This blog

This blog is a collection of some random writing I've done over the past few years. I don't write as often as I'd like, but this is what I have to show that isn't hyperspecific or technical and dull.

Demon Souls Review

I wrote some reviews a few years ago for actionbutton.net that seemed to get lost somewhere in the internet. At the time, Demon Souls had not been released in the US and I wanted to give complimentary games writing a shot.

"a review of

Demon's Souls

a videogame by From Software

published by Sony Computer Entertainment (Japan and Asia) and Atlus (US)

text by jacob munford

Score: 4 stars out of 4

Bottom Line: Demon's Souls is “the pocketwatch that you can give to your grandchildren”

My original plan for this review was to steal the IGN format of game reviews, with the terrible segmented 'graphics' and 'gameplay' sections and all, and write a sardonic review where the reviewer sees all of Demon's Souls successes as faults and tops the whole thing off with a 7/10 at the end of the article. My bottom line would be: Demon's Souls is not for everyone, but hardcore gamers will eat it up. For a while, I thought this was clever. But it isn't, really. It's too easy. It would be like challenging a cab driver to a fencing match. It doesn't actually celebrate what a real piece of goddamned work this thing is.

But the reason taking the piss out of game reviewers felt so appealing to me in the first place is that the reviews for this game write themselves. When this game comes out in America in October 2009, expect to see plenty of game writers warning about the ways in which the game is difficult to a fault, the combat isn't as well-animated as something like Dynasty Warriors and that the multiplayer system is clunky and awkward. Expect 7s. Expect a metacritic score of 7.6. Expect to be disappointed when whatever you read for your product reports makes you breathe a bit deeper.

Here's the facts, man. Demon's Souls is a game about struggling with discomfort. Demon's Souls uses the typical fantasy environment and milks logic out of it with the ferocity of a teenaged farmboy who is forced to go to an all-boys school. There are castles and forts in this game, you know. But these castles and forts aren't comfortable places. Most castles and forts aren't, really. There's crumbling stone everywhere. You fight through these things with the passion and verve of a human being surrounded by monsters, since that's what you are. If you are a broadsword-wielding meatbrick, expect to learn about the timing and pacing of home invasions. If you decide to use a rapier, expect to dance like you ain't never danced before. Stakes is high, y'know what I mean? You can die easy if you aren't on point, all the time, and combat is as serious as basketball would be in a movie about basketball. The combat doesn't snap or pop like it does in games like God Hand, but it's just a different type of music. It is spare, with offbeat percussion and open air. You can call it difficult if you aren't willing to put your back into it, but games don't typically make us earn it. It's nice to be regarded as somebody who isn't interested in having my food injected directly into my stomach.

In this game, dungeons are a tone as opposed to an aesthetic. The levels are dangerous worlds that loop with forward momentum, but roll back up into themselves as a comfort. They are laid out like darkened, rarely-used rooms in a basement. You trace your hands across the walls to see how they feel. You find a corner and feel assuaged, as most mapmakers do. But the consistent lack of light in the room is a reminder that you've only found the border of an entire open space, and you can't see a thing. The problem with games that let you play mapmaker is the assumption that drawing a map is the end goal of exploration. No way, sisters. That shit is nothing but liner notes. The reality is that anything worth exploring will have dynamics: dullness and danger and reward and tension. If you are the type of person who can lose yourself in an environment, Demon's Souls can play you like a stringed instrument.

The game is designed around anticipations and expectations. When you get near the end of the game, you realize how clockwork everything is. The atmosphere is not accidental, it is pathologically constructed. It is the culmination of well-punctuated kineticism combined with crystalline-structured maze making and line drawing. But early in the game? You don't know what's around the next corner. You hope it is something that you can handle. You are getting to know this person and are navigating their personality like a sailboat in cold waters. The game allows you to bring other players into your game, but the reality is that these people are nothing more than guiding flags. They may show you where to go, but not always how to get there. They can't speak, only nod. You aren't on an equal plateau, you don't get the same things. It's awkward and alienating. It can only serve to show you how to stand on your own two feet.

