Snowflake Challenge 2017 - Day 2

[lebateleur]

Day 2

In your own space, share a book/song/movie/tv show/fanwork/etc that changed your life. Something that impacted on your consciousness in a way that left its mark on your soul. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

There's a lot I could list here, from the obvious (The Lord of the Rings) to the niche (Oucho Romanse), but I'm going to go with the Prydain Chronicles. I read Tolkien first, but it was Alexander that gave me my fascination with Celtic languages, cosmology, and history; which led to my learning Latin, which gave me the linguistic grounding I needed to succeed at multiple modern languages, which gave me the opportunity to spend a large percentage of my life abroad and my current career in the bargain. So, there you go: the course of an entire adult life out of a Mabinogion mash-up.

And while not everything came up roses for Tolkien's characters, it was Alexander's books that made the lesson stick, precisely because the good guys didn't always get the grand prize in the end (I can still easily recall how viscerally furious I was about certain events in The Black Cauldron and Taran Wanderer). Bad things happened in Tolkien, but Tolkien was for grown-ups; things always worked out in books that looked like the Prydain Chronicles that were shelved in the part of the bookstore where the Prydain Chronicles were shelved. The fact that they didn't in this case made me realize life was probably like that too.

これで以上です。

Comments

[hellkitty]

OMG I haven't thought of this series in YEARS (decades, actually) but secret handshake: I wrote my Bachelor's Honors Thesis on the Welsh Mabinogion...which can be directly traced back, in my life, to Alexander. Thanks for reminding me of this wonderful series.

[lebateleur]

Oh, that is so awesome! Secret handshake indeed. If you don't mind my asking, what part(s) were you looking at. My favorites have always been The Dream of Rhonabwy and Arianrhod's sections.

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[turlough]

I have so much love for the Prydain Chronicles! The funny thing is that I read the last book first - it was the only book translated into Swedish (so weird!) and getting to read the first four books were one of the major reasons why I strived so hard to learn English properly when I was an early teen.

Re: here from snowflake challenge

[lebateleur]

Oh cool! Alexander seems to have lead a lot of people into language learning with this series. :) Did the Swedish translation feel very different from the English volumes? I'm always intrigued by how translation can shift the tone or feel of something slightly (or sometimes even a great deal).

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[turlough]

It was so long ago now I'm afraid I don't remember. (We're talking c. 1970.) But it can't have been that bad since I've no memories of being in any way suprised by the language in the original books. (Completely different from my experience with LotR where the old Swedish translation was bad enough to make young!me prefer to stumble my way through the English original from my dad's bookshelf :-)

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[lebateleur]

That makes sense. I ask because I tried reading The Hobbit back when I was learning Japanese, and it just did not work. I don't know how to describe it other than that fantasiness in Japanese and English depend on very different things. I love reading Japanese fantasy in Japanese, but what makes it tick is so different.

[scripsi]

Here from Snowflake.

I read, and loved, Tolkien first, but the Prydain books gave me a heroine I could identify with. And yes, in many ways they were a lot harder to read than Tolkien just because bad things happened, the heroes didn't always made the best choices and tehre were consequences.

[lebateleur]

Exactly, and I think what really did it for me was Taran Wanderer, because that outcome was just not something that happened in kids books. Or Tolkien, for that matter, where people may be in reduced circumstances but are nevertheless high born.

[angrboda]

Here by Snowflake.

These sound interesting. I've never heard about these books before. I'll have to try and remember them! :D

[lebateleur]

Ooh, yes, please do give them a try. They really are a wonderful story.