tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-75773593602174788492024-02-06T23:56:05.318-08:00Linguaglossa 17the town from which my paternal grandfather, Alfio Vecchio, hailed. It sits at the foot of Mount Etna. The origin of the name is in some dispute. Some say it means "glossy tongue", others "red tongue", still others "fancy talk".Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger18125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7577359360217478849.post-12389866349575884152018-01-02T21:39:00.002-08:002018-01-02T21:39:54.956-08:00News of the World: Armadillos and more<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ_MUWaunwRnydpBT4aRvxWpMMF9wT1tikThj0IkewewaRCB5MjPB5xjXPA55ViwMWMYn9KVPyAtruJJXN_19n6XCQCtO3JG12xWqTRv7vZ4s0uWvPmwKaqEm0aWI5eBG7Q_Pdee4Lu4g/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-01-02+at+3.35.00+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="433" data-original-width="478" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ_MUWaunwRnydpBT4aRvxWpMMF9wT1tikThj0IkewewaRCB5MjPB5xjXPA55ViwMWMYn9KVPyAtruJJXN_19n6XCQCtO3JG12xWqTRv7vZ4s0uWvPmwKaqEm0aWI5eBG7Q_Pdee4Lu4g/s200/Screen+Shot+2018-01-02+at+3.35.00+PM.png" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">from armadillo-online.org</td></tr>
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Exotic as an eight-banded armadillo. Did you know that armadillos generally give birth to identical quadruplets? They do. While I don't think I've ever seen an armadillo other than in a zoo (if even there), I've had a fondness for them as a symbol for many years. Just look at their adorable snoutlet and perky ears, their attractive bands, and who could resist their ability to curl up like a pillbug to resist harm? There is a Jan Brett book for children called <a href="http://janbrett.com/bookstores/armadillo_book.htm" target="_blank">Armadillo Rodeo</a> about a spunky lil 'diller from the Texas hill country who tries to befriend a fancy cowboy boot. I actually have a collection of armadillos: armadillo pins, stuffed armadillos, an armadillo planter, an armadillo mug. And yet I don't recall ever having met an armadillo. Why do I like these critters so much? They are cute, tough, resourceful, self-protecting. That they are symbols of Texas has always been incidental, and yet they indubitably are.<br />
<br />
A New Yorker trashing Texas should probably to be expected, since (real) NewYorkers generally trash everyone. Meaning, everyone is fair game to a New Yorker. Texas isn't as desirable a target as say, California (bunch of fruits and nuts who are going to fall into the Pacific any day now), but the stereotype of gun-toting, big-haired Dallas oil magnates and tumbleweeds brushing against pick-up trucks crashing into drive-through liquor barns - well, it's there.<br />
<br />
I've never been a fan of the western genre, neither in movies nor books, but I did read some examples over the past several years. Cormac McCarthy's <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Country_for_Old_Men" target="_blank">No Country for Old Men</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road" target="_blank">The Road</a> made it pretty clear that Texans are some gritty-ass people. After reading those I wouldn't mess with Texas either.<br />
<br />
The most recent book I read about Texas was much more benign. It was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/13/books/news-of-the-world-paulette-jiles.html?_r=0" target="_blank">News of the World</a> by Paulette Jiles. It tells the story of a elderly itinerant newspaper reader in Texas who has to deal with informing a highly polarized post-Civil War society that the 15th Amendment to the Constitution has passed (outlawing slavery). While doing this he agrees to take a 10 year old blonde girl who was taken captive when she was 6, back to her German parents near San Antonio. Drama ensues. It's actually very beautifully written, with beautiful, poetic descriptions of nature, and simple, straightforward explication of the characters. I'm too tired to write more about it now, and I've promised myself to write something every day, so I'll sign off here. I am writing again so that I can look back in the future and see what I was thinking now, much as I am able to do with my old diaries from ages 8 to 25 or so. Good night.<br />
<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7577359360217478849.post-28174350607043891122018-01-01T16:24:00.002-08:002018-01-01T16:26:43.971-08:00In the Ring: Dostoevsky vs. Tolstoy<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
