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A blog to connect Humanities Core concepts with my creative side |
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Hello, and welcome to Creative Intellect! I'm glad you've stopped by! ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** This is my new blog, in which I aim to post some intellectual material while still showing off my creative side. I invite you to come join me on this adventure of my musings and reflections which I will tie in to various art forms. Most posts will be related to what is being taught in the Humanities Core class I am currently taking.  If you're looking for my other blog, the one with my Novel Prep, it's here  "Invalid Item"  ! Feel free to explore the rest of my portfolio and stories, too.This blog is linked on https://creativeintellect.weebly.com About the Image ▼ |
| This quarter, my definition of “The Humanities” and “war” has been blown apart. My definition of “war” has evolved, from simply “a bloody, violent type of fight everyone should avoid”, to “an extreme form of resolving disagreements through strategy and battle.” Previous to this class, the main source for my definition of “war” was from the Matthew Reilly thriller novels my uncle recommended to my mom. As the quarter progressed, I realized how much more war was, underneath the blood, guts, swearing, and dead bodies the books depicted. War can be an art form, in a way. The strategies and maneuvers war consists of are so carefully thought out, because one false move could mean a lost limb or life. In Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, the thirteen chapter titles already illustrate how intricate a war can be. Chapter VIII, especially, “Variation in Tactics”, details the variables and creativity needed to win a war. Consistently using the same strategies against your opponents makes you predictable and vulnerable. I personally cannot fathom the thought and effort it would require to contrive different strategies for different situations. Having lived a relatively sheltered life previous to attending UCI, at the beginning of the quarter, my definition of “The Humanities” was limited to what preceding outside experience I had with the subject, which was nearly none. My faint idea of “The Humanities” consisted of English and Language Arts. I know now that my original definition of “The Humanities” was not complete. “The Humanities”, as Stanford Humanities Center states, is “the study of how people process and document the human experience. Since humans have been able, we have used philosophy, literature, religion, art, music, history and language to understand and record our world”. As we studied historical images and examined the different facets of religion in the face of war during the quarter, my definition of “The Humanities” expanded with the knowledge I gained. Works Cited: Tzu, Sun. The Art of War. 2013th ed. New York: Barnes & Noble, Inc, 2013. Print. What are the Humanities?. Stanford Humanities Center, 2014. Web. 30 Nov. 2014. <http://shc.stanford.edu/what-are-the-humanities>. |
| In Bertolt Brecht’s play Mother Courage and Her Children, Brecht uses conventions of epic theater to argue the 30 Years War was a war of politics. Brecht utilizes the alienation effect and irony to prevent the audience from feeling for Mother Courage and other characters at specific moments in the play. One recurring thing we see in the play is how business and money come before family. Mother Courage’s self-involvement shows how she acts out of self-interest than love for her children. She is more of a mother to the war than she is to her kin. Also, on page 95, the first soldier even points out the farm is the family’s priority. It also goes along with the idea of the state becoming a “military-industrial complex”. The farmer’s wife does not thank the soldiers for sparing her son after his impudent attitude towards them; she thanks the soldiers instead for sparing the ox. This shows how war has turned more into a business than a fight. Business and war are in a paradoxical situation, because war funds the business; however, without business to supply the army, there can be no war. As a mute person and a female unable to fight in the war, it would be reasonable to assume Kattrin would be safe from the horrors of the battle. However, Kattrin’s death at the end of scene eleven is particularly disturbing to the readers. She is considered a martyr for her cause, and she died thinking she did not succeed. The fact that the bells and cannons sound out right after Kattrin dies makes us pity Kattrin, yet when Mother Courage comes back in the beginning of scene 12, Brecht jolts the audience away from their connections when Mother Courage begins singing about how her child will be better off than all the others in heaven. The farmer family who turns Kattrin in to the soldiers is symbolic of the desperation of war. When Kattrin goes onto the roof to beat the drum. the farmer’s wife pleads with the soldiers, telling them Kattrin is not related to the family, in an attempt to prevent the soldiers from killing her and her family. This act of self-preservation shows how the characters’ actions are determined through self-interest. Kattrin’s fatal virtue, kindness, helps display her as a mother-figure in the play, Kattrin is obviously distraught when she hears the farmer’s prayer. She is willing to sacrifice herself and her own material possessions for a town she does not even live in, and that in itself is more than anyone else has done. The farmer family ends up in league with the soldiers, trying to kill Kattrin. They show how individual action is useless when acting out against authority: the farmer’s son refuses to tell the soldiers the path to town, and he is beat up. Kattrin beats the drum to warn the village and is shot down. At the very end, Mother Courage is seen continuing on with her wagon, without Kattrin, Swiss Cheese, or Eilif to help pull it. She has not learned that the war is her ultimate undoing; it has killed her children, and slowly, it will also kill her. Works Cited: Brecht, Bertolt. Mother Courage and Her Children. London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2013. Print. |
