You thought Jeff Feuerzeig's 2005 documentary The Devil & Daniel Johnston was the quote-unquote "longest, scariest commercial for Mountain Dew I've evYou thought Jeff Feuerzeig's 2005 documentary The Devil & Daniel Johnston was the quote-unquote "longest, scariest commercial for Mountain Dew I've ever seen", but this Greek dude Aristotle's book On Plants is even longer and scarier than that. It doesn't explicitly name Mountain Dew but I understand the subtle machinations in its text. Just trust me.
But seriously, I learned from this book that "worms are bred in snow" and that threw me for a bit of a loop. They are?? Who says?
Also, setting aside language and time period, imagine if Aristotle wrote On Plants today, word-for-word, and it were wildly popular; but still somehow, a little scientifically dubious. He'd go on NPR to discuss his botanical theories and defend them against the opposing viewpoints that had thousands of years behind them. Who's to say who's right? It's interesting anyway. Damn....more
I'm afraid it was a little disappointing. Just a limp Art of War thing. I thought we could be funnier, more comical, lighter. C'mon.I'm afraid it was a little disappointing. Just a limp Art of War thing. I thought we could be funnier, more comical, lighter. C'mon....more
They wrote a novelization of Aronofsky's mother! [exclamation point most definitely intended]??
Jesus. It's a joke.
No, but more seriously, as regards cThey wrote a novelization of Aronofsky's mother! [exclamation point most definitely intended]??
Jesus. It's a joke.
No, but more seriously, as regards cinema, it's not really Schrader's First Reformed or DeMille's Ten Commandments or really any of the usual suspects that I think holds a key to Milton's early masterpiece: it's Thanos from the Marvel movies, duh. Haha. No, really, God isn't godly here: he's just a regular supervillain whose powers, y'know, include casually obliterating the universe or whatever. So what's the point of anything really? Haha. I don't know.
Lost is an epic in blank verse, telling that Old Testament again or something like it, to sexily "justify the ways of God to men". Sexy. Regained is the plainer, shorter 'brief epic' that continued the story; this dude Jesus is born, preaches, finds out he's God's son somehow, etc. Everything be kind of Biblical, yo!
Zeffirelli's 1977 film about Jesus () or this random 2009 documentary about Jerusalem I saw () might be important previous stops, and an audiobook reading of Milton's Paradise Lost/Regained might be just another present stop. You know? We all must contemplate this lewd impropriety that's doinking all our moralities, right? I guess so. I'm doing my best (or actually, wait sorry, I thought you'd requested my 'worst', so I offered that by mistake; sorry, "best", "worst", I may have mixed them up; my bad).
During Regained, when Satan says things are "fallacious" I was hearing the audiobook and not the actual text, so of course I misheard it as "fellatious". That's a word, right? Well, I consider it one, and that's of course all words need. To be considered. It's diction! Diction. Emphasis on the "dick" part of "diction", to go with the topic at hand. Literally, at hand (on the back of a head, guiding the mouth nearer and farther). Is my soul cursed to Hell yet, or is yours since you've read this sentiment? I don't quite understand it: they give you breaks, right?
Needless to say, when Satan says something might be a fallacy I'm like "Yeah, that's a fallacy, indeed" even if I don't fully understand.
I've read Milton before (I can say Great Books of the Western World, #32), but haven't we all? He seems like one of these good poet guys, talented at the poetry thing....more
Historical context seems paramount to Tolstoy's book, a great one I guess, but you don't need my reportage on that, do you? Well, first of all, there'Historical context seems paramount to Tolstoy's book, a great one I guess, but you don't need my reportage on that, do you? Well, first of all, there's this big country, Russia. Ah! Russia. Emperor Alexander II was leading it for a while, and he introduced this Emancipation reform of 1861. Railroad, banks, industries, all that hot stuff: getting hotter every day!
Also, Wright's 2012 adaptation of this was a limp picture I kind of dislike when I remember it at all, so Tolstoy's original novel has some huge shoes to fill!!!!
A throwaway line early on had me chortling at some of the old-fashioned language, in this popular Garnett translation at least: one of our guys Stepan says to a butler Matvi, giving him some money, "Enough or not, we must make it do": 'Make it do'? Oh boy, I like that expression a lot, forgive me.
And then later on, in Part 5, Nikolai Lyovin is dying of consumption, so his younger brother Kostya goes to visit him and "felt utterly cold, and was not conscious of sorrow nor of loss, less still of pity for his brother"… And then even later, in Part 7, Kostya Lyovin is looking at his newborn son by Dolly and "felt nothing towards it but disgust"… Jeez, this guy: give me a break, right?
