MediEvil

Again, it has been a while since I last managed to post something here. I decided to post about one of the video games I find positively brilliant. I have never been a game addict, although I did have a period of about a year at the end of my PhD studies when I tried out various games from throughout the history of gaming. The game I'm writing here about is actually one I tried more or less at the time when it came out, and it has been one of my favourites ever since.

I should really talk about a series of games really. The first MediEvil is from 1998, developed exclusively to the PSX console. It is a combination of many things that makes it unique. The story in a nutshell is as follows. Sir Daniel Fortesque, the hero of the story is a skeleton night, who was resurrected by his old enemy, the evil sorcerer Zarok around 1300. Fortesque then has to go through various levels to find and kill Zarok. Now, so far it may sound nothing special, but it as always, the devil hides in the detail. It is the details of realisation that are unique. The story is a medieval fantasy mixed with a gentle Gothic horror style similar perhaps to that of Tim Burton. It is also humorous sometimes, and never excessively morbid or overly depressive like a Lovecraftian horror game might be. The genre to my mind is just ideal. Labeled action-adventure, it is a mixture of both and at the same time without some of the disadvantages of either. Many action games focus on body count without any real atmosphere, while many adventure games are centred on the story and atmosphere without anything particular to do other than visiting locations and talking to other characters. MediEvil has everything that I find attractive in a fantasy of this kind and at the same time it does have a "platformer" side with some nice puzzles and quite a few zombies to slash. The characters include a wide selection of foes and allies combined into MediEvil's own mythology. It also has a very nice music and graphics. The letter is especially evident compared to any other PSX games I know, some of which may be technically more advanced, but I venture that few others use their resources as well as MediEvil does.

The second instalment, MediEvil 2 was made in 2000. It takes us from the middle ages to 19th century London, where hell breaks loose after Lord Palethorn finds the spell book of Zarok and unleashes an army of zombies on the city. It is up to Fortesque to stop him. It is I think fitting to continue a story that started out in the middle ages in another era that had a romantic longing for that same period. Especially since it allows to bring in the Gothic fantasy monsters of the 19th century, like Dracula and or elements of the Frankenstein story, or on a different note, Jack the Ripper himself. It also allows some update in the weaponry, which may now include early modern gadgets. There are fewer levels in this game, but these are longer and harder on average. In short, this sequel adds a lot to the original, while it still remains within the same general framework.

The last game in the series, MediEvil: Resurrection is really a remake of the first one with some elements from the second. It is however, quite a different game, made primarily for PSP. It is worth exploring, although it did loose some of its fantasy charm due primarily to an effort to make it funnier, I think. 

Lem and Communication: Fiasco

Stanislaw Lem was not only a well-known writer of science fiction, but he also published a wide range of critical writings on the genre. It is perhaps the latter side of his work that helped him identify accepted and often unrecognised assumptions popular within the genre, and develop themes in reaction to these.

One of his recurring themes is the problem of communication with alien life forms. This is the main theme of his arguably most well-known work, Solaris, and it was one of the reasons for the disagreement between Lem and Andrei Tarkovsky on the film version of Solaris. While Tarkovsky emphasised the "human angle" and the necessity to depart from the book while making a film, Lem intended to make an illustration of the sort of communicational problems mentioned above, which are related to that very human angle. It should perhaps be noted that as far as I can tell, the film version did not completely destroy Lem's intention, but the way Lem reacted to the acknowledged change of emphasis indicates very strongly the importance of the theme of communication in his work. Another one of his well known works, His Master's Voice takes this theme even further. In Solaris the problem can be summarised as: do two utterly different intelligent life forms - the human race, and a gigantic living ocean - have anything meaningful to tell each other at all? In HMV, the problem is even more academic: a regular sequence of signs coming from space is discovered, a message from the stars. Can we make  head or tail of it without knowing anything at all about the sender? HMV is related as the reminiscences of a scientist working on the decipherment project, in one long stream of ideas without any organisation of the text into parts, chapters at all. The shear number of possibilities of understanding and misunderstanding is devastating, and the project would culminate in complete confusion except for the fact that the project leads to new discoveries as a by-product.