When it comes to fans of the Russian classics, they say you are either a Dostoevsky person or a Tolstoy person. It's not clear why this dichotomy has been bandied about; my guess is that those are the big two and, people like to see a fight, and so you're encouraged to pick sides. You can check out a piece on this from The Millions called, "<a href="https://themillions.com/2012/04/tolstoy-or-dostoevsky-8-experts-on-whos-greater.html" target="_blank">Tolstoy or Dostoevsky? 8 Experts on Who’s Greater</a>." <br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnmCyS0R_Mjos6Xv0Qs05837RIKxW61RR7L7J_Y-Ejkk07-Ie7JJzqNXwkgkdyCxIyn7XBi7NaIzqKi-PyDCIwqAqvBFiJOypA3S6ozZRw9K4XsQZ-kYzcrRkPfdaBabGvVyKwb59dIYw/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-01-01+at+4.23.30+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="168" data-original-width="105" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnmCyS0R_Mjos6Xv0Qs05837RIKxW61RR7L7J_Y-Ejkk07-Ie7JJzqNXwkgkdyCxIyn7XBi7NaIzqKi-PyDCIwqAqvBFiJOypA3S6ozZRw9K4XsQZ-kYzcrRkPfdaBabGvVyKwb59dIYw/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-01-01+at+4.23.30+PM.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">There's more than one such book.</td></tr>
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Going with the flow of this idiocy, I always considered myself a Dostoevskian. My friends and I in college got a big kick out of reading Dostoevsky, acting out the characters in our Slavic Club, and even considered putting together a musical based on Crime and Punishment (still a good idea, I think). We had a band called "Slavic Kenotic", inspired by the Dostoevskian focus on purification through suffering. The themes of the band were often more ribald than kenotic, but I think we claimed to be channeling Marmeladov and Svedrigailov as an excuse for that focus.<br />
<br />
Tolstoy was clearly the less popular in our crowd. He seemed naive and preachy, hung up on adulteresses and dying old men. The story of an aristocratic morphing into a highly spiritual mendicant didn't appeal to us. We were all so over Hesse's Siddhartha, and Leo just seemed like such a self-indulgent trust fund case. I am sure we weren't fair to him.<br />
<br />
Now I'm an older lady and the time has come to do what I hadn't dared to do earlier: read War and Peace. In the introduction I learned that Leo wasn't really such a ridiculous fuddy-duddy. He took it upon himself to educate the local serf children, and seems to have been genuine in his intention to improve the world. I'll learn more, I'm sure.<br />
<br />
Regarding translations, there are quite a few choices, and apparently not one canonical original. In any case, I'm using <a href="http://rvb.ru/tolstoy/01text/vol_4/0030_1.htm#" target="_blank">this version in Russian</a>, and a number of translations into English. The latest one is by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, and it seeks to remain as faithful to the original as possible, with the obvious drawback/advantage of including the original French as well as all manner of stilted speech and rarified vocabulary. An earlier (off copyright) translation by Louise and Aylmer Maude is available for free via Kindle and <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2600" target="_blank">on Project Gutenberg here</a>. It translates most of the French and is more colloquial, and much more accessible. My plan to is go back and forth between the original and the P&V, periodically checking in or Maude, and a Penguin paperback I have, translated by Rosemary Edmonds.<br />
<br />
Getting back into the swing of social reading, I've revved up my Goodreads account, joined <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/410706-2018-war-peace-read" target="_blank">a group dedicated to reading War and Peace</a> (admittedly the catalyst to this decision), and delved in headfirst, splashing around joyfully in all the history and culture of the thing. The characters? The plot? The atmosphere? I'll save that for tomorrow. <br />
<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7577359360217478849.post-11630862501881160892012-02-26T00:20:00.001-08:002012-02-26T00:40:01.225-08:00Sail<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUdFM83VS4GXJmg7qcPy-DRiPeMtWjWEVh9LPcRkUvfkf9RUKpO5oamt_7WP-eu3RwULUVtYrq19v58yIQK_6YSRNl1mE1ylu6UCS8PWJpW0cS-Qc_uLZbp2n4mVmuodoX4hCZ_wNnebM/s1600/goncharova.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUdFM83VS4GXJmg7qcPy-DRiPeMtWjWEVh9LPcRkUvfkf9RUKpO5oamt_7WP-eu3RwULUVtYrq19v58yIQK_6YSRNl1mE1ylu6UCS8PWJpW0cS-Qc_uLZbp2n4mVmuodoX4hCZ_wNnebM/s320/goncharova.jpg" width="225" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Sailboat by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natalia_Goncharova" target="_blank">Natalya Goncharova</a></span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">by Mikhail Lermontov, </span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">1832-1834 </span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">translated from the Russian by Alfia Wallace, 2011</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span> </span><br />
