Classic’s Spin 2

Time for Classic’s Spin 2! Last March when The Classic’s Club held their first Classic’s Spin I tried to make it more social and interactive by populating most of my list with books that other bloggers had placed on their list. Number 14 was chosen which was Proust’s Contre Sainte-Beuve. That was not a book on anyone else’s list but in retrospect was very glad it was chosen. It was not a book I was particularly motivated to read but found it provided great insight into what Proust was up to. It clarified many things for me that were lost in the sheer volume of Recherché and led me to want to reread the larger work again.

However good that experience was I want to make sure I get the more social and interactive version this time around by selecting ONLY books chosen by other bloggers. And since six weeks is a long time, I’ll try to get through an additional book for each number. Although I must admit the combinations for #6 Middlemarch & Tess of the d’Urbervilles and #16 Buddenbrooks & Master and Margarita may be a bit much.

This time around Brona at Brona’s Books is doing the same thing so some of the selections (e.g., #4, #18) could have up to four of us reading the same book. Happy Reading!

1. Pushkin-Eugene Onegin (Half-filled Attic)/Aristophanes-Lysistrata (Sarah Read Too Much)
2. Confucius-Analects (A Horse and Carrot)/Buck-The Good Earth (Brona’s Books, Tiny Library)
3. Zola-Germinal (Bronas Books, Book Rhapsody, Cat)/Zola-The Ladies Paradise (Books and Chocolate)
4. Austen-Sense & Sensibility (Surgabukuku)/Mafouz-Palace of Desire (Wandering in the Stacks)
5. Woolf-To the Lighthouse (Cat)/Conrad-The Secret Agent (Half-filled Attic)/Fitzgerald-The Beautiful and the Damned (Tiny Library)
6. Eliot-Middlemarch (A Horse and a Carrot)/Hardy-Tess of the d’Urbervilles (Brona’s Books, Lakeside Musing)
7. Orwell-Burmese Days (From Isi)/Wilde-The Canterville Ghost (Surgabukuku)
8. Emerson-Essays (Classics Club)/Shakespeare-Richard III (Fanda)
9. Zola-Nana (Books and Chocolate)/Shakespeare-Richard III (Classics Club)
10. Dafoe-Moll Flanders (Brona’s Books, Under a Gray Sky)/Nabokov-Lolita (Literary Nerds Unite)
11. Machado de Assis-Dom Casmurro (Book Rhapsody)/Flaubert-Sentimental Education (Books and Chocolate)
12. Zola-L’Assommoir (All Things Booker)/Wilde-The Canterville Ghost (Fanda)
13. Nabakov-Lolita (Under a Gray Sky, The Book Wheel)/Fitzgerald-The Beautiful and the Damned (Unscripted35)
14. Gissing-New Grub Street (Books and Chocolate)/Woolf-To the Lighthouse (Brona’s Books, From Isi)
15. Fitzgerald-Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Fanda)/Eliot-Middlemarch (Under a Gray Sky)
16. Mann-Buddenbrooks (Book Rhapsody)/Bulgakov-Master and Margarita (Brona’s Books, Wandering in the Stacks)
17. Nabokov-Pale Fire (Lost Generation Reader)/Frank-Diary of Anne Frank (A Horse and a Carrot)
18. Swift-Gulliver’s Travels (Fanda)/Frank-Diary of Anne Frank (Brona’s Books, Classics Club, Surgabukuku)/Gissing-The Odd Woman (Cat)
19. Schreiner-The Story of an African Farm (Literary Nerds Unite)/DuBois-The Souls of Black Folk (Classic Vasilly)
20. Naipaul-A House for Mr. Biswas (Cat)/DuBois-The Souls of Black Folk (Wandering in the Stacks)

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Verse numbers of ancient texts

The “verse numbers” you see on most ancient texts not exactly “decided” by a particular person or group. Scholars use the line breaks in the original source texts.The process usually begins with stabilization and preservation of the material itself. Then some kind of sorting and editing to find the order and arrangement of the pieces. Then a facsimile is prepared by photographing the pieces, sometimes with infrared or other techniques to improve clarity. A transcription is made of the words and characters in the original language. There is often a good amount of interpretation in this step as the texts are not always clear and readable. The facsimile edition will be distributed to other scholars for interpretation, translation and commentary. Good examples of the process can be seen in the work performed with recent finds like the Nag Hammadi Library or the Dead Sea scrolls. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Sea_Scrolls#Photography_and_assembly

This image shows a photographic facsimile of part of the Psalm scroll (11Q5 or 11QPs) from the Dead Sea scrolls. It includes a transcription of one column of the scroll. Notice how the line breaks in the transcription match those in the facsimile and how the transcription is broken and fragmentary at line 18. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/67/Psalms_Scroll.jpg

