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Article: “Silent Night” Turns 200: Non-Violent English-Language Translation/Adaptation Now Available

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“Silent Night” Turns 200: Non-Violent English-Language Translation/Adaptation Now Available article published

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“Silent Night” Turns 200: Non-Violent English-Language Translation/Adaptation Now Available

The famous Christmas hymn “Silent Night” (“Stille Nacht”) was first performed on the night of Dec 24-25, 1818.   Joseph Mohr wrote the lyrics in 1816, and Franz Gruber set them to music in 1818 for the Christmas Mass of Oberndorf bei Salzburg, Austria.  This song has endured ever since that time as one of the most universally recognized Christmas carols and hymns.  “Silent Night” is one of the songs that was sung by opposing forces during the Christmas truce of 1914. This hymn has been declared a UNESCO cultural heritage piece and is one of the most highly recorded songs of all times.

Modern Christmas celebrants in general as well as vegan Christians who embrace non-violence in particular, however, reject a portion of the original text that includes a tacit recognition of animal exploitation, enslavement, and slaughter, namely, the phrase that includes a reference to “shepherds.” In order to bring the text into line with the spirit of kindness universally associated with the Christmas holiday and with the non-violence values particularly associated with original Christian teachings, a new English translation/adaptation—a “veganized” adaptation—is provided below.

This translation/adaptation is identical to the pre-existing English translation (mainly by John Young) except that the clause “Shepherds quake” has been replaced with “Stars awake.”  This replacement has the virtue of (i) eliminating the animal-abuse text while (ii) retaining the original meter and “-ake” sound of the well-known English-language translation and (iii) also tying into the rest of the second verse more effectively, since the remainder of this verse pertains to sky-related concepts or symbols (e.g., “heaven” and “heavenly”).  Retaining the poetics of a line is an essential task of veganizing a classic work.

Please feel free to use this text henceforth in your Christmas celebrations!

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Silent Night

Lyrics: Joseph Mohr; Music: Franz Gruber; English translation:  John Yong; English adaptation: S. E. Harrison

1. Silent night, holy night,
all is calm, all is bright
round yon virgin
mother and child.
Holy infant, so tender and mild,
sleep in heavenly peace,
sleep in heavenly peace.

2. Silent night, holy night,
stars awake at the sight;
glories stream from heaven afar,
heavenly hosts sing Alleluia!
Christ the Savior is born,
Christ the Savior is born!

3. Silent night, holy night,
Son of God, love’s pure light;
radiant beams from thy holy face
with the dawn of redeeming grace,
Jesus, Lord, at thy birth,
Jesus, Lord, at thy birth.

4. Silent night, holy night,
wondrous star, lend thy light;
with the angels let us sing,
Alleluia to our King;
Christ the Savior is born,
Christ the Savior is born!

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Article: “‘Solitary as an oyster’ and other animal comparisons or expressions”

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“‘Solitary as an oyster’ and other animal comparisons or expressions” article published

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“Solitary as an oyster” and other animal comparisons or expressions

In the process of veganizing Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, numerous expressions that refer to animals presented themselves as items to consider.  For instance, in Stave 1,  the author compares Ebenezer Scrooge to an oyster, saying that Scrooge was “solitary as an oyster.”  Later in that chapter, Dickens uses the expression “dog-days” for the hot time of late summer. Another example comes from Fred’s Christmas party, in which Scrooge is implicitly compared to a “bear.”

Veganizing principle:  retaining animal comparisons and idioms that have no exploitative or speciesist meaning

Expressions that merely include a reference to an animal are not necessarily exploitative or non-vegan.  Indeed, an entire story could be written about an animal, of course, without having any negative intent toward or associations with that animal. Such benign expressions can be left intact.  And under the minimally invasive principle for veganizing a classic work of literature, such expressions should be left intact, since they represent the original author’s words and embody that author’s creative approach.  In short, when no clear and convincing need for editing a passage appears, the original text controls.