The whole Anna Karenina novel's sort of like Welles's film MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS to me: a melancholy panorama of an upper-middle-class family on the down-stroke. This soap opera so soapy of an opera, and Russian too by golly.
I'd like to see a portrait of modern Russian society like Anna Karenina 2019, where it centers on disrupting liberal democracy in the West by gaming elections and sowing fascism, but I don't think they write novels anymore: it's all just memes, I guess....more
Cervantes's Don Quixote isn't quite the brilliant head smack I thought it'd be. Early on, in the first few chapters especially, it has flashes of balaCervantes's Don Quixote isn't quite the brilliant head smack I thought it'd be. Early on, in the first few chapters especially, it has flashes of balanced wisdom to mix in with its punch; but eventually, the stark divide between high and low brows pulls too much for me. For one extreme, it tips into leaden raunch and jokiness and whatnot. Sancho literally poos too near Quixote, and we're to Haha at this, perhaps also groan at its pretension; but also of course we've gotten some blizzards of Spanish names and titles, little itches toward epic. The mix of these was at first an intriguing wonder but then too much a meaningless goo.
Seems often very stupid? Surprise surprise -- well, not always. From literary 'what's all this then', going far behind the joke, it then squats in front and expects to move us in the same way. Not everything needs to be bookish/smartass of course, or even can be, but the same kind of clever philosophy could puff nearer to the whole story. Smarter these days than medieval dunces are we? Mostly. In both intelligence and cleverness/quickness? Probably. Maybe too much.
Gilliam's art is close of course, in at least a modern sense. (Not just for the adaptation of Quixote that seemed a vain, heart-on-its-sleeve passion until it actually happened, but for all the other projects that take their cues from the doomed yet funny quester, 'tilting at windmills' and whatnot: BARON VON MUNCHAUSEN most of all, I guess.) For older things we have Chaucer working, Sterne working, Swift working, I don't know. Before that, Homer's Odyssey, the Bible from Moses and Jesus and God or whatever, Beowulf, etc.
I tend to enjoy the stories within the stories more than the story itself. Whether it's a shepherd who went a little nuts, or a Christian captured by Moors who fell in love with a Moorish woman secretly a Christian too (they took their religion pretty seriously in old Europe, I guess!), each little romance can charm me more than continual goofiness from a 'knight errant' buffoon and his ass-riding disciple.
"Madness" is a mad thing? The density of old epic is all part and parcel (so pull it apart and find some juicy jokes)? I do not always know; I'm not always amused! (This Cervantes guy might not be too happy with this review, but tough titties) The hero might have a "rueful countenance", but I think the reader would eventually have one too! You can understand the depth of Don Quixote's imprint on our culture -- tragedy to slapstick, psychology and philosophy, beauty and ugliness -- and still not really dig the text much itself. Right?...more
We start out promising. "The Mantle", the title story, follows a hopeless, beige fellow working as a clerk (like Melville's Bartleby?) named Akaki Akakievitch. And "since it is the custom to portray the physiognomy of every separate personage in a tale" Gogol also introduces for our benefit Petrovitch the tailor. We get some expressions that seem antique and unfashionable though nevertheless very readable, in the way of Russian translation I guess: "vexatious", "'Petrovitch, I adjure you!' said Akaki Akakievitch in an imploring tone", and maybe a lot showing the difficulty of translating skaz Russian to formal English, I don't know.
So the mantle's stolen, Akaki embarks on a labyrinthine, Kafkaesque way of reporting the theft, and an official yells at him quite severely when he does it wrong. He gets sick, very sick (lol). Spoiler alert, hehe: Akaki dies! And then comes back as a ghost? Whoa. Black humor out the wazoo: "The police adopted all possible measures in order to get this ghost dead or alive"
And then "The Nose" is quite all right too. Ivan Jakovlevitch is a barber. We stay with him just a bit -- "Like every honest Russian tradesman, Ivan Jakovlevitch was a terrible drunkard" -- and then move away. Major Kovaloff, one of Ivan's customers, wakes one morning to find something gone (like Kafka's Metamorphosis but much less intense?), his schnoz. It's a little slapstick, a little surreal, a good mix. His predicament's described to him as 'Nonsense' and he strikes back nonsensically "But this is not nonsense!": fun.