Demon's Souls is the right kind of game. It is confident in itself. Playing it correctly can make you more confident in yourself. I've heard people call this a dungeon simulator, but that isn't quite right. Simulation is a dirty word, you know. It implies an echo of something else, something more concrete. Demon's Souls is as real as the inside of a watch. It ticks consistently. The watch hands never stop moving clockwise. Anybody who can read an analog clock will understand the facade of the watch and hear the ticks of clicking gears but if the watch breaks, be at a loss as to how the thing fits together. Watchmakers are old and lazy symbols for beings of internal order and momentum. But these guys? These Demon's Souls guys? These guys are watchmakers. There's no other way to describe them. They've made a well-oiled machine that will only stop doing its job when it is ignored."     

Crisis Core Review

Here's the next review for actionbutton. This piece is much more negative than I feel comfortable with today, but then again games have certainly earned their fair share of bile.

"a review of

Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII

a videogame by Square Enix

published by Square Enix

text by jacob munford

Score: 1 stars out of 4

Bottom Line: Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII is “one of the more pleasant terrorist acts that I have taken part in”

People who write about games are called games journalists, despite the fact that the majority of what they do has nothing to do with journalism whatsoever. Some are journalists, but the majority are critics. Scratch that, the majority are just game writers. But let's pretend this is journalism for this review because I'm going to do some undercover investigative journalism posing as somebody who could possibly give a shit about the story of this game. This game is an extension of the story of another game that was released about 10 years ago. People like that game, so when the guys who made this game they made it with similar scope and ambition. The characters created in that game come back for this game and...fuck this. Long story short as possible, the plot of Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII is that there are a bunch of people with angel wings, but only one angel wing. One of the bad guys has a black angel wing. Some of the good guys have white angel wings. The conflicted guy has a big angel wing and a tiny angel wing. If this isn't depressing to you, go buy a book or failing that, a thick metal cable. Then just do what comes naturally.

Like most Japanese role-playing games these days, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII is an extended exercise in tedium. Playing through the 'story mode' is pretty excruciating in the way that most of these things are: you walk from point A to point B, interrupted by pointless and weightless fighting approximately nineteen times per minute. These hikes are then interrupted by small movies with poor writing and subpar voice performances. It's a lot like running a marathon where you have to tie your shoes every five seconds. Oh, and the track is nothing but a straight line and you have explosive diarrhea. Did I mention that it is about 20 hours long?

The reason why this game is worth writing about is because of something that the game calls 'mission mode'. You can access 'mission mode' by standing still at a glowing diamond and going into the menu usually reserved for the type of minute statistic tweaking reserved for magic mathematic pornographers. 'Mission mode' also happens to be the finest terrorist attack perpetrated upon game development since the original Final Fantasy VII. 'Mission mode' is a list of somewhere around 200 scenarios where you navigate your character through one of five total environments. These scenarios are usually finished in about two or three minutes. They consist of a point A, a point B and a treasure quest in between. The point B usually has a boss battle that is more difficult than the regular interruptions.

The beauty here is that in attempting to add content to their game, Square Enix has compromised their entire product catalog. The missions are a distillation of every reason that anybody even plays these games, all wrapped up in a two minute package. They aren't satisfying in themselves, but at least the missions are bite-sized. Think about what to expect from Final Fantasy XII. Or XV. Or XXVV. Unless you are especially invested in the ways that action figures emote, every single one of these games will be a 60 hour extension of one of these two minute missions. These missions even have stories! Missions start with two sentences from a soldier or villager or (holy shit!) Final Fantasy VII character and end with two more sentences. If one of these missions were released as a web browser game entitled “Every Final Fantasy Game Ever”, internet dudes would lose their business. It would become a meme that posters at kotaku would link to and have a laugh at. The creator would probably get praised and interviewed. Instead, somebody made about 200 of them and put them inside of an actual Final Fantasy game. The first time I played through one of these missions, I fell off of the chair I was sitting in. I felt the way that Teddy Roosevelt probably felt when he was warned about how dangerous exploring the Amazon was by a guy who then immediately fell in the Amazon and eaten by piranhas.