Thus, expressions such as “solitary as an oyster” (which expression, for example, implies nothing negative about oysters) and “dog-days” (an expression that apparently originated as a reference to the star Sirius, which was the chief star in a constellation said to look like a dog) have been left untouched in A Vegan Christmas Carol.  Even the comparison of Scrooge to a bear—presumably because of Scrooge’s grumpiness or ferocity—is not necessarily negative: bears can indeed be fierce, smart, and defensive fighters, and there’s nothing inherently non-vegan, demeaning, or otherwise speciesist about acknowledging these possible traits of a bear.  Accordingly, that comparison was also left intact as well.

 

Article: “Ebenezer Scrooge: Revealing Quotes—’Decrease the Surplus Population’”

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“Ebenezer Scrooge: Revealing Quotes—’Decrease the Surplus Population’” article published

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Scrooge Quotes

Ebenezer Scrooge:  Revealing Quotes—“Decrease the Surplus Population”

In the beginning stave of A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens reveals much about the inner workings of Ebenezer Scrooge‘s mind through Scrooge’s verbal expressions.  Here are some examples.

“If they would rather die… they had better do it and decrease the surplus population.”

This statement by Scrooge is in response to the gentlemen who, in Stave 1, enter the “Scrooge & Marley” office and ask for holiday donations.  One of the gentlemen says that many of the poor “would rather die” than go to the “prisons” and “workhouses” that Scrooge has previously suggested as a suitable place to house and care for the poor.

The statement is very effective at introducing us to the landscape of Scrooge’s mind.  He has already countered the gentlemen’s request for money by pointing to the fact that he pays taxes to fund certain institutions.  He then counters their attempt to, indirectly, call upon his pity.  Rather than say something like, “Oh, I didn’t know the prisons and workhouses were that bad,” thereby getting sucked into their pity trap, Scrooge counters again by upping raising the stakes per the above quotation, which indicates clearly that his pity is not available as a point of leverage for would-be fundraisers.

The entire exchange that culminates in this statement shows that Scrooge is very perceptive; he’s not oblivious to human need, cries for pity, and the plight of the poor.  Nor is he oblivious to the verbal tactics with which others attempt to manipulate him.  Nor is he too slow-witted to recognize and counter these attempted manipulations in the very moment in which they are happening.  He is, in short, very perceptive on multiple levels.

Meanwhile, the mathematical and financial relationships realities of the situation are very present and apparent to him.  He views society in terms of the money, math, and numbers. For instance, he’s readily aware of the fact that he is already paying to support certain public institutions. He recognizes, in a Mathusian way, that the resources that he and others pay into the system are not sufficient relative to the existing population.  He, at least ostensibly, views those who are outside of the reach of existing resources as “surplus.”  The fact that he chooses such a dehumanizing word shows that the numbers-based approach is both readily available to his standard way of thinking and also readily available to establish his negotiating position:  pity-based arguments will carry no wait with him.

This interchange, comprising just a few lines that pay off in the multi-layered response quoted above, thus reveals a great deal about Ebenezer Scrooge in a very short span.  It is but one of many examples of Charles Dickens‘ mastery.

Article: “Veganizing Process, #3: ‘Coach-and-six’ and horse-drawn carriages”

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“Veganizing Process, #3: “Coach-and-six” and horse-drawn carriages” article published

Veganizing Process, #3: “Coach-and-six” and horse-drawn carriages

By the time Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol (1843), massive social and economic changes wrought by steam power were well underway. At the same time, however, automated power, such as steam-powered trains and boats, coexisted alongside animal-exploitation-based forms of transportation that were still very much in use, such as animal-powered vehicles. A term we use today to describe the power produced by a gas-powered automobile engine—“horsepower”—reflects the historical reality that, for thousands of years, animals were used as the primary means of land transportation for humans (other than humans simply walking under their own power!).