<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: small;">The lonely sail whitely widens</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: small;">in the fog of the deep blue sea!</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: small;">What is it seeking in a land so distant?</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: small;">What has it left in its native city?..</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: small;">The waves are playful, the wind it whistles,</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: small;">The mast it bends and bends and squeaks..</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Alas, it seeks not joy, nor fortune </span></div>
<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Nor from joy and chance retreats. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Above it shines a sun so golden,</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: small;">The brightest lapis streams beneath,</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: small;">And he, a rebel, invites the tempest,</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: small;">As if in storms he will find peace.</span><br />
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><b>Парус </b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><b> </b> <br />
</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD7oM0F2UspCo8596f09o0L_m_RG6VYQmD1njRvqMNBW0q8EAQGIcK9unxL3duHIRxLT-5DfyulfLqO3pWi9qck0yDlB7_t5qJ9Ht-tqtpHrnrPa6uHClI2z6yR6_dY482ZEU8mx5TMu4/s1600/475px-Rembrandt_Christ_in_the_Storm_on_the_Lake_of_Galilee.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD7oM0F2UspCo8596f09o0L_m_RG6VYQmD1njRvqMNBW0q8EAQGIcK9unxL3duHIRxLT-5DfyulfLqO3pWi9qck0yDlB7_t5qJ9Ht-tqtpHrnrPa6uHClI2z6yR6_dY482ZEU8mx5TMu4/s320/475px-Rembrandt_Christ_in_the_Storm_on_the_Lake_of_Galilee.jpg" width="252" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Storm_on_the_Sea_of_Galilee" target="_blank">The Storm on the Sea of Galilee</a> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">by Rembrandt van Rijn 1633<br />
</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Белеет парус одинокий <br />
В тумане моря голубом!<br />
Что ищет он в стране далекой? <br />
Что кинул он в краю родном?.. <br />
</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Играют волны - ветер свищет, <br />
И мачта гнется и скрипит... <br />
Увы, - он счастия не ищет <br />
И не от счастия бежит! <br />
</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Под ним струя светлей лазури, <br />
Над ним луч солнца золотой... <br />
А он, мятежный, </span><span style="font-size: small;">просит</span><span style="font-size: small;"> бури, <br />
Как будто в бурях есть покой.</span></div>
<br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7577359360217478849.post-88068526356125404162012-02-25T23:03:00.002-08:002012-02-26T00:42:41.527-08:00Brightsided<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG3tFvYEuHYFc-Xs1H6ByAF5Tl1WTyfiI3OkeShFLV0h-7uKxAoNB-y5sNNMvfJuVlDMrjyfl5qk8rwTEMRj9gkhMBiH1ITFMceAdoo16tSL8LG-XSnA9QEu8I_tCiH85yD4hnFhatL_c/s1600-h/bird-smile.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="151" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG3tFvYEuHYFc-Xs1H6ByAF5Tl1WTyfiI3OkeShFLV0h-7uKxAoNB-y5sNNMvfJuVlDMrjyfl5qk8rwTEMRj9gkhMBiH1ITFMceAdoo16tSL8LG-XSnA9QEu8I_tCiH85yD4hnFhatL_c/s200/bird-smile.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<i>"How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America" </i><br />
by Barbara Ehrenreich (2009)<br />
<br />
<i>Right makes might. </i> This could be the motto of the positive thinking movement, whose history and impact Barbara Ehrenreich examines in <u>Brightsided</u>. If we are convinced that all is right with the world, with ourselves, that we contain a divine spark which renders us potentially omnipotent, well, what road is not open to us, what great achievement unattainable? What banal, self-serving desire, what exploitative scheme, what atrocity is not justified with impunity? What don't we have a right to attain?<br />
<br />
Like in <a href="http://linguaglossa.blogspot.com/2009/12/giver.html">The Giver</a>, one considers the removal of human suffering to be for the putative greater good, and like in The Giver, we see that this impulse can and is taken way too far by some people, and movements. As a transplanted New Yawka who has felt both tremendous relief at no longer being surrounded by jaded, hostile crowds every day, and some Californian pressure to appear chirpier than I really am, I can see both sides of the picture. Being negative in the face of adversity is only useful up to the point that it helps you cope with or solve the problem. Being positive or negative is not what necessarily determines the outcome of a problem though, and that's where the Brightsiders tend to miss the point.<br />
<br />
