I was looking for something related to Valentine's Day two weeks ago & encountered something interesting that I'd like to share with you. However, before doing this, I'd like to talk about Valentine's Day. When we were young, we used to buy flowers, chocolates or fancy cards with many hearts to our love one. When time goes by, we may gradually lose the enthusiasm or passion. Now we are all hovering around 70's. If "人生七十才開始" is true, we must revisit & find a new meaning of the Valentine's Day. Most people agree that we must at least try something new in every decade of our life. I am sure most of you have some idea about the new meaning of Valentine's Day & I encourage you to write it & share with our classmates. I remember one event during our last reunion. After everyone got a five-minute time slot on the bus to talk about his achievements or anything worth mentioning, 陳正一夫人,吳紀珠很感性的說了一句話,'你們說了這麼多成就,可是你們都沒有提到你們的另外一半'. It is well said. We all take this as granted after so many years of marriage. It is time for us to invigorate, strengthen and enhance our wedding vow.
Now here is the thing I'd like to share with you. It is a poem, well written and unique with its technical jargon. I read a few times and found it hard to translate into Mandarin. I know some of our classmates have talents in literature. They are welcome to give it a try. Before I tell you who was the author of the poem, I copy the whole text here for you to appreciate.
Valentine by a Telegraph Clerk
The tendrils of my soul are twined
With thine, though many a mile apart.
And thine in close coiled circuits wind
Around the needle of my heart.
Constant as Daniel, strong as Grove.
Ebullient throughout its depths like Smee,
My heart puts forth its tide of love,
And all its circuits close in thee.
O tell me, when along the line
From my full heart the message flows,
What currents are induced in thine?
One click from thee will end my woes.
Through many a volt the weber flew,
And clicked this answer back to me;
I am thy farad staunch and true,
Charged to a volt with love for thee.
In this poem, the author uses several terms we are all familiar with. They are circuit, coil, current, induced, weber (magnetic flux), volt, farad etc. Please use your imagination to understand the true meaning of this poem and try to translate it into Mandarin. Also spend at least a few minutes to figure out who wrote this poem. If you can't figure it out within 5 minutes, you may read my comment in the 'Comments' section.
3 comments:
From Mark Lin,
PS0: I tried several time to translate the poem but give up because it is just not up to the standard of '信達雅'.
PS1: The key to decipher who the author was is telegraph or those electrical terms. So this person must be EE & Physics related. He must be after the time that telegraph was invented (1837 by Samuel Morse). Also we assume he is well known or we wouldn't waste time here. It turns out the real key is 'Clerk'. Now you know his name is James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879).
PS2: Maxwell's work in electromagnetism has been called the "second great unification in physics", after the first one carried out by Isaac Newton. He is generally considered to be the most influential scientist between the time of Newton & Einstein. However, his name sometime got misspelled as James Clark Maxwell. As a matter of fact, his father was John Clerk. He added the surname Maxwell to his own after he inherited a country estate of the Maxwell family. So James was named James Clerk Maxwell after his birth. If you are a physics or EE major, be sure to spell 'Clerk' correctly. Otherwise people may think you flunked the class of electromagnetics in college.
PS3: Not many people know James Clerk Maxwell wrote poems. Actually he wrote many other poems & won several awards. He is truly a rare genius in history of science. Unfortunately, his life was cut short when he got cancer & died at age 49 (1879).
PS4: Daniel, Grove & Smee in 3rd stanza may be some kind of battery devices that enhance the current supply.
PS5: Something similar or close to this poem (especially the last 3 stanzas) in Chinese literature may be the following:
軟玉溫香, .心轻折, ..牡丹開
from 西廂記 by 王實甫.
Comments from AhMo,
Thanks and thanks!
Electromagnetism and poetry, do you know whom he wrote the poem for? I was not aware of such and cannot possibly even try a translation. But I did visit the Maxwell House in Edinburg, Scotland (by special appointment). In fact I had sat on the chair on which he presumably wrote the Maxwell Equations.
Maxwell as a scientist has probably by far the most impact to the modern world, including and even in practical terms. Many scientists including Einstein and Feynman stated this multiple times. He is a relatively shy man and does not advocate himself much. He once said, “the problem is that I understand what everybody says, but nobody understands me” (close but not exact verbatim quote). Everything not involving h-bar and gravity are virtually all implied by his equations.
Yes each of us all deeply appreciates our far better half, everyday is Valentine’s day. Btw, if I may please be reminded that at the reunion I did emphatically mention and heartily thank Garbo, so far just 44+ years and lagging behind some of our more venerable classmates, toward eternity. J
Best regards,
AhMo
Comments from AJ,
Dear S. F. and our classmates:
Thanks S. F. for a technical flavored Valentine poem. While some of our classmates have talents in literature, and help us to translate the poem into Chinese, for sure, I am not one of them. As I always say, S. F. is our working encyclopedia, we really appreciate his efforts to come up with many diversified topics to share with us. He used to say that it’s like playing Ping-Pong. Someone pings and other pongs. The other analogy is like playing baseball. S. F is our major pitcher, while AhMo, say, is the hitter. Most of the time, I am the audience. I encourage more classmates to be pitchers and hitters to make the game more exciting.
While talking about S. F.’s contributions, we shall not forget his contributions in our BLOG ( ntuee64.blogspot.com ). When Wei Chen set up the our blog in Feb. 11, 2008, there were 20 or articles in 2008 and 2009,
mainly contributed by two Marks, i. e, S. F. and Yang. When Mark Yang passed away in 2010, the no. of articles dropped to ten’s. I hope that AhMo and other classmates can contribute more articles in our Blog. As most of our classmates visit our e-mails daily, not so for the blog, please send a note through our group mail when you submit an article in our blog.
Cheers,
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