Bede: Northern Virtue
Jun. 4th, 2008 09:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustWhen we had exhausted our sense of smell, we spent some time walking in Backhouse Park, trying to work out whether this is the park in which BoyBear remembers getting lost as a small child (he thinks not). Then we headed for the Museum & Winter Gardens, in search of more culture - and lunch.
Over lunch, we looked through the leaflet about the "Bede & Beijing" festival (a collection of miscellaneous activities with a vaguely Chinese flavour). The cover design is a striking affair in - inevitably - red and yellow, and although it is a long time since BoyBear studied Chinese, he can still pick out a number of characters, which is always entertaining.
So he started to read the vertical yellow text: the two characters above the intersection were BE DE - Bede; and the two immediately below were BE JING - Beijing, the Northern Capital. Since he'd pronounced the first syllable exactly the same in each case, I asked why the characters didn't match. "The BE of Bede is an archaic character, not much used; that's quite usual, when a name is being transliterated, to indicate that what's wanted is the sound, not the meaning... But that's interesting, they've used DE, virtue, for the second syllable." That's De as in Tao Te Ching.
In other words, but for a translators decision somewhere, Bede could be rendered into Chinese as "Northern Virtue".
Enough of theory: we went upstairs to see the model temple loaned to the museum by the V & A - on a mountain carved in wood (think of the mountains in Chinese watercolours, which could just as well be gnarled and knotted branches or roots), ivory fretwork walls mark the chambers of a monastery. The slopes are shaded by jewelled trees, and populated tiny figures: a monk sweeps dust out of a doorway, a nobleman and his entourage are visiting, a dog waits outside, a fox lurks in a cave, a grasshopper clings to a wall... The accompanying note said it had been made in China about 1800, possibly for export. At first I was a little disillusioned by this - was I being charmed by something designed to charm the Western taste? - but on consideration it seems appropriate for this very selective consideration of east-west relations. The temple may even have been made as a gift for the Empress Josephine, a possibility which has a distinct charm of its own.
Over lunch, we looked through the leaflet about the "Bede & Beijing" festival (a collection of miscellaneous activities with a vaguely Chinese flavour). The cover design is a striking affair in - inevitably - red and yellow, and although it is a long time since BoyBear studied Chinese, he can still pick out a number of characters, which is always entertaining. So he started to read the vertical yellow text: the two characters above the intersection were BE DE - Bede; and the two immediately below were BE JING - Beijing, the Northern Capital. Since he'd pronounced the first syllable exactly the same in each case, I asked why the characters didn't match. "The BE of Bede is an archaic character, not much used; that's quite usual, when a name is being transliterated, to indicate that what's wanted is the sound, not the meaning... But that's interesting, they've used DE, virtue, for the second syllable." That's De as in Tao Te Ching.
In other words, but for a translators decision somewhere, Bede could be rendered into Chinese as "Northern Virtue".
Enough of theory: we went upstairs to see the model temple loaned to the museum by the V & A - on a mountain carved in wood (think of the mountains in Chinese watercolours, which could just as well be gnarled and knotted branches or roots), ivory fretwork walls mark the chambers of a monastery. The slopes are shaded by jewelled trees, and populated tiny figures: a monk sweeps dust out of a doorway, a nobleman and his entourage are visiting, a dog waits outside, a fox lurks in a cave, a grasshopper clings to a wall... The accompanying note said it had been made in China about 1800, possibly for export. At first I was a little disillusioned by this - was I being charmed by something designed to charm the Western taste? - but on consideration it seems appropriate for this very selective consideration of east-west relations. The temple may even have been made as a gift for the Empress Josephine, a possibility which has a distinct charm of its own.
