Hi, Daivid,
daivid wrote:Markos wrote:
Breathe. Breathe in the air.
Don't be afraid to care.
Leave; don't leave me.
Look around; choose your own ground.
ἀμπνοὰς ἔχε σύγε, ὦ τᾶν, ὁράων φάος ἠελίοιο.
I had a bit of trouble with the first line. I had not met the word ἀναπνοή before but from the dictionaries I've got the impression that ἀμπνοὰς ἔχε means breathe out. Woodhouse suggests ἕλκειν for inhale. Even though both have the implication of relax,
breathe out to me implies "be laid back" while
breathe in implies to me a more desperate "Don't Panic!".
The main thing is that I was looking for a more poetic way to say "breath." LSJ says that ἀμπνοὰς ἔχειν= ἀναπνεῖν, "breath, live," and quotes Sophocles:
Ajax 412-416: ἰὼ
πόροι ἁλίρροθοι
πάραλά τ᾽ ἄντρα καὶ νέμος ἐπάκτιον,
πολὺν πολύν με δαρόν τε δὴ
415κατείχετ᾽ ἀμφὶ Τροίαν χρόνον: ἀλλ᾽ οὐκέτι μ᾽, οὐκ
ἔτ᾽ ἀμπνοὰς ἔχοντα:
Ah! You paths of the sounding sea, you tidal caves and wooded pastures by the shore, long, long, too long indeed [415] have you detained me here at Troy. But no more will you hold me, no more so long as I have the breath of life.
This is what I was looking for because I think the first line of the album, addressed to an infant, is the injunction to start living, take the first few breaths of life.
I couldn't make out ὁράων at all. Is it a form of ὁράω? And is φάος ἠελίοιο ray of the sun?
Yes, ὁράων is the singular participle of ὁράω, but I left it uncontracted, as you find it in Epic. (Attic-Koine would be ὁρῶν.) In this project I switch between dialects for effect. Yes, φάος ἠελίοιο is Epic for τὸ φῶς τοῦ ἡλίου, and "seeing the light of the sun" is a poetic idiom for "living, existing."
How do you see the relationship with your Greek to the original?
That's a good question, both here and in general. When you translate songs, you have to first interpret the original. This is highly subjective. Then, putting it into Greek is to the left of dynamic equivalence. One really seeks to capture not the words, nor even the thought, but the tone (as one feels it) of the original.
Dark Side of the Moon is my favorite all time album, and it is on my bucket list to translate the whole thing into Greek.