Barbara Ehrenreich became especially pissed off when she was being treated for breast cancer and found that many "support groups" insisted that participants only express hope and "positive" thoughts. Anger and indignation were not acceptable, and bogus studies were bandied about which purported to link positive attitude with positive medical outcomes. When Ehrenreich pointed out that people were dying who had tried having a positive attitude and others survived while being grumpy and angry, she was told she was a downer and banned from the group.<br />
<br />
The early history of "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Thought" target="_blank">New Thought</a>"/"right thinking" movements in the United States is full of well-meaning people trying to improve their lives and the lives of others. <a href="http://www.religionfacts.com/a-z-religion-index/christian_science.htm" target="_blank">Christian Science</a> developed in large part as a response to an unregulated domestic drug policy which allowed the marketing of all manner of drugs and even poisons as medicines. The self-actualization ideologies of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unity_Church" target="_blank">Unity</a> movement and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Vincent_Peale" target="_blank">Norman Vincent Peale</a>'s Power of Positive Thinking were responses to the dour message of self-abnegating Calvinist Protestantism, an ideology which no longer served a world in which the possibilities for humanity seemed to be expanding along with the industrial revolution and improved human rights. The common idea in New Thought was that individuals are the masters of their destinies, that God wants us all to be happy and prosperous, and to attain this, we just have to reach out and grab it. We have to be the positive change, reflect it, project it, be it. Sounds good to me.. up to a point.<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz-6cQmQXmpSL9i2jZhN_FASXQk4go8_HAs-XFt8voIvKnhhU6Xpgeyh2Wr7g6gnnsXIflHVnRylbFq4oojfcxYMDYN67QI80JI-fm2TmS71EgmpjFb6tSmR8R3Dh4jDPAQyzTY3qoysM/s1600/bright_sided.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz-6cQmQXmpSL9i2jZhN_FASXQk4go8_HAs-XFt8voIvKnhhU6Xpgeyh2Wr7g6gnnsXIflHVnRylbFq4oojfcxYMDYN67QI80JI-fm2TmS71EgmpjFb6tSmR8R3Dh4jDPAQyzTY3qoysM/s200/bright_sided.jpg" width="146" /></a></div>
Positive thinking becomes pathological when it leads to delusional, irresponsible behaviors, such as fiscal policies based on what people would like to happen, rather than what would logically happen as a result of one's actions. Pyramid schemes, real estate bubbles, going into massive debt to finance an untenable dream that's been sold you by positive-think hucksters - we have seen the disastrous effects of the dark side of positive thinking this past decade and Ehrenreich gives plenty of convincing examples of positive thinking in the service of greed. That said, it is unfair to characterize positive thinking as being responsible for the downfall of America, as suggested in the title of Ehrenreich's book. Positive thinking while struggling for progress against the odds, has helped Americans to attain great things. Consider the successes of struggling immigrants, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horatio_Alger,_Jr." target="_blank">Horatio Alger</a> stories, single moms who manage to start businesses or send kids to college, and anyone with an idea and the passion and energy to make it happen. <br />
<br />
Despite Ehrenreich's misgivings, and the potential for abuse in any
ideology which demands absolute adherence, there's a lot to like in the positive thinking philosophy. Fatalism is a drag, it is regressive, and I would
generally rather deal with an honest, can-do optimist than with someone who is a
defeatist downer. On the other side of the cookie, wish therapy's no good unless you're going to be methodical and work hard to make your wishes come true. Also, just because you want something, doesn't make it right. Whether you are entitled to it, have a right to it, is a whole other question which some "positive thinkers" might do well to consider. </div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7577359360217478849.post-55601451498350551422012-02-24T12:55:00.001-08:002012-02-24T12:58:16.874-08:00Moribundant Mermaid<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE9lOirVK54gk6v87pN1DoXC0HopZOhmPDq-d0RtIrXo7GszVSh1Sq2qyrK8QW4PizkopaC_UdxUvo_EZz3RKJLzexKxQ3prXgQmsPqSU0oWHHk0IUtgQQ9CGsExcF0txUog8Fv3ww5UU/s1600/Photo+on+1-20-12+at+3.19+PM+%233.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="141" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE9lOirVK54gk6v87pN1DoXC0HopZOhmPDq-d0RtIrXo7GszVSh1Sq2qyrK8QW4PizkopaC_UdxUvo_EZz3RKJLzexKxQ3prXgQmsPqSU0oWHHk0IUtgQQ9CGsExcF0txUog8Fv3ww5UU/s200/Photo+on+1-20-12+at+3.19+PM+%233.jpg" width="200" /></a>This blog is moribund. Happily, I am not. This is just a peek up to the surface from my underwater library where I am cataloging fish tales and dog-eared tomes. It sure is cozy and colorful down here, not to mention relatively safe. If marauding sharks or sting rays approach, there's a munitions depot full of razor-sharp-clawed harpies wielding harpoons (if not razor-sharp wit.) It's rarely an issue though since everything moves much more slowly under water.<br />