But then we get to "Memoirs of a Madman". The story starts out nice, a little unnerving and a little ominous ("For some little time past I hear and see things which no other man has heard and seen"), even departing for some amusing little flourishes that might have tickled Gogol as he wrote them ("The critics also are criticised; they are said only to be able to find fault, so that authors have to beg the public for protection"). But then we go completely off the rails into the deranged monologue of a crazy guy. It's just not meaningful; and unlike the title story or even "The Nose" there's nothing subtle underneath getting twisted. We have a few possibilities -- eg., "how all the scent-bottles and boxes are arranged in her boudoir" could speak to the material? eventually? -- but nothing substantial. I’m afraid we're just eventually treated to more of what's annoying and charmless as we go on.
And the stories following those, "A May Night" and "The Viy," have nothing good in them at all, I'm afraid. It's just not promising, and this Gogol kid, wherever he is today, out there in Russia or whatever, in my opinion doesn't have a fine literary career ahead of him. Maybe when he dies his ghost will come back seeking vengeance. I wouldn't know, since I myself have no plans at all to die and so never will. Can ghosts interact at all with the mortal world? I do not know. It can seem a little fantastical, fictional, maybe....more
The introduction provides some excellent Grimm trivia, if naught else… Wilhelm concentrated on literature, while Jacob was more wide-ranging; and therThe introduction provides some excellent Grimm trivia, if naught else… Wilhelm concentrated on literature, while Jacob was more wide-ranging; and there are no fairies (I repeat, no fairies, so get out of here with those fairies) as fairies were French. It does a pretty nice job of introducing everything. Presentation of business at hand -- each tale's years, sources, provenance, whatnot -- isn't as dry as it could be thanks to the fun and light cross-referencing and compact digressions by Applebaum.
And the translations always seem really, really excellent. Some rhyming songs stretched a bit far to fit back into English, but the bulk of it is line-for-line impressive and well done. Dual-language seems to me quite rewarding and awesome, for big details (whether it feels better to say this or that, etc.) or small details (cross back line-by-line or sentence-by-sentence or graf-by-graf, etc.), or how you read at all.
Also, I guess folk tales can seem, when they're just bare English, off-point and bad; so when there's macabre or gruesome bits, those can be ironically twisted up in a way to mock what seems crazy and archaic. But they don't seem like that much in German. Everything has the same rich, aged, funny, kind of smelly character, where everything's as old as everything else, so you can be macabre a little bit anytime you want to. It's not just little tales that can do that, sure, but crazy-big monuments and movements and songs. And don't get me started on the grand dangers of blood and alcohol. Hitler didn't drink, fyi.
"Der Froschkönig" is the first, "Märchen von einem, der auszog, das Fürchten zu lernen" (they be dead on them gallows, y'idiot) the second, "Der Wolf und die 7 jungen Geißlein" (Big Swallow motif, yo; cut out of belly and replace with stones), the third, and "Brüderchen und Schwesterchen", "Rapunzel", "Die 3 Spinnerinnen" next.
"Hänsel und Gretel" (hot-as-hell oven) is the seventh, "Strohhalm, Kohle und Bohne" the eighth, "Das tapfere Schneiderlein" the ninth, "Aschenputtel" (dance with prince and then a super-quick wardrobe change) the tenth, "Frau Holle" and "Rotkäppchen" next, and "Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten" (talking animals whose dreams of rock musician stardom won't be cut short by any meddling humans) the thirteenth.
"Tischendeckdich" (Table-Set-Yourself, and don't forget the donkey who poops gold) is the fourteenth, "Daumesdick" the fifteenth, "Die 6 Schwäne" and "Dornröschen" and "Sneewittchen" the next, and "Rumpelstilzchen" (angry little person, who boasts too loud about his own cool name) the nineteenth, and "Der goldene Vogel", "Allerleirauh", "6 kommen durch die ganze Welt" next.
But I really like "Hans im Glück" most of all. It's so simple, just a guy going home after service, and powerful all the same. A careful series of exchanges… Seven years to gold. Gold to horse. Horse to cow. Cow to pig. Pig to goose. Goose to grindstone. And then that falls down a well, so he's "frei von aller Last" and happy still. Who would have thought?