| Translations of foreign texts to any other language require great thought and analysis. There needs to be a balance of what the original author tried to evoke, and what would make the piece relevant to today’s world. Each word or phrase in a translation has its own purpose and contributes to the overall feeling of the piece. I just translated the lyrics of a song from Chinese to English, with the help of Google Translate. Some words were substituted for others, simply because they didn’t sound right. Others did not fit in the context or mood of the song. Therefore, what is omitted from a translation is just as important as what was included. How the translation looks is also important. For example, we are presented with two different translations of Otto von Guericke’s account on the destruction of Magdeburg; the first one, from J.H. Robinson, is a stark comparison to the second translation, from Julie K. Tanaka. Robinson’s translation is much more rigid, and is formatted so the reader gets the basics of what is happening. Robinson’s diction is grander and more concise, as if it were being presented to a king. Robinson eliminates potentially confusing terminology, such as “Haiduk”, or “hullabaloo”. In comparison, Tanaka’s translation is much more informal, it seems like she is talking in a conversation with the audience, her word choice, while more technical, is also more casual. Tanaka’s translation gave me a feeling of reading a story. It felt like she was telling her audience the story of how Magdeburg was ruined, as opposed to Robinson’s version, which could be easily imagined to be an article in an encyclopedia or archaic book. One other important facet of translation is an understanding of the culture. Sometimes there are idioms the author uses which, when translated directly, make no sense. Translators need cultural background to understand the original author's meaning. For example, if a translator were to literally translate "it's raining cats and dogs", he would make everyone reading the translation either run in fear, or leave the reading confused, because they would believe that cats and dogs really were falling from the sky. However, the actual meaning, that it is raining hard, would mean the reader would instead pull out an umbrella and his rain gear, safely proceeding outside. Works Cited: Robinson, James. “A Personal Account of the Destruction of Magdeburg”. Readings in European History. Ginn & Co. 1906. Pp. 211-213 Tanaka, Julie. “A Local Apocalypse – The Sack of Magdeburg (1631)” German History in Documents and Images. N.p. 1996. Web. <http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/docpage.cfm?docpage_id=5405> 7 Nov. 2014. And in case you were wondering, the translated song lyrics are here, too:
*UPDATE* I found somebody else's translation of the song online- feel free to compare: https://ca.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080512180616AAocYJs |
| As some background information, this is the video my story is based on- I put the video first, as I feel it may help in your understanding of my story. Enjoy! [Embed For Use By Upgraded+] **Insert Unavailable; Upgraded Membership Required. ** Also find the story at
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| Last time, I questioned as to why Helen was not the one making the decision regarding her future husband. As I continued to think about it, I began wondering about the difference of gender roles in Homeric society. Paris and Menelaus saw Helen as a prize to be won, an object, and Chinese men see women as someone who will tame them and carry on the family name. Therefore, I had initially imagined Homeric society to be like current day China’s 男重女轻 (nan zhong nü qing) stereotype , where men dominate over women in every facet of society. While I am aware that many cultures have different social structures, coming from a Chinese background, this surprised me. Something that especially struck me as I researched this week was an article from an English magazine, The Spectator. The columnist, Peter Jones, wrote “both parties [are] united in respect for and commitment to each other, the family and its needs. Humiliation and subjugation do not come into it.” He sees the two genders as equal. While they both have remarkably different roles, neither role is more important than the other. Contrarily, men in China marry women for their dowries and looks, obviously showing who the dominant gender is. However, all they have to do is wait a few years: men will run out of women to marry, because at some point, the women will either all be married or not yet of age to marry. This extremity will eventually seesaw the other way, and women will be the ones choosing the men. Works Cited: Homer. The Iliad. Trans. Robert Fagles. NY: Penguin Books, 1990. Jones, Peter. "A woman’s place in Homer." The Spectator 15 Dec. 2012. Web. 18 Oct. 2014. |
| Homer presents Helen as the epitome of beauty. She is “the loveliest daughter Priam ever bred” (2.149), he describes, a “terrible beauty” (2.189). For Homer, she is beautiful to the point that the Trojans and Achaeans start a war over who possesses her, and make a prize out of her. Paris kidnaps Helen while Menelaus is away, and now both men are each prepared to possibly fight to his death for a chance to finally claim Helen as his wife. When Iris tells Helen of that, Homer says “out of the rooms [Helen] rushed, live tears welling” (3.170). Such aggressiveness from the men, and Helen’s quiet, yet emotional acceptance of the deal when she received Iris’s message reminded me of what Emma Watson had to say in her recent #HeforShe Campaign in the United Nations. She said “If men don’t have to control, women don’t have to be controlled” (Watson). The two men are fighting over control of who gets Helen. While it could be seen as a romantic gesture of desperate love, in reality, Helen should be the one making decisions on who she wants to go with. It is, after all, who she will have to live with for the rest of her life. Instead, the battle ends when Aphrodite helps Paris disappear so he can go back and make love to Helen; Paris’s disappearance means that Menelaus declares himself winner of the battle; therefore, demanding the Trojans hand back Helen, alongside all her riches, with the “roared assent” of his armies (3.540). Works Cited: Homer. The Iliad. Trans. Robert Fagles. NY: Penguin Books, 1990. Watson, Emma. "Emma Watson at the HeForShe Campaign 2014". np. Launch of the HeForShe Campaign. U.N. Headquarters. New York City, NY. 20 Sept. 2014. Address |
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