Hello! My name is MJ, and this will be my little literature nerd side blog, I suppose. I also write original works, which you can find at @mj-is-writing, and I’m currently learning Spanish and post updates at @mj-is-learning-languages (or I theoretically post updates. Lo siento.)
I may mention contemporary books and fandoms, but I’m currently on a kick of classic and modern classic literature. My current obsession is Arthurian legend, and I’m a huge fan of H. G. Wells.
So stick around for mostly inaccurate analysis, my dumb commentary, and a meme or two.
Hello! I don't know if you've discussed this before, but you mentioned your first language was Spanish, I was wondering how Shakespeare's writings translates into other languages? Like if they're able to keep the rhyme and meter and such? Thank you!
Hello dear! Oh my, I’m majoring in translation studies, you know, so I have a lot of feelings about this—I actually wish to become a Shakespeare translator in the future.
My knowledge is limited to the languages I understand, of course (so Spanish, Portuguese, Galician, French, and Italian), but in my experience, a translation is ultimately a metamorphosis. Each language has a different vibrancy, a sort of uniqueness that defines it; they embody reality in their own peculiar way, and the speaker’s thoughts flow differently through the shape of its words. What distinguishes a language is its own rarity and its personal beauty.
The act of translation must be conceived within these differences; it is about changing a text, furnishing the words with new colors. That is, you have to cheat on Shakespeare in order to do him justice: in your translation, Mercutio and Romeo might not play with the word ‘goose’ in 2.4, but they shall play with another animal or thing which is related to race, folly, and women in your language. Ultimately, what we must do is alter the flesh of the text, its words, and hopefully keep its true essence intact: we must learn to discern that wordless beauty which lies beneath the language of the play and let it flow it in our own text with new words. It’s a constant paraphrase. To quote Juliet, we need to drink from the utterance of the characters’s tongues. To translate a Shakespeare play is to delve into all its complexity—a translator must be a reader, an editor, a critic, a writer all at once. One must bare the play entirely, and then dress it again.
Can you tell us about that gender bent midsummer night's dream production you did lights for?
Oh boy oh baby oh boy ive been waiting for this one
So in 2019, I ran lights for a Free Shakespeare in the Park production of Midsummer that took the characters of Lysander and Helena and genderswapped them. Lysander became Lysandra, and Helena became Helenus. And dude???????? It changed...SO MUCH??? It literally lives in my head rent free, i still think about this production every goddamn day. More under the cut.
When Hermia’s father insists that she marry Demitrius or face death, it becomes much less a matter of a man exerting control over his daughter as if he owns her, although it still definitely is that, but now takes on a new dimension. Egeus has delivered an ultimatum: be straight or be killed. Absolutely fucking terrifying, and for modern audiences especially, the stakes suddenly become much more personal and much more real. (We also kept a running tally of every family who left in the middle of the show when they realized it was gay LMFAO our highest record number was 18 families in one night. Gotta love PA!) So in the scene immediately following that, you get this really gorgeous tenderness in the “how now my love, why is your cheek so pale” scene, you know the one. The agreement to elope, the overwhelming joy that comes from the notion of leaving your homophobic father and going to live with your girlfriend’s accepting aunt...it’s good, it gave me the warm and fuzzies.
The Helenus comes on, and oh boy oh boy oh fucking boy. Because in the first scene, you have this line from Lysandra about Demitrius promising himself to Helenus, and Egeus looking absolutely horrified at it, and Demitrius denying it fervently. And Helenus is lost, confused, and desperate, and he’s seeking comfort in two other openly gay people, his childhood best friend and her girlfriend—and the’re both leaving athens. Together. When he gives that fucking goddamn how happy some o’er other some can be speech (which ive had memorized since i was eight because its so unbelievably fuckign good) it’s absolutely HEARTRENDING. Demitrius was his, and they were in love, and then demitrius got cold feet and backed out, and now hermia and lysandra are leaving too, and helenus is going to be alone in athens.
