Eric Zhao https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-0000/ zzhaoe-0000 /zzhaoe-0000/ home Hello! This is my forest.https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-0001/zzhaoe-0001/zzhaoe-0001/aboutI'm a second year doctoral student at Brown University, advised by Nikos Vasilakis and Robert Lewis. My interests are in programming languages, especially formal methods, interactive theorem provers, and type theory. I'm also supported by the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.Previously, I was an undergraduate in computer science at The University of Michigan, where I worked with Cyrus Omar in the Future of Programming Lab. I was also the Communications Chair of the Japanese Language Circle for some time. https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-003P/zzhaoe-003P/zzhaoe-003P/externalFeel free to reach out: email: eric_c_zhao / brown / edu github: mirryi orcid: 0009-0000-4969-2376 lt: mirryi Eric Zhaohttps://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-0004/zzhaoe-0004/zzhaoe-0004/newsEric Zhaohttps://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-0034/zzhaoe-0034/zzhaoe-0034/chronological Jun. '26 Honored to be invited to the Veritas Graduate Conference! Jun. '25 I will be at OPLSS at the end of the month. May '25 I will be at HotOS XX later this month! Feb. '25 I was invited to participate in the Kakehashi Project between Feb. 4–11! Jan. '25 Our paper on Grove is published at POPL! Dec. '24 Gave a talk at NJPLS on symbolic reasoning for file system effects. Aug. '24 Starting my PhD at Brown in PL and formal methods. Jul. '24 Participated to the 2024 School on Univalent Mathematics! Apr. '24 Honored to receive an NSF GRFP! Mar. '24 Passed the JLPT N1! Feb. '24 Won the Michigan Japanese Speech Contest with a very shoddy speech. Jan. '24 I will be presenting our paper on type error localization at POPL! Aug. '23 I will be assisting with EECS 490 this year. Jun. '23 Abroad in Osaka, Japan for advanced intensive Japanese language study! Mar. '23 Honored to receive a FLAS! Eric Zhaohttps://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-0003/zzhaoe-0003/zzhaoe-0003/publicationsLukas LazarekSeong-Heon JungVagos LamprouZekai LiAnirudh NarsipurEric ZhaoMichael GreenbergKonstantinos KallasKonstantinos MamourasNikos Vasilakis202566https://mustardfox.org/lazarek-et-al-2025/lazarek-et-al-2025/lazarek-et-al-2025/From Ahead-of- to Just-in-Time and Back Again: Static Analysis for Unix Shell Programsreference10.1145/3713082.3730395HotOS XXLukas LazarekSeong-Heon JungVagos LamprouZekai LiAnirudh NarsipurEric ZhaoMichael GreenbergKonstantinos KallasKonstantinos MamourasNikos Vasilakis202566abstractShell programming is as prevalent as ever. It is also quite complex, due to the structure of shell programs, their use of opaque software components, and their complex interactions with the broader environment. As a result, even when exercising an abundance of care, shell developers discover devastating bugs in their programs only at runtime: at best, shell programs going wrong crash the execution of a long-running task; at worst, they silently corrupt the broader environment in which they execute---affecting user data, modifying system files, and rendering entire systems unusable. Could the shell's users enjoy the benefits of semantics-driven static analysis before their programs' execution---as offered by most other production languages?Michael D. AdamsEric GriffisThomas J. PorterSundara Vishnu SatishEric ZhaoCyrus Omar202519https://mustardfox.org/adams-et-al-2025/adams-et-al-2025/adams-et-al-2025/Grove: A Bidirectionally Typed Collaborative Structure Editor CalculusreferencePOPL 202510.1145/3704909zzhaoe-000Q/bafkrmigmhnqhc24zxmxphoaw3khagv6xahf4k23h6lzwiogafvjk6prgce.pdfMichael D. AdamsEric GriffisThomas J. PorterSundara Vishnu SatishEric ZhaoCyrus Omar202519abstractVersion control systems typically rely on a patch language, heuristic patch synthesis algorithms like diff, and three-way merge algorithms. Standard patch languages and merge algorithms often fail to identify conflicts correctly when there are multiple edits to one line of code or code is relocated. This paper introduces Grove, a collaborative structure editor calculus that eliminates patch synthesis and three-way merge algorithms entirely. Instead, patches are derived directly from the log of the developer’s edit actions and all edits commute, i.e. the repository state forms a commutative replicated data type (CmRDT). To handle conflicts that can arise due to code relocation, the core datatype in Grove is a labeled directed multi-graph with uniquely identified vertices and edges. All edits amount to edge insertion and deletion, with deletion being permanent. To support tree-based editing, we define a decomposition from graphs into groves, which are a set of syntax trees with conflicts—including local, relocation, and unicyclic relocation conflicts—represented explicitly using holes and references between trees. Finally, we define a type error localization system for groves that enjoys a totality property, i.e. all editor states in Grove are statically meaningful, so developers can use standard editor services while working to resolve these explicitly represented conflicts. The static semantics is defined as a bidirectional marking system in line with recent work, with gradual typing employed to handle situations where errors and conflicts prevent type determination. We then layer on a unification-based type inference system to opportunistically fill type holes and fail gracefully when no solution exists. We mechanize the metatheory of Grove using the Agda theorem prover. We implement these ideas as the Grove Workbench, which generates the necessary data structures and algorithms in OCaml given a syntax tree specification.Eric ZhaoRaef MaroofAnand DukkipatiAndrew BlinnZhiyi PanCyrus Omar202415https://mustardfox.org/zhao-et-al-2024/zhao-et-al-2024/zhao-et-al-2024/Total Type Error Localization and Recovery with Holesreference10.1145/3632910POPL 2024/bafkrmig6uouiljzl7bd2hsdvybslotw4hme5ee2wrptjxfu243y2zskscu.pdf/bafkrmicqbx7k3zk2yw3wouzg7xccmly4fj422zl2ixpx5uozuxrmpswnrm.pdfzzhaoe-000BEric ZhaoRaef MaroofAnand DukkipatiAndrew BlinnZhiyi PanCyrus Omar202415abstractType systems typically only define the conditions under which an expression is well-typed, leaving ill-typed expressions formally meaningless. This approach is insufficient as the basis for language servers driving modern programming environments, which are expected to recover from simultaneously localized errors and continue to provide a variety of downstream semantic services. This paper addresses this problem, contributing the first comprehensive formal account of total type error localization and recovery: the marked lambda calculus. In particular, we define a gradual type system for expressions with marked errors, which operate as non-empty holes, together with a total procedure for marking arbitrary unmarked expressions. We mechanize the metatheory of the marked lambda calculus in Agda and implement it, scaled up, as the new basis for Hazel, a full-scale live functional programming environment with, uniquely, no meaningless editor states.The marked lambda calculus is bidirectionally typed, so localization decisions are systematically predictable based on a local flow of typing information. Constraint-based type inference can bring more distant information to bear in discovering inconsistencies but this notoriously complicates error localization. We approach this problem by deploying constraint solving as a type-hole-filling layer atop this gradual bidirectionally typed core. Errors arising from inconsistent unification constraints are localized exclusively to type and expression holes, i.e. the system identifies unfillable holes using a system of traced provenances, rather than localized in an ad hoc manner to particular expressions. The user can then interactively shift these errors to particular downstream expressions by selecting from suggested partially consistent type hole fillings, which returns control back to the bidirectional system. We implement this type hole inference system in Hazel. Eric Zhaohttps://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-0002/zzhaoe-0002/zzhaoe-0002/softwareMichael D. AdamsEric GriffisThomas J. PorterSundara Vishnu SatishEric ZhaoCyrus Omar2024https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-000Q/zzhaoe-000Q/zzhaoe-000Q/Grove (Agda)software10.5281/zenodo.14026532POPL 2025fplab/grove-agdaAn Agda mechanization of the Grove collaborative structure editor calculus described in "Grove: A Bidirectionally Typed Collaborative Structure Editor Calculus".Cyrus OmarAndrew BlinnEric Zhaomany, many others20242021https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-000A/zzhaoe-000A/zzhaoe-000A/Hazelsoftwarehttps://hazel.orghazelgrove/hazelHazel is a live functional programming environment that is able to typecheck, manipulate, and even run incomplete programs, i.e. programs with holes. There are no meaningless editor states.Eric Zhao2024https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-0025/zzhaoe-0025/zzhaoe-0025/cabal-foreign-librarysoftwaremirryi/cabal-foreign-librarycabal-foreign-libraryA library for Cargo build scripts to build and link a Cabal foreign library to Rust crates. The crate calls out to Cabal and GHC; all necesssary Haskell dependencies must be installed and managed separately.Eric Zhao2024https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-0024/zzhaoe-0024/zzhaoe-0024/hermitsoftwaremirryi/hermitLanguage-level information flow control for Rust via dynamic epistemic logic.Eric ZhaoRaef MaroofAnand DukkipatiAndrew BlinnZhiyi PanCyrus Omar20232022https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-000B/zzhaoe-000B/zzhaoe-000B/Total Type Error Localization and Recovery with Holes (Agda)software10.5281/zenodo.10129703POPL 2024hazelgrove/error-localization-agdaAn Agda mechanization of the marked lambda calculus, a judgmental framework for bidirectional type error localization and recovery described in "Total Type Error Localization and Recovery with Holes".Eric Zhao20222018https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-0008/zzhaoe-0008/zzhaoe-0008/Wikichansoftwaremirryi/wikichanWikichan is a browser extension that displays a popup with information from Wikipedia and other sources when hovering over text on any page. Its development (2018 – 2020?) was mainly during high school (and therefore a bloody mess) and is on indefinite hiatus. I'd like to return to it at some point, however.Eric Zhao20222021https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-0009/zzhaoe-0009/zzhaoe-0009/shelfsoftwaremirryi/shelfA symlink farm manager in the spirit of GNU stow, meant primarily for dotfiles. Though I still use it for my own configurations, it's pretty awful, so I wouldn't recommend it to anyone at all. At some point, I'd like to build a robust and intelligent tool for these purposes.Eric ZhaoMarcus Gozon2021https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-0013/zzhaoe-0013/zzhaoe-0013/mmsoftwarehttps://mirryi.github.io/mmmirryi/mmIt's like Desmos but equations become musical scores. Marcus Gozon and I made this for MHacks 14. My good friend EricNot me but a much smarter and more industrious fellow. contributed the (rather astounding) third demo.To play it, click (1) D-III, (2) the refresh button, and (3) the play button. On mobile, the refresh button is the squashed one directly left of the dividing vertical bar. It's easy, no doubt, that this is a lousy hackathon piece. Eric Zhao2021https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-0011/zzhaoe-0011/zzhaoe-0011/mpdndsoftwaremirryi/mpdndmpdndAn XDG notification daemon for mpd in Rust.Eric Zhao2021https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-0012/zzhaoe-0012/zzhaoe-0012/regexp2softwaremirryi/regexp2A