Do you guys listen to hip-hop? The new Raekwon album is pretty nice. On the end of one of the songs, Ghostface Killah tells his son to go to the store to buy some bologna to put on his face. This sentence lasts about three seconds on the album and is more entertaining than the entirety of Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII. Measuring games by how many hours you get out of them isn't going to help anybody, but would it be such a problem to have about two seconds of game as entertaining as some shit that Ghostface Killah says at the end of a song that isn't even on his album? 'Mission mode' tells me that somebody at Square Enix probably feels similar. This game gets one star because 'mission mode' is Square Enix attempting to forge a hot knife to cut through its own fat. They won't succeed until they realize that the ultimate act of criticism is to create something better than what they have, but I guess we should appreciate that they've noticed the poisoned well. Plus, the fact that you gain levels on a slot machine mechanic is just hilarious."  

Touch The Sun

A friend and I were working on a platformer for a while based around climbing all the way to the sun. All of our work outside of this script was lost in a freak accident, but I like this script/outline enough to share. The premise is that our main character is ignoring their responsibilities in order to climb to the sun and is constantly being reminded of their left-behind life via voicemails once per level.

"Stage 1: Ground

Level 1-1: Ground level

The game starts on the sidewalk, with the character beginning the climb at the base of a building. The level ends at a jump from a smaller building to the side of a skyscraper.

1-1 Script: Dad – Hey. I was calling to remind you about that dinner at my place next month. Your sister is getting the weekend off. I was thinking that if you could do the same, we might drive up to the lake. Let me know.

Level 1-2: Back and forth

This level has the character jumping back and forth between a skyscraper and another large building. The level ends as the character jumps from the top of the large building onto the skyscraper.

1-2 Script: Chris – Hey, are you alright? It got weird last night. You didn't call after dinner. I mean, you don't have to. But you did before. Anyway, call me back if you get the chance.

Level 1-3: Skyscraper

 The level has the character climbing the skyscraper to the very top of the building. The city is far below the character now. The level ends with the character jumping onto a small cloud.

1-3 Script: Ray – Man, where'd you put that Mexican wrestling tape with the midget? I was telling Dante about that shit and now I can't find it. I bought a VCR at the flea market for like 3 bucks, its got a bunch of stickers all over it but that's no thing.

Stage 2: Sky

Level 2-1: Troposphere

This level begins with wispy cirrus clouds and flocks of birds. The character climbs through increasingly thicker clouds and volatile weather. The level ends at  the very top of a nimbostratus layer. 

2-1 Script: Dad – I was calling to try to get a hold of you but Ray was telling me that you aren't answering your phone. If you need something, you know I'll try to help. Just...uh...just...just get back to me.

Level 2-2: Stratosphere

This level has the character jumping between cumulus clouds and airplanes. This level should be filled with soft blue sky.

2-2 Script: Chris - Ray let me in. I had some stuff to drop off. We found the thing from work. I'm sorry. I don't know...but If you need help with rent, let me know. The firm gave me a good bonus, I can cover it. Wherever you are, just come back soon. We'll figure this out.

Level 2-3: Thermosphere and exosphere

This level represents the transition between sky and space. The beginning of the  level should start where the last level cuts off, but this level will have the sky blue transition to darker shades. This is where auroras occur and space detritus burns up to become meteorites. This level should end with the encompassing blackness of space.         

2-3 Script: Ray -  Hey, its Ray. Sucks about the job, man. I was pokin' around in your room and found your note. You playing around about that? Or are you really going to the sun?

Stage 3: Space

 Level 3-1: Space junk

This level should feature the character jumping between all of the flotsam and jetsam revolving around the Earth. Spent rocket chambers, junked machines and dirt. The player could climb through an abandoned, rotting space station

3-1 Script: Dad – Your roommate called me about what you are doing. He also told me about the job. Um...I don't know what to say. [long pause] I took out some of those books we always used to buy you with all the pictures of the planets and constellations. Is that where you are? Are you out there?