Then you get helenus and demitrius’s first scene together, the “you draw me you hardhearted adamant” scene, the “spurn me like a dog” scene. And this scene was hard for me to watch every single night. Because, now forgive me for getting a little personal, I struggled with a lot of internalized homophobia for a pretty significant portion of my life. And there was this awful heartwrenching moment the actors did where demitrius grabbed helenus by his shirt and their mouths were inches apart and demetrius like tore himself away and stumbled away shouting and it just...i’ll say, okay, i named my sword demitrius(That’s not a euphamism, I have a sword hanging on the wall of my apartment named demitrius, I intend to name all my swords after shakespeare cahracters)because of this character. I don’t like demitrius within the text, i think he’s an asshole LMAO. But this version of demitrius really just grabbed my heart ripped it out of my chest and stomped on it, because he wasn’t a misogynist freak, he was a real dude struggling with some serious significant internalized homophobia. It gave him a reason to reject helenus, it gave him a reason to pursue hermia, and it gave him an actual in-depth character reason to be a dick other than just...hey, this is demitrius, he’s a dick to women.
One of the worst and best scenes every night was the fight scene. Now the fight scene fucking gets me, no matter what, but with the sexuality dynamics, god, it’s just so fucked up. Because when demitrius first starts acting all lovely-dovey towards helenus, there’s this awful heartbreaking look of longing on helenus’s face, and then when “oh, spite, oh, hell” comes bursting out, ur heart breaks ight the fuck along with him. Not to mention now here’s hermia, who ran away from her father to be with her girlfriend, to escape the confines of heterosexuality, so they could be together, and now lysandra is turning away from her and trying to get all cozy with helenus. Helenus’s heart is breaking because he thinks that he’s being betrayed by his own community, being mocked for something that they above all else should support him for. Hermia’s heart is breaking because she’s losing the one person she sacrificed everything to be with. Lysandra and demitrius are fine lmao they’re asleep, they don’t know whats going on.
But like okay. Okay. god. Okay. listen to me. When theyre all running exhaustedly through the woods and they eventually collapse on the ground, sound asleep, and puck comes out with the cure for the spell...he cures them both. HE CURES BOTH LYSANDRA AND DEMITRIUS. Because unlike in the original text, demitrius doesn’t need to be under a spell to love helenus. He loved him all along, he never stopped loving him, he just...wouldn’t let himself. So wheras in the heterosexual midsummer, puck usually cures lysander but not demetrius, in this version, you have them both being cured, both being brought back to themselves.
And when they wake up, and the lights went all purple and blue and soft and the music started playing (it was fucking moon river. The music was fucking moon river please im going to cry) and they’re all just standing there, holding the person they love, swaying softly, whispering in amazement at their fantastic dream…”are you sure that we are awake?” oh my fucking god. Oh my fucking god. Oh my god.
Then everybody comes storming on, theseus and hippolyta and egeus and such, and demitrius has that line...that fucking line… “The object and the pleasure of mine eye Is only Helenus. To him, my lord, Was I betrothed ere I saw Hermia. But like in sickness did I loathe this food, But as in health come to my natural taste, Now I do wish it, love it, long for it, And will for evermore be true to it.” DUDE ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME THAT’S SO GOOD. Because unlike with the magic flower route, he actually is returning to his natural tastes. This is the story, this is his story, this is him giving up on his attempts to hide that part of himself. This is him accepting who he is and wishing for Helenus, loving him, longing for him, will forevermore be true to him….god. It got me every single fucking night. Every goddamn single night that line made me tear up.
And then they all got married and it was lovely and beautiful blah blah its a comedy everybody gets married you know the drill <3 but yeah, i still think about that production every single fucking day of my life. I dont think ill ever stop thinking about it.
“Public libraries are such important, lovely places!” Yes but do you GO there. Do you STUDY there. Do you meet friends and get coffee there. Do you borrow the FREE, ZERO SUBSCRIPTION, ZERO TRACKING books, audiobooks, ebooks, and films. Have you checked out their events and schemes. Do you sign up for the low cost courses in ASL or knitting or programming or writing your CV that they probably run. Do you know they probably have myriad of schemes to help low income families. Do you hire their low cost rooms if you need them. Have you joined their social groups. Do you use the FREE COMPUTERS. Do you even know what your library is trying to offer you. Listen, the library shouldn’t just exist for you as a nice idea. That’s why more libraries shut every year
“Books are too expensive” -> GET A LIBRARY CARD!!!
“E-books are too expensive” -> GET A LIBRARY CARD!!!
“Audiobooks are too expensive” -> GET A LIBRARY CARD!!!
“Video games are too expensive” -> GET A LIBRARY CARD!!!