very bad implementation of regular expressions using finite automata. From the high school days.Eric Zhao2019https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-0007/zzhaoe-0007/zzhaoe-0007/dotfilessoftwaremirryi/dotfiles https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-000Z/zzhaoe-000Z/zzhaoe-000Z/teaching20242023https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-0010/zzhaoe-0010/zzhaoe-0010/EECS 490: Programming Languages (F23, W24)courseThe University of MichiganProgramming languages are rich mathematical structures and powerful user interfaces. This course covers the design and use of modern programming languages. We will build up systematically from formal first principles while considering human factors in language design, language prototyping, and techniques for reasoning precisely about program behavior throughout the course. The goal is to change the way you think about programming and programming language design in ways that will remain relevant across the many technology hype cycles that you will encounter over the course of your careers.I was the undergraduate teaching assistant for the 2023–2024 academic year. The course was lectured by Cyrus Omar; Andrew Blinn and David Moon served as graduate teaching assistants in F23 and W24, respectively. https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-000J/zzhaoe-000J/zzhaoe-000J/writingEric Zhao20251230https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-003O/zzhaoe-003O/zzhaoe-003O/on Lay Me in God's Good EarthmusingsIn his treatment of the body one confesses his anthropogeny and eschatology. He who sees only the blackness of the void looks anxiously to its preservation in perpetuity, that he might cheat death by any instrument available. He who scorns it as a mere vat for the soul—now perhaps a necessary apparatus but later a worthless husk—allows it to languish, or mortifies it beyond recognition. Incineration, then, is a fitting end. But he who recognises its God-given worth accords it due honor and stewards it in health whilst resting his ultimate hope elsewhere: in the Maker who creates and recreates.It is a distinctively biblical eschatology which allows followers of Christ to engage with death forthright, not shrinking away in fear; with proper mourning yet in surpassing joy; recalling always our sure hope in the "Maker of heaven and earth" who brings about "the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting." For those whose trust lies in God can look to their creation in His image.Gen. 1:27. And they can look to the body of the risen Christ to perceive what awaits them: that which is sown in weakness and dishonor shall be raised in power and glory; that which is natural and perishable shall be spiritual and imperishable; that which is earthly shall be heavenly. The man of dust dies, but the man of heaven lives, and we who have borne the image of the man of dust shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.1 Cor. 15:35–49.Natural burial, then, as the authors argue, is a fitting confession of the Christian hope. The body is left unembalmed, for such invasive efforts to forestall decomposition, far from preserving the body, do violence to it. Neither are they suitable nor even possible, for the body is sown perishable and resown imperishable. It is set to decompose alongside its covering or its casket in the ground without a vault, affirming that God raised us out of dust and will recreate us from dust. Cremation, on the other hand, does deliberate violence to the beauty of the divine creation; one must ask if it honors the dead as children of God whose bodies will be resurrected on the last day.There is more to reclaim, however, than burial alone. In a culture in which the affairs of death have been relinquished to secular professionals, even Christians have fallen upon the impulse to sanitize death of its discomfort. Whilst living, death, though superficially acknowledged, is something taboo, hardly to be spoken of in seriousness, even among those at its door. It is to be staved off at all costs, and the dying perish in hospitals, nursing homes, and funeral palours, suffering aggressive treatments among unfamiliar faces and sterile equipment. Once dead, their bodies are impure and unclean, to be handled by undertakers, away from the eyes of the living. They are "cleansed" through embalming as though decay and the realities of death might be warded off. They are buried in manicured cemeteries far "out there," away from sight, with cement vaults and liners to "protect" them from the earth. Among the living, grief is made a private affair, and orchestrated by funeral dramaturgists who move mourners through a production by which emotions are released and comfort found.What can the church offer in a culture whose relationship with death has been so confused? It can speak of death with severity yet hope, affirming its sorrow whilst rejecting its finality and allaying its fear; Christ has passed through death before us, who tells us, "Do not be afraid".Matt 28:10. It can accompany the body unto its burial place, to care for and watch over it, to transport it and inter it into the ground; and in doing so confess the body not as a foul carcass but an honorable vessel of God. It can comfort the living in word and presence; for to live is Christ, and to die is to gain Christ.Phil. 1:21. The church offers, in other words, nothing short of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The process of death is an opportunity to bear witness to the power of that gospel; the gospel which teaches us to face death—and thus life—with a right seriousness and joy.Eric Zhao2025731https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-003I/zzhaoe-003I/zzhaoe-003I/on Life of the Belovedmusings"Where is the gospel?" or so I found myself asking all throughout. In what is ostensibly an apologetic, Nouwen seems to shy away from any mention of what makes the Christian life at all distinctive and worthwhile: the redemptive power of Christ on the cross. One is taken and adopted as a child of God, through Christ's work. One is blessed and broken, as Christ was blessed and broken. One is given for others, because Christ first gave himself. Here the Eucharist is used as a framing device yet entirely emptied of its meaning and power. For one is beloved in the Beloved. It's no surprise, then, to find that his friends found the book uncompelling; how could it, without the gospel? What might have been a tender testament to the salvation that comes only from above becomes only impotent word-wrangling and hollow mysticism.Eric Zhao202554https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-003C/zzhaoe-003C/zzhaoe-003C/on The Remains of the Daymusings Eric Zhao202554spoilerwarning The Remains of the Day. Some months after reading this book I encountered a fellow in a bookshop who exclaimed that it was a life wasted. But I don't think this is at all the picture. The life is not over! No, "I gave my best to Lord Darlington. I gave him the very best I had to give, and now—well—I find I do not have a great deal more left to give," he says, speaking in relation to his present service to Mr Farraday; but surely he is also speaking of how, in giving all of himself to that image of a butler, he had little left to give to the others in his life: his father, his friends, and Miss Kenton. At least Darlington "chose a certain path in life," though it "proved to be a misguided one," whereas he "can't even say [he] made [his] own mistakes." He gave his very best, yet it was a giving marked by a passivity which let moments and opportunities slip by. He thought himself to be carrying out the duties of his post in proper dignity, yet now he laments, "Really—one has to ask oneself—what dignity is there in that?"But the man on the bench is unruffled. He responds that his attitude is all wrong, that he ought not to ponder so much on the past, for that should only put him in a deeper rut; but he should face what is ahead of him, to seize the "remains of the day." And it appears that Stevens really takes this to heart. He suddenly thinks back to "bantering," at which point one might suppose that he is only considering business again. But is he not really reflecting on the relational essence of such bantering, the "key to human warmth?" This, he realises, is what he has really lacked all this time. It is, perhaps, not the turning point for which one might hope or expect; instead we read something of a mellow resignation to that post which he has kept all these years---what else can be realistically done?---but with a brighter anticipation for the remaining years, and a newfound hope and will: a broader vision for what this post of his really is.Eric Zhao2025228https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-003H/zzhaoe-003H/zzhaoe-003H/the life of an unextraordinary SAT solvermusingsThe accompanying artefact is a small SAT solver composed of standard techniques. In this short monograph, we recount its brief and rather unextraordinary history.Eric Zhao2025228Humble beginningsThe birth of the present solver was preceded by its older brother. Yet it may be that its guardian was unprepared to nurture a purely functional existence. The poor creature was short-lived; hardly had its fragile OCaml bones begun to take shape before it perished from neglect.Evidently the steward supposed himself rather more fit to foster its imperative sister; though he might strive in his slumbering murmurings for the holy city atop the hill of mathematical purity, in his quotidian subsistence he tends in embarrassment toward practicality, or rather ease. Thus grew the solver in her rusty nest, and in short time, by way of a rather rudimentary DPLL education, she learned to dubiously scrutinize the CNF rations which she received---though trained with some later transition to more sophisticated algorithms in mind. In this period, she learned to unit-propagate by naïvely inspecting every clause; for each literal picked to propagate, she would repeat the whole process. She was yet learning her numbers; when there was none more to propagate, she counted on her fingers and chose the first variable which she had not yet assigned. When she perceived any conflict in what she had supposed, she gave a small cry, but would quietly backtrack a single step of her work. So industrious was she that only the most hardened of hearts would not have wondered in pity at the sight of her toil.Eric Zhao2025228A troublesome adolescenceOnce she had proven some competence with these basic skills, the steward supposed the time had come for tutelage in rather more clever techniques; thus she learned, through much trouble and rebellion, to analyse conflicts and avoid the same mistake. Therefore she was able to work out the 11 most simple instances in the order of tenths of a second.Following this period, she underwent another season of education, this time focused on her unit-propagation techniques. With a great struggle she at last internalised the 2-watched literals technique, and the efficiency of her work improved several orders of magnitudes. Yet although she made even quicker work of those easier instances, the others gave her much challenge. The steward wondered if she yet lacked in methods or if the agility of her mind and the dexterity of her hands betrayed a sluggish and wasteful skill.In alternating seasons, the steward sought to improve both aspects, that she might conquer greater instances. She was taught the techniques of Luby restarts and introduced to two useful decision heuristics: a static most-frequent heuristic and the variable state independent decaying sum (VSIDS). With these new arts she further improved her times and solved anew another instance (C—) in the order of tens of seconds. Unfortunately, at some point, it is likely