Level 3-2: Deep space

At this level, the character should seem lost in space. This is the odd emptiness of space, with distant stars and weird radiation. What the character is jumping on has  become abstract and illogical. This is where space madness usually sets in, but not for our guy!                

3-2 Script: Chris – I don't know if you are even getting these messages, but I want you to know that I get it. Like, I just get it. I get it. [pause] Me and your dad and Ray are on the roof of the apartment building pointing out all the stars that we remembered as kids. We're kinda drunk. I hope you get to where you want to go, but...I hope you come back. I miss you. [phone gets dropped and you hear a bunch of fumbling] Shit! [voicemail cuts out]

Level 3-3: Comet's tail

In this level, the character is climbing through the tail of a comet. The tail's blaze should grow increasingly larger and brighter as the level goes on. The tail has a bunch of fragments and chunks flowing through it for our character to jump on.

3-3 Script: Ray – So man, about that wrestling tape...Why you ain't got my shit when I let you hold it? Ha. Remember that shit though? Sittin' back and listening to Wu in the summertime? That was great, man. Let me know what it's like up there. By the way, Chris is pretty cool, man. Good on ya.

Stage 4: Sun

Level 4-1:

The approach to the sun starts reminding the player of the blackness of space. The corona will still be faint and thin, with the occasional coronal loop providing some flair.

 

4-1 Script: Chris – Jesus, I'm sorry about that drunk call. I took a big ol' chunk out of my phone. I don't even remember what I said...such a jackass. Ray told me you should be pretty close by now. I bet it's warm. You know how good it feels when you walk outside and that sun hits your skin? I imagine that's how you feel right now. Keep climbing. You'll get there!

Level 4-2:

The level draws out the approach to the sun. The intensity has increased, with the character jumping through the midst of a coronal transient.

4-2 Script: Dad – You know, I never told anybody this. When I was your age, I wanted to drive race cars for a living. I used to do a bunch of skids in the burn pit down the road. When the time I broke my leg, I had to put that off to the side. Then I met your mom...well, you know how the story goes...um...I guess I'm trying to say that I've got your back. Whatever it is. You should just keep going. Keep going. I...love you. 

Level 4-3:

The level is almost all heat and light. The only thing to break up the consistency is the flow of the plasma, swirling and rotational. The level ends with the character jumping into the sun.

4-3 Script: The level should feature audio blocks all around the level, right before particularly tricky jumping parts, as opposed to just at the beginning. This should be just anybody who we can grab to record something. Dad, Chris and Ray should give short messages, but let's just have as many opportunities to encourage the player as we can tastefully work in." 

Gained In Translation

This is an essay on poetry and the nature of translation from one of my undergrad classes. I happen to think that academic writing is the entertainment equivalent of eating rocks, but this is probably the best example of a more long-form formal piece.

Gained in Translation: Ezra Pound's Heuristic Revision of “The Seafarer”

     How important is the role of authorial intent? Many educators have downplayed the role of authorial intent, stating that as long as the text can support an idea, the authorial intent is irrelevant. The problem is that by downplaying authorial intent, the study of a text can often be broader than the text is meant to support. This especially true of translated works, a nature of text where authorial intent should be at the forefront. To fail to consider the author's relation to his text means that, in issues of language, word choice and theme, elements can be lost in translation. However, what if authorial intent is shoved into the spotlight? Would it be possible for elements to be gained in translation? Such is the question for “The Seafarer”, a prominent Old English piece of poetry that has been translated in many different ways, the most famous translation the fruit of prominent early 20^th century poet Ezra Pound. Just as Pound and his modernist contemporaries revolutionized the nature of poetry, Pound also changed the nature of translation in his interpretation of “The Seafarer”. “The Seafarer”'s themes of distance and exile, although prevalent in the original text, are enhanced by Pound's heuristic translation.

