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What do you think of this opening paragraph?

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Kyriakos

Kyriakos

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May 21, 2010
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Tell me what you think of it. Naturally you should imagine it is around 10.000 times better in Greek ;)

"I would have been fond of claiming that my study begun as the consequence of something i had read, or by chance happened to listen to as i was lifting my arm so as to reach a book volume that i had often borrowed up to then, but in that afternoon was paradoxically placed in a much higher shelf in that part of the university's library. That a voice the accent of which did not declare with clarity just of what nationality was the person to whom it belonged, had murmured something from the claims in the third part of the Socratic dialogue with Parmenides, as it was recounted by heart by Antiphon who it had been years now since he chose to admire Boeotian horse-whippers rather than sophists, and it is highly likely that in between this alteration of his he had concluded as an eye-witness just how incapable had the Athenian wooden fort proved to be at Delium as a force to diminish their defeat by the Thebans in the battle that took place shortly before, and in which Socrates was also one of those covering the retreat, as a mere hoplite..."

It is just my translation of the first paragraph of a new story i am working on. As usual it has to do with a pseudo-occult tone, and the narrator is isolated and breeding his own inner universes. It won't end well (surprise, i know ). :eek:hmy:
 
Well, you got that kinda lovecraftian vibe. The Greekness makes it pretty interesting.
 
can you pm me the greek version? :)
 
Reminds me of Borges. I bet you are a fan of The Aleph :)
 
I like a number of stories by Borges, yes :) (but not the actual story titled Aleph, but i love some other stories in the Aleph collection, eg the house of Asterion, the man in the threshold, the Wait etc).

Although in my view Borges was (despite his genius) less complicated than Kafka, who seems to have been in turn less complicated than Pessoa. But who knows anyway, all three of them burned up, in very different ways (Borges sort of burned out rather than burned up). :)
 
I would have been fond of claiming that my study begun as the consequence of something i had read, or by chance happened to listen to as i was lifting my arm so as to reach a book volume that i had often borrowed up to then, but in that afternoon was paradoxically placed in a much higher shelf in that part of the university's library. That a voice the accent of which did not declare with clarity just of what nationality was the person to whom it belonged, had murmured something...
Click to expand...

This opening section is good, captures the interest of the reader well. However, the second part of the quote undermines this section, as it is long, complex and wordy and the reader will lose interest in the original 'hook' which was that the narrator's study began with some sort of event that was not related to traditional study. Rather than the lengthy rendition of the dialogue, which according to the narrator did not result in his study, you should move directly on to the events causing the study e.g. "...however the real trigger for my obsession proved to be a snippet of conversation overhead in the oddly mudane atmosphere of a fast food place I had slipped into to enjoy the cool of the airconditioning as an antidote to the blazing midday sun..." or whatever link suits the tone of your story.

Hope this critique helps in some way as I have tried to limit to factors that would likely be present in translation. For what is worth the opening paragraph made me want to read the rest of the story.
 
Kyriakos said:
Tell me what you think of it. Naturally you should imagine it is around 10.000 times better in Greek ;)

"I would have been fond of claiming that my study begun as the consequence of something i had read, or by chance happened to listen to as i was lifting my arm so as to reach a book volume that i had often borrowed up to then, but in that afternoon was paradoxically placed in a much higher shelf in that part of the university's library. That a voice the accent of which did not declare with clarity just of what nationality was the person to whom it belonged, had murmured something from the claims in the third part of the Socratic dialogue with Parmenides, as it was recounted by heart by Antiphon who it had been years now since he chose to admire Boeotian horse-whippers rather than sophists, and it is highly likely that in between this alteration of his he had concluded as an eye-witness just how incapable had the Athenian wooden fort proved to be at Delium as a force to diminish their defeat by the Thebans in the battle that took place shortly before, and in which Socrates was also one of those covering the retreat, as a mere hoplite..."

It is just my translation of the first paragraph of a new story i am working on. As usual it has to do with a pseudo-occult tone, and the narrator is isolated and breeding his own inner universes. It won't end well (surprise, i know ). :eek:hmy:
Click to expand...

Paradox now own that paragraph and If I understand the Terms and Conditions of this forum (which I might not), you aren't allowed to publish that elsewhere without Paradox's consent.
 
:D

They are greedy indeed :\

@HenryIX: thanks for the comments :) Basically the longer bit there was placed to hint already at some issues with the narrator going off to other directions, but i agree that if a reader is now examining something by me for the first time then it would be likely to be a barrier to meet such a sentence early on. I also accept that the reader is not supposed to have read other texts (eg here the Parmenides) in order to read a story by someone else, so i try to balance things and such trivia are usually part of a sub-plot or parallelism.
 
honestly, and I apologize for my durkneness, but:

what really struck me when I went to Athens was the insanely ancient nature of the cultic worship aroudn the acropolis. do more of that.

i mean, there was a sanctuary to Pan and Apollo from thousands of years before stuff that we know was built on the top of the hill. There's leagues of material from taht very simple idea... particularly from the Pan/Apollo dynamic.

again, durnk.
 
Pan is dead :(
 
Is the Pan sanctuary thing certain, though? Cause i do recall Herodotos claiming very specifically that Pan had no temple in Athens, and supposedly he was very sad by this when he ( ;) ) spoke to Pheidipides in Arcadia, the messenger sent to run to Sparta to ask for their help in the battle of Marathon.
 
Kyriakos said:
Tell me what you think of it. Naturally you should imagine it is around 10.000 times better in Greek ;)

"I would have been fond of claiming that my study begun as the consequence of something i had read, or by chance happened to listen to as i was lifting my arm so as to reach a book volume that i had often borrowed up to then, but in that afternoon was paradoxically placed in a much higher shelf in that part of the university's library. That a voice the accent of which did not declare with clarity just of what nationality was the person to whom it belonged, had murmured something from the claims in the third part of the Socratic dialogue with Parmenides, as it was recounted by heart by Antiphon who it had been years now since he chose to admire Boeotian horse-whippers rather than sophists, and it is highly likely that in between this alteration of his he had concluded as an eye-witness just how incapable had the Athenian wooden fort proved to be at Delium as a force to diminish their defeat by the Thebans in the battle that took place shortly before, and in which Socrates was also one of those covering the retreat, as a mere hoplite..."

It is just my translation of the first paragraph of a new story i am working on. As usual it has to do with a pseudo-occult tone, and the narrator is isolated and breeding his own inner universes. It won't end well (surprise, i know ). :eek:hmy:
Click to expand...

Very, very, very thick. it will send most people running for a dictionary, or put the book down.
 
I suppose so. But "thick" has a far worse connotation in british english :eek:hmy:

I recall once using that term (with the passive connotation in mind) to describe the prose of a fellow student in (my english) university. He made an expression of great sadness upon hearing it.
 
Yes, and now all I can hear is Jethro Tull's 'Thick as a Brick' in my head.

I meant it more in the American way, extremely academic and hard to chew. I like it, I get it, you've got something to work with; but it needs to be softened a bit. Or, depending on the story, the next set of paragraphs have to be phrased in such a way to give an action which reinforces but distracts from the pure academia of the first paragraph. Don't go full blown Dan Brown, but I see it heading in that direction.

Of course, I can't comment on the Greek translation, because, well, it's all Greek to me!
 
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