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A holiday in the benthos is a stand-in for pathos. From shallow tidepools teeming with flashy starfish to the abysmal depths of some blackeyed godforsaken trench - it all serves to remind: there's just so much sunken seaweed, and so very little time. The lurid lives of those starfish, the freaky folkways of the abyssopelagic. Back off, <a href="http://images.wikia.com/endlessocean/images/0/01/HumpbackAnglerfish.jpg" target="_blank">humpback anglerfish</a>! I'm trying to interview this mellow <a href="https://lrcd.com/item.php?itemID=203&catID=13" target="_blank">smack of jellyfish</a> about the triumphs and travails of living the bioluminescent lifestyle! Never stop exploring your world, kids. Or the worlds of others. <br />
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<br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7577359360217478849.post-11878654169647124652010-08-14T20:50:00.000-07:002012-07-04T01:34:55.829-07:00Some thoughts on The Enchantress of Florence<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
by Salman Rushdie (2008)<br />
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Antonino Vespucci, a handsome young blond magician from Florence either wheedles his way into the heart of a Mongol emperor, or is earnestly in search of his rarified roots. A princess-survivor enchants and sleeps her way to safety or genuinely beguiles all who encounter her with a glimpse of the divine. Both are tricksters , both hustlers and survivors. It's hard to tell what the real deal is with the adventurer-protagonists of this tale.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR-ULHfsVvRBVeZI4R_3sJ4n2zB_qRpEJDI9PPSrFDAU24V3H8IcONtVO15G8md2FFQ2tGIzo-scyZTsl6xAf24HBxmljPOwTBpq6OnafQJ6nw2IXqKI8_NldLIssTANSFReL8FUa2Pxs/s1600/pic_zebunnisa.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR-ULHfsVvRBVeZI4R_3sJ4n2zB_qRpEJDI9PPSrFDAU24V3H8IcONtVO15G8md2FFQ2tGIzo-scyZTsl6xAf24HBxmljPOwTBpq6OnafQJ6nw2IXqKI8_NldLIssTANSFReL8FUa2Pxs/s200/pic_zebunnisa.gif" width="177" /></a></div>
<i>The Enchantress of Florence</i> feeds into two deep psychological tributaries for me: <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1276712585_3">Renaissance</span> Italy and the Mongol (Mughal) Empire. Renaissance Florence fascinates many of us. It has been widely portrayed in popular culture from best-selling novels and films to the iconic art of Michelangelo, <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1276712585_4">Botticelli</span>, and others. Most educated people have heard of Niccolo Machiavelli, the author of <i><span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1276712585_5">The Prince</span></i>, and a character in this book. Renaissance Florence is widely hailed as the birthplace of modern Humanism, as well as the place where the mercantile class became the ruling class (the Medici). It is an historical locale steeped in creativity, beauty, intrigue, possibility. The <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1276712585_6" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(54, 99, 136); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 2px; cursor: pointer;">Mongol Empire</span>, in contrast, is one which conquered in a more traditional manner, by brute strength. Both societies shared a certain ecumenical character though: the <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1276712585_7">Italian Renaissance</span> was made possible by the reintroduction of pagan (<span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1276712585_8">Greek</span> and Roman) myth and learning, which was transmitted via Muslim and Jewish scholars and traders who had preserved and translated the works of the Classical world. The empires forged by the various lines of Mongol warriors, the Ottoman and Mughal for example, were likewise ecumenical. As evident in the book, other religions were tolerated and even assimilated into the courts of the Muslim Mughals. <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1276712585_9" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(54, 99, 136); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 2px; cursor: pointer;">Salman Rushdie</span> creates a mirror between these two cultures in The Enchantress of Florence. <br />
