|
|
Tuesday, February 10th, 2009
Nice: I am thinking about Sister Bridget's speech on humanistic and divine learning, and I happen on a new blog entry from Saramago:
Let us face facts. Years ago (many years already), the famous German theologian Hans Küng wrote this truth: "religions have never served to bring human beings closer to one another." Truer words have never been spoken. Here is not denied (and it would be absurd to think so) the right that everyone has, to adopt the religion most to his liking, from the most accustomed one to the least heard of, according to its precepts or dogmas (such as they may be), not even called into question the recourse to faith as supreme justification and, by definition (as we know all too well), the most definitive shutting off of reason. It is possible that faith moves mountains, there is no evidence that such a thing has ever occurred, but this proves nothing, given that God has never been disposed to engage his powers in this type of geological operation. What we know is that religions not only do not bring human beings closer, but rather they live, these religions, in a permanent state of mutual emnity, in all the falsely ecumenical harangues which this one or that one finds advantageous for passing, temporary tactical reasons. Things are this way, the world is the world, it is not an indication that anything is going to change. Except for the obvious idea that the planet would be much more peaceful if everybody were an atheist. Clear that, human nature being what it is, we would not be lacking in other motives for every dischord possible and imaginable, but we would be free of this ridiculous, infantile idea that our god is greater than the rest of the gods walking around, that the paradise which we hope for is a five-star hotel. And more, I believe that we could reinvent philosophy.
Anybody know which work of Küng's is being referenced here?
posted evening of February 10th, 2009: Respond
➳ More posts about Saramago's Notebook
|  |
|
 UCLA has created an online collection of mediæval manuscripts -- to me this means primarily "pretty pictures"; looks like it will also be a very useful resource for people whose field of research this is.
 (Some further thoughts from a mediævalist: Mary Kate Hurley of In the Middle writes about the Digital Codex.)
posted evening of February 10th, 2009: Respond
➳ More posts about Pretty Pictures
|  |
Textual scholarship meant, first, the recovery of the true text, then the true translation of that text; and true translation turned out to be inseparable from true interpretation, just as true interpretation turned out to be inseparable from true understanding of the cultural and historical matrix from which the text had emerged.
Sister Bridget's speech in the fifth chapter of Elizabeth Costello is interesting and educational; unfortunately I am having a bit of a hard time distinguishing Sister Bridget's public speaking style from her younger sister's, which is making me wonder whether Coetzee really bothered to create a new character, or if he just pulled her on as a prop to make this speech (which Elizabeth would obviously not do). -- In contrast Emmanuel Egudu's speaking style in Chapter 2 was distinctly different from Elizabeth's.The content of the speech on textual scholarship, however, is great -- stuff I did not know (in this degree of specificity) and am very glad to find out about.
posted evening of February 10th, 2009: 2 responses
➳ More posts about Elizabeth Costello
| |
|
 Modesto gets the recognition which is its due! We are more miserable than Flint, MI, but less so than Cleveland, OH; our next-door neighbor Stockton takes top honors.
 Update from my dad: The idea that life in Modesto is "miserable" is laughable. Individual lives (anywhere) are miserable, but the total of misery here is not worse than most. I think I could name numerous places in the US where I would be more "miserable." These things are all dependent on the metric chosen. That said, Modesto seems to consistently come out in the bottom of the pack on these ratings listings. (I'll bet I could design one to boost it, though, just by choosing what factors/measurement sets to use).
posted morning of February 10th, 2009: 2 responses
|  |
Monday, February 9th, 2009
I haven't really made up my mind what to think about the arguments in Elizabeth Costello -- I'm a little sorry nobody seems to believe any of them passionately? It's fun to engage with them playfully, in fun, but hard to treat them as actual advocacy. Well I don't think advocacy is the intent... That said, this is just lovely and seems exactly right to me: The behaviorists who designed [the tests for cognition in animals] claim that we understand only by a process of creating abstract models and then testing those models against reality. What nonsense. We understand by immersing ourselves and our intelligence in complexity. Coetzee's creation Costello is a marvelous speaker when she keeps her focus.