that some mistake slipped into the curriculum, for on not infrequent occasion one finds her in a seemingly infinite loop (or perhaps she is still simply slow). It remains unclear why this is the case; alas, the steward did not have sufficient time before the Examination to resolve these issues.In the course of a week or more, the SAT solver, which began as a run-of-the-mill DPLL solver, grew into an equally run-of-the-mill CDCL solver. The steward, weary from perhaps twenty or so hours of work, now returns slothfully to his research.Eric Zhao2025116https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-002K/zzhaoe-002K/zzhaoe-002K/a Japanese AcronymymusingsI recently came across David Renshaw's Acronymy, which is just brilliant. Now, I wonder what the task would be like in Japanese.Maybe I'll build a toujigoy.net at some point.Eric Zhao2025116https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-002L/zzhaoe-002L/zzhaoe-002L/頭字説明ゲームGiven a word, the objective is to describe the word as an acronym. The trouble is, "acronym" isn't really a well-defined notion in Japanese. Let's take some examples (more here).Eric Zhao2025116https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-002N/zzhaoe-002N/zzhaoe-002N/基本Take 冬 with its reading 「ふゆ」: the goal is a construct a sequence of two words whose readings start with ふ and ゆ, respectively. One might raise, for instance, 「ふわふわ・雪」 as an apt descriptor. To 休み, read 「やすみ」, one might answer 「やっと・吸える・水」.This is a terrible answer; someone please come up with a better one. But anyways it probably has to get pretty metaphorical. In other words, each kana in the reading is used as the start of the next word. Of course, using the word itself is disallowed.Or the same character at the start of a jukugo, and so on—use common sense in the spirit of the game.Jukugo with multiple readings are considered separately; 人気 as 「にんき」 and as 「ひとけ」 are different. But what about that ん, huh?Eric Zhao2025116https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-002O/zzhaoe-002O/zzhaoe-002O/撥音、促音、拗音、、、For ん, it seems reasonable to just say that the word may begin with な, に, ぬ, ね, or の;Or any of their katakana equivalents. I don't see any way around it. For small っ, the word need only begin with つ. Small ゃ, ゅ, ょ, and other small kana (such as ェ in シェア) are grouped with their antecedent, e.g., for 賞—that is, 「しょう」—the description must be two words that start with しょ and う, say, 「勝負・得る」.This is likely too hard for words like シェア; for these it's reasonable to consider them individually.Eric Zhao2025116https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-002P/zzhaoe-002P/zzhaoe-002P/バリエーションTo make the game much easier (or maybe just possible), we can extend the rule for ん to all non-small kana, i.e., 走る, read 「はしる」, is described by a triple of words starting with は, ひ, ふ, and so on; さ, し, す, and so on; and ら, り, る, and so on—say 「早く・進む・労」.Call these 二級頭字説明, as opposed to those of the 一級 sort.Eric Zhao2025116https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-002M/zzhaoe-002M/zzhaoe-002M/頭字説明A work-in-progress list of rather awful descriptions... 言葉 読み方 説明 級 昨日 きのう 記憶・の・後ろ 一 賞 しょう 勝負・得る 一 冬 ふゆ ふわふわ・雪 一 休み やすみ やっと・吸える・水 一 走る はしる 早く・進む・労 二 Eric Zhao2025114https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-002I/zzhaoe-002I/zzhaoe-002I/on Tom Bombadil as unfallen AdammusingsThe latest issue of Mallorn has a nice article positing that Tom Bombadil represents Tolkien's conception of an unfallen Adam.Any article claiming to have 'cracked' the enigma of Tom Bombadil is inevitably met with a wary feeling; it's like seeing an arXiv paper claiming to have solved . As the author mentions, the idea of an Adamic identity is not new, having appeared, apparently, in obscure fanzines from the 1970s, in Shippey's The Road to Middle-Earth, and in a 2018 article by Jane Beal.A quick search also pulls up a number of pages with similar ideas. This reddit post summarizes the important points rather well. But the author argues that Tom is not identical to Adam nor prelapsarian, as he doesn't appear to be the progenitor of all man-kind and betrays none of Adam's weakness; he embodies, instead, "an alternative Adam who never fell," that is, "what would have happened had the serpent... failed".Joy 2024, p. 26, emphasis original. I suppose I would wonder, then, why Tom has no progeny; this is the one point that seems incongruent with the divine command in Genesis 1:28: "And God said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth,'" it says. Perhaps he just hasn't yet gotten around to it.Otherwise, the issue contains three other research articles. I passed over the two about elements of horror in The Lord of the Rings (specifically, the use of 'gaps and indeterminacies') and about renunciations of immortality. The last discusses the ex nihilo nature of Ungoliant herself and her ability to create Unlight; such notions have disturbing implications for the Tolkienian cosmology. It was interesting but could, I think, have been about half the length.Eric Zhao2025110https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-002D/zzhaoe-002D/zzhaoe-002D/the illusory middle landscapemusingsPlenty of people have spoken or written about the enduring mystic of Skyrim.So I shall, shamelessly, add my own. In fact, I wrote one several years ago for a course blog. Although it hovered vaguely around a similar sort of focus, in any case it said something entirely separate and possessed a rather different flavor. In spite of newer experiences which may boast gripping narratives or real-to-life visuals or delightful gameplay loops, those whose hearts upon which has lain the tender yet unyielding hold of idyllic Tamriel find themselves returning again and again, even nigh fifteen years now, to that northern corner of the world. By most reasonable measures the game's combat mechanics are rather lacking; the quest writing varies from uninspired to abominable; the whole experience is rife with visual and functional deficiency and defect, of both comic and exasperating character. Yet somehow it is a spring from which all weariness seems to depart; when novelties have worn off, one remembers the rugged peak and the rolling pastures, the surly wanderer and the unassuming stableboy, the hidden cove and the homely home.At some point, I discovered mods, and then the possibilities had truly opened before me. For by way of the bottomless trove of fan-made modifications I could make the world a place of my own: new characters to befriend, equipment to craft; fair vistas to behold, deep dungeons to crawl. In short time I discovered, somewhat paradoxically, that I could only best feed my wants and my wonders by imposing restrictions. It is absurd, after all, to wade an icy bay or eat a half-quiver of arrows without much thought; one should suffer, respectively, hypothermia and outright death. One should wonder why prisoners remain in their chains and carriage drivers at their seats if instantaneous teleportation to any point-of-interest costs neither money nor effort. Until then I had cared for good cooking only after a brutal stabbing. Now I respected the snow squalls and esteemed the bow; I cherished my feet and my mare; I welcomed to my parched lips even the most insipid soup and stale loaf after any jaunt in the woods. For the harsh land of the Nords demands hardy living; by endurance one claims the high ridge; through peril comes the richest spoil; it is hinter that makes home. The untamed grasses rush furiously, I can see the glowing parapet, nigh is the slumbering grove; here I stand. Its name is Wilderness—yet not altogether Wild.This was the reality away from reality: the middle landscape, fraught with many dangers—but comforts are never so out of reach. I sought more, driven to wilder wilds, homelier homes. But satisfaction is a doomed pursuit, a chasing after the wind. There is always some greater adventure to be tasted. It is this regrettable truth that, whilst no longer surprising, never loses its vexing flavour. For the sub-creation of man, though it may refract and magnify the splintered rays of the primary creation, remains just that: a partial mosaic of the hale light. And man whose heart was made for the light has fallen very far into the shadows.Eric Zhao202519https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-002B/zzhaoe-002B/zzhaoe-002B/the unwarranted delightsmusings This world is a wild and startling place, which might have been quite different, but which is quite delightful. So Chesterton wrote in the "The Ethics of Elfland", the fourth chapter of Orthodoxy.p. 105 in the 1927 Dodd, Mead & Co. printing I have. It is perhaps one of my favourite chapters of a book, ever. The volume as a whole is a difficult but satisfying experience. I have yet to write much about it for fear that I cannot do it due justice. The world is a "thoroughly zany"Philip Comer. place, yet this is not all in honey-disgorging aerial drones or sharp-tongued (in the literal sense) waterfowl. It's easy to take for granted, so to speak, not only the irregularities of this tremendous existence—but without second thought pass over the orderly, regular phenomena. But why should there be order at all? So wonders the cold metaphysical realist of Faërie as he cuts through the mere sentimentalism of materialist science, which would like to call "laws" that which are merely the patterns of a rising and setting sun. That the pot should always begin to bubble over the burner and the dandelions on the lawn blossom yellow—these too are great delights which light upon the ordinary man just as well as the extraordinary. For why should the water not turn to ice, or the petals turn brown? So I've sought to observe some pleasures of this creation—however insufficiently—by a frivolous list...undergoing continuous construction. as this. These are only one-off experiences, in no way seriously intended to capture the overwhelming richness of reality; they are little instances, vague pointers; nothing is original—rather, mere instances gathered whilst digesting what wiser and more articulate people have already written.Eric Zhao202519https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-002C/zzhaoe-002C/zzhaoe-002C/it all just comes together.There's a sort of quelling satisfaction when seemingly unrelated sensations—even more, apparently contradictory experiences—are at once unified by some missing key; all tension is eased, each piece falls into place exactly where it belongs. The vision is cleared, the ears are unstopped; and there is altogether anew a sort of freshness in the air.One can't help but share the pleasure Cueball has upon noticing that the turn signals of his car and the one in front are synchronized.XKCD 165. Not closely coordinating with slight miscommunication, but exactly in tandem. My delight was of a similar sort when I found—pray indulge my frivolity for a moment—the ticking of my toaster ovenTrader Joe's chicken samosas are rather good, provided that I don't eat them too frequently. to be in sync with Händel's Water Music Suite, No.3 in G major from the radio.I mostly listen to WRTI when I return to the Philly area. It is a wonder that rhythms and other orderly structures should be granted to us. One readily recognizes the easy harmony of a cascade of rushing notes; the mystery novelist who ties together many threads of the grand puzzle has attained a marvellous thing; when category theory unifies physics and computing, it is astounding; when orthodox doctrine has made sense of our deepest sufferings and our highest joys, one knows it has achieved the seemingly unachievable. It may take some several moments to confirm that the many pieces are really cohesive; or immense striving to perceive that the Gordian Knot has unravelled into a colourful embroidery; but then there is no doubt—still more when the matter continues