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My father was a professor of <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1276712585_10">Italian Renaissance history</span> and Florence is where he met and wooed my mother. The aesthetics and intellectual curiosity of the Italian Renaissance were set up as ideals in my family. We also had a print of <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1276712585_11" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(54, 99, 136); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 2px; cursor: pointer;">Genghis Khan</span> on horseback brandishing a bow and arrow, which hung at the top of the staircase. Not that I am into astrology, but I am a Sagittarius, and somehow associated myself with this print even before I knew who it was. As a result I have had a life-long fascination with the Mongol empire and Mongolia. It sounds nutty, I know, but there you have it. <br />
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<span style="font-style: italic;">"This may be the curse of the human race, not that we are so different from one another, but that we are so alike."</span><br />
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">Mirroring</span> is a major theme throughout the book. Qara Koz, the eponymous heroine, has her mirror servant girl. Simonetta, the Florentine model for Botticelli is also a mirror of Qara Koz, who is a mirror of Alaquwa, the Mongol sun-goddess, the ancestor of Genghis Khan. Qara Koz and Simonetta (who modeled for Botticelli as both Venus and the <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1276712585_12">Virgin Mary</span>) are also mirrors of the archetypal goddess-enchantress, the objectified essence of female power, perfection and mystery. (Alanquwa - Mongol sun-goddess: compare with Virgin Mary and Amaterasu, Japanese <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1276712585_13">sun goddess</span>?) Vespucci, the "Mongol of Love", is mirrored in the story of his putative (grand?)father Arcalia the Turk, who mirrors the nomadic, battlefield prowess of the <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1276712585_14" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(54, 99, 136); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 2px; cursor: pointer;">Mongols</span>. Florence mirrors Sikri. The Florentine bordello mirrors the Sikri bordello. Qara Koz and her servant mirror the Skeleton and Mattress who mirror the Florentine prostitutes. There are also mirrors on the inside of Emperor Akbar's brocade yurt, but does he have a mirror? Thanks to the associative imagination, I am reminded of recent research into mirror neurons, which allow us to feel compassion, to mimic, to learn from copying sensory perceptions, and even to learn from memories of sensory perceptions.<br />
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(<b><i style="color: #990000;">Spoiler alert - the rest of this reveals the plot and some of the ending of the book.</i></b>) <br />
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Nomadism, wandering, settlement, trying to return home, are all themes in the book as well. Rushdie was born and raised a Muslim in <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1276712585_15">India</span> but completed much of his higher education in England, moved to the Islamic Republic of Pakistan with his family in the 1960's when India and Pakistan were at war, and ended up as an outspoken atheist living in <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1276712585_16">New York City</span>. Thanks to the fatwa issued against him for satirically portraying the prophet Mohammed in <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1276712585_17" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(54, 99, 136); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 2px; cursor: pointer;">The Satanic Verses</span>, he in permanent exile from his homeland. I wonder: Is how Qara Koz finally returns to her homeland a reflection of the only way he can return to his, as a ghost?<br />
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The Enchantress of Florence as been critiqued for making too facile a comparison between Florence and "the East", between West and East, but I think Rushdie wrote this book for himself, for the elements in his own psyche and ancestry which he tries to reconcile. The <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1276712585_18" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(54, 99, 136); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 2px; cursor: pointer;">Mughals</span> were a far cry from the intellectual despots some would like to equate with certain "Eastern" civilizations, but they were certainly not democrats. Note Emperor Akbar's internal struggle with his own despotism <br />