Here is an English translation of column 19 of the same scroll. It is also fragmentary at line 18. http://www.ibiblio.org/expo/deadsea.scrolls.exhibit/Library/psalms.html

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Reading Athens

Classical Athens (Credit: Richard Sennett)

There are several of us who have been tossing around the idea of reading more of the Greek classics. Our interests vary: history, comedy, tragedy, philosophy, politics, etc. We realized that Classical Athens was a very small community with a few key players that have had a great amount of influence on Western culture. They show up as characters in history, oration, philosophical dialogues and satiric comedies. The writings of Plato, Aristophanes, Euripides, Thucydides, Xenophon and the Sophists are all reacting and responding to each other and the current events of the final 30 years of the 5th Century BCE.

We have also discovered that reading books in the context of the events, people and other books they are reacting too provides some amazing insight into what they have to say. We have created a plan to read the great works of late 5th Century Athens, year by year so that we can really get to know them. As we are scattered around the country we will be reading and interacting by Twitter, blog and bi-monthly Skype chats. Please feel free to join us for whatever interests you. Feel free to pick and choose. If you like History you could read along with Xenophon and Thucydides. If you like Drama you could participate in the readings of Aristophanes and Euripides. If you want Philosophy, there will be plenty of that!  And I can personally guarantee that you will come away with a very different understanding of Plato and Socrates than you have ever experienced before.

Here is a copy of our reading list. Every week or two we hope to read one dramatic work, a book of history, a short philosophical dialogue (Plato’s Meno) or a section of a longer dialogue (e.g., Plato’s Laws). Dates and times to follow. If you are interested in joining for some or all of Reading Athens leave a comment, send an email, or follow us on Twitter at #readingathens. More details to follow soon.

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Eclectic American Architecture

from Samuel Fisk’s “Studies in Architecture” Springfield Republican

” There is a good deal of variety in the style of army architecture. My own building is a severe classic, without ornament, rather low and heavy, inclining to the Doric, or perhaps even to the Egyptian order. But we have specimens of the airiest, most fantastic Gothics, of the tasteful Corinthian capitals, of fluted Ionic columns, of Moorish arches and Arabesque ornaments, of the Chinese pagoda roofing, of the ‘ a la catacomb ‘ excavations. One of my neighbor’s is nearly on the model, on a somewhat smaller scale, to be sure, of the Athenian Parthenon; yet I presume the idea of imitating the proportions of that ancient structure never entered his mind. Some model after a heathen temple, some after a Yankee woodshed, some after an Indian wigwam, and some after a woodchuck’s hole. But the Hottentot style of architecture, on the whole, it must be confessed, prevails over every other; and for every kind of structure that can rise out of Mother Earth, that can be created from Virginia mud, with some ribs and framework of logs, let me commend you to this whole region round about. I couldn’t do full justice to the subject, however, in a dozen letters ; so I may as well stop in one place as another.”

“The parlor, sitting-room, dining-room, and library are so arranged as to be easily thrown together into one apartment. The sleeping-rooms are well ventilated; and, to be brief, the whole forms a snug tenement for a family of suitable size, such as is rarely to be found, and I might add, if you wont charge this as an advertisement, could be rented on easy terms, with a limited amount of furniture, as the owner is thinking of moving to Richmond.”

reprinted in Samuel Fisk, Mr. Dunn Browne’s Experiences in the Army, pp. 8-9

Human Nature and Conduct

“Njal spoke and said, ‘”Slow and sure,” says the proverb, and so it is with many things, though they try men’s tempers, there are always two sides to a story, even when vengeance is taken.’”

The Saga of Burnt Njal-ch.XLIV

Justice (Dike, on the left) and Divine Vengeance (Nemesis, right) are pursuing the criminal murderer. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“To sentimentalize over a criminal—to “forgive” because of a glow of feeling—is to incur liability for production of criminals. But to suppose that infliction of retributive suffering suffices, without reference to concrete consequences, is to leave untouched old causes of criminality and to create new ones by fostering revenge and brutality. The abstract theory of justice which demands the “vindication” of law irrespective of instruction and reform of the wrongdoer is as much a refusal to recognize responsibility as is the sentimental gush which makes a suffering victim out of a criminal.”

“Courses of action which put the blame exclusively on a person as if his evil will were the sole cause of wrongdoing and those which condone offense on account of the share of social conditions in producing bad disposition are equally ways of making unreal separation of man from his surroundings, mind from the world.”