Horse-drawn carriages, of course, are a classic example of animal exploitation, abuse, and cruelty. Horses are made to suffer all manner of hardship through their training and subsequent life of labor as pulling slaves. Under the basic reasons for veganizing a work, just as in the example of horse-racing, passages including animal-drawn vehicles should, therefore, be edited to eliminate the exploitative content.

“Coach-and-six” description of Jabob Marley’s staircase

Horse-drawn vehicles make some appearances in A Christmas Carol. One of those is in a comparison that occurs early in Stave 2. Here’s the passage in the original form:

You may talk vaguely about driving a coach-and-six up a good old flight of stairs, or through a bad young Act of Parliament; but I mean to say you might have got a hearse up that staircase, and taken it broadwise, with the splinter-bar towards the wall and the door towards the balustrades: and done it easy. There was plenty of width for that, and room to spare; which is perhaps the reason why Scrooge thought he saw a locomotive hearse going on before him in the gloom.

This passage, complete with signature Dickensian colloquial embellishment, is intended to show that the staircase in Marley’s house is wide. The “coach-and-six” phrase refers to a horse-drawn carriage (the “coach”) and the horses  forced to pull it (i.e., six horses; the phrase “coach-and-six” would indicate four horses). Use of an animal-exploitation based comparison is unnecessary, of course, to demonstrate that Marley’s staircase is wide; thus, a world of possible veganizing editorial choices are available here.

Veganizing with “steam engine”

Under the minimally invasive principle, ideally we would excise the portion of the passage as cleanly as possible and replace it with content that serves the intended function and fits the context. Thus, just as steam power and other forms of machine-generated power were in the process of replacing animal exploitation, replacement of this reference with a machine-produced power reference makes sense.

Meanwhile, Dickens himself uses the word “locomotive” later in the same paragraph, a reference that, while not inherently referring specifically to steam power, would have likely evoked steam-powered “locomotives” for many readers and listeners who had been exposed to the train engines that had, by 1843, come into widespread use. This “locomotive” reference presents a fortuitous opportunity to tie into the rest of the paragraph in accordance with the serendipity principle for veganizing a work.  Thus,  in this portion of the text of A Vegan Christmas Carol, the “coach-and-six” phrase has been veganized by way of replacement with the phrase “steam engine” such that the passage now reads:

You may talk vaguely about driving a steam engine up a good old flight of stairs. . . .

Time-and-place compatibility, and context-and-author awareness

This case serves to demonstrate another principle to retain when veganizing a classic text: that of not introducing anachronisms. We would not want to introduce a reference to, say, gasoline-powered automobiles into a Dickens work, since these vehicles were yet to come. In the present case, since steam engines of various sorts were already in widespread use at the time and location in which A Christmas Carol is set—Dickens himself had traveled to the U.S. in 1842 by way of a steam-powered boat—, such a replacement is a time-and-place-compatible substitute for the original phrase. Moreover, vehicles driven by a steam engine clearly appear in other portions of Dickens work, such that the veganizing choice made here embodies an awareness of the context and author of the original work.

Article: “‘More of gravy than of grave’: notes on the veganizing process, part 2”

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“‘More of gravy than of grave’: notes on the veganizing process, part 2” article published_____

“More of gravy than of grave”: notes on the veganizing process, part 2

Virtually every page—indeed, virtually every paragraph—of Charles Dickens’ 1843 novella A Christmas Carol includes some salient moment.   The work is so imaginative, so densely filled with action and meaning, and so widely known and beloved that almost every one of these salient moments is someone’s “favorite part.”  Many people will recognize such a moment, perhaps even be eagerly anticipating it.  When that passage arrives, readers and listeners may be disappointed if any heavy-handed meddling has been done.  Thus, when veganizing such a salient passage, the light touch of a “minimally invasive” approach is particularly necessary.