Lem's Fiasco is yet another take on this problem of communication. This perhaps lesser known work of Lem would deserve more attention. For one thing, it is easier to read than HMV. True, it still has passages that depending on my mood  I either put down as the love of detail of a careful architect of imagined futures, or a pseudo-technological mambo-jumbo prolonging the prelude to content. To make this latter point clear one must admit that it is reassuring to know that whoever wrote this, took the pains to imagine a world in full detail, this commands respect. But it may not be necessary to reveal all this. If I compare the novel to a television broadcast of the theatre play, than a well done background is something everyone appreciates, but imagine what would happen if between the dialogues the commentator would go into detailed descriptions of that background. Interestingly, I found some of Lem's critical writings sometimes easier to read then e.g. HMV, for they were full of observations without interruptions of abundant detail. In Fiasco, the most critical part for me from this respect was the first chapter with its technological descriptions and Titanian landscapes.

Having said this, I think Fiasco is in many ways a more effective medium to convey Lem's warning about communicational problems than either Solaris or HMV. There is some sort of certainty of contact in Fiasco, where there is only a question mark in HMV. In Solaris the contact as far as possible creates a new psychological reality coupled with a number of other themes. Fiasco on the other hand is primarily a kind of caricature of contact attempts. These are treated as completely anthropocentric in scope, and the novel asks the question what if the others don't want contact? Fiasco puts the human race into the shoes of the UFOs of science fiction: humans visit a planet as a technologically superior race who have to find the means to communicate with the locals. The situation allegorically could be described as follows: a man travelling through a desert encounters two quarrelsome foreigners, and rejoicing in the possibility of company offers them friendly relations, but as he is ignored, and eventually even attacked he becomes more agitated and willing to show an upper hand. This is perhaps a good metaphor, except that we only imagine that what we meet in the novel can be interpreted in terms of human behaviour. Lem revolts against many popular themes here. In many sci fi novels, the relations with alien races are either peaceful or inimical but they always assume that there is a mutual understanding of concepts such as war and peace. In other words Lem says that humans don't look for alien civilisations, they look for humans in an alternative physical form. The object of criticism is the overwhelming optimism that contact is possible. I don't think Lem rules it out completely, but he finds the idea of the underlying assumption of blind optimism to be plainly stupid as there is plenty of room for less ideal scenarios. Fiasco is one such possible scenario, where at the same time this optimism eventually turns into an obsession and into the titular Fiasco.

There are several interesting characters in the novel. The ship's captain, Steergard, and a delegate, Arago, from the Vatican represent confronting opinions regarding their mission. Steergard aided by the ships omnipresent computer, DEUS, represents the colder calculating attitude, who is nevertheless in conflict with himself over his decisions. Arago, although a man of the church is not significant as a representative of an organisation but as a kind of consciousness amplifying some of the inner doubts of the captain in their conversations, but eventually it seems without little practical consequence. I would risk a guess that these conversations are perhaps semibiographical, as the atheist Lem is reported to have had long conversations with his friend Karol Wojtyla (later John Paul II) perhaps about similar matters. There is also a pilot, Tempe, recovered from a state of hibernation after an accident centuries ago. He is to some extent a twentieth century observer in the novel, although this angle is not very emphasised. Tempe is the person who finally lands on the alien planet, and in a way more personally related to the eventual fiasco. Finally, a Japanese physicist, Nakamura, whose zen philosophy sides him with Arago, while officially he takes stand by the captain. He also advices Tempe in a number of ways before the descent, most importantly he advises humility in the face of something completely unknown. The advice perhaps, taken more seriously, could have changed the ending of the novel.