“Subscriptions to magazines/newspapers are too expensive” -> GET A LIBRARY CARD!!!
For real, get a library card for your local public library and you will have almost unlimited access to all kinds of media for free. Libraries also often have many different kinds of classes you can take, often for free or very cheap. Oh, and don’t forget the computers and internet access you can also use for free.
“this makes me personally uncomfortable”, “this seems in poor taste”, “this is somehow harmful but presumably because you’re misinformed” and “this is actively malicious” are all different things. remember that
“this makes me personally uncomfortable”: the work has something that is awkward or triggering to someone, but nothing problematic
“this seems in poor taste”: the work is fine, but it’s about something that maybe shouldn’t be joked about/the work has bad timing with the release lining up with a tradgedy similar to the events of the work like the episode tentacool and tentacruel from pokemon
“this is somehow harmful but presumably because you’re misinformed”: the work unintentionally has some negative shit in it caused by a lack of knowledge, i.e. a cis person’s trans headcanons accidentally reinforcing negative stereotypes
“this is actively malicious”: the work was made with the intention to cause harm
#this post needs to be mandatory viewing because the critique of work always being this black and white like… #‘the artist made a joke in poor taste therefore they are clearly an unapologetic violent fascist’ is like holy shit #please learn how to have a normal discussion about problems without it being 0 to 100
this concept of “people HATE things that are for teenage girls and that’s why people shit in twilight” thing was a mistake. now I’ve got to see clowns being like “stan edward cullen omg consent king 🙌😮💨” and acting like jacob black is a fucking sexual predator…….. like one of those is a man who has lived over a century and openly proudly admits to stalking a teenage girl. reading eclipse as an adult is like reading a full on fucking psychological thriller, the way he’s watching her every move and doing everything in his power to control every aspect of her life. meanwhile jacob is like an emotionally developing 16 year old dealing with adult problems who kisses the girl he has a crush on. I’m not saying that it wasn’t wrong of him to do, but I am saying that there’s a reason stephenie meyer decided to paint jacob as a scary brown man who has to be scolded for making advances on little white girl bella (despite Bella being 17/18 and jacob being 15/16 for most of the series). the difference is jacob’s actions are acknowledged as bad in the text, while edward is depicted as some saint despite doing equally fucked up things (without the excuse of being a hormonal teenager dealing with the emotional and physical turmoil of turning into a fucking werewolf). the worst part is fans will uncritically do the EXACT SAME SHIT. like there’s nothing funny about portraying this native kid as a sexual predator to lift up ur white fav…. think with your fucking brain WHY that is the way you’re reading the situation. like both textually by treating jacob’s actions as worse because you’re incapable of being empathetic and understanding towards him in the same way you can with edward, and outside of the text when you’re looking at the fucking authorial intentions behind the way she portrays her white vampires vs her non-white werewolves. it’s one thing to miss this shit when you’re twelve, but y’all are adults now and the people being depicted (the literally real, real life tribe of people that smeyer really chose to use) are literally TELLING you it’s racist and yet………..
It’s like people hear “people hated Twilight because it was meant to appeal to teenage girls” and think that somehow means it’s inherently good.
The full sentence is “people hated Twilight because it was meant to appeal to teenage girls when they should’ve hated it for the racism, misogyny, and the creepy af leading man.”
Big fan of Henry Clerval being the embodiment of the gothic romantic attitude towards nature. Big fan of the fact that almost all the remaining romantic ideals in Victor died with Henry.
I remember reading through the Black Stallion books in middle school and in book 2 the kid has to give The Stallion back to his original owner and then in book 4 he gets a letter that’s basically ‘the stallion has trampled my father to death 😡 I do not want him anymore 😡 will you take him back’ and the kid is just like ‘oh dope! My horsie!’
I remember reading through the Black Stallion books in middle school and in book 2 the kid has to give The Stallion back to his original owner and then in book 4 he gets a letter that’s basically ‘the stallion has trampled my father to death 😡 I do not want him anymore 😡 will you take him back’ and the kid is just like ‘oh dope! My horsie!’
Plays and short fiction are about reading the single most fucked up thing you've ever encountered in 45 minutes or less and then going back to work like you didn't just meet both faces of god and satan on your lunch break
MJ (they/he) @mj-loves-literature - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