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<span style="font-style: italic;">"The Almighty is not a tyrant. In the House of God all voices are free to speak as they choose, and that is the form of their devotion."</span> .. <span style="font-style: italic;">"The adoration of the divine was reimagined as an intellectual wrestling match in which no holds were barred."</span><br />
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Akbar, the Mughal emperor, struggles with the concept of god as a Renaissance humanist, as a pluralist, would. He even goes so far as to suggest that the divine may rest in the very questioning of the divine. Paradise is envisioned as a democracy, a place with true human rights. He imagines not using the royal we, of expressing himself as part of a whole, not just as a despot. He goes so far in his transgressive inner narrative as to question the existence of god, and to wonder whether it might be easier to figure out what goodness is without a god. <span style="font-style: italic;"><br />
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"This business of worship, of the abnegation of the self in the face of the Almighty, was a distraction, a false trail". </span> <br />
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<span style="font-style: italic;">"Wherever goodness lay, it did not lie in ritual, unthinking obeisance before a deity but rather, perhaps, in the slow, clumsy, error-strewn working out of an individual or collective path." </span><br />
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Repeated comments like this smack a bit of a Humanist screed. On the other hand, Rushdie also invokes a tribe of "Afghan Illuminati" who used a sort of pantheistic religion to justify any and all behavior, an amoral use of ecumenical spirituality. Modern-day fundamentalists accuse Buddhists, Unitarians and Humanists of similar amorality stemming from moral relativism. <br />
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This book has also been criticised for being too stylistically self-indulgent, too fawning over the personality of the writer (the storyteller). May be. The only annoying aspect of this novel for me was the incessant reference to how marvelous or beautiful such-and-such a character was. In retrospect, I think this is part of the point of the story. This style is the stuff of ancestral stories, of national mythologies. You need to hyperbolize the hero, the goddess. Otherwise he's not a hero, she's not a goddess. The adulation, the repetition is necessary to solidify the myth. <br />
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Witchcraft of language, storytelling and survival: Funny stuff: <span style="font-style: italic;">"Shah Ismail had fallen victim to the rarely used Great Uzbeg Anti-Shiite Potato and Sturgeon Curse, which required quantities of potatoes and caviar which were not easy to amass.." "</span><br />
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<span style="font-style: italic;">"All men needed to hear their stories told."</span><br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">"While you were anesthetized to the tragedy of your life you were able to survive."</span><br />
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Akbar's existential angst <span style="font-style: italic;">"I am absurd", he told himself. "A cockroach in a steaming turd has more significance than I." </span> Where does it fit in with the main themes of the story? Because he has no one to mirror him, no one to contradict him? The novel also ends in a sense of tentativeness, of impermanence, albeit with tenderness towards our impermanence.<br />
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<span style="font-style: italic;">"I have come home after all," she told him. "You have allowed me to return, and so here I am, at my journey's end. And now, Shelter of the World, I am yours."</span><br />
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<span style="font-style: italic;">"Until you're not, the Universal Ruler thought. My love, until you're not."</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7577359360217478849.post-23222648730475675812010-04-22T15:49:00.000-07:002010-04-22T16:13:38.531-07:00I urge you (Romans 12:1-2, 9-13)<b>Romans 12:1-2, 9-13</b><br />
Letter of Paul to the Romans<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Translated <a href="http://www.scripture4all.org/OnlineInterlinear/NTpdf/rom12.pdf" target="_blank">from Biblical Greek</a> by Alfia Wallace </i></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>My cousin, Nick, asked that I read this passage at his wedding. Not sure of what I was reading, I checked out the original and came up with my own translation. </i></span><br />
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I urge you brothers and sisters,<br />
through God's mercy, to give<br />
your bodies in living service,<br />
which is your logical offering.<br />
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Don't just conform to the times,<br />