to bear witness to its truth. "A stick might fit a hole or a stone a hollow by accident. But a key and a lock are both complex. And if a key fits a lock, you know it is the right key.""The Paradoxes of Christianity", p. 151–152.Eric Zhao202518https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-002A/zzhaoe-002A/zzhaoe-002A/we murder to dissectmusingsThe word religion is troublesome precisely because it is rather useless—nay, even destructive. It suggests, for one, that those awfully disparate things which commonly suffer from such a label are in some way very alike, that one may speak of them as a meaningful collective. The adherents of these—say, Christianity, or Buddhism, or Hellenic paganism—the religious—are to be held in contrast with those so-called irreligious, as though those of the latter crowd do not also possess worldviews by which they derive the God or the gods whose character commands their lives. What people really imagine when they call something a religion is, I suppose, some very confined set of notions, such as a personal divine, and practices, like meditation at an altar. But the man whose attention is fixed on God is in no way thinking about religion, for to consider religion at all his attention must be diverted; as Lewis puts it, "he hasn't the time.""Lilies that Fester", which I have as it is reprinted in The World's Last Night and Other Essays (p. 32). The word has only a chance to be meaningful (alas it isn't) from the outside.The same, he says, seems to be true of cultured, which should surely mean a man who is possessed of "deep and genuine enjoyment of literature and the other arts." The man whose present attention is occupied by culture, like the religious man, must not be considering culture one bit, else his enjoyment would be thoroughly ruined. Rightly writes Lewis that "the talk is inimical to the thing talked of, likely to spoil it where it exists and to prevent its birth where it is unborn."p. 33The "whole trouble", as perhaps Charlie Brown would say, is that the focus of the mind has begun to wonder in the "abstract", so to speak, about religion or culture and therefore ceased in the activity itself. For any "meta-thinking" must by necessity kill the object of its study; the chef cannot butcher a duck in flight. A mortician would have much trouble to autopsy a squirming cadaver. I am often, in a rather foolish, self-aggrandizing fashion (I do not know if others can relate), found wondering if the present moment, when it is dramatic or astonishing or otherwise appears significant, will mark some critical point by which all that came afterwards began to change—if the pen has just been lifted, poised now to begin a new chapter. Yet in its very appraisal the drama has fled the scene; by pondering its future implications I have left it in the past. Probably, I suppose, the moment impressed sufficiently to meet some threshold of dramaticism yet inadequately to hold captive my mind. Empty yet cluttered, tedium has driven it to (probably fruitless) reflection.I am led to see the same in other attitudes: humility, as an obvious example. For humility is by definition embodied by self-forgetfulness. The moment I wonder if I am indeed being very humble, far from forgetting the self, I have remembered it and altogether ceased in humility, if ever I really was; in fact, it is more fair to say that the proof has come out that I was decidedly not—there is none clearer. In humans, the great inquisition of such meta-thinking leaves no door unopened, no table unturned, no chest unbroken; one wonders who it was that injudiciously issued the warrant. Far from allowing humility to continue on its innocent way, it possesses a unquenchable desire to make of it something rather nasty. For one is likely to feel rather proud of one's supposed humility. Indeed, it would seem that only pride was ever present. It has packed the courts with its own lackeys, and the agenda is set against virtues. I am prone to suppose, not without some satisfaction, that I have been rather charitable to the ill-to-do or very patient with that nagging in-law; pride has practically won the day with just this. I say that I have merely "realized" the extent of my charity or my patience—and perhaps I really have been so, but I have also propped up some shadowy caricature of the real things and set them upon a platter for Screwtape. Already the ravenous ringing of his smacking lips echo from the lower echelons of Hell.Yet it seems that surely not all "meta-thinking" is undesirable. Surely it is a good thing to wonder about the purpose for which one is pursuing their career or giving their money away, or why one is reading that book or writing to the present journal. Indeed, such self-examination is the way by which one perceives their sins and therefore may even begin to move toward contrition. Conviction of sins is impossible and meaningless without contemplation for the activities in which they manifest. After the morning has been wasted away on frivolous articlesOr, as it were, adding sidenotes to the website. or the loss in some competition has provoked a sullen mood, only when I realize that I have been slothful or covetous can I begin to seek contrition. These are, Screwtape reminds Wormwood, exactly the sorts of considerations whose entry into the patient's mind he ought to prevent:The Screwtape Letters, letter 6. Let an insult or a woman's body so fix his attention outward that he does not reflect "I am now entering into the state called Anger-or the state called Lust". Contrariwise let the reflection "My feelings are now growing more devout, or more charitable" so fix his attention inward that he no longer looks beyond himself to see our Enemy or his own neighbours. I find, unfortunately, that even such profitable reflection can rather easily and quietly turn into the wicked, inward-looking sort. The human mind is an unreasonable breed, that in regrettably natural manner it manages to unearth some way to be prideful even about contrition. I am rather eager to give myself a pat on the back for my arrival at a realization of sin; and very soon one finds himself back in the realm of such undesirable meta-thinking. Then on reels a cycle of morbid introspection: at once I might recognize anew the meddling head of pride and grope for a mallet of repentance—until again I think myself rather well for the meta-meta-realization. Though one may go on unwrapping the onion, the core shall hardly come in sight. I can only throw up my hands in exhaustion, confidence in my capacity for humility utterly spent—there is something ironic in the statement. No matter; the dirt of its remains is not too bland for the palate of the insatiable human vanity.Perhaps the vanity of the meta-meta-meta—ad infinitum—variety is mostly innocuous; yet by it we may recognize a reeking foulness of the human heart as it comes to the surface. All that we do is tainted by natural self-absorption, and it is unquenchable. How can one be self-aware, to self-examine, without pride? The whole trouble, indeed, as Charlie Brown would no doubt assent, is Original Sin. Alas, I have little hope for myself in this regard; I do not suppose that I can cast out the wicked and self-serving tendencies of my heart. Then it should be hopeless—if there is only myself, for evil cannot banish evil; every city or house divided against itself shall not stand. But I may take comfort in the knowledge that God who is almighty can—and would. Perhaps therein lies something close to the answer: as much as wayward man should desire to deceive himself, any degree of self-awareness is, like all profitable things, a merciful gift from God. It would do well for the self-examining will to remember that and by it recall its chief end: to turn the mind toward God, toward his grace and his ultimate gift, Christ.Eric Zhao20241217https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-0028/zzhaoe-0028/zzhaoe-0028/MS P.1396a & b: correspondence of Nov. 1958fiction/bafkrmih3gy25xhp5iykujufn766uzbdxdgyyhvzf2avwafdtk6qdiavna4.pdfEric Zhao20241117https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-003D/zzhaoe-003D/zzhaoe-003D/on Here I StandmusingsIn a thoroughly engaging biography of Luther, Bainton plants the reformer firmly in his own political and theological landscape: the final decades of the medieval age, and the age of the Renaissance and of nationalism. He traces Luther's thought by way of the man's own writings and those of his allies, his observers, and his enemies. Ample discussion of the personal and theological contemporaries supplements without distracting too much from Luther himself. The picture is complex; the man is variously polemic and deferential, sometimes unreservedly jocular, so much that occasional glimpses at his tenderness are startling. It is one of a titan of church history: a passionate theologian and a pastor, a musician and a prolific scholar, a father; above all, an intensely and painfully devotional Christian.Eric Zhao2024119https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-0027/zzhaoe-0027/zzhaoe-0027/Sardalifiëfiction/bafkrmidxsjsfyvc7kyythh2qyb4uvyfcgnccq3hefkrwqhc6igtltt7skm.pdfEric Zhao20241020https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-002E/zzhaoe-002E/zzhaoe-002E/poorly modernising "The Battle of Brunanburh"musingsSince ceasing to return again and again to Skyrim, I have found that I return again and again to a desire to study Old English, for which I had taken a class a couple of years ago as a sophomore at Michigan. There were five or six of us enrolled,Mostly, from what I recall, seniors in the German department; though this is probably really inaccurate. But the best student seemed to be a Middle-Eastern studies fellow. though on a typical day only three or four might show up to class, which centered mostly around reading and modernising texts in Moore and Knott's The Elements of Old English, 10th ed. There was some discussion of sound changes which I've entirely forgotten. It was sometimes a slog, sometimes great fun, and anyways it has been difficult to keep up since then, however much I would like. In recent weeks I've been slowly working through An Introduction to Old English.The power of the interlibrary loan is not to be understated. It's proven to be, in many ways, substantially more digestible.I could complain much about the textbooks and the other resources, but probably, at the end of the day, I just don't practice it enough. So here's to more practice,And to work these sidenotes to the limit. by glossing and modernising the famous "The Battle of Brunanburh", the only poem I've worked through in its entirety in the past. The text is the edition in the OEPF, edited by Martin Foys. I suppose I can compare with Tennyson's afterwards.Eric Zhao2025111https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-002F/zzhaoe-002F/zzhaoe-002F/a somewhat and poorly glossed "The Battle of Brunanburh"Eric Zhao2025111https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-002G/zzhaoe-002G/zzhaoe-002G/lines 1–5aHer Æþelstan cyning,Her adv. which can mean 'here', but in this case is probably closer to 'in this year'. cyning nom. sg. masc. n. cyning, 'king'.      eorla dryhten,eorla gen. pl. masc. n. eorl, 'earl'. dryhten nom. sg. masc. n. dryhten, 'lord'. beorna beahgifa,beorna gen. pl. masc. n. beorn, 'warrior' (poet.). beahgifa nom. sg. masc. n. bēahgifa, 'ring-giver'; bēah + gifa.      and his broþor eac,his 3 gen. sg. masc. pron. broþor nom. sg. masc. n. brōþor, 'brother'. eac adv. 'also, likewise'. Eadmund æþeling,æþeling nom. sg. masc. n. æþeling, 'noble'; æþel + ing (dim. suf.).      ealdorlangne tirealdorlangne acc. sg. masc. adj. ealdorlang, 'life-long'; ealdor + lang; mod. tir. tir acc. s.g masc. n. tīr, 'glory'. geslogon æt sæccegeslogon 3 pl. pret. ind. str. vi ġeslēan, 'to kill, slaughter'. sæcce dat. sg. fem. n. sæc, 'conflict'.      