     By using a more direct translation, the expressions of exile and distance can be seen in the context of Old English poetic concepts. One such technique of expression is the use of diction by the poet. As noted by John Miles Foley, the poet of “The Seafarer” uses language chronologically removed from the intended audience of the poem in order to create an atmosphere of distance and exile. The poet's original intent is to, using archaic terms, create an atmosphere of what Jeff Opland calls “the joy of the hall” (Opland 442-467). According to Foley, lines 19b-21b represent an example of such diction: “Hwilum ylfete song/adyde ic me to gomene/ganotes hleoþor/aond huilpan swegand/fore hleahtor wera” (Miller 19b-21b). In this example, words such as 'song', ' gomene' and ' swegand', roughly translated as 'song', 'mirth' and 'music', contribute to this atmosphere while using antiquated terms to represent a sense of distance. In Foley's words, “our learned and non-traditional poet has returned to the word-hoard for his diction and has put its older, remembered contents and contexts to use in his relatively modern poem” (Foley 9). The poet also expresses distance through his diction in a different way: through his structure.

     Keeping in mind Foley's theory of creating a figurative distance though using antiquated language, the placement of such language also contributes to the themes of distance. In “The Seafarer”, the structure of the language holds equal importance to the diction. When reading “The Seafarer”, the structure of the Old English poem guides the reader's eye to the caesura which separates the poem into two distinct halves. In “The Seafarer”, the poet guides the reader in a right-oriented fashion, which is to say that the final conclusion of the poet can be found in the section following the caesura. “The Seafarer” is established as a presentation/reply dichotomy: the A section of the line serves to introduce a concept while the B section of the line serves as the speaker's response to the concept presented. For an example, consider line 75, “bravery in the world/against the enmity of devils” (Miller 75a-75b). In this instance, the poet uses the A section to introduce the concept of bravery and proceeds to place it in context to its opposition in the B section of the line. Affording this presumption, an examination of the aforementioned lines 19b-21b reveals how this technique is used to represent a feeling of distance: by placing a physical white space between images of the poet's longing and that which he longs for. This passage, in which I have include the caesuric breaks, “At times the swan's song/I took to myself as pleasure||the gannet's noise/the voice of the curlew||instead of the laughter of men/the singing gull||instead of the drinking of mead” (Miller 19b-21b), shows a particular instance of thematic separation within the work: the pleasurable song contrasted against “noise” (20b) or the “voice of the curlew” (21a) against “laughter of the men” (21b). With this type of structure, the caesura represents a physical distance within the poem as well as a textual distance for the reader.

     One interesting distinction to make for “The Seafarer” is one of the central thematic explorations of the poem: a strange mixture of the pagan and Christian elegy. This poetry of lamentation is wholly concerned with questions of distance, with the speaker remarking his differences with the world around him. As I.L. Gordon aptly described, a concept known as transience: renouncing the ills of the world in favor of a personal assertion. In typical Christian elegiac concepts of transience the moral is that “security is to be found in God and everlasting life” (Gordon 8) while more traditional pagan transience acts as “an incentive to bravery, a reminder of the futility of caution” (Gordon 8). What makes “The Seafarer” a unique poem is its dual structure: it approaches exile and distance through the Christian and traditional concepts of transience. The distinction within “The Seafarer” is not subtle by any means, there is a direct thematic break from a traditional concept of transience to a more Christian interpretation at lines 56a-65a: “This the man does not know/the warrior lucky in worldly/some endure then/who tread most widely/the paths of exile” (Miller 55b-57b) representing the culmination of the traditional transience while “Indeed hotter for me/the joys of the Lord/than this dead life/fleeting on the land” (Miller 64b-66a) begins an exploration of the Christian view of transience. Note that in the traditional view of transience, the poet seeks to once again embrace the land while eschewing the temporary nature of the same land within the Christian contextualization. Although both views discuss the nature of exile, the speaker seems to be directly contradicting himself: is the torture in relation to his physical distance from his land or a distance from the permanence that faith offers? This distinct contrast between the two views of the poetry has been a source of contention within those whose study it and this precise conflict is why Pound's method of translation is worth examining within a literary discussion of the work.

