Found in Translation
TED Radio Hour
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The Chess of Love
The Chess of Love is perhaps the last major long poem of the European Middle Ages that has never been transcribed and it's never been edited. The Soviets used urea which is basically made from urine to clean up ink blots in the manuscript. It had two effects: First of all it removed ink but it also removed ink from the text so much of it was so faded that you couldn't see it. But I managed to transcribe oh maybe a few thousand lines using the standard tools of the trade at the time.
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