aglarien-Literature (EN) @[email protected]

English language has been the biggest source of anxiety for me over the last few weeks. Last week, when I talked to my colleague, I found myself stuttered and I could barely make 3 words out of 5. I am 100% aware it has something to do with my recent trauma and I don’t plan to give up talking to people in English in the foreseeable future. But, ugh, I don’t know. Sometimes it is just really, really hard. Okay?

I am so happy that I have brought myself to tell my supervisors that I DON’T want them to proofread my writings. I want them to focus on my contents instead of spending time on correcting grammar, wordings, or paragraph structures. I told them I would get some native speaker to proofread my work when it would be reviewed externally (e.g. in annual reviews) , but I wouldn’t be able to do that every time I sent things to my supervisors. They all agreed to this.
I asked this because during my master’s study I got two kinds of markers: one solely focus on my contents; the other suggesting alternative wordings for every phrases they deemed inappropriate. I didn’t felt supported by the latter ones. I mean, I do know that poor writing leads to poor thinking, and I will relentlessly work on improve my own writing. It’s just that some works are better done by proofreaders or AIs, and some by academic experts in the field.

2. I have been reading Montaigne while listening to the podcast. He's astonishingly an Enlightenment-ish figure. Or, one could conclude that people in the 16th century had all schools of thought and many of these thoughts simply wouldn't be admitted into the mainstream for a long, long time. Justice towards minorities and the right state of mind often come so late. Along the same line, Marlowe made Tamburlaine die by burning a Quran and showed many Christians betrayed their alliance with Muslims and were then punished by Jesus for the betrayal. At the same time, in the theatre next door, Shakespeare questioned whether Jewish people had feelings like Christians did and continued to portray that all Jews were monstrously avaricious.
Montaigne asked whether the Europeans were truly superior to the "savage" cannibal North American natives and pointed out that burning hearsays alive or shredding traitors into pieces alive didn't make it better than (technically) eating your enemies' corpses. Nevertheless, there were two more centuries of "native Americans were not people! They were like monkeys!" discourse after Montaigne's death.
Additionally, Montaigne’s philosophical thoughts did not immediately become heresy in his lifetime. Actually, once he brought some of his books to Rome for advertisement when he visited the Pope! His works were only banned several years after his death, when more and more progressive free-thinkers associated with radical movements openly declared that they were inspired by his works. Montaigne is undoubtedly a radical figure for the 16th century, but people in his life time might be deceived by his nonchalant attitude towards his own philosophy. He wrote extremely radical materials and got away with it because he looked like a gentleman contented with his life and didn’t asked no social change. However, in a society heavy with all kinds of repression, even expressing one’s thoughts in a casual manner and persuing a simple life in accordance to one’s conscience can manifest as radical. Texts expressing such tendencies can be incendiary.

I have enormous respect for any authors who set off to adapt any Shakespeare‘s tragedies into comedies. Terry Pratchett and Stephen Briggs’s Wyrd Sisters (a novel parodying Macbeth by Pratchett, now adapted into a play text by Brigg) is everything one could dream for: fast-pace and sharp-wit dialogues; a perfect balance between the tragic and comic modes manifested through a fool character; jokes on adultery and dynastic endeavours; reflections on the social functions of language etc. They really pull it off. Thanks for cooking, Sir Terry and Mr. Brigg!

I am under the impression that he's an erudite scholar, but a happy one. And he strived to make his readers enjoy knowledge as much as he was.

The French philosopher, writer Michel de Montaigne is nowhere to be found in the Chinese high school curriculum and western philosophy is not exactly my idea of reading for pleasure. As a result, I knew absolutely nothing about the Montaigne until 6 months earlier, when a professor advised me to read John Florio's 1603 English translation of Montaigne's "essais" to understand better Shakespeare. We know not much about Shakespeare's body of knowledge, nor his study, but some lines in his late play The Tempest - verbatim of certain passages in Florio's translation of Montaigne - confirms that the bard had read his Montaigne and he relied on Florio's version. (Was Shakespeare's French even more atrocious than his Latin? That's a story for another day.)
That was how and why I started to read Montaigne. As a text of philosophical reflections, his "Essais" is (comparatively) an easy read in modern English translation, but Florio's language is a bit archaic. I only managed to complete reading six or seven entries before I listened to the BBC "In Our Time" podcast episode on Montaigne.
As is usual with the episodes on literary figures, the Montaigne episode begins with an introduction of his life. His upbringing and education was certainly very unorthodoxical and was shaped by his parents' expectations of him becoming a government officer with an erudite classical education. The podcast mentioned that he was sent to live with a lower-class family and was taught Latin as his mother tongue. (He was fluent in Latin before the age of six and French was a language that he acquired later. He was also taught Greek in very non-traditional ways like through game and he mastered Greek. ) The podcast emphasised that he used his language skills to become a successful diplomat and jury later in life (Latin was the diplomatic language between many European countries back then.) But I also wonder whether this luxury of extradionary Latin and Greek imbued him with a special perspective of classical culture and literature. Most of his contemporaries were taught and beaten in classes and was asked to recite certain ancient passages in most rigid ways. In contrast to them, Montaigne actually enjoyed these languages from the start. He recalled his earlier years with a fond tone, saying something along the line that he felt quite free and happy back then. I wonder whether this was one of the reasons that Montaigne seemed so relaxed in his writings. He's just comfortable with what he need to say and he said/wrote it in plain language.

Eh, hi, over the past few weeks, I've been teaching myself English using podcasts in English.
So, I'm going to revive this account - maybe just for a few weeks though. I'll start posting about the podcasts that I'm shadowing for language learning. Specifically, I'll do the episodes in BBC "In Our Time" podcasts that are related to Literature or History.
Honestly, I'll just be trying to scribble down here anything interesting that I remember after listening to each episode. I'll do the basic fact checks but the posts won't be thoughtful lengthy academic stuffs! Be gentle with me, please?
Thank you for reading this.