sweorda ecgumsweorda gen. pl. neut. n. sweord, 'sword'. ecgum ins. pl. fem. n. ecg, 'edge'. ymbe Brunanburh.ymbe adv. 'around'. Brunanburh dat. sg. masc. n. 'Brunanburh'.      Bordweal clufan, ›Eric Zhao20251112025115https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-002H/zzhaoe-002H/zzhaoe-002H/lines 5b–10a‹ ymbe Brunanburh.      Bordweal clufan,Bordweal nom. sg. masc. n. bordweal, 'shield-wall'; bord + weal. clufan ... heowan heaþolindeheowan 3 pl. pret. ind. hēawan, 'to strike, chop'. heaþolinde acc. pl. fem. n. heaþolind, 'linden war-shield'.      hamora lafan,hamora gen. pl. masc. n. hamor, 'hammer'. lafan ins.(?) pl. fem. n. lāf, 'remains, legacy' (poet. usage). hamora lafan refers to swords, which are made by hammers. afaran Eadweardes,afaran 3 pl. pret. ind. str. vi vb. āfaran, 'to depart, march out'. Eadweardes gen. sg. masc. n. Eadweard, 'Edward'; gen. of source(?).      swa him geæþele wæshim 3 dat. pl. masc. pron. geæþele nom.(?) sg. masc. str. adj. geæþele, 'congenial, in accordance with one's nature'. wæs 3 sg. pret. ind. anom. vb. bēon, 'to be'. from cneomægum,cneomægum dat. pl. masc. n. *cnēomǣg, 'relation, kindred'; cnēomǣgas is attested.      þæt hi æt campehi 3 nom. pl. masc. pron. æt prep. 'at'. campe dat. sg. masc. n. camp, 'battle'. oft wiþ laþra gehwænelaþra gen. pl. masc. n. laþ, 'loathsome, hateful'. gehwæne ?, 'each, every'.      land ealgodon,land acc. sg. neut. n. land, 'land'. ealgodon 3 pl. pret. ind. wk. 2 vb. ealgian, 'to defend'. hord and hamas.hord acc. sg. masc. n. hord, 'hoard'. hamas acc. pl. masc. n. hām, 'home'.      Hettend crungun, › Eric Zhao20251112025119https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-002J/zzhaoe-002J/zzhaoe-002J/lines 10b–17a‹ hord and hamas.      Hettend crungun,Hettend nom. pl. masc. (str. nd-stem) n. hettend, 'enemy'. crungun 3 pl. pret. ind. str. iiia vi. cringan, 'fall, yield'. Sceotta leodaSceotta gen. pl. masc. (str. n-stem) n. Sceottas, 'the Scots (the Irish)'; of leoda. leoda gen. pl. masc. n. lēod, 'prince'; of Hettend(?).      and scipflotanscipflotan nom. pl. wk. masc. n. sċipflota, 'sailor'. fæge feollan,fæge nom. pl. masc. str. adj. fǣġe, 'fey, doomed to die'. feollan 3 pl. pret. ind. str. vii vb. feallan, 'to fall'.      feld dennadefeld nom. sg. masc. n. feld, 'field'. dennade 3 sg. pret. ind. wk. 2 vb. dennian, 'to become slippery'. secga swate,secga gen. pl. masc. n. seċġ, 'warrior' (poet. usage). swate dat.(?) sg. masc. swāt, 'blood'.      siðþan sunne upsiðþan conj. 'since'. sunne nom. sg. wk. fem. n. sunne, 'sun'. up adv. 'up'. on morgentid,on prep. w. acc., 'on, during'. morgentid acc. sg. fem. n. morġentīd, 'morning-tide'; morġen + tīd.      mære tungol,mære acc. sg. neut. str. adj. mǣre, 'renowned'; of tungol. tungol acc. sg. neut. n. tungol, 'heavenly body, star'; app. sunne. glad ofer grundas,glad 3 sg. pret. ind. str. i vi. glīdan, 'to glide, slip'. ofer prep. w. acc. indicating motion from above. grundas acc. pl. masc. n. grund, 'ground'.      godes condel beorht,godes gen. sg. masc. n. gōd, 'God'. condel nom. sg. fem. n. condel, 'candel'. beorht nom. sg. fem. str. adj. beorht, 'bright'. eces drihtnes,eces gen. sg. masc. str. adj. ēce, 'eternal, perpetual'. drihtnes gen. sg. masc. n. drihten, 'lord'; of godes.      oð sio æþele gesceaftoð conj. 'until'. sio nom. sg. fem. def. art. æþele nom. sg. fem. wk. adj. æþele, 'noble, eminent'. gesceaft nom. sg. fem. n. gesceaft, 'the creation'. sah to setle.sah 3 sg. pret. ind. str. i vb. sīgan, 'to sink, fall'. setle dat. sg. masc./neut. n. setl, 'seat, residence'.      Þær læg secg mænig › Eric Zhao20251112025120https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-002Q/zzhaoe-002Q/zzhaoe-002Q/lines 17b–20a‹ sah to setle.      Þær læg secg mænigÞær adv. 'there'. læg 3 sg. pret. ind. str. v vi. liċġan, 'to lie'. secg nom. sg. masc. n. seċġ, 'man' (poet.). mænig adj. w. sg. n. 'many'; of secg. garum ageted,garum ins. pl. masc. n. gar, 'spear, arms'. ageted pp. wk. 1 vb. agetan, 'to destroy'.      guma norþernaguma nom. sg. wk. masc. n. guma, 'man'; of secg mænig. norþerna nom. sg. mas. wk. adj. norþerne, 'northern'. ofer scild scoten,ofer prep. w. acc. 'over'. scild acc. sg. masc. n. sċild, 'shield'. scoten pp. str. ii vb. sċēotan, 'to shoot'; of secg mænig, guma.      swilce Scittisc eac,swilce adv. 'as, like'. Scittisc nom. pl. masc. undecl.(?) adj. Scittisc, 'Scottish (Irish)'. eac adv. 'also, too'. werig, wiges sæd.werig nom. sg. masc. str. adj. weriġ, 'weary, tired'. wiges gen. sg. masc. n. wīg, 'war, battle' (poet.). sæd nom. sg. masc. str. adj. sǣd, 'sated, weary'.      Wesseaxe forð › Eric Zhao202511120251202025320https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-002R/zzhaoe-002R/zzhaoe-002R/lines 20b–24a‹ werig, wiges sæd.      Wesseaxe forðWesseaxe dat. sg. masc. n. Wesseaxe, 'Wessex'. forð adv. 'forth, thence'. ondlongne dægondlongne acc. sg. neut. str. adj. ondlong, 'all-along, throughout'. dæg acc. sg. masc. n. dæg, 'day'.      eorodcistumeorodcistum dat. pl. fem. n. ēorodcist, 'company, troop'. on last legdunon prep. w. dat./ins. expressing .... last dat.(?) sg. masc. n. lāst, 'footstep, track'. legdun 3 pl. pret. ind. wk. 1 vb. leċġan, 'to slay'(?).      laþum þeodumlaþum dat. pl. fem. adj. lāþ, 'hateful, evil'. þeodum dat. pl. fem. n. þeōd, 'nation, people'., heowan hereflemanheowan 3 pl. pret. ind. str. vii vb. hēawan, 'to strike, chop'. herefleman acc. pl. masc. n. hereflēma, 'one who flees from battle'.      hindan þearlehindan adv. 'from behind'. þearle adv. 'severely, sorely'. mecum mylenscearpan.mecum ins. pl. masc. n. mēce, 'sword, falchion'. mylenscearpan ins. pl. masc. adj. mylenscearp, 'ground sharp'; str. decl. mylenscearpum in some MS.      Myrce ne wyrndon › Eric Zhao2025111202532020251216https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-002Y/zzhaoe-002Y/zzhaoe-002Y/lines 24b–28a‹ mecum mylenscearpan.      Myrce ne wyrndonMyrce nom. pl. masc. n. Myrce, 'The Mercians'. wynrdon 3 pl. pret. ind. wk. 2 vb. wyrnan, 'to keep from, refuse'; in this case w. gen. of what is prohibited. heardes hondpleganheardes gen. sg. masc. adj. heard, 'hard, harsh'. hondplegan gen. sg. masc. n. honplega, 'hand-play'.      hæleþa nanumhæleþa gen. pl. masc. n. hæleþ, 'man, warrior'. nanum det.(?) nān, 'not one, not any'. þæra þe mid Anlafeþæra gen. pl. masc. pron. Anlafe dat. sg. masc. n. Ānlāf, 'Olaf, king of Dublin'.      ofer æra geblandofer prep. 'over'. æra gen. pl. masc. n. ær, 'ocean'; here, pl. 'waves of the ocean'. gebland dat.(?) sg. neut. n. gebland, 'mingling, commotion'. æra gebland 'the agitation of the sea'. on lides bosmelides gen. sg. neut. n. lid, 'vessel, ship'. bosme dat. sg. masc. n. bōsm, 'breast, bosom'.      land gesohtun,land acc. neut. n. land, 'land'. gesohtun 3 pl. pre. ind. wk. 1 vt. ġesēċan, 'to seek'. fæge to gefeohte.fæge nom. pl. masc. str. adj. fǣġe, 'fey, doomed to die'. gefeohte dat. sg. neut. n. ġefeoht, 'fight, battle'.      Fife lægun › Eric Zhao202511120251216https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-003J/zzhaoe-003J/zzhaoe-003J/lines 28b–32a‹ fæge to gefeohte.      Fife lægunFife nom. pl. num. fīf, 'five'. lægun 3 pl. pret. ind. str. v. vi. liċġan, 'to lie'. on þam campstedeþam dat. sg. masc. det. campstede dat. sg. masc. n. campstede, 'battlefield'.      cyningas giunge,cyningas nom. pl. masc. n. cyning, 'king'. giunge nom. pl. masc. str. adj. ġeong, 'young'. sweordum aswefede,sweordum ins. pl. neut. n. sweord, 'sword'. aswefede pp. wk. 1 vt. āswebban, 'to lull, pacify; to annul, destroy'.      swilce seofene eacswilce adv. swelċe 'also, likewise'. seofene nom. pl. num. seofon, 'seven'. eac adv. 'too'. eorlas Anlafes,eorlas nom. pl. masc. n. eorl, 'nobleman'. Anlafes gen. sg. masc. n. Ānlāf, 'Olaf, king of Dublin'.      unrim heriges,unrim nom. pl. neut. n. unrīm, 'countnless number'; w. gen. heriges gen. sg. masc. n. here, 'army, host'; used of enemies in assocation w. devastation and robbery. flotan and Sceotta.flotan gen.(?) pl. masc. n. flota, 'shipman; ship'. Sceotta gen. pl. masc. n. Scottas, 'the Irish'.      Þær geflemed wearð › Eric Zhao202511120251216https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-003K/zzhaoe-003K/zzhaoe-003K/lines 32b–36b‹ flotan and Sceotta.      Þær geflemed wearðgeflemed pp. wk. 1 vt. ġeflīeman, 'to drive away, put to flight'. wearð 3 pl. pret. ind. str. iii vi. weorþan, 'to be'; forming the passive voice. Norðmanna bregu,Norðmanna gen. pl. masc. n. Norþmann, 'Norseman, Dane'. bregu nom. sg. masc. n. brego, 'prince, lord'.      nede gebeded,nede adv. 'of necessity'. gebeded pp. wk. 1 vt. gebǣdan, 'compelled, urged'. to lides stefnelides gen. sg. neut. n. līd, 'vessel, ship'. stefne dat. sg. masc. n. stefn, 'stem, prow'.      litle weorode;litle ins.(?) sg. str. adj. lȳtel, 'small, little'. weorode ins. sg. neut. n. weorod, 'band, troop'. cread cnear on flot,cread 3 sg. pret. ind. str. iii vt. crēodan, 'to crowd, press, drive'. cnear acc. sg. masc. n. cnear, 'ship, galley (of the Norse)'. flot dat. sg. neut. n. flot, 'water deep enough for a ship; the sea'.      cyning ut gewatcyning nom. sg. masc. n. cyning, 'king'. ut adv. 'out'. gewat 3 sg. pret. ind. str i vi. ġewītan, 'to depart'. on fealene flod,fealene acc. sg. masc. str. adj. fealu, 'yellow, dusky, grey'. flod acc. sg. masc. n. flōd, 'flowing of the tide; deluge'.      feorh generede.feorh acc. pl. neut. n. feorh, 'life (in danger); soul; living being'. generede pp. wk. 1 vt. nerian, 'to save, rescue'. "There was put to flight the lord of the Danes, driven with a little bad by necessity to the prow of the ship; crowding the ship on the sea, the king departed on fallow tides to save his life." Eric Zhao202511120251217https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-003L/zzhaoe-003L/zzhaoe-003L/lines 37a–44aSwilce þær eac se frodaSwilce adv. 'likewise'. þær adv. 'there'. eac adv. 'too'. se nom. sg. masc. art. 'the'. froda nom. sg. masc. wk. adj. 'wise, experienced'.      mid fleame comfleame ins. sg. masc. n. flēam, 'escape, flight'. com 3 sg. pret. ind. str. iv vi. cuman 'to come'. on his cyþþe norð,on prep. 'onto, into'; w. acc. expressing allative. his 3 gen. sg. masc. pron. cyþþe acc. sg. fem. n. cȳþþu, 'native country, home'.      Costontinus,Constontinus nom. sg. masc. n. Constantīnus, 'Constantine II, king of Scotland'. har hildering,har nom. sg. masc. str. adj. hār, 'hoary'. hildering nom. sg. masc. n. hilderinc, 'warrior' (poet.).      hreman ne þorftehreman inf. hrīeman, 'to boast, brag'. þorfte 3 sg. pret. ind. pret-pres. vb. þurfan, 'to need, have good cause to do something'; maybe subj.? mæca gemanan;mæca gen. pl. masc. (str. ja-stem) n. mǣċe, 'sword'. gemanan acc.(?) sg. wk. masc. n. gemana, 'intercourse'.      he wæs his mæga sceard,he 3 nom. sg. masc. pron. wæs 3 sg. pret. ind. anom. vi. wesan, 'to be'. his 3 gen. sg. masc. pron. mæga gen. pl. masc. n. mǣg, 'relative, kinsman'. sceard nom. sg. masc. str. adj. 'notched, chipped, broken'(?); here, 'bereaved'. freonda gefylledfreonda gen. pl. masc. n. frēond, 'friend'. gefylled pp. wk. 1 vi. fiellan, 'to fall'.      on folcstede,on prep. 'at, on'; w. dat. folcstede. folcstede dat. sg. masc. n. folcstede 'battle-place, battlefield'. beslagen æt sæcce,beslagen pp. str. vi vt. beslēan, 'to strike, take away, bereave'. æt prep. 'at'; w. dat. sæcce. sæcce dat. sg. fem. n. sæċċe, 'battle, fighting'.      and his sunu forlethis 3 gen. sg. masc. pron. sunu acc. sg. neut. n. sunu, 'son'. forlet 3 sg. pret. ind. str. vii vt. forlǣtan, 'to abandon, forsake'. on wælstowewælstowe dat. sg. fem. n. wælstōw, 'place of the slain, battlefield'; wæl 'slaughter, the slain' + stōw 'place'.      wundun fergrunden,wundun ins.