Translations and cryptic valentines

xstellarx translated "Le Cygne" on her livejournal, so if you can't read French like me, go check it out. Very cool.

All I ever do in this is talk about what happened in class, but I shall continue to do so. Professor Barich came to class on Thursday to discuss his translation of Valerius Flaccus� Argonautica One of my questions was if he thought it was worth it, as most translators said it was a thankless task to translate, taking all the poetry out of a work. Barich disagreed, saying he thought it was worthwhile, because it opened up the audience. That surprised me, as most professors here seem to take the opposite view, hence my Literature in Translation course. Shutt teaches the Divine Comedy from a horrible prose translation just because it has the incomparable Italian on the facing page, and I am sick of being in a translation course and hearing the professor go on about how much we�re missing by reading it in English. I am trying to get proficiency in Latin, and I hope to have Greek in firm grasp in the next five years, but you know, I�ll probably never get around to learning Russian, but I still love Tolstoy. And I probably would enjoy his novels even more if I did, but I don�t pick up languages easily, so I�ll have to be content with the translation.

I got the strangest Valentine last night. It was stuck on top of my whiteboard, plainly addressed to Megan. Inside, it said
You snookie!
Boyfriend following boyfriend; he is
loving a serial monogamist, a chocolate fiend
What a fool! Then there is a drawing in red ink of nesting dolls and a blue heart
What shall we do with him
that adores this beacon
on the rim of the sea.
This holy mother?
There is only one choice

Then when I turned the card over, it said �Feed �im to the wolves! Happy Valentines Day. Love, Christine.�

This confuses me on several different levels. First, the writing sounds like a spam e-mail or something, secondly, I don�t know anybody named Christine at all, thirdly, why a valentine five days before, and lastly, I am a serial monogamist and a chocolate fiend, but that could describe many girls my age, so I�m still not sure it was meant for me. I thought maybe it could be for the Megan down the hall. I haven�t been able to catch her yet, but from my door it�s plain to see that I�m the RA.

Ah ha! I just did a Kenyon directory search on the name Christine and found out that it�s the middle name of one of my friends, although she�s never gone by it. I�ll have to ask Clarissa if she is the culprit.