posted evening of February 9th, 2009: Respond
➳ More posts about J.M. Coetzee
|  |
|
Robyn Hitchcock's playlist this morning included a Beatles title I didn't recognize, "Rain" -- I asked Ellen about it this morning and she hummed a few familiar-sounding bars; I thought I'd look into it. Turns out "Rain" is the B-side of "Paperback Writer" from 1966. It is by John; it was not released on an album until "Hey Jude" in 1970. According to Wikipædia, it is the first commercial recording to feature backwards vocals. Sweet sounds! Here is video of the boys inventing MTV:
posted evening of February 9th, 2009: Respond
➳ More posts about The Beatles
| |
|
Elizabeth Costello is a book which I am finding requires access to source material. (I am kind of ignoring the major piece of source material for this book, but trying to track down the incidental pieces...) Below the fold, some source material for chapter 4, "The Poets and the Animals." This interview with Coetzee from the Swedish magazine Djurens Rätt ("Animal Rights"), while not strictly speaking "source material," also seems useful.
↷read the rest...
posted evening of February 9th, 2009: 4 responses
➳ More posts about Readings
|  |
Sunday, February 8th, 2009
 Ellen uploaded a set of pictures of the Girl Scout troop at the Children's Aid office. (Click the picture for more.)
 Update: Ellen's write-up of the project is on Patch.com.
posted evening of February 8th, 2009: Respond
➳ More posts about Sylvia
|  |
|
 After I watched the movie yesterday afternoon, I was walking around Soho, killing some time before I traveled out to Brooklyn to meet up with Dave. The neighborhood has -- not changed exactly; the character of the streets is quite similar to what it was ten years ago -- but sharpened, I think, become more distinct. It's as always, a pleasant place to walk around, and I had a good time peering into the new shops and the old shops alike.
One place that really made my day is an antique store on Houston just west of Bowery called B-4 it was cool, which specializes in old lamps and lighting fixtures. The person who runs it has an excellent eye for old metal artefacts, I was really impressed both by the pieces s/he had selected and by the way they were displayed -- the shop looks like nothing so much as a spare parts warehouse for robots from old science-fiction movies.
posted morning of February 8th, 2009: 2 responses
| |
...Storytelling works by lulling the reader or listener into a dreamlike state in which the time and space of the real world fade away, superceded by the time and space of the fiction.
-- But some books (and particularly this book, as I think Coetzee is making quite clear in this chapter titled "Realism") work by inserting themselves into the reader's "real world" head, rather than creating a separate "fiction" head -- instead of rivetting plot you have long reflective sessions riffing off the book.The narrator's intrusions, reminding us that he is telling us a story, become less frequent after the first chapter -- once Coetzee has established what kind of world he is creating, they are not necessary. This is good as they could become heavy-handed. I almost want to think of this as a book of essays rather than a novel -- each chapter centers around a long prepared talk, and the characters' responses to it. A curious sort of essays, though, as the narrator/author is explicitly not invested in the arguments being made but rather in the speakers' reasons for making and methods of making the arguments and in the listeners' understandings of the arguments. Elizabeth "is not sure, as she listens to her own voice, whether she believes any longer in what she's saying" -- but "on the other hand, she no longer believes very strongly in belief."
The Kafka story to which Elizabeth alludes in some of her talks is Ein Bericht für eine Akademie (at the bottom of the page), translated as A Report for an Academy. Wolfgang Köhler's book The Mentality of Apes can be read in part at Google Books; and there is some discussion of it at the Tufts Animal Cognition page. Plutarch's essay "On the Eating of Flesh" (which John fears Elizabeth will start talking about while she is at Appleton) is reproduced at the Animal Rights Library site.
posted morning of February 8th, 2009: Respond
| Previous posts
Archives  | |
|
Drop me a line! or, sign my Guestbook.
•
Check out Ellen's writing at Patch.com.
| |