"Die Gäusemagd" the twenty-fourth, "Die zertanzten Schuhe" (take better care of your sweet kicks, so no one realizes you sneak off to dance) the twenty-fifth, and "Schneeweißchen und Rosenrot" and "Die Meisterdieb" the last. These Germans and their silly folk tales. They can spin one pretty well when they feel like it, it seems like, for eventual translation alongside they original words, to which you just gotta word up. Word....more
Giacomo Leopardi, 1798-1837, a little-known Italian philosopher but world-renowned poet, composed most of this collection of prose between 1823 and 18Giacomo Leopardi, 1798-1837, a little-known Italian philosopher but world-renowned poet, composed most of this collection of prose between 1823 and 1828. The resulting magnum opus, Operette morali ("Small Moral Works"), ties together 24 dialogues and fictional essays. Its translation, plus the biographical sketch on Leopardi that precedes it, are both by Charles Edwardes, a stiff English chap writing in 1882. Stilted sometimes, even mean-spirited, but such a departure for all involved.
The actual material -- silly dialogues, essays, just fleeting corners of rhetoric, sharp in a mannered antiquity -- are sometimes long-winded but usually pretty nicely balanced.
Before I discuss the bulk, let me just pick out two that I feel perfectly encapsulate Leopardi. Both of these come in the middle of the book. The 12th, "Dialogue between Nature & an Icelander," takes its time setting up its premise but soon enough delivers a nicely droll end. The 19th, "Dialogue between Timandro & Eleandro," has Timandro inquiring politically and nicely (on behalf of optimism?) and Eleandro brashly and dismissively (on behalf of pessimism?); suitable, I think! ;-)
The rest, whether dialogue or essay, rest pretty clearly in a few subjects. One is probably scornful mythology… I don't know mean scorning the mythology that exists (at least not always), but maybe inventing new mythology one of whose express purposes is to be scorned. The 1st essay in the book, "History of the Human Race," is thick and repurposes all of anthropology. The 4th, "Prize Competition of the Academy of Sillographs," asks if could machines could ever be social.
The 9th, "The Wager of Prometheus" does poke at actual mythology but in a chummy way. After a contest among the gods about which of their inventions is best (Bacchus's wine, Minerva's oil, or Vulcan's cooking pot), Prometheus wagers with Momus that humanity is. Some doubting ensues!
There are other dialogues that bluntly revise common misunderstandings: the 3rd one, "Dialogue Between Fashion & Death," asks which is more permanent, more impermanent. The 5th one, "Dialogue Between a Goblin & a Gnome," asks would the apocalypse, after it happens, be parochial. Smart and silly, but tied a little too tightly to earthly particularly.
Others (better, I think) subtly direct their questions to the cosmos. The 6th, "Dialogue between Malambruno & Farfarello," weighs happiness and vice. The 7th, "Dialogue between Nature & a Soul," examines happiness as a human raison d'être. The 10th, "Dialogue between a Natural Philosopher & a Metaphysician," looks at prolonging human life: more years _and_ better years, or more years _or_ better years?
And gradually those cosmos-directed questions can turn more and more to mortality. The 16th, "Dialogue between Columbus & Gutierrez," asks if soldiers'/sailors' risks, versus the relative safety of ordinary people, mean they enjoy their lives more or less. The 21st, "Dialogue between an Almanac Seller & a Passer-by," is a tiny dialogue examining the popular attitude that the past is bad but worth reliving.
And at the very end, Leopardi's writing crashes head-on into mortality. Three in a row, offering an interesting summary of the subject. In the 22nd piece, "Dialogue between Plotinus & Porphyrius," self-destruction is the topic (Plotinus curtly but successfully anti-, Porphyrius pro-), along a rich philosophical vein, Reason vs Nature, but then settling on egotism.
The next, "Comparison of the Last Words of Marcus Brutus & Theophrastus," examines it in a more nonfictional, historical sense. And the next again, "Dialogue between Tristano & a Friend," examines it again: the friend unsuccessfully -anti, Tristano -pro.
Leopardi also reviews other authors in these pages. His 13th, "Parini on Glory," seems to deal just in assumptions and cruel/crude audacity. Greatness, he quotes agreeably, "owes more to men of common powers than to those who are exceptionally endowed," and sneers on at intellectuality ungratefully. His 15th, "Remarkable Sayings of Philip Ottonieri," is a bit disagreeable and trite, and too dense and inscrutable by far. It's only very occasionally relatable or interesting.
So on the basis of those two alone, I think it's safe to say Leopardi isn't a great writer when he isn't creative. And the mere flights of fancy in the book -- 14. "Dialogue between Frederic Ruysch & His Mummies"; 17. "Panegyric of Birds"; 18. "The Song of the Wild Cock" -- are appropriately some of the funniest and most exciting pieces....more
Loading...
