write
than sonnets, then (as the Japanese have been telling westerners for years),
you're not writing the haiku right.
=> As proven by my sonnets. ;)
=Ahem. Mighty proud of them sonnets, ain't we? {{:-)
Uh, the word is 'defensive'. Perhaps unreasonably so, but I do get touchy
about them. Whatever.
=They may reflect us and some values we want to explore, but that doesn't
=mean that they use the exact same
=kind of rhyme scheme that we've been using for hundreds of years. I think
=the Star Trek universe can handle a little diversity among types of poetry.
Sure it can. Which is why I was so happy to do alliterative verse; and yes,
if you're arguing that people shouldn't *only* do rhymed poetry, then you're
correct and you have my support. If you're saying that people shouldn't
do rhymed poetry in Hol'a' at all, well, that I can't accept. But I don't
think we're actually in basic disagreement here.
=> Now, given that you argued that Klingons are too spontaneous to rhyme, I
=> find it much more incredible that they would sit down and count 5-7-5
=> syllables; but that's beside the point. If you think rhyme is a neat bundle
=> that can be used by anyone, then (1) you haven't read enough badly rhymed
=> poetry; (2) you haven't read enough *well*-rhymed poetry. Rhyme is no
=> different to metre, syllable counts, tonal patterns in Chinese, complex
=> Classical metres, or alliteration (apart from it merely being out of fashion
=> in your culture). These are all an imposition of order, using finite
=resources.
=> Sure, anyone can stumble across and use them. So why isn't *everyone* doing
=> it? Because it requires skill, and flexibility, and bravado. This holds for
=> rhyme as much as suffix types, and number of suffixes, and the time of day,
=> and the phase of the moon.
=Ahem.
You really should do something about that cough of yours. :-)
=Boy, you really like to make those assumptions, don't you?
=(1) Counting to 5 isn't hard. Even Klingons can do it, most of the time.
Ah, but what about 7 ;) . Anyway, I guess I was thinking of my Esperanto
experience of haiku. Esperanto words tend to be long, and Japanese
Esperantists insist on their culture's conventions in writing haiku
(obligatory weather reference, etc.) As a result, an Esperanto haiku is
a rather fragile thing, hard to get right, and much more inconsistent with
my perception of the rough-edged Klingons than a "it'll be all right on
the night" sonnet. (Particularly a Shakespearean sonnet, whose rhyming
scheme is as unchallenging as they get. If I want to write a sonnet in
Esperanto, I make *sure* it's Petrarchan. As far as form is concerned,
Shakespearean sonnets barely deserve the name. The fact that someone could
take exception to an *Shakespearean* sonnet form, instead of Petrarchan,
says a lot about our cultural expectations.)
=(2) Again, I'm not talking about any particular language fad, or lack
=thereof. And I have read plenty of rhyming poetry that I have enjoyed.
=Plenty that was bad, too. What does that have to do with the fact that I
=just don't think Klingon is well-suited for rhyming? Have you ever expressed
=extremely technical jargon in Spanish? Sure you can do it... but it goes
=against the grain of the language. Spanish is meant for music and love
=poetry, undying expressions of heartfelt passion, and has a structure and
=a sound which is well suited for that. English is flexible,
=tricky, and is well suited for rhyme. Klingon is neither of the above.
=Why try to force it to do that which it isn't MADE to do? Why not
=explore with it to do things that it DOES do?
Um.
Look, I'm not going to make a friend out of you for saying this...
... but this is the kind of specious, cryptoracist fallacy that any linguist
worth the name laughs at, and that justifies the idiots who say that blacks
can't do maths at school. It's a common misperception, one you're not to
blame for, but it's a misconception none the less, and dangerous at that.
Spanish has been 'made' in order for people living in Spain and Latin
America to go about their day-to-day business, be it music, love poetry,
civil engineering or merchant banking. They do have engineers in Spain and
Colombia. And they don't talk to each other in English. There is *no* grain to
a language, when it comes to the register it is applied in. All there is is
the issue of how often a language has been used in a particular domain ---
whether it's been often enough for the vocabulary to become standardised and
conventionalised.
The fact that English has been used widely enough in science to gain a
certain (current) preeminence is nothing but historical accident. It has
nothing to do with the climate, or the Spaniards' fiery temperament. Give
the Xhosa the technology and the infrastructure, and take away overt
English influence, and they'll eventually be able to talk to you about
nuclear physics in Xhosa. Whyever not? I'm sure there was a Klingon
Oppenheimer too.
And you see, *this* is where the beauty of Klingon lies for me. We all know
what Klingon is *supposed* to be, from the movies: a language in which you
bark commands. Well, in my translations, I think it's also a language in
which you can pun, and meditate, and preach, and expound, and sing. And
it taught me something invaluable: that if this shell of a language we
got from Okrand can carry Shakespeare off --- even if it sounds a bit more
impatient or nervy than the original --- then ALL LANGUAGES ARE EQUAL. Anything
is possible in any language. And that is a great, humanising, ennobling
lesson to learn from a language which isn't even supposed to be spoken by
humans.
Now, this isn't to prove that Klingon is suited or unsuited to rhyme. Chinese
isn't suited to rhyme --- though with tones, they have the next best thing,
a rhyme-tone double whammy. The Ancient Greeks obviously thought rhyme
wasn't worth the time of day. But I tell you: the only way to know for sure
whether Klingon is suited or not to rhyme (never mind whether that's *all*
we should be doing in Klingon poetry; that's another issue, and one in which
I have no argument with you) --- is by trying. I've tried; and I can tell you
it works. Which is all that can be said about it, really.
I've enjoyed this exchange with you, and I look forward to reading your
poetry. As you'll no doubt know, it's the original literature that really
tests a new language, not the translations. In that regard, your work is
probably much more important than mine in the long run. I wish you continuing
success with it.
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* Nick Nicholas, Linguistics, University of Melbourne, Australia *
[email protected]; [email protected]
* "Eschewing obfuscatory verbosity of locutional rendering, the *
circumscriptional appelations are excised." --- W. Mann & S. Thompson,
* _Rhetorical Structure Theory: A Theory of Text Organisation_, 1987. *
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