Wednesday, January 9, 2008

The other man in my life...


This is a picture of Shah Abbas I, "the Great," the most important of the Safavid rulers of Persia. Read about him here. He lived between 1571 and 1629. The reason he is important to me is that for the last three years I have been working on a translation of a memoir written by a one García de Silva y Figueroa, an ambassador of Philip III of Spain, who was sent to Persia, and spent more time than he bargained for with the Shah. García was 60 when he accepted the assignment, and died fourteen years later while returning from Persia. That's right, this was his last job. Wouldn't it be great to send some of our modern politicians on a fourteen year assignment to the other side of the world, at the conclusion of which they die?

But I digress. I am drawing dangerously close to finishing my first revision of the translation. 437 single space 12-font pages. I'm starting to taste it. Right now His Excellency is heading back to India after an aborted attempt to sail back to Spain. This was in 1621. Unfortunately, he doesn't get to try to return again until 1624.

6 comments:

Jeff said...

Good luck in your fascinating project, Jeff, and thanks for sharing!

Rachel Mae said...

437 single-spaced words is close? Oh, I'm so sorry...

Also, who is the first man in your life? I was kind of hoping mom had written this :)

Rachel Mae said...

I meant pages, duh.

Rachel Mae said...

Also, this isn't Rate My Professor, you know. You can't leave comments on your own blog--and I bet you're still looking for the chile peppers.

Ben and Lori said...

You guys are funny.

Nancy said...

You probably won't read this, because I am commenting in May to a post written in January, and that is your most recent post. Jeff, don't you know you are not supposed to start a sentence with a number (unless you write it out)? I think it's funny that the technically-challenged Turleys have a blog, and the technically-savvy Carriers don't!
Nancy Carrier