“Causes for an act always exist, but causes are not excuses. Questions of causation are physical, not moral except when they concern future consequences. It is as causes of future actions that excuses and accusations alike must be considered. At present we give way to resentful passion, and then “rationalize” our surrender by calling it a vindication of justice. Our entire tradition regarding punitive justice tends to prevent recognition of social partnership in producing crime; it falls in with a belief in metaphysical free will. By killing an evildoer or shutting him up behind stone walls, we are enabled to forget both him and our part in creating him. Society excuses itself by laying the blame on the criminal.”

 John Dewey Human Nature and Conduct pp. 5-6

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Finding your way through La Débâcle

‘Sir,’ explained Sambu, unperturbed, ‘we and our comrades are occupying Dieulet Wood…’
‘Dieulet Wood? Where’s that, then?’
‘Between Stenay and Mouzon, sir.’
‘Stenay, Mouzon, never heard of ‘em! How am I supposed to get my bearings, with all these new names?’

Émile Zola, La Débâcle

La Débâcle (1892) by Émile Zola (1840-1902)

In reading Zola’s La Débâcle it is easy to get lost in the flurry of names and places. These maps and order of battle should help you to get a better sense of what is going on, who is where and what all the complaining is about.

La Debacle follows the fictional 106e régiment d’infanterie de ligne which is part of the VII Corps under Félix Charles Douay.

VII Corps is initially part of the optimistically named “Army of the Rhine” under Commander in Chief Emperor Napoléon III. After the initial retreat VII Corps becomes part of Marshal Patrice de Mac-Mahon‘s Army of Châlons.

The Order of Battle (organization of the armies):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Prussian_War_order_of_battle

Part I describes the early phase of the Franco-Prussian war. This map shows the troop movements during the entire war but is particularly useful in following the movement of VII Corps described in Part I. VII begins the novel at Belfort (in the lower right corner of the map). They rapidly retreat to Paris and almost as rapidly advance to the Ardennes, just south of the border with Belgium. Most of Part I takes place in this area (in the upper right corner of the map) and ends at Sedan.
http://www.marxists.org/glossary/events/f/pics/franco-prussian-war.jpg

Part II describes the Battle of Sedan. This map shows the troop positions and movements during Sedan. VII Corps is located 2-4 km north of the fortified city of Sedan along the plateau de l’Algérie from the town of Floing to Illy.
http://www.marxists.org/glossary/events/f/pics/sedan.gif

Part III takes place in the city of Paris. This map shows the investment of Paris. There are no French troop positions as the army has surrendered and the government has fallen after Sedan.
http://www.oocities.org/fpwar1870/images/parismap.jpg

Napoleon III having a conversation with Fürst Otto von Bismarck after his defeat and capture at Sedan. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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Philosophy: Who Needs It

Ayn Rand (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 ”The primitive and banal mentality of enforced politics–any politics–can only produce primitive and banal art.”

Vladimir Nabokov, ”Robert Hughes Interview” 1965

It is interesting to think about Ayn Rand in relationship to literature and philosophy. She boasted that she wrote literature and philosophy but her results were a bland and pale imitation. Rand, Nietzsche and Baudelaire all share a kind of glorification of individualism. Nietzsche created works that challenge our preconceived notions of morality and truth. Baudelaire creates great art, challenging and disturbing works that cause us to question our notions of the beautiful. Rand, on the other hand, while promoting individuality and genius, writes works in a popular and sentimental style to appeal to a mass audience. I always felt her pulp style and appeal to popular taste was somewhat hypocritical and undermined her message. Viewed in this context her ideas seem rather weak and reminiscent those lampooned in Flaubert‘s Dictionary of Accepted Ideas.

I am not just dismissing Rand for her followers, but for her writing which seem to lack the understanding and rigor you mentioned. If we are looking for rigorous and insightful presentations of individualism we can look toward the Existentialists and Transcendentalists (who are admittedly less rigorous). If we are looking for rigorous and insightful presentations that oppose socialism or collectivism we can read Friedrich Hayek or Karl Popper.

I am certainly not dismissing her for writing fiction. Flaubert and Baudelaire are great examples of how fiction can be intellectually and artistically challenging.

I can accept Rand as a propagandistic writer of popular fiction. She certainly has her fans. I can also see the value of discussing her in the context of literature as it helps us to understand what makes other writers so much better. The characters in her novels are one-dimensional. They are allegorical rather than real. Flaubert’s Emma Bovary is foolish, but she still engages our sympathy. Baudelaire presents his (somewhat narrow) view of the world with great richness and variety. Rand repeats herself endlessly. Nietzsche takes on much of the history of Western Philosophy. Rand sets up straw men and knocks them down. I’m sure that Atlas Shrugged is a great book read at the beach. I’m also sure that it is not the great work of literature or philosophy that it sometimes pretends to be.

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