     Before discussing the relation between Pound's translation and the original text, the nature of Pound's heuristic translation must be defined. The logistics of translation do not heed themselves to a direct representation of the original text: there are too many cultural, linguistic and contextual barriers between languages for a direct translation to properly represent the careful manipulation of language that poetry requires. This is especially true for dead languages, such as Old English, for which there is only historical context to represent in the transcription of words. The distance between the reader and author is measured not only in years but in stages of linguistic development. Traditional translation methods attempt to create a modern gloss for a distinctly un-modern text. To Pound, this method of translation was the obstacle to understanding poetry such as “The Seafarer”: he states in “I Gather the Limbs of Osiris”, “The drudgery and minutae of methods concern only the scholar” (I Gather 22). To Pound, we can only approach a work such as “The Seafarer” with our modern perception and attempt to adjust the original text into our modern world. Direct interpretation of the original text does not allow the modern reader to directly engage with the poem. To explain this thinking, he makes note that when somebody describes a piece of visual art, they take note of the differences to their modern world: the date and location of its conception, the author's historical significance, the relations to other works of art and other details. To Pound, this is a fruitless endeavor, “A few good days in a gallery are more illuminating than years would be if spent in reading a description of these pictures” (I Gather 23). This level of thought resulted in a new type of translation, where the translator eschews textual accuracy in order to focus on the literary qualities of the original text. Ming Xie, in her essay “Pound as Translator” dubs this “heuristic translation” (Xie 4) and outlines the concept as thus: “the new version is justified to the extent that it can direct the reader's attention to certain intrinsic qualities of the original, while at the same time bringing about the equivalent effects of these qualities in a new poem. Such translation is based not so much based on “The Seafarer” as a source-text of translation, as on “The Seafarer” as a poem,a poem that has been strongly made and can be re-made with a directly matching strength” (Xie 4). It is with this concept of translation which Pound approaches “The Seafarer”, attempting to enhance its themes of distance and exile.

     Pound's method of heuristic translation serves to further the themes of distance and exile found in the original version of “The Seafarer” by continuing the poet's use of alienating diction and structure. The poet of “The Seafarer” was interested in using word choice and poetic structure as a way to alienate the reader in the fashion as the speaker is being alienated within the poem. It is with this concept in mind that Pound recognizes the authorial intent of the poem and reinterprets this sense of exile in his modern version of “The Seafarer”. Although often accused of unintentionally bad translation, it should be noted that Pound's version of “The Seafarer” utilizes many linguistic elements of Old English in order to alienate the modern audience, much as “The Seafarer” poet utilized language from the past. For instance: consider lines 8-10 of Pound's translation: “coldly afflicted/my feet were by frost benumbed/chill its chain are;chafing sighs/hew my heart round and hunger begot/mere-worthy mood” (The Seafarer 8-10). As John Corbett points out, Pound's text is intentionally obtuse, “Pound here systematically disrupts present-day English sentence structure, going beyond the disruptions usually found even in poetry, to the extent that subject-verb relationships are obscured...the reader has to decide whether 'hunger' is the subject or the object of 'hunger begot'. Do 'chafing sighs' beget the hunger or does hunger beget the 'mere-worthy mood'?” (Corbett 2). Pound's distortion of modern language utilizes many Old English concepts which are now alien to the modern reader: the laissez-faire attitude towards sentence structure and word placement, the alliteration which had fallen out of favor and supplanted by rhyme and kennings, combinations of established lexemes, such as “lone-flyer” (The Seafarer 63) and “whale-path” (Seafarer 64) in substitute for a more complex modern terms. In translating as such, Pound has both created a new version of “The Seafarer” that is indelibly Pound's but also utilized the tools embraced by the original author to emulate the effects of the original poem. However, it is Pound's reconstruction of the poem which affords the right of a heuristic translation.