Solaris

The dvd version of Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris was the first dvd that I bought for myself, while still at the University. At that time, dvds were still new and rather expensive, while I was a rather poor student. The cost of the disk was the equivalent of several weeks food money, yet I decided that I will buy it. It is difficult to say why... I had read about Tarkovsky before, I was more or less aware of the story of Solaris as well. I remember I somehow found the presence of such a piece strange; I imagined I would have sooner found it on the shelves of some specialized store, rather than on those of a shopping center, surrounded by nothing of its kind. It somehow looked lonely, and I guess I saw a lost treasure in it. I went by it several times before I had the funds to finally buy it, but it waited for me patiently. I believe it is still to be found among my belongings I brought back from the University years, yet I haven't actually seen it for several years, until quite recently, the Solaris novel of Stanisław Lem came into my possession. After reading it, I decided to rewatch the Tarkovsky movie, and ended up watching the remaining two film versions based on the same novel. I thought I will commemorate the event by noting down a few things about these.

Let's start with the novel. Stanisław Lem (1921-2006) was probably the internationally best known Polish author of recent times. Among his numerous science fiction related and non-fictional writings, Solaris is the most well known, not entirely unrelated to the fame of the film versions, although Lem himself was rather critical of these. The main theme of the novel, which according to Lem has been largely overlooked by all adaptations, is the difficulty in establishing contact with an alien civilization. The underlying argument is that humans do not really look for new worlds, they look for the mirror images of their own, and once they encounter a form of intelligent life form that cannot be grasped in the framework of human notions, attempts to establish contact become difficult and are probably even bound to failure or are at least of limited interest for either parties. The sentient ocean of the planet Solaris is such a life form. It can only be partially compared to a brain or a cell, and by the different nature of its existence it likely has little to communicate to human beings. For a long time, the ocean largely ignores them, until strong irradiation triggers a response. Occupants of the space station located above Solaris, begin to receive visitors, animated forms of their own most hidden thoughts... Another nice feature of the novel, probably unsuitable for the medium of film is the description of Solaristics as a scientific trend, its ideas and its development. This is an intellectual effort that requires a lot of imagination; to come up with a sort of 'fictional science'. And for this very reason it is likely to be appreciated by only a few...

There are to my knowledge three film versions of Solaris. I tend to think about them as independent from the novel, and both Lem and Tarkovsky seem to agree with me, although for different reasons, and with different emotional coloring... The first version was a soviet tv adaptation, with a flavor of heroic comradery. The whole film is on youtube.

Tarkovsky and Lem collaborated up to a certain stage on the script of the movie, which ended due to artistic differences. The film keeps the plot structure of the novel, but alters its philosophy. Although the theme of contact is present in the movie, Tarkovsky used this as a starting point for a story more centered on human conflicts, the human reaction to the situation created by the confrontation with the sentient ocean. Unlike the novel, an initial large segment of the movie takes place on Earth, discovering the roots of the main character, Chris Kelvin, a psychologist sent to Solaris, to investigate what happened to the crew of the space station. The contrast to the novel is even more interesting, since Tarkovsky is considered a more 'epic' artist, in the sense that he takes time to create an atmosphere, in the sort of detailed manner comparable to novelistic descriptions, relying less on the dynamics of drama/action as the majority of films do. The difference in the views of Tarkovsky and Lem is more than formal, however. Tarkovsky's Solaris is after all, still a drama, a slow paced psychological one under alien circumstances, whereas Lem's novel is more in the nature of a philosophical pondering.

But the version that really maximalized the element of dramatic action within the Solaris story is Steven Soderbergh's adaptation. Of course, compared to the action packed space operas of today, this is probably still somewhat slow paced, but it is a bit hard to see in what way this adaptation would fulfill the promise of its makers that it would be closer to Lem's novel than the Tarkovsky version. The plot is close enough, but it focuses even more on the weird psychological scenario packed into significantly less runtime, and if the description of interpersonal relationships tend to overshadow the philosophical content of the novel, then this version is on the dark side. However, like some other things from the dark side it's not altogether that bad... It has sometimes been described with the formula 2001: A Space Odyssey + Titanic. Now from that recipe, anything can be concocted... On that note however, I would have been interested to see Stanley Kubrick's take on Solaris. Somehow I can imagine that his capability to keep emotional distance could perhaps paid off well for Lem's philosophical goals. Distancing is a much argued tool, but it is a tool after all, and perhaps not only Solaris, but sci-fi in a somewhat more general sense can benefit from it, since it is a genre where the underlying general idea may well rival the importance of the 'human element', as well demonstrated by the conflicting versions of Solaris.

