PimPhilipse's meanderings

H. Obenzinger: American Palestine: Mellville, Twain, and the Holy Land Mania.

I read this as a companion to Melville's Clarel. The book covers such areas as America as the new promised land (and other 'promised lands' that were settled by groups considering themselves a chosen people), Melville's soujorn in Palestine, real-world people that were used to create characters in Clarel, pilgrimage vs. settlement, American settlers in Palestine (including the original Nathan, Warder Cresson), Twain in his role of the 'American Vandal'.

The book gave me a good impulse to proceed with Clarel, but I also liked it on its own, since it also treated the apocalyptic side of Western influence in Palestine. According to some readings, settlement of Palestine by Jews (whether or not converted to Christianity) was a necessary step in the grand schedule of the Apocalypse.

Nathanael West: Miss Lonelyhearts: Very dark and uncomfortable, but hard to put down.

Hugo Grotius: Adamus Exul. Now and then quoted as a possible source of inspiration for Paradise Lost. I was not impressed by the similarities. The play is a good read, it might actually work on stage.
Adamus Exul inspired Vondel's Adam in Ballingschap, which was actually staged in Amsterdam, causing much consternation. It would be interesting to compare the treatment of Grotius, Vondel and Milton of the subject, perhaps in the light of their respective religious backgrounds. Grotius was an Arminian (tolerant protestant), Vondel started as Anabaptist, but when he wrote Adam in Ballingschap he was already 23 years a Catholic. Milton had his own extraordinary views on theology.

The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb
Compelling images! Careful research! Critical interpretations!
Reading Clarel is so much easier while thinking of a Crumb drawing of the desert (OK, it's still hard). And I demand that Crumb take Paradise Lost as his next subject. No wait... Exodus. No...

Voltaire: Essai sur la poesie épique
I started this for support of Paradise Lost, intending to limit myself to the chapter on Milton, but the work turned out to be sufficiently entertaining to deserve being read in its etirety, with V.'s innocent but scathing remarks and all that. Like when Camoens describes the portuguese seafarers being entertained on a desert island by nymphs:

"Mais il faut avouer qu'une île enchantée, dont Vénus est la déesse, et où des nymphes caressent des matelots après un voyage de long cours, ressemble plus à un musico d'Amsterdam qu'à quelque chose d'honnête."

Orchard: The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost'
The relation Milton-Galilei revealed.
Milton as Crypto-Copernicanist, with relevant quotes from PL, f.e. where Venus is descibed as 'horned'.
The sections on 18th and 19th century astronomy were a bit superfluous (surely, Milton wasn't so prophetic that he could foresee the discovery of Uranus...) but being a former astronomy
student I still found that part quite entertaining.

Galilei visited by Milton - I remembered this print from a book I read a while back.

Intreresting thread Pim, too erudite for me to express any meaningful opinions just yet - but following with interest.

Any way you can enlarge that, Zeno?

Also following with interest, Pim.

tcM already tried without success. Here is a site with the print in better view.

http://www.art.com/products/p13307133-sa-i2456145/henry-wolf-galileo-galilei-ita...

Milton: Paradise Lost: The tragedy of tragedies as Vondel called it (Aller treurspelen treurspel). This is one of those works that I read because of the splendid style, at the same disagreeing violently with most of the things that are being said. To be discussed here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/81543

Joseph Roth: Die Geschichte von der 1002. Nacht: Fascinating story of people habitually making the wrong choices in 19th century Vienna.

I hope you'll come discuss Roth in the Author Theme Reads group. It's been fun seeing Roth and Zweig's names popping up all over the place because of the influence of the group.

The Basque History of the World: comprehensive introduction, covering language, social structure, famous Basques of whom practically everybody thinks they're Spanish (f.e. Loyola), politics, terrorism, whaling, emigration to the New World...

Kurlansky remains objective most of the time, noting the good and bad things of both Spanish and Basques (and French, although they get a little less attention).

This one was TBR for a long time, I'm glad I was now able to squeeze it in. Fascinating.

Pim - any indications from this as to the future of Basque/Spanish relations? Is some type of Northern Ireland settlement likely?

And where does whaling come into this?

>14 zenomax:: I find it hard to predict. There are on both sides too many different directions. Whaling was invented by the Basques in the seventh century: they went out in the Biscay Bay (right: the Basque Bay) in rowing boats and tried to attack the whales that were swimming there.

(Yes, the Inuit and other peoples of the north probably invented this as well and earlier)

O. Pamuk: My Name is Red.
Group read of The Salon Litteraire...
I constantly had to remind myself that I wasn't reading The Name of the Rose. Yes, the narrative structure is strikingly original, but then there are murders, two colliding world-views, blindness, endless enumerations.
The strategy of letting the tales of the murderer be completely disjunct from the tales of the miniaturist who eventually turns out to be the murderer didn't work for me - it struck me as unbelievable. Nor was I tempted to go back in the book to check which clues had missed.
The conflict between the Frankish and the Oriental view on painting was vaguely interesting, and this kept me from quitting. As the successor of the Sultan pulls the plug on illustrating, there is no real resolution.
Knowing that Atatürk recreated Turkey as a secular state, where a part of the populace would prefer formal recognition of Islam as the state-religion, I wonder how much the story is a parable for modern Turkey.

