Censorship in the 21st Century

Long time no post, but the summer's properly demented, and some of us have Internet woes (and Usagi's still in Kyoto). Basically, reduced team is no fun...

We've made a choice about Racine's Phedre et Hyppolyte: we'll have the original spelling and typography, and a modern version (just the old one could be fun, but it'd be really tough without a more modern one on the right page).

We're still working on Wilde's Salomé, but we're taking our time to make sure that we'll give you a nice translation - and a bilingual introduction.

When I have some free time, I work on the fourth novel in my Sci-Fi universe (the current news are feeding the plot bunny in a rather dark way).

Then... bank news to be able to launch our website.

So... we've found a bank, but because of an annoying technicality, we can only open the account in September (sometime in September).

But what's utterly frustrating is that Cousin Chris had managed to open an account for us at her main bank. She'd had to go through artificial hoops to please the arrogant plonkers, but we had an account... until we asked for the reference that would allow us to buy an e-commerce plugin so that we could safely link our website to our account.

The female that called my cousin at my aunt's (even though my cousin never gives any phone number because she does business at 2 am by e-mail - because she gets some written proof) was a proper nightmare. 

First, she claimed that she didn't have access to our file (then, how did she get my aunt's phone number, um?), and she demanded to be given the names, addresses, and e-mails of the website provider and webmaster; to quote my cousin: 'No way in friggin' Hell!!!!!'.

My cousin's plan was to get the reference, give it to the plugin company, buy the plugin, install it, buy the website, migrate our site that's on Xampp, test everything, and launch the ship.

That wasn't possible, as the phoning biped demanded to be allowed to see our website first because she wanted... to censor it!

She literally said that she had to "check our website for references to religion, sex, and drug".

Well, 95% of our books are LGBTQ-friendly (though there's nothing graphic, but with "Miss Censorship-Sunshine", we'd have ended up with an empty catalogue). And Shakespeare's potentially controversial. And Wilde's play was already censored on religious grounds - from the late 19th century, up to the 1930s!

What we miss is stuff about drugs (thanks for the plot bunny, arrogant bank biped!).

So the account was closed, because none of us (not even our accountant, who growled with us, editors and authors) were ready to accept censorship in the 21st century.

Do you know what the other bank only asked us? That the website had an SSL certificate, which we will have. Internet security is their only concern.

Right now, we're plotting all together to report the censoring biped to someone much higher than her in the food chain.

I'll have some painting to show you soon, maybe a video, and we're planning to take pictures of our paper babies to add them to the website (we'll share some with you then).

See you soon (hopefully)!

Editing News

Now that we've sent our edition of Shakespeare's Sonnets and A Lover's Complaint to be officially registered, and that our work on editing Oscar Wilde's Salomé (the original French edition, and a new translation in English by yours truly - the introduction is being written by Cousin Editor-in-chief) is nearing completion, we've made a discovery: we love editing the books that we loved reading.

We're still working on our own stories or works, but it's properly exhilarating and possibly addictive to go back to the original texts, edit and dust them off (or even make discoveries), and then share them with you, dear Readers.

The day we had the idea to publish our favourite works, we came up with this list:

William Shakespeare: Sonnets - Much Ado About Nothing

Oscar Wilde: Salomé (we decided to translate it into proper English when we read how it's been treated by Douglas)

Jane Austen: Sense and Sensibility

Jean Racine: Phèdre

Charles Dickens: A Christmas Carol

We have now added:

The Forme of Cury

Edmond Rostand: Cyrano de Bergerac (a request from my aunt)

Even if it was a lot of work, editing Shakespeare gave us access to fonts that can mimic the ligatures used in the early years of printing.

Last night, in order to do something soothing after dealing with the infuriating banker, we had a look at the first edition of Racine's Phèdre et Hippolyte, and we discovered that he wrote an introduction, and that the text of the royal privilege allowing him to print the play was printed there, as well.

We're not planning to make a facsimile of it, but we started thinking that it'd be different, unusual, original to publish a version of the text as it was first printed. Perhaps it's quite a niche, but we really think it could be a different kind of edition.

De is plotting more short stories (focussing on friendship this time).

Chris is still formatting her PhD.

I've got two Muff&Sherly stories ready to be edited (and the next novel is whispering in my ear). I've been thinking about my Sordid Fairy Tales, and my Victorian spy plot, too.

We're quite busy.

Now, if only we could find a banker with a brain and get this e-bookstore started... 

PS: if there are books that you'd like us to edit, you're more than welcome to make suggestions.

Writtinge lik its 1609

     I'm done editing our version of Shakespeare's Sonnets (I still have to work on A Lover's Complaint -shshhhhhhhh!), and it was astronomically interesting.

     After making a discovery about denialists in the introduction I wrote, I may have solved a puzzle that was generated by a massive misprint. I shan't pretend that I am right, but I will declare that my conclusion makes a lot more sense than anything that was corrected before.

     A thing that I realized, as I was fighting with the original texts in the Quarto, is that most of the spelling mistakes that are made today look like the way things were printed in 1609! "It was better then I thought" and other oddities like that.

It's fascinating to see that the rules that took so long to be created have almost disappeared since people started texting and using the Internet!

Perhaps the spirit of George Eld (the printer of the Quarto) floated inside the heads of too many people...

Modern typos are still weird, but the parallel with 1609 is properly nutty.

I just thought I'd share...

Varieties of Denialism

Bipeds that cannot accept facts because they don't fit their agenda, beliefs, or whatever have a way to make my blood boil.

With the film Denial coming to our screens, the number of Holocaust denialists has become more visible with these decerebrated bipeds flooding forums and comments threads.

