Posted on: June 16, 2009
Cover, 1922
Another year past, and we’re here again. June 16th. Bloomsday. The day to celebrate James Joyce’s book about a day in the life in 1904 that was kinda important to him.
It points back in time to Homer, back in time to various modes of English, back in time to that day in 1904, and ahead in time for thousands of scholars who have labored to understand it and its myriad sources.
Ulysses was meant to be read aloud, so we can chew on each word. It was meant to be heard, so we can sing with each paragraph. Listen to each sentence, carefully, so we can dance inside our ears. May your celebration be cerebral, merry, filled with joy and song, and may it involve a little reading, here and there, too.
(A great site for Bloomsday activities, and Joyce in general, can be found by clicking here)
Here’s an excerpt from Episode 9, Scylla and Charybdis:
URBANE, TO COMFORT THEM, THE QUAKER LIBRARIAN PURRED:
– And we have, have we not, those priceless pages of Wilhelm Meister?
…
[More...]
Posted on: June 14, 2009
Jacket for The Great Gatsby. Cerca 1925
Personally, I have no horse in this race. But I am interested in discussions regarding the best of the best. Not that any of them are definitive, or even particularly enlightening. They do, however, seem to spark interesting dialogue.
A friend of mine sent along an online article about a panel discussion on the topic of Great American Novel. The Cultural Center of Cape Cod recently had a battle of the books, with five English teachers guiding the debate, and some one hundred people in the audience.
Some excerpts from the article:
“Moby Dick” had the home court advantage according to Rick Porteus, who teaches at Dennis Yarmouth High School. “Two months ago the Massachusetts state legislature voted ‘Moby Dick’ the epic of Massachusetts,” he said.
Porteus discussed the connections “Moby Dick” has to the Cape and Islands, including the story of the Essex, a Nantucket whaling ship that was sunk by a sperm whale.…
[More...]
Posted on: June 10, 2009
The Sleeping Venus, by Giorgione. 1510
The loss of art and the wonder of its survival. Giorgione (1477 – 1510) left us less than ten paintings that can be attributed to him with certainty, or something close to that. The Sleeping Venus is one of them, though even this great work of art was finished by Titian, not Giorgione, who died before its completion. The subject, an erotically charged, reclining female nude, was revolutionary for its time, though earlier cultures had far less angst when it came to portraying similar subject matter. In many ways, we lag behind them still.
Restoration. Of the soul, of treasures left to us, passed down by geniuses, madmen and saints. Restoration of the golden age that came before, that never was, the goddesses and gods and heroes who once walked the earth, larger than life, bigger than the average dream, but dreamed of by humans larger than life in their own way.…
[More...]
Posted on: June 8, 2009
Mendut Temple, Central Java, Indonesia. Photo by Gunawan Kartapranata
Pascal said:
The eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me.
He was thinking about the heavens, the stars, galaxies, night. He said in another pensée:
For after all what is man in nature? A nothing in relation to infinity, all in relation to nothing, a central point between nothing and all and infinitely far from understanding either.
I imagine most of us have these feelings from time to time. The immensity of the universe dwarfing us, subduing us, making us feel more than alone. Devastatingly alone.
But the reverse can occur, as well as all of the points in between. As in, think about history, think about the billions of forms of expression from age to age, culture to culture, nation to nation. Think about the collective as well as the individual. Expression, art, words, thoughts, music.…
[More...]