but be transformed<br />
by the renewal of your mind<br />
to know that the will of God is<br />
goodness, and gratitude, and completion.<br />
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Love is not devious.<br />
So keep away from that<br />
which is evil, and stay<br />
close to that which is good.<br />
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Love each other warmly,<br />
with tender affection<br />
and in honor,<br />
prefer one another.<br />
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Don't let your dedication wane,<br />
but let your spirit soar,<br />
serving the Lord.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNHohU_paekgX71Xqyb51LMgf3buTlIVu98QcbUABzpIFlm3Noqdl8EQTwQa1TgvCvywWcbdGtYcEkdn2teMVYzXN1Rd_2zcrafMH3mNPkAaFgFZlG9Q9lJqFgkGqbg6qilrkkbdyE5z8/s1600/rembrandt-saint-paul-in-prison.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNHohU_paekgX71Xqyb51LMgf3buTlIVu98QcbUABzpIFlm3Noqdl8EQTwQa1TgvCvywWcbdGtYcEkdn2teMVYzXN1Rd_2zcrafMH3mNPkAaFgFZlG9Q9lJqFgkGqbg6qilrkkbdyE5z8/s200/rembrandt-saint-paul-in-prison.jpg" width="157" /></a></div>Rejoice in hope.<br />
Endure in tribulation.<br />
Persevere in prayer.<br />
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Tend to the needs<br />
of the saints,<br />
and extend your kindness<br />
to strangers.<br />
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<i><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Saint Paul in Prison by Rembrandt van Rijn</span></i>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7577359360217478849.post-9145377847156231352009-12-29T23:47:00.000-08:002010-06-06T13:16:43.732-07:00The Giver<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIIZknerXpyoi5pGp1fRUn3TToWxLaRpq5dit_vei4DbMyKWl-jp-nbZ5SDWEgpK_sSdwnotRG2swBbEDjexZ7rC3RBJZpzVs6zTv0kZQwacfG5nmulzweR3dPblDN14TlCZ3pLfR2_p0/s1600-h/Giver.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIIZknerXpyoi5pGp1fRUn3TToWxLaRpq5dit_vei4DbMyKWl-jp-nbZ5SDWEgpK_sSdwnotRG2swBbEDjexZ7rC3RBJZpzVs6zTv0kZQwacfG5nmulzweR3dPblDN14TlCZ3pLfR2_p0/s320/Giver.jpg" /></a></div><b>The Giver</b><br />
by Lois Lowry, 1993<br />
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This book is required reading in the middle school my sons attended and both of them raved about it as one of their favorite books. When I recently read it for book club, I was surprised that such an intense, bleak book was being read by our tender, suburban 11 and 12 year olds. Surprised, but pleased.<br />
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The Giver raises important questions about what we value in society, and in humanity. What are the essential qualities of our humanity? What role does suffering play? What is love? Is it worth reducing our humanity in order to have a more orderly society? <br />
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In the utopia of The Giver, all families are chosen. Everyone is adopted. Each family has a mother, a father, a son and a daughter. Family members express appreciation for each other but not "love" (which is deemed too vague a term; they may have a point there). At the beginning of each day, dreams are shared and analyzed away at breakfast. In the evening there is another mealtime sharing of feelings which serves to monitor and normalize each person's psyche. Apologies and forgiveness are automatically proferred as part of the rigid, yet cozy set of emotional rituals members of this society exhibit. This is presented in a rather believable, unpathologized manner. Built-in therapy is an obligatory family tradition.<br />
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All potentially negative experiences are sanitized or analyzed away, including sexuality which is controlled with drugs when children reach puberty and begin to experience "stirrings". If it could cause emotional pain, it is neutralized. Interestingly, they still have to employ birthmothers to gestate children, and this is considered a low-class job. Birthmothers get to be indulged for the few years that they are employed as such, but then go on to live as manual laborers, perhaps to discourage girls from wanting to become birthmothers. In this society you cannot apparently be both a birther and an intellectual, or even a manager. <br />
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Many aspects of this society seem quite cozy, and indeed it has been carefully constructed to ensure its members' optimum utility and emotional safety. People need not fear making the wrong decision regarding course of study or job or spouse, since this will be chosen for you. Furthermore, even children are especially chosen for families. From a certain perspective this could seem reassuring. Knowing what we are supposed to do is comforting; people like boundaries and traditions. The problem is that, as in any totalitarian regime, the