Just this morning, I've seen a bunch of village idiots doubt that the Holocaust happened; one even found it fishy to not be allowed to doubt the evidence - and the testimonies of the survivors! There were also idiots adding the Holodomor to their list of denials.

As a historian, I understand that we can doubt that the battle of Agincourt happened exactly the way it is reported in archives - but we can dig up testimonies and get a fair idea of what happened. All one needs is hard work - and a working brain.

What I cannot understand is the collection of village idiots, from all over the rock, who can read all the documents we have in archives, and who can meet survivors or read their testimonies (be it about the Holodomor, the Holocaust, or even the sex slaves for the Imperial Japanese army), and who say, 'Nope! I don't believe it! It just can't be true!'.

They make me want to yell and make them sit down and educate themselves until their two and a half brain cells have a spark of illumination.

My introduction for the publication of Shakespeare's Sonnets for Éditions Aikyō is dealing with all the varieties of denialists about Shakespeare.

I ended up dividing contemporary denialists into two categories: prime and secondary.

Secondary denialists are the collections of village idiots who might well doubt that our planet orbits around the sun if it became fashionable in their circles to think so, or who do not have enough brain cells to understand facts and the truth. They're infuriating, but I fear most of them are just too stupid.

Much worse and twisted are the prime denialists. These are bipeds who, I think, do understand the archives and the testimonies, but who have decided to not believe them. These bipeds have decided to spread lies (not "post-truth", not "alternative facts" - let's call a spade a spade: they're LIES); maybe they're doing that to enjoy the chaos and pain their words will generate, and/or maybe they have some hidden agenda to promote - be it hatred for one subdivision of humanity, or be it to promote their own work.

If we take into account the scary number of secondary denialists, the prime denialists have a lot of quarterwits (I do fear we're talking about creatures way below the average halfwit) who are ready and willing to pay to buy their books or watch their films or documentaries.

We have ignoramuses and simpletons falling into the cunning traps of manipulators and profiters who would say and do anything to make money and become famous.

Both categories annoy me, but I have some compassion for secondary denialists... Prime denialists, not so much, as I see them as liars and dubious, devious, and unethical creatures who would deny that their own mothers gave birth to them if they could gain anything from spitting that lie.

I do believe that "Knowledge is power", and I will always fight against prime denialists who try to pervert what decent people know to be truths.

Literary News

Strangely enough, we, at Éditions Aikyō, are currently editing a lovely book, full of entertaining short stories, and in one of them, there's a brief mention of a female POTUS (as if it had happened in the election before the one that just happened). We're planning to write a barmy, tongue-in-cheek summary to promote that book, and since Wednesday morning, the author, our friend DeForest suggested that we insist on the fantasy/science-fiction side of some of his stories. I think he's got a point...

On my side, I'm busy editing Muff&Sherly 2, and I'm finishing the third novel in that universe.

I'm also still planning the plots for my Victorian spy story, and modern spy plots.

Whilst my cousin and Usagi are busy gathering info so that they can write a few prefaces we're going to need for a few books we've decided to add to our catalogue, I'm also editing a version of Shakespeare's Sonnets (from the first printing, with the original spelling, and with a modern version of each sonnet, too).

As well, we will have an edition of Oscar Wilde's Salomé (from the 1893 edition in French). Now... huge question: most published translations of that play into English are based either on the faulty version committed by Oscar's lover, or on the one where corrections were attempted after Oscar's death by one of his close friends. Both allow a grammatical mistake in English in... the very first line - and neither is close enough to the original text in French. 

I never planned that, but... I'm tempted to translate it myself. So...How nutty am I?

Let me show you what bothers me:

From 1894 ->

SCENE
[A great terrace in the Palace of Herod, set about the banqueting hall. Some soldiers are leaning over the balcony. To the right there is a gigantic staircase, to the left, at the back, an old cistern surrounded by a wall of green bronze. The moon is shining very brightly.]

THE YOUNG SYRIAN: How beautiful is the Princess Salome to-night!

THE PAGE OF HERODIAS: Look at the moon. How strange the moon seems! She is like a woman rising from the tomb. She is like a dead woman. One might fancy she was looking for dead things.

From 1912 ->

SCENE
[A great terrace in the Palace of Herod, set above the banqueting-hall Some soldiers are leaning over the balcony. To the right there is a gigantic staircase, to the left, at the back, an old cistern surrounded by a wall of green bronze. Moonlight.]

THE YOUNG SYRIAN: How beautiful is the Princess Salome to-night !

THE PAGE OF HERODIAS: Look at the moon ! How strange the moon seems ! She is like a woman rising from a tomb. She is like a dead woman. You would fancy she was looking for dead things.

And here's what I would do:

SCENE
[A huge terrace in the palace of Herod, overlooking the banqueting hall. A few soldiers are leaning over the balustrade. To the right, there's an impressive staircase. To the left, at the back, an old cistern surrounded by a patinated bronze wall. Moonlight.]

THE YOUNG SYRIAN: How beautiful is Princess Salomé tonight!

THE PAGE OF HERODIAS: Look at the moon. The moon looks very strange. She looks like a woman leaving a tomb. She seems like a dead woman. One might think that she’s looking for dead people.
 
So?

[Video] Shakespeare: Original pronunciation

This is absolutely fascinating (let's all e-hug my brother, who sent me the link!). Enjoy!

Apart from the fact that that's really the kind of stuff that makes me purr with happiness (my favourite memory of my time in college was a class at 8:30 in the morning - History of Old English - where I was making puns in Latin with our teacher... I am that kind of weird), I really loved this: 'There's something about working our way back to Shakespeare, rather than dragging him into the twenty-first century.'