(?) pl. fem. n. wund 'wound, injury'. fergrunden pp. str. iii vt. forgrindan 'to destroy by crushing, grind'; for- internsifier + grindan. giungne æt guðe.giungne acc. sg. masc. str. adj. giung, 'young'; of sunu. guðe dat. sg. fem. n. guþ, 'war, battle'. "Likewise there also the experienced one came in flight to his native country—Constontinus the hoary warrior. He had no good reason to boast of the meeting of swords; bereaved of his kinsmen, friends fallen on the battlefield, slain in the fighting, in the place of the slain he abandoned his son, with wounds crushed, young in war."      Gelpan ne þorfte › Eric Zhao202511120251219https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-003M/zzhaoe-003M/zzhaoe-003M/lines 44b–52b‹ giungne æt guðe.      Gelpan ne þorfteGelpan inf. str. iii vt. gelpan, 'to glory, boast'; w. gen. þorfte 3 sg. pret. ind. pret-pres. vb. þurfan, 'to need, have good cause to do something'. beorn blandenfeaxbeorn nom. sg. masc. n. beorn, 'man, warrior' (poet.). blandenfeax nom. sg. masc. str. adj. blandenfeax, 'having mixed or grizzly hair'; blanden (pp. of blandan) + feax 'hair'.      bilgeslehtes,bilgeslehtes gen. sg. neut. n. bilgesleht, 'clashing of swords, battle'; bil 'sword' + gesleht 'clashing' from slēan. eald inwidda,eald nom. sg. masc. str. adj. eald, 'old'. inwidda nom. sg. masc. str. adj. inwidda, 'deceit, guile'.      ne Anlaf þy ma;Anlaf nom. sg. masc. n. Ānlāf, 'Olaf, king of Dublin'. þy adv. 'therefore, for this reason'. ma adv. 'more, rather, further'. mid heora herelafumheora 3 gen. pl. masc. pron. herelafum dat. pl. fem. n. herelāf, 'remnant of an army'; here 'host, army' + lāf 'remnant'.      hlehhan ne þorftunhlehhan inf. str. vi vb. hlehhan, 'to laugh'; w. gen. of thing laughed at. þorftun 3 pl. pret. ind. þurfan, 'to need, have good cause to do something'; maybe subj.? þæt heo beaduweorcaheo nom. pl. masc. pron.(?) beaduweorca nom. sg. wk. masc. n. beauduweorca, 'war-worker, soldier'; beadu 'battle, war' + weorc 'work, labor'.      beteran wurdunbeteran betera, 'better'; comp. of gōd. wurdun 3 pl. pret. ind. str. iii vi. weorþan, 'to be'. on campstedecampstede dat. sg. masc. n. campstede, 'battlefield'.      cumbolgehnastes,cumbolgehnastes gen. sg. neut. n. cumbolgehnāst, 'conflict of banners, battle'; cumbol 'ensign, standard, banner' + gehnāst 'conflict'. garmittinge,garmittinge dat. sg. fem. n. gārmitting, 'meeting of spears, battle'; gār 'spear, javelin' + mitting 'meeting'.      gumena gemotes,gumena gen. pl. wk. masc. guma 'man, hero' (poet.). gemotes gen. sg. neut. n. gemōt, 'meeting, moot, coming together'. wæpengewrixles,wæpengewrixles gen. sg. neut. n. wæpengewrixl, 'turning of weapons'; wæpen 'weapon' + gewrixl 'turn, change, vicissitude'.      þæs hi on wælfeldaþæs adv. 'where, in which place'. hi 3 pl. masc. pron. wælfelda gen. pl. masc. n. wælfeld, 'field of slaughter'; wæl 'slaughter, carnage' + feld 'field'. wiþ EadweardesEadweardes gen. sg. masc. n. Eadweard, 'Edward'.      afaran plegodan.afaran. 3 pl. pret. ind. str. vi vi. āfaran, 'to depart, march'. plegodan 3 pl. pret. ind. wk. 2 vb. plegian, 'to contend, fight'. "No cause to boast had the grizzly haired warrior, old and crafty, nor more did Olaf; with the remnant of their army they had no cause to laugh, that they were better on the battlefield of banner-conflict, the meeting of spears and assembly of warriors, the trading of weapons, where against Edward's men they marched and contended."" Eric Zhao202511120251225https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-003N/zzhaoe-003N/zzhaoe-003N/lines 53a–56bGewitan him þa NorþmenGewitan 3 pl. pret. ind. str. i vi. ġewitan, 'to depart'. him 3 dat. sg. neut. pron. þa nom. pl. masc. def. art. Norþmen nom. pl. masc. Norþmann, 'Norseman'.      nægledcnearrum,nægledcnearrum ins. pl. masc. nægledcnear, 'vessel whose sides are nailed together'; nægled pp. wk. 1 vt. næglan 'to nail' + cnear 'ship, vessel'. dreorig daraða laf,dreorig nom. sg. masc. str. adj. drēorig, 'sad, sorrowful, dreary'. daraða gen. pl. masc. daraþ, 'dart, spear, weapon'. laf nom. sg. masc. lāf, 'remnant, remainder'.      on Dinges mereDinges unk. mere dat. sg. masc. mere, 'lake, pool, sea'. ofer deop wæterofer prep. w. acc.(?) 'across'. deop acc. sg. neut. str. adj. deop, 'deep'. wæter acc. sg. neut. wæter, 'water'.      Difelin secan,Difelin acc. sg. masc. Difelin, 'Dublin'. secan inf. wk. 1 vt. seċan, 'to look for, seek'. eft Iraland,eft adv. 'back (of return)'. Iraland dat. sg. masc. Iraland, 'Ireland'.      æwiscmode.æwiscmode nom. pl. masc. str. adj. æwiscmōd, 'shameful, dishonored'; æwisc 'shame, disagrce' + mōd '-minded, -spirited'. "Departed there the Norsemen on nailed vessels, the sorry remnant from the battle, upon Dingesmere, across deep water to seek Dublin, humiliated." Eric Zhao2025111lines 57a–73 Swilce þa gebroþer      begen ætsamne, cyning and æþeling,      cyþþe sohton, Wesseaxena land,      wiges hremige. Letan him behindan      hræw bryttian saluwigpadan,      þone sweartan hræfn, hyrnednebban,      and þane hasewanpadan, earn æftan hwit,      æses brucan, grædigne guðhafoc      and þæt græge deor, wulf on wealde.      Ne wearð wæl mare on þis eiglande      æfer gieta folces gefylled      beforan þissum sweordes ecgum,      þæs þe us secgað bec, ealde uðwitan,      siþþan eastan hider Engle and Seaxe      up becoman, ofer brad brimu      Brytene sohtan, wlance wigsmiþas,      Weala s ofercoman, eorlas arhwate      eard begeatan. Eric Zhao202493https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-0021/zzhaoe-0021/zzhaoe-0021/relistening to the Lord of the RingsmusingsPlenty of folks have a tradition of rereading The Lord of the Rings every year or two—or, even better, with The Hobbit too. (Some people are also constantly rereading The Silmarillion, too, probably.) Doubtless many have watched and rewatched Peter Jackson's film trilogy a number of times. But fewer people, I'd suppose, are aware of the much earlier 1981 BBC radio dramatization.In May of last year, when touring pretty much every single used bookshop in Covent Garden and Soho, I picked up the entire series in cassette tape (in a very nice box) at Marchepane.It's a cozy little shop on Cecil Court with many childrens' books and a very warm fellow. I was also given a copy of the 1992 radio adaptation of Tales from the Perilous Realm to boot.It is, in many, many ways, the definitive adaptation, in the literal sense of the word; one is reminded strongly of Michael Hordern's Gandalf and Peter Woodthorpe's Gollum when watching the much later films. With a gorgeous original soundtrack, the adaptation manages to bring Middle-earth afresh into the new medium (I'm immediately reminded of the very unique sequence for the Battle of the Pelennor Fields) whilst keeping astonishingly true to the original. Unfortunately, there's still no Tom Bombadil.The earlier 1968 radio dramatization of the Hobbit is also delightful, but not as quite as good as this—and indeed a bit jarring at first. But please, if ever you've the chance to listen to either one, you must. The Road goes ever on and on Down from the door where it began. Now far ahead the Road has gone, And you must follow, if you can, Pursuing it with eager ears... Eric Zhao202492https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-0016/zzhaoe-0016/zzhaoe-0016/ペット屋に（２）poem古典に匹敵する我が作品： ペット屋に（２） まだ孵ってない蛙が買えるかな 買えるなら買った蛙が孵るかな 孵るなら孵った蛙を飼えるかな ん？まさかずっと蛙だったかな とにかく帰るわ Eric Zhao2024821https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-000Y/zzhaoe-000Y/zzhaoe-000Y/utterly illegible Han ideographsmusingsI was surprised to find it possible to properly type (though not directly via Rime) and render the character 𰻞 (bíang) when recording a recipe for 𰻞𰻞麵 from my dad, since I was, for whatever reason, under the impression that it wasn't part of Unicode. Apparently, it was added in 2020 in Unicode 13.0 as one of the codepointsPrecisely, U+30EDE. There's also the simplified version, 𰻝, as U+30EDD. in CJK Unified Ideographs Extension G, the first block of the Tertiary Ideographic Plane.This block also includes 𱁬,taito; daito; otodo; U+3106C. an 84-stroke behemoth made by sticking 䨺tai; U+4A3A. Three clouds 雲 together, meaning "cloudy". and 龘.tou; U+9F98. The three dragons 龍 are perhaps meant to resemble, it seems, a dragon flying or climbing. It's a Japanese-coined character, or kokuji,That is, 国字. but its origins are shrouded in some mystery. In the early 1960s, a man showed a namecard with this surname to the staff of a brokerage office... or so it goes according to a 1981 etymological dictionary of surnames. Some scholars think it's an erroneous ghost letter; or 䨺龘, written separately, was perhaps an alias. In any case, it's now the name of a series of ramen shops starting in Chiba.北松戸、千葉県. I think I'd like to go there sometime.It seems like some netizens have borrowed the character into Chinese, developing humorous neologisms like 𱁬𪚥,tài zhé. The latter character apparently means "verbose". meaning something like "excessively complicated (of a Chinese character)". One has to zoom in rather much to make anything of it.In Chinese, there's also 䲜"abundance of fish"; U+4C9C. and 䨻."roar of thunder"; U+4A3B. The Japanese have contrived 𰽔kagami; U+30F54. It's the last one (2607) here. Maybe the folks working on CJK fonts will get to it someday, though I can't imagine that it's very high priority. which seems to me like a bewildering room of many mirrors.Eric Zhao2024815https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-000U/zzhaoe-000U/zzhaoe-000U/Orpheus in Atuanmusings Eric Zhao2024815spoilerwarning The Tombs of Atuan and maybe The Farthest Shore. Having recently read too much about Orpheus, I find myself looking for something resembling an Orphic katabasis in other stories... The Labyrinth in The Tombs of Atuan seems awfully underworld-ish.Ged's to-be-legendary heist is to reclaim that half of Ring of Erreth-Akbe which is kept deep under the Temple of the Nameless Ones on the Kargish isle of Atuan. He succeeds. But arguably, there's something much greater that he reclaims from the dark: a human soul, Tenar's. I don't suppose he expected do so, but I can't help but see some Orpheus-like elements to his descent and return from the darkness.He's no artist of music, but an artist of names, a mage, and indeed perhaps the greatest, at least since Erreth-Akbe. Into the darkness he goes with his instrument of power; he contends with the Nameless Hades therein, his art against their heaving will, that he wards off a great earthquake. The Arha he finds and leads back up (or rather she with her knowledge of the winding tunnels leads him up) is but a mere shadow of who she could be. But he is the successful Orpheus, for together they burst forth into the light of day, and Tenar is, in all ways but that of flesh, reborn.Then one is reminded of the Sir Orfeo, for they fare from that dark Place, climbing forest and peak out of the desert, and return to the isles of the Archipelago. And indeed, after many years, a throne is to be reclaimed (though not quite by Ged).Eric Zhao2024812https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-000N/zzhaoe-000N/zzhaoe-000N/on namesmusingsIn the last couple of days I've been making my way through Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea cycle (A Wizard of Earthsea and The Tombs of Atuan and a bit of The Farthest Shore thus far), and I've been thinking a little bit about names. Of course, none of this is going to be very well-formed, and I'm sure the philosophy of language people will have much aching to be said.In the Archipelago, true magic—the real stuff of changing, not mere trickery and illusions—is all about knowing the true name of something. The true name of an object is its name in the True Speech, and knowledge of it gives the speaker power over it. Though it's not precisely clear how magic works in Earthsea, it points at the reality that names identify, communicate, and reveal the truth of things and that creativity with words can deeply impact our understanding of them, even if, I suppose, no single name can properly encompass the whole essence of its referent.I was reminded during a commute of Ishi in Two Worlds, a biography by Le Guin's mother Theodora Kroeber, which I've been meaning to read for some time. It follows the life of Ishi, the last known member of the indigenous Yahi people in present-day California, who in 1908, at around fifty years of age, emerged for the first time into 20th century American society and was taken in by anthropologists at Berkley. "Ishi" was something of an adopted name given by anthropologist Alfred Kroeber who studied him, meaning man in the now extinct Yana language; in Yahi culture, it seems that one was not to speak his own name until formally introduced by another. I thought this felt something like a true name, but, unlike Ged, it is not even his own to give, and as the last of his people, none are left to name him.To learn of this struck me as tragic—how much more might one know (in a personal way) about "Ishi" through his lost name?