“More of gravy than of grave about you”

Ebenezer Scrooge’s quip, in Stave 1, about there being “more gravy than grave” in Jacob Marley’s ghost is one such salient moment.  Here, Scrooge is trying to argue with Marley’s ghost, seeking to establish the point that Marley’s ghost is actually just a figment of Scrooge’s imagination. Scrooge’s theory is that Marley’s ghostly visitation is but a hallucination, one that is likely to have been caused by some malfunction in Scrooge’s senses, perhaps the result of Scrooge’s stomach having been upset by something that he ate. Scrooge summarizes this argument in the final quip, which reads, in relevant part:

“There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!”

The line is brilliant for several reasons:  alliteration and internal rhyme; apt summation of the argument being made; revelation of some of the internal workings of Scrooge’s mind.  Changing but a single letter—the ending “-y” to “-e”—to achieve such a stroke is a fair instance of poetics.

Need to veganize

Generally speaking, a principle to which the Veganized Classics Series adheres is that, if a word has a vegan meaning and a non-vegan meaning that is plausible in the context of the original work, that word can remain unaltered. While vegan gravy does exist today, the reality is that “gravy” in its origin and in the time and place in which A Christmas Carol is set was made from and defined in terms of the juices of a dead body of an animal.  A vegan gravy-like item would have been called something like a “sauce” in Scrooge’s day, such as the “apple-sauce” that is expressly mentioned later in the book.

Thus, the choice, while perhaps not absolutely necessary, was made to veganize this word in the making of A Vegan Christmas Carol.

“Gravy” to “grain”

The challenge in veganizing a passage with this level of artistry and memorability is to retain the essential meaning while also preserving its beautiful form.

Fortunately, the English language comprises a word for a plant-based item that works very well, both to retain the poetics of the line and the role that the line serves in the argument Scrooge is making: the word “grain.”

Originally, the poetics include recurrence of four identical letters:  gravy and grave.  The veganized form gets very close:  grain and grave.

Moreover, the meter is slightly improved:  “gravy than of grave about you” has three essentially unaccented syllables in a row—not a strong form, and one that is not used elsewhere in the sentence.  But “grain than of grave about you” sets up a very pleasurable and catchy meter:  / u u / u u /.

Editorial opportunism: capitalizing on serendipity

This instance exemplifies the sort of happy accident for which one should be on the lookout when veganizing a work.  It’s editorial opportunism:  if the language happens to present an opportunity to retain both the literary substance and the poetic form of a line, we should be ready to take full advantage of that opportunity. Such a happy accident allows the line to be read or heard by someone who already knows and loves the line without missing anything—or perhaps without even noticing that the line has been veganized.

This case can be used as another touchstone, a prime example of the type of serendipity we’re looking for when we are trying to veganize a passage, particularly one that is very well-known and well-written and, therefore, needs to be handled with delicate care.

Article: “Part 1: Veganizing process for A Vegan Christmas Carol”

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“Part 1: Veganizing process for A Vegan Christmas Carol” article published

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Part 1: Veganizing Process for “A Vegan Christmas Carol”

A Vegan Christmas Carol:  Veganization Note #1

Some editorial and re-authoring choices to be made in the veganizing process are pretty straightforward.  In this series pertaining to A Vegan Christmas Carol, beginning with an example of this straightforward editing / re-authoring type makes sense, as it can later serve as a touchstone when facing more difficult choices.

“… panting like race-horses….”

The original text of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol includes the following passage, which refers to Scrooge and his workmate, Dick Wilkins, who are busily preparing their workplace for Fezziwig’s big Christmas party:

You wouldn’t believe how those two fellows [Ebenezer Scrooge and Dick Wilkins] went at it!  They charged into the street with the shutters—one, two, three—had ’em up in their places—four, five, six—barred ’em and pinned ’em—seven, eight, nine—and came back before you could have got to twelve, panting like race-horses.

Clearly, the reference to racehorses will not survive the veganizing process:  the so-called “sport” of horse-racing is violent, cruel, and often fatal for the horses involved.

