Itinera mundi mentisque

Summer has gone in a blissful otium.

Soon after my last post, I went to London for a week. This was the trip I was originally supposed to meet Karen first time – but that meeting got advanced by nearly four months, luckily… Anyway, we decided to stick to the London trip after all. We had plenty of nice time. The latter part of the trip was spent mostly reading – or almost exclusively, to be honest – as we got Harry Potter and Deathly Hallows at the midnight release. The ending of the book series was even better than I had expected. The important parts were very much as I had expected, though the frequency of killings first seemed surprisingly high.

We then came together to Finland and have enjoyed sunny Helsinki and occasional visits elsewhere, like my parents’ summer cottage at Ängvik island (in Pyhtää). Here’s a picture of me and Karen (or almost) over there:



Now it’s our last week together, and I’ve already started some work with several PhD courses, trying to write my research paper, and on top of that studying some Latin… And there’ll be wven more to do for the coming weeks.

Labels: Blogging, English, Finland, Harry Potter, Helsinki, London, Pyhtää, Work

Posted by Janne at 18:33 | Permalink | Comments

I was recently studying and translating a letter by Seneca (Epistulae Morales 28) as required for a course, and it evokes some thoughts about this blog… I’ll post some pieces of my Finnish translation separately, but here are some general comments in English. The complete original Latin text is available at the Classics Library (you have to scroll down a bit until XXVIII) and an English (old-fashioned) translation by Richard M. Gummere in the stoics.com The letter begins:

Hoc tibi soli putas accidisse et admiraris quasi rem novam quod peregrinatione tam longa et tot locorum varietatibus non discussisti tristitiam gravitatemque mentis? Animum debes mutare, non caelum.

Translation:
Do you suppose that this has happened to you alone, and are you surprised, as if it were a novelty, that after such long travel and so many changes of scene you have not been able to shake off the gloom and heaviness of your mind? Your must change your soul, not the climate.

At first, I was afraid the letter contained criticism to me, but reading further just confirmed that Seneca is channelling my own thoughts, a feeling not unusual to me when reading his works:

Magis quis veneris quam quo interest, et ideo nulli loco addicere debemus animum. Cum hac persuasione vivendum est: ‘non sum uni angulo natus, patria mea totus hic mundus est’.

Translation:
More important is as who than where you go; for that reason we should not make the mind a bondsman to any one place. One has to live in this belief: ‘I am not born for any one corner; my fatherland is this whole world.’

Valete!

Labels: Blogging, English, Latin, Lingua latina, Literature, Seneca, Translating

Posted by Janne at 19:39 | Permalink | Comments

It has been quite some time since the last update - I guess that's what happens when one starts to date... which has been going on now for two months... very nice.

However, I have now made some backdated entries to fill in the gap.

I also upgraded for new Blogger Labels, but as you can see, haven't managed to remove the old tags yet. If somebody knows how to do that easily, without need to edit each post separately, please tell me.

Labels: Blogging, English

Posted by Janne at 20:36 | Permalink | Comments