Solar Rain

Sometimes I visit the NASA website just to see a few nice astronomical pictures, especially in the  Astronomy Picture of the Day archive. One can find nice things there, not only strictly about astronomy. Here, I picked a video about what would be the equivalent of rain on the Sun. The actual duration of the event is about 10 hours, so the website tells me, filmed in ultraviolet. Magnetically aligned plasma rain... that's something we don't have here on Earth. There is plenty of regular rain tho, enough to look out of my window...

Egg Shoeing

It's been a while since I saw an egg shoeing process, and recently I just remembered in connection with something requiring a lot of patience. Indeed, it was originally to demonstrate (and show off with) one's craftsmanship. There are still a few people who do egg shoeing ('tojáspatkolás') in Hungary. Next time I am impatient about something, I will remember to try and drive a nail into an egg instead...

József Attila's Oh Heart! Be Still! Sung By Ágnes

Some years ago I did a translation of the song of Ágnes Vanilla below. It is part of an album, where each song is a musical adaptation of a József Attila poem. This particular one happens to be my favorite of the lot and it appears to be popular also among non-Hungarian people, and still one may find many requests for a translation on youtube. Mine got lost during the past few years, and there were many other attempts ever since. It is however, a very difficult task, since the lyrics is actually a poem of one of the greatest Hungarian poets, József Attila (Attila József in the English name order). The text is full of subtleties that are difficult to translate in the same compact verse form that the original used. I attempted that once. What I would like to do here is a bit different. I would like to give a transcription rather than a translation, in the sense that I would provide a more lengthy description for the lines than what would be possible if I attempted to put it into verse. The best suited person for such a task would be bilingual anyway, since only a person who knows subtleties in both languages can decide how to adapt or occasionally replace a phrase in the original with one that carries similar meaning in the target language.

József Attila had the difficult life of an artist, who found it hard to conform to some of the norms of his contemporaries. He attempted suicide several times, was fired from university, and got into conflict with the authorities because some of his poems were considered politically or otherwise incorrect. While previous generations learned that he was schizophrenic, updated textbooks urge the knowledge on younger generations that in fact he had borderline personality disorder. Whether his early death at the age of 32 in 1937 was an accident or suicide, is still not unanimously agreed upon. The fact remains he found his death among some railway tracks. His fame increased after his death, he is introduced to students among artists influenced by the Avant-garde (e.g. surrealism), others discuss his relation to transrealism.

The poem Óh szív! nyugodj! (Oh Heart! Be Still! written in 1928) repeated twice, is the lyrics of the above song. I will try to restrict myself to a technical/raw translation. The poem is a depiction of a winter scenery (daybreak), where various natural phenomena trigger poetic emotions. At least this is how I would summarize it, without too much explanation. Of course, here, and in the following, I base my translation on the image the poem triggers in my own mind. There are 4 stanzas:

Fegyverben réved fönn a téli ég,

Above, the winter sky daydreams in arms,

kemény a menny és vándor a vidék,

heaven is hard and the land is a wanderer,

halkul a hó, megáll az elmenő,

snowing decreases, someone leaving stops,

lehellete a lobbant keszkenő.

his breath is the flickered handkerchief.

The verb 'réved' is related to the French 'rêve' (dream), and perhaps could be translated as 'be in a reverie'. I personally imagine here that certain sleepy awareness that just precedes full awakening, and so it could perhaps also be translated as 'awakes armed in a reverie', though that sounds a bit complicated to me. The land is a wanderer could perhaps also be rendered as 'the land wanders'. In 'halkul a hó' halkul lit. means to become less loud, all in all it would be "the snow becomes less loud". In the last line flicker stands for 'lobban', which refers to one flicker rather than many rapidly suceeding ones (the latter would be 'lobog').