Chosen method for editing / re-authoring the passage

At this point, the editor can either (i) delete the reference to horses and horse-racing altogether, thus “abridging” the underlying work to a small degree, or (ii) replace it with a suitable substitute of similar meaning, content, style, length, and so on.  In either case, we would want to avoid excising any more material than necessary.  In A Vegan Christmas Carol, the latter choice was made, such that the last phrase of the passage now reads:

… panting like two boys after a race…..

This approach allows us to keep the intended meaning of the last phrase, retain the strong visual image of “panting,” and even retain the reference to racing—all while excluding the animal exploitation imagery.

This type of “minimally invasive” approach provides an excellent example of what we’ll strive to achieve when veganizing other passages.

Article: “Veganizing process for A Vegan Christmas Carol: Introduction”

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“Veganizing process for A Vegan Christmas Carol: Introduction” article published

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Veganizing Process for “A Vegan Christmas Carol”: Introduction

The process of veganizing a classic work of literature requires keeping in mind a number of disparate criteria.  These range from historical considerations—for instance, what types of food were available at a particular point in time—to vocabulary—what types of words were in the given author’s toolkit—to many other considerations.

The upcoming series of posts will explain some of the choices that were made in veganizing Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” for the first edition of “A Vegan Christmas Carol.”

Those who are not familiar with vegan literary theory are invited to review the article that sets the stage for the general field.

Vegan Songbook & Hymnal, Hymn #2: “Minds and Hearts Unite Today”

Minds and Hearts Unite Today | from the Vegan Songbook & Hymnal
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If you know the tune, you can sing this one right now.  🙂

Minds and Hearts Unite Today

(tune of “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today”)

1.  Minds and hearts unite today!  (Allelujah…)
Darkness yields to light today!
Knowing peace, to peace we rise!
Peace upon the seas, the lands, the skies!

2.  No more chains, no more foul cages!
No more psuedo-science sages!
Reason and compassion reign!
Gone is the speciesist’s blood stain!

3.  Build we now a world of justice!
Free from those whose hate oppressed us!
Cows and pigs, like you and me!
Chickens and turkeys—all set free!

4.  Wish “ahimsa” to thy neighbor!
Pierce the lies with freedom’s sabre!
Truth, our shield, will all defend!
Each and every animal—our friend!

“Minds and Hearts Unite Today’
~ The Vegan Songbook and Hymnal
© 2016.  Kaleidosound Publishing.

Minds and Hearts Unite Today | from the Vegan Songbook & Hymnal
Minds and Hearts Unite Today | from the Vegan Songbook & Hymnal

The Vegan Songbook & Hymnal: Doxology (Old 100th)

Vegan Doxology | from the Vegan Songbook & Hymnal
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The Vegan Songbook & Hymnal

Many ethical vegans feel excluded from the broader society in which they live because they are unwilling to embrace religious violence and bigotry.  But what if vegans could sing right along with their religious friends, doing so to the ancient, familiar tunes that are known throughout our culture?

Here’s a vegan “Doxology” (old 100th), the first of what will hopefully become a full “Vegan Songbook and Hymnal”, in which classic hymns and ancient tunes are supplied with new, non-violent, mythology-free lyrics. If you know the tune of the Old 100th (“Praise God, from whom all blessings flow….”), you can sing this song right now!

Doxology

(tune of the Old 100th)

1. Thank we our fellow creatures—all!—
All those with whom we share the Earth,
Come forth from humble birth,
Drawn to pursue our common call!

2. No barriers of creed divide
Our loving hearts from reas’ning minds.
Each one is of one kind.
Each creature to each other tied.

3. Behold our feathered friends in flight,
Scions of all that spans above,
Lifting our hearts to love,
Ascending into the sunlight!

4. Now deep inside the oceans cool,
Birthplace from which all species rise,
Wrapped in that paradise,
Fish, reptiles, mammals form one school!

5. Some, like us, on dry ground do dwell.
Some crawl, some slither, strut, or climb—
Yet every one sublime.
Beauty and grace their faces tell!

Doxology

~ The Vegan Songbook and Hymnal
© 2016. Kaleidosound Publishing

(Original publication date:  4/12/16 (FB))