      Pound omits religious references within “The Seafarer” to strengthen the themes of exile and distance by eliminating what he has as thematic inconsistencies. Pound's omission in part of his goal to represent the poem with a singular theme of exile and distance. To Pound, “his main interest in the poem is its essential music and its prosodic movement which he believed to be the embodiment of the poem's secular heroism in the face of physical harshness, solitary exile and spiritual anguish” (Xie 3). His interpretation heighten elements of the secular heroism while omitting the themes of Christian transience. In fact, his version of “The Seafarer” ends at line 99a, omitting over 20 lines of poetry. However, Pound's version of “The Seafarer”, although an inaccurate translation, is more concise in its thematic expression. It has been argued that Pound's translation eliminates many issues in the original poem: “In the nineteenth century it was widely believed that the overtly Christian ending of the poem...was an evangelical accretion to an essential secular beginning...finally, almost as a non-sequiter that is further isolated by a metrical shift, the speaker exhorts his listeners to praise God” (Corbett 3). The poem has a very uneasy relationship with itself: it shifts wildly without intent or purpose from secular longing to Christian longing to Christian proselytizing. The speaker can “...sing us 'a true song' about himself and his travels, but whether this is ultimately to inspire our sympathy, awe, or religious devotion is unclear” (Corbett 4). What is clear is the effect of Pound's translation: the reading of the speaker's secular heroic notions have inspired poets such as Edwin Morgan, Tom Scott and Alexander Scott to create their own reinterpretation of The Seafarer's tenuous balance between secular and Christian. However, in doing so, it must be kept in mind, that Pound eliminates some level of significance from the original poem: it's conflict between Christian forms of exile and a more secular view are part of what has fascinated scholars since its inception. In fact, A.D. Horgan suggests that it is the Christian elements that “[provide] the contours of the work” (Horgan 1). However, making an argument that a literal translation is somehow more ethical than a heuristic translation can be debunked. After all, most pieces of art are an extension of some literal quality: an emotion, a happening, an action. As Corbett states, “...just as we do not really expect claims to veracity from novels or films...we should not expect an acknowledgment of 'otherness' from a self-evidently 'literal' translation” (Corbett 11). Or perhaps in plainer terms, “May I for my own self's song truth reckon” (The Seafarer).

     Pound's translation of “The Seafarer” both modifies and heightens themes of exile and distance within The Seafarer by reinterpreting the text for a modern audience. Poetry is a display of sorts, a physical representation of our fascination with language. However, language changes at a rate untenable for direct translation. With the layers of historic, linguistic and thematic distance between the modern reader and the original “Seafarer”, it would difficult to experience the poem without a level of heuristic translation. Pound's old axiom to 'Make it New' is associated with the beauty of innovation, but perhaps we should be using it to look backwards. “The Seafarer” is an extension of man's desires and dreams, lain dormant obscured by layers of age and distance. Pound's revelation? Make it new.

Works Cited

Corbett, John. ‘The Seafarer: Visibility and the Translation of a West Saxon Elegy into English and Scots’ Translation and Literature, Vol. 10, Part 2. Edinburgh University Press, 2001.

Foley, John Miles. “Genre(s) in the Making: Diction, Audience and Text in the Old English Seafarer.” Poetics Today, Vol. 4, No. 4. (1983). Jstor. Grand Valley State University Lib., Allendale. 10

October 2007. <http://www.jstor.org/>.

Gordon, I.L. “Traditional Themes in The Wanderer and The Seafarer.” The Review of English Studies,

New Series, Vol. 5, No. 17 (1954). Jstor. Grand Valley State University Lib., Allendale. 10

October 2007. <http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0034-6551%28195401%292%3A5%3A17%

3C1%3ATTITWA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-I>.

Horgan, A.D. “The Structure of The Seafarer.” The Review of English Studies,

New Series, Vol. 30, No. 117 (1979). Jstor. Grand Valley State University Lib., Allendale. 10

October 2007. <http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0034551%28197902%292%3A3

0%3A117%3C41%3ATSOTS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-H>.

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Pound, Ezra. “I Gather the Limbs of Osiris”. Selected Prose 1909-1965. New Directions Publishing, 1975. 19-45.

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