—and yet somehow this aspect of Yahi culture also seems to make so much sense: names may reveal the truth of things, but they do not stand alone, existing rather so that we may relate to each other. If each of us lived in isolation, there would, surely, be hardly any need for a personal name.Eric Zhao202489https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-000F/zzhaoe-000F/zzhaoe-000F/on the original OrpheusmusingsEric Zhao202489https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-000W/zzhaoe-000W/zzhaoe-000W/Orpheus as knownThe tale of Orpheus and Eurydice as now popularly known ends in tragedy. The bereaved Orpheus descends into the underworld, harp or lyre in hand; there, he plays music so sweet as to move Charon, and Cerberus, and even Hades, that the king of the underworld grants him to take Eurydice back into the realm of the living, with the condition that he must not look backwards whilst they're still in the nether's darkness. In some versions, as in Virgil's Gregorics (first century BCE), he forgets this charge; approaching the light of the living world, the joy-enraptured Orpheus looks to share his delight with Eurydice—and she's taken away from him. Other accounts, as in Ovid's Metamorphoses X (first century CE), suggest that he's possessed by a fear that the gods have tricked him. Either way, the famous musician fails and returns alone, twice-robbed.Later, it seems that medieval authors began to conflate the character of Orpheus with the figure of Christ, perhaps in a reinterpretation of the katabasis as the Harrowing of Hell. A fourteenth century French author writes of the tale in Ovide Moralisé that "by Orpheus and by his harp we must understand the person of our Lord Jesus Christ... who played his harp so melodiously that he drew from Hell the sainted souls of the Holy Fathers who had descended there because of the sins of Adam and Eve."Friedman 1965, p. 274 We are, as a result, left with works such as the much less well-known Middle English Breton lai "Sir Orfeo", itself perhaps based on French works. But there's a crucial transformation of the core arc known from antiquity: Sir Orfeo succeeds in retrieving his wife Heurodis from the fairy king and reclaims his throne in Winchester. It would seem that Christian influences made the original catastrophe instead eucatastrophic.Yet what if this wasn't a novel alteration, but more like a return to the true original?Eric Zhao202489https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-000V/zzhaoe-000V/zzhaoe-000V/the successful Orpheus?Apparently, plenty of scholars of antiquity have argued that Orpheus originally succeeded in leading Eurydice back to the land of the living, to the extent that John Heath observes in a 1994 essay:p. 163 The nearly universal conclusion of twentieth-century scholarship has been that the earliest and most pervasive pre-Virgilian account of Orpheus' catabasis related his unqualified success: the bard charms the powers of the underworld into releasing his wife, and she returns with him to the land of the living. The more familiar tale of a second loss due to the breaking of a tabu, according to the prevailing opinion, is the invention of the Hellenistic world. Curiously, very little about such a lost comedy can be found by searching online, outside of scholarly sources. Neither Wikipedia nor Encyclopedia Britannica seem to make any mention of the possibility. I'm left wondering why this is so, if indeed that "Orpheus' 'complete victory' has found its way into the mythological handbooks, introductory texts, and commentaries."Heath 1994, p. 163I was introduced to such notions some weeks ago by a paper from Giovanni Costabile, "Orpheus and the Harrowing of Hell in the Tale of Beren and Lúthien",The essay can be found in spring/summer 2024 issue of Mythlore, the peer-reviewed academic journal of the Mythopoeic Society. Most of the articles, as far as I'm aware, are openly available online. which discusses some fascinating connections between the tale of Orpheus's katabasis, Sir Orfeo, Christ, the Harrowing of Hell, and Tolkien's cherished Tale of Beren and Lúthien, and wherein he summarizes this argument that the earliest clear account of the Orpheus and Eurydice had a happy ending.Such a debate exists, of course, because no manuscripts of such an original are left to us; what we are left consists of a number of allusions by pre-Virgillian authors which, the critics claim, strongly suggest Orpheus's success. I'll summarize a few of the references here; folks interested in the rest can refer to the full paper, Heath's article, and this thesis by Kyle Merkley.It seems that the earliest allusion cited by scholars is from Alcestis, a fifth century BCE tragedy by Euripides. In Admetus's lamentation over Alcestis, who willing sacrificed her life for him, he bemoans:Heath 1994, p. 169 If I had the words and music of Orpheus to charm Persephone or her spouse with my songs and take you from Hades, I would have made the descent. Then neither Pluto's hound nor soul—conduction Charon at his oar would have stopped me until I set you alive once more in the light of day. The argument is thus: these lines wouldn't make much sense—be absurd, even—if Orpheus was unsuccessful. Next, in the fourth century, Plato writing as Phaedrus in Symposium, declares:p. 178 But Orpheus, the son of Oeagrus, the gods sent back from Hades a failure. They showed him a mere phantom of the wife for whom he made the journey. They did not given him the real thing because he seemed to be a coward, seeing that he was a harp-player and did not have the heart to die for his love as Alcestis had. Instead he schemed to enter Hades while still alive, and so for this reason the gods punished him and arranged for his death to come at the hands of women. Phaedrus praises Alcestis's self-sacrifice in love, so powerful is true love that leads to noble deeds. Orpheus, in contrast, is punished by the gods for his weakness, his failure to demonstrate true love: instead of dying for his wife, he tries to retrieve her from the underworld whilst still alive; in response, the gods supply with him with a mere ghost. But critics assert that nevertheless Orpheus is clearly portrayed as succeeding and that Plato, in order to serve his narrative, is merely warping the returned Eurydice into a ghost.Also from the fourth century, the elegiac Hermesianax writes that "with song he won the underworld’s great lords, for Agriope to regain the gentle breath of life."Lightfoot 2010, p. 165 Here, Orpheus's wife is named for the first time, not as Eurydice but as Agriope. But anyway, scholars argue that this clearly suggests that the musician was successful. The evidence mounts: a number of ancient sources (the aforementioned, and Busiris, Lament for Bion, and Diodorus) allude to an Orpheus who seems to achieved the light of day with the resurrected Eurydice.Not everyone agrees. Heath's 1994 article, indeed, seeks to refute each of the cited examples and asserts that there is no unequivocal evidence for a pre-Christian successful Orpheus. He argues that the supporters of the happy ending have elected for overly optimistic interpretations of each reference and taken them out of context. In his lament, for example, Admetus refers to Orpheus's enchanting of Hades—and all agree that this was an unequivocal success, for Hades returned Eurydice to him in the underworld—but not that he actually brought her out. Furthermore, in the midst of all the hysterical and wildly inappropriate things pronounced by Admetus in this lament,He goes on, indeed, to promise to hate his parents who did not die for him and to commission a statue of Alcestis which he will embrace in their marriage bed. one can only take his statements in irony. It makes more sense to understand his allusion to Orpheus as the utterings of a self-absorbed man caught up in his own grief; he wishes he had Orpheus's powers, but that the legendary bard in fact failed is completely lost on him—but not on the audience. And in the context of the entire play, Heath argues that "it is [Orpheus's] traditional inefficacy that fits closely with the major themes."p. 178The opposition to the interpretation of Phaedrus's statements is similar: indeed the gods presented Orpheus with his wife in the underworld, but nothing is said about a successful return. And if Orpheus did succeed, wouldn't this subvert Phaedrus's point, which anyway is mainly about the gods' view of love and virtue? And that in Hermesianax Agriope regained life is hardly under dispute, for all agree that she was alive when returned to Orpheus in the underworld; whether or not she made it out is not mentioned. And Leontion, in which the reference is found, is altogether about tragic loves, about the victims of overwhelming passion.All of this is reinforced, Heath argues, by the fact that there's much ancient pottery and art suggesting a link between Orpheus's romance woes and his death by a group of women. But he is never depicted reunited with the resurrected Eurydice in the world of the living.Merkley pushes back in his 2016 thesis on the Gregorics.Costabile, indeed, regards him as having decidedly "disproved" Heath in this thesis (p. 74). He argues that Admetus's allusion to the Orpheus's musical prowess can be understood ironically even if it is to a successful Orpheus; for example, he swears off the lyre and music entirely just a few lines prior. He also cites the fourth century BCE Palaephatus, who makes a seemingly unquestionable parallel between Hercules's twelfth labor and Orpheus's katabasis:p. 17 As Herakles after going down into Hades led up Cerberus, so likewise Orpheus led up his wife. None would doubt that Hercules suceeded in leading up the vicious dog. Thus, Merkley suggests, the other references are enormously bolstered; while they don't go so far as to make explicit Orpheus's success, surely they imply it given this explicit parallel. He goes on to suggest that perhaps the original contained only the first half of the quest: Orpheus receives Eurydice from the lords of the underworld, and the tale ends, implying some success. Various authors were then able to add their own addendum, as perhaps Plato did. He goes on to posit that the failure ending was invented not by Virgil but some earlier first century author.From my limited and very amateur reading, I supposeObviously, I'm not at all an expert on the classics; if someone who actually knows what they're talking about has thoughts or corrections, I'd be happy to hear them. that, even now, there remains no consensus with regards to this century-long debate—though "on all sides, various scholars claim the weight of consensus for their position."p. 1Eric Zhao202487https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-000C/zzhaoe-000C/zzhaoe-000C/「舟を編む」musings 先月に大学の友達を訪問し、誕生日プレゼントとしてもらった三浦しをんによる、2012年本屋大賞受賞作である「舟を編む」は、一週間かけて読み終わった。長年にわたる情熱が切れず、言葉の海を渡る舟になれるように「大渡海」の完成に向ける馬締たち。短かったわりに、作業の大規模さを感じられ、不器用で愛おしいそれぞれの登場人物を知れ、言葉への敬意、言葉の力、大切さを改めて覚えさせていただいた作品だった。 携帯電話の時代だというのに、辞書の編纂作業には、見出し語の重複や漏れがないか、用例採集カードや山積みの校正刷りをすべて手で確認する。編集部の部屋にコンピューターがあるみたいが、肝心な仕事には関わっていなさそう。今ならどうだろう。よくデーターベース化されたら、「玄武書房地獄の神保町合宿」は一ヶ月間を費やすまでもなく、起こるさえもなかったに思える。しかし、それで編集作業が楽になるどころか、言葉へのより鋭いセンス、愛情が求められるものだろう。これから、オックスフォード英語辞典や広辞苑を引くたびに、無数の辞書編集者へ感謝を覚えるべき。 これで翻訳版は気になる。「あがる」と「のぼる」の微妙な違いや「への人」の問い合わせなどは、いったいどうやって訳されているかな、と思っていた。英語の翻訳版が大いに高評価を受けているらしく、よく工夫したにちがいない。ネットで購入しようかと思うほどでもあるが、積読が続いている今の状態で良心の呵責に耐えかねる。 Eric Zhao2024515https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-000P/zzhaoe-000P/zzhaoe-000P/The Mountains at the Edge of the Worldfiction/bafkrmie7cd2qyjtbqtvljm47jv52irclowevug46a2mg2rswmtpmstki4u.pdfThat I had read much Lord Dunsany prior the writing is evident enough.Eric Zhao202441https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-000E/zzhaoe-000E/zzhaoe-000E/on The Worm OuroborosmusingsThe language is delightful, but one can't help but agree with Tolkien's assessment that what underlies the entire saga is "an evil and indeed silly 'philosophy'" and the ending has one wondering indeed if Eddison admired "arrogance and cruelty."Letter 199Eric Zhao202416https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-000K/zzhaoe-000K/zzhaoe-000K/Wrathpoem Upon God my Wrath was wholly bent A fury that from Eden high He had Men cast and took undue what was Our Own, yet mere Knowing we had durst. 'Twas Doom with which He shackled us, The Doom of men, the Doom of death Whilst sits He on a See Above And beholds us in our withering. Of Gift would those in folly speak Their Doom, in joy tholing their fetters. Sought I the means to quicken anew, To rout this curse by might and main To shape the Earth in images fresh. So far I went to lonesome face And deep to forge new whispers true, The lore to-day and Word to come. By craft arisen to meet His Face— To pluck my Own Fate from Despot fist! A Wrastle for ages untold, sinew Upon sinew, and grasped I the winning At hand, and lo! How grand and vast It was not, but horrid indeed, all The Same, for yet I was, and Falling To grey below and dashed upon the Weight Of Doom, His now lifted, but all my Own. For seen I had death under Conquest, But there is none at all over Death. Eric Zhao2023815https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-003F/zzhaoe-003F/zzhaoe-003F/on The Vikings: A Very Short IntroductionmusingsI suppose it's inevitable that a series like the Very Short Introductions should be rather hit-or-miss. Coming from Cunliffe's introduction to the Celts, which I found to be very well-written, this volume on the Vikings was more difficult to get through. No doubt Richards possess a great amount of knowledge about the subject, but he's perhaps not the right person to distill it into a short 140 page volume for beginners.Agreeing with some other folks, it read much more like a survey of archaeological finds relating to the Vikings—Richards goes on for pages about different excavations and the objects found within them. Yet in most cases one doesn't really come to understand which of those objects are significant and indicate a Scandinavian presence in that area, and what kind of continuity exists between Scandinavian expansion across different areas. There's a noticeable lack of the kind of overarching discussion I enjoyed in The Celts: Richards occasionally makes the scant effort to summarize the finds, but these bits come off as half-effort transitions to the next chapters more than anything else. The result is that one doesn't get much of a sense of who the Vikings were or in what their daily lives consisted, only with what they might have been buried. Nor, though he offhandedly mentions them a few times, does one come to understand how reality relates to the Scandinavian sagas.The final two chapters were the strongest, I felt, in that I received something of an overall picture of the Greenland and North American colonies, and the discussion on how Viking identity has been altered and used in more recent times is exceptionally interesting.As usual, the list of further readings is well appreciated—hopefully those may lead to some more focused introductions.Eric Zhao2023420https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-0017/zzhaoe-0017/zzhaoe-0017/川柳集poemEric Zhao2023420https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-0018/zzhaoe-0018/zzhaoe-0018/poem ご無沙汰し 申し訳ない 誰だっけ Eric Zhao2023420https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-0019/zzhaoe-0019/zzhaoe-0019/poem 古池や 我ら飛び込む 胴震い Eric Zhao2023420https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-0020/zzhaoe-0020/zzhaoe-0020/poem 痩せ土に 案山子同士の 無駄話 Eric Zhao2023415https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-000O/zzhaoe-000O/zzhaoe-000O/The Butlerfiction/bafkrmiczlegkcpkbmnwr7fpdf43ql5pp7hhbckuimxhdoyejhvcxy7l3me.pdfThe mind is a lawless realm.Eric Zhao2023316https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-0015/zzhaoe-0015/zzhaoe-0015/Otter Gets the Mailfiction/bafkrmia4v5matrbp2kg2tvonxycfityhlzd5vxgdkirro5d53xm2ku2uba.pdfEric Zhao2023215https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-000L/zzhaoe-000L/zzhaoe-000L/Sorrowpoem What is life if not but sorrow? Wary now — I speak not merely moment's gloom, despair all hollow. Nay, only how we wear so dearly keen the present's fleeting passage. What happiness does linger through? But dare I say — do not outrage! — that better they had gone as due, for far the road does whistful wend, with sight ineffable at each bend. Eric Zhao2023215https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-000I/zzhaoe-000I/zzhaoe-000I/The Wise One of the Mudpoem What little knew those men in dark atread upon that grove bespoke. They hearkened not the eldest lark yet sentinel for broken yoke: incarnate fen, though incorporeal, soft the firm made stifling mire writhing drew a hymn primordial groaning past in willow shire. Eric Zhao202321https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-000M/zzhaoe-000M/zzhaoe-000M/The Ettin's Lamentpoem To him alone who      far now across wild old weald      worn wetland ways beholds it broken:      bold burgs once bright, fortune of fathers      fey foe full fettered, wondrous wallstone      wyrd's wrath wasted, comes often on mind      Maker's fell mercy, but seldom does see      a rainfall serene the cries of hunger and green. Where now the heath?      Where now the hinter? Where now home and      hymnal of hope? Long have I lived      in lands lean and malign, cold and cruel coil      to quickness confine; not apple nor plum,      but poor province's pity, be broken for me,      nor brother beside so long since seen      by stock or by stone: how may we ettins atone? Men's meeting I mourn,      malevolent make who rifle remorseless;      how dearly I rue: what little we learned      of tranquil and list and stations so soft      of serenity too? Linden hair hewn,      the leavings of hammer, deep vein debased,      heaven defiled that sweat yet sweeps      swarthy to swim whilst silver and gold fall dim. Wherefore this scourge      of sinew and spite? Their breast bright burns      as not basking sun nor lasting light      but lively coal: straight fleeting spark      as measures size; yet tears of sky      call toil and tide, speak tremors far      wide and side; so befled the flood      or final to fall— heard not thy word nor law. Yet wish the wretched      to hearken revealed, as bird and bee bid      for honey love bed: wilt not thou plant      but thicket for thrush, or condemned ere      to exile on earth, forsaken to fire      of unforeseen fury? Alas, too late      for lore learned at roun, for worlds      at wight's will wind not, nor fate be one to bind. Eric Zhao2022121https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-000G/zzhaoe-000G/zzhaoe-000G/on bealuwara weorcmusingsIn lines 78-80a of the "Dream of the Rood": Nu ðu miht gehyran, hæleð min se leofa, þæt ic bealuwara weorc gebiden hæbbe, sarra sorga. Roughly modernised, the Cross speaks: Now you may hear, my dear warrior, that I have endured the works of wicked men, grevious sorrows. Here, the neuter acc. weorc is roughly Mdn.E. "work", and bealuwaraThis is perhaps the pl. gen. of an unrecorded *bealuware, compounding bealu ("baleful", "wicked") and ware ("inhabitant"). has been translated variously as "miscreants", "wicked men". Bosworth Toller's gives "baleful inhabitants", "criminals". But apparently this bit has caused philologists some trouble.Britton 1967.As noted by Christopher Tolkien,The Shaping of Middle-earth, p. 209. one can compare also "Balrog", which in Sindarin comes from BAL ("power") + raug/rog ("demon") but also seems to echo bealu-wearg ("outlaw", "wolf") or bealu-broga ("monster", "terror"). https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-002Z/zzhaoe-002Z/zzhaoe-002Z/miscellanyRobert Jastrow1978https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-003E/zzhaoe-003E/zzhaoe-003E/Jastrow on scientific cosmogonyquoteGod and the AstronomersDeny the virgin birth but not the virgin birth of the universe:God and the Astronomers, p. 116.At this moment it seems as though science will never be able to raise the curtain on the mystery of creation. For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.Fyodor Dostoyevsky1867https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-0030/zzhaoe-0030/zzhaoe-0030/Dostoyevsky describes the PhDquoteCrime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoyevsky1867spoilerwarningCrime and Punishment. In chapter ii of the epilogue: Vague and objectless anxiety in the present, and in the future a continual sacrifice leading to nothing—that was all that lay before him. And what comfort was it to him that at the end of eight years he would only be thirty‐two and able to begin a new life! What had he to live for? What had he to look forward to? Why should he strive? To live in order to exist? Why, he had been ready a thousand times before to give up existence for the sake of an idea, for a hope, even for a fancy. Mere existence had always been too little for him; he had always wanted more. Perhaps it was just because of the strength of his desires that he had thought himself a man to whom more was permissible than to others. John Milton1667https://mustardfox.org/zzhaoe-003G/zzhaoe-003G/zzhaoe-003G/Milton's advice for those engaging in poetryquoteParadise LostThe great Poem is prefaced with a diatribe against Rime:The measure is English Heroic Verse, without Rime, as that of Homer in Greek, and of Virgil in Latin; Rime being no necessary Adjunct or true Ornament of Poem or good Verse, in longer Works especially, but the Invention of a barbarous Age, to set off wretched matter and lame Meeter; grac't indeed since by theuse of some famous modern Poets, carried away by Custom, but much to thir own vexation, hindrance, and constraint, to express many things otherwise, and for the most part worse than else they would have exprest them. Not without cause, therefore some both Italian and Spanish Poets of prime note, have rejected Rime both in longer and shorter Works, as have also, long since our best English Tragedies, as a thing of it self, to all judicious ears, triveal and of no true musical delight; which consists only in apt Numbers, fit quantity of Syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one verse into another, not in the jingling sound of like endings, a fault avoyded by the learned Ancients both in Poetry and all good Oratory. This neglect then of Rime so little is to be taken for a defect, though it may seem so perhaps to vulgar Readers, that it rather is to be esteem'd an example set, the first in English, of ancient liberty recover'd to Heroic Poem from the troublesom and modern bondage of Rimeing. References Context Backlinks Related Contributions