The Scattering Blossoms

Alexandria and a great notification

We are reliably informed by a Serious Literary Author that this is “one of the greatest notifications a Serious Literary Author will ever receive.”

Castalia Library is now #1 Rising in Literature

A great honor, to be sure, albeit one tempered considerably by its transience, as a mere 21 hours later, we have already fallen to #2 on the Rising in Literature list, which indicates that while we are still Rising, we are not Rising as fast as one Bri Lee, who is apparently an Author, Academic, and Activist, but neither a) binds books in leather nor b) translates never-before-translated Japanese novels into English and other European languages, so one can only wonder what anyone happens to see in her.

But, as a serious literary site, and one that is equally well-versed in both Eastern and Western philosophies, we take these unkind blows of fate like the stoic grass bowing before the wind, as Lao Tzu wisely recommended in the 76th chapter of the Tao Te Ching. The experience even inspired us to commit verse upon the innocent and unsuspecting reader.

散る花を
綴ぢて留むる
手はいつか
塵にかへるを
知らぬ言の葉

For the benefit of that tiny fragment of our intelligent and well-educated readership that does not happen to read fluently in kanji, the English translation of what shall henceforth be known as Chiru hana wo is as follows:

The scattering blossoms,
bound now and made to stay—
this binding hand
will one day turn to dust,
unknown to the leaves it held.

Let the weight of that sit, as our learned machine friends are so apt to say.

In other news, we continue to advance rapidly toward Alexandria, as we have selected the project name for what will be known as Castalia Unlimited, a digital library of the various language translations that are now being produced at a rate that a weekly email cannot hope to keep up with. Soon, paid subscribers to this substack will be provided access to the Castalia Digital Library and permitted to select three DRM-free books of their choice per month and add them to their personal collection in addition to the weekly ebook they receive via email, or eventually, through more direct means of distribution.

For as you see, Castalia Unlimited subscribers will be able to read those DRM-free epubs on the free Castalia Reader, which is already in development and is operational in pre-Alpha mode, as can be seen by the screenshots taken of the Reader in action below.

Above is the title page of the first volume of Nangoku Taiheiki, one of our recently released translations. Below is a page from Sangokushi, the Japanese rendition of the Chinese classic known as The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which has been translated but has not yet been released.

We don’t have a precise date for when Alexandria or the Castalia Reader will be formally launched, but we reasonably expect it to contain more than 100 books upon launch and as many as 1,000 by the end of 2027. This is going to be one of the greatest projects of translingual exposure, expansion, and preservation of world literature since the invention of the ebook, so if you’d like to participate in it and support it, you know where to subscribe.

Lest you be somehow misled into thinking that Alexandria is preoccupied with Japanese literature, rest assured that our primarily initial focus is actually on Spanish literature, specifically, on the 46 volumes of the Episodios Nacionales, more than one-third of which are already translated. We have already successfully added German to the pipeline, and expect to have both French and Italian proven operational before the end of the weekend.