Л. Толстой и Достоевский (Tolstoj and Dostoevsky):
Seemed to be a good idea as background for Братья Карамазовы. Here is the review:

http://www.librarything.com/work/4872744/reviews

Browsing through Brothers Karamazov secondary literature, I noticed that both Bakhtin's La poétique de Dostoïevski and Belknap's The Genesis of the Brothers Karamazov mention a connection with E.A. Poe. Belknap states: "Dostoevsky's journal Time (Vremia) introduced Poe to the Russian reading public..." and Bakhtin gives the title of the article: Три рассказа Эдгара Поэ. Turns out that this is available on Wikisource: http://ru.wikisource.org/wiki/%D0%A2%D1%80%D0%B8_%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%81%D1%81%D0%BA%.... You can even click through to the original scans of Vremia by Google! The stories in Vremia are: The Tell-tale Heart, The Black Cat and The Devil in the Belfry.

I'll try to quote from D.'s introduction later.

How fascinating, Pim. I'll look forward to reading quotes from D.'s intro, if you have the time to post.

ooooh how exciting! I look forward to that as well!

I have posted a translation at http://www.librarything.com/topic/101524, msg 66.

I let Google translate do most of the work, then I tried to remove the greatest errors to the best of my knowledge.

The translator of the stories, Mikhalovsky, has also translated works by Byron, Longfellow, Macaulay, Prudhomme, Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet) and Baudelaire. Here is a famous bit about Hiawatha:

На прибрежьи Гитчи-Гюми,
При водахъ большаго моря,
Тамъ стоялъ вигвамъ Нокомисъ,
Дочери луны Нокомисъ.
Позади былъ лѣсъ дремучiй,
Лѣсъ изъ тёмныхъ, мрачныхъ сосенъ
И изъ елей, впереди же
Необъятною равниной
Разстилалось и сiяло
Въ блескѣ солнца Гитчи-Гюми.

M. Bakhtin: La poétique de Dostoïevski.

Tries to place D. in traditions like the carnival, satire, dialogue (Platonic and otherwise). Enjoyable, except for the section on linguistics. Some examples would have been helpful.

Bakhtin made me put more of D's books on my TBR: Poor Folk, The Double, The Idiot, The Possessed...

I'm struggling through chapter 3 of Bakhtin (English title: Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics) now, pim. It is indeed revelatory, but hard going at times.

The Double is the best of his early works. Incredible.

Belknap's The Structure of The Brothers Karamazov has a lot of references to older Russian critics, among them Leonid Grossman's "Seminar on Dostoevsky". This happened to be available in a 1972 reprint. It arrived today. I'll list the chapters:

1: Dostoevsky's library
2: Catalog of Dostoevsky's library
3: The notes of Anna G. Dostoevskaya in the works of F.M. Dostoevsky
4: Remarks on Dostoevsky's language
5: From the lost essays of Dostoevsky
6: Bibliography of Dostoevsky's letters
7: Bibliography of Reminiscences about Dostoevsky

I am moist just looking at the contents page.

I'll try to make some excerpts, but the Russians are terrible transliterators, esp. the French names are often mangled beyond recognition.

The Genesis of the Brothers Karamazov

Interesting views on the various sources D. might have been influenced by, people that may have influenced BK's characters etc.
The last chapter where Belknap uses a sort of neurologico-perceptional model was a bit over the top for me.

Edit: hyperlink instead of failing touchstone

Davaj! De Russen en hun wodka

263 pages chock-full of anecdotes and literary citations on Russia and its national vice. Seven pages of bibliography.

While surfing in search of more Dostoevsky-related literature, I stumbled over Kurosava's version of The Idiot:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Idiot_%28film%29

Has anyone seen this?

No, I hadn't, but I just checked and Netflix has it.

De gebroeders Karamazov
Amazing. Doestoevsky slices all characters open and reveals their inner motives in such a way that often you cannot just like or dislike them: they are complex personalities that you might meet in real life, and at the same time they stand for an idea, without killing the story.

Wij zijn ons brein
Columns of the neuroscientist Dick Swaab. On the cooperation between mother and child at birth, brain defects, memory, Alzheimer, free will or determinism, nature or nurture and much more.

Van Moskou tot Medan
Short adventures of Jelle Brandt Corstius in Russia and other parts of the world.

De aap uit de mouw
Columns of Frans de Waal on primate and human behaviour.

I managed to find this trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eoq6eGknp88

Thanks, looks great!

In the mean time, I have tracked down a full version, which out of the box comes in Japanese with Russian dubs, but with some tweaking you can remove the Russian channel and choose to display English or Russian subtitles.

But I've told myself to read the book first.