Hol is vagyok? Egy szalmaszál nagyon

Where am I? A straw moves about

helyezkedik a csontozott uton;

intensely on the boned road;

kis, száraz nemzet; izgágán szuszog,

little dry creature; snuffs restlessly,

zuzódik, zizzen, izzad és buzog.

(it) gets bruised, buzzes, sweats and boils.

The first two lines constitute one sentence (other than the initial question). 'Helyezkedik' means something like tries to find its place. For 'csontozott', 'boned' is risky. The first meaning of the corresponding verb would be to remove the bones, and so the participle here would mean boned or boneless. Together with the winter context I imagine bony patches of snow on the road when I say 'boned road'. The word 'nemzet' means nation, and I have seen it translated like that many times. However, I think 'nemzet' here stands in its more direct derivative meaning (something similar to 'fajzat'), i.e. 'creature'. The last line has a phonetic message, all verbs there contain 'zz' reminding one to noises a piece of straw could make.

De fönn a hegyen ágyat bont a köd,

But up on the mountain, the mist is making the bed,

mint egykor melléd: mellé leülök.

like once beside you: I sit beside it.

Bajos szél jaját csendben hallgatom,

I listen in silence to the laments of the troubled wind

csak hulló hajam repes vállamon.

only my falling hair flies about on my shoulder.

'The laments of the troubled wind' would lit. be the 'ouches of...' where 'jaj' is 'ouch'.

Óh szív! nyugodj! Vad boróka hegyén

Oh Heart! Be Still! On the mountain of the wild juniper

szerelem szólal, incseleg felém,

love talks, flirts to me,

pirkadó madár, karcsu, koronás,

a dawning bird, slender, with a crown,

de áttetsző, mint minden látomás.

but transparent as all visions.

And here, one has actually little trouble to give a literal translation. The question remains whether all this helps to understand the original? To convey the poetry, definitely, a poetic translation is needed, more suited to the subtleties of the English language. But in such a procedure, the taste of the original is likely to suffer, and I hope that with this more literal translation, I have managed to transfer at least some of it.

Les Diaboliques

"Les Diaboliques" is the title of the film adaptation of the Boileau-Narcejac novel "Celle qui n'était plus" (She, who was no more). Written in 1952, the novel appeared in English in 1954, and in 1955 it was made into a film by H. G. Clouzot, who obtained film rights to the novel a little before Hitchcock could have. All the more interesting, that today the name Boileau-Narcejac seems to have lost its familiar ring to the fans of the thriller genre, unlike their American counterparts (e.g. Chandler). English translations of the novel are hard to come by and some sellers ask astronomical prices for them. The pseudonym refers to two authors, Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, who much in the style of Ellery Queen, divided the task of plotting and writing among themselves. The aforementioned novel is their first success to be followed by many other.

The first thing that comes to mind about the rather short novel is the strong atmosphere. The reader follows a murder plot, and as the characters move along in the dark and misty world surrounding them, one has the feeling that we are turning away from reality into a world of inner fears to complete a psychological journey with a dramatic conclusion at the end. It is like a landscape at night, with an interplay of dark shades that has some unearthly beauty for the outside observer, but crushes the main character with its deadly magnetism. The novel consists of such scenes, for instance a nocturnal journey with a dead body in the back of the car, where every little obstacle tries the mental stability of the plotters. Much emphasis was laid on the ending in the trailer for the movie. It should be mentioned that whereas the background had been changed for the movie, the structure of the plot, and the main twist survived. However, the film is much less pessimistic, the atmosphere is somewhat lighter. Nevertheless, it was made in the spirit of the novel, about the same aspects of human nature. Interestingly, there is an exchange of roles as the main character in the novel corresponds more to his wife in the movie, and vice versa. It seems the makers of the film did not envision a psychologically tormented, weaker male character, but a rather menacing and tyrannical one. Thus, in a way, film and novel are complementary, both recommended heartily.