Challenge 1006

Getting Your Goat

In Charles C. Cole’s The Song in the Heart of a Friend: How does the plot relate to the classical myth of Cupid and Psyche?
In Gary Inbinder’s Offers: Max explains to Eve why he has rejected John Merwin’s offer of employment. Do you think his reasons are sufficient for not accepting Eve’s offer of partnership or marriage?
In Michael Wooff’s translation of Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer’s The Kiss:
1. Where are the soldiers from? Where are they now, and why? How are they behaving? In what other work has the author expressed a personal interest in the locale?
2. How does the ending express the meaning of the action and the feelings of Spanish citizens? How does this story, from two centuries past, apply to national and international politics in the world of 2023?
3. The syntax imitates that of the original, which is early 19th-century Spanish prose in a highly formal register. Does the content justify the English translation’s prose style, which appears archaic and has a “foreign accent”? Does the content justify the translator’s taking an approach different from that explained in “Some Preliminary Notes” at the end of episode 1 of Bewildering Stories’ version of Cyrano’s The Other World?
4. Bonus question: Why is the epic of Gilgamesh not translated into English in the language contemporary with the original?
In Gary Clifton’s The Lobolito: What happened after McClain and Aponi left Wilson’s place?
In SL Kretschmer’s Miriam Mitchell, Peking Duck and Bela Lugosi:
1. Do the fortunes in the cookies predict anything?
2. Toby O’Connell is a minor employee in a restaurant where he handicrafts fortune cookies. How are fortune cookies actually made? Could his fortune-telling be done as effectively if he regularly published an astrology column?
In Dione Precious Abwe Betika’s Nkume the Goat:
1. Why does Chief Aka become frightened when he thinks Nkume might be dead?
2. Why is Chief Aka’s loan not repaid? Is Nkume more valuable to the Mbukus than the loan is to Chief Aka?

Responses welcome!