And then the demons attacked...

One said: "You're wasting your time. It is going to take too long to work through this text. It is foolhardy to embark on a translation when somebody else might be doing it."

Another said: "Whatever you do with this text, it will not be relevant enough. It is certainly not worth spending so much time on. You are not asking a big question, just doing a study of a single text that nobody read(s). Studying this work is not like an analysis of Chaucer. The text is not a part of our larger culture, just an oddity or example."

Another said: "Somebody else could do it better. Saiani already has, it’s just in Italian. You probably can't even do it, your Latin isn't good enough to deal with John's technical vocabulary, never mind his poetry."

The first one said: "You will never finish. There's no way you are going to make any headway on this project working only two hours a day every other day. Somebody else is certain to finish this before you do."

And so the battle begins.

Comments

  1. Ray GirvanFebruary 15, 2011 at 8:03 AM

    That's all horribly familiar. I'm maybe two-thirds though a biography of Maxwell Gray, and I'm regularly despondent about the schedule (having to fit it in between paying work) - and I'm also regularly panicking that someone else is working on it (someone with better research facilities and/or luck who's been able to find some vast cache of the so-far-very-thin primary material).

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  2. Fencing BearFebruary 15, 2011 at 9:49 AM

    Courage! I don't understand entirely why these demons attack, but I do know that they're liars. It is interesting how strong they are still, as if they just keep getting stronger the more one writes. I used to have a sign up in my office by my desk that said something to the effect of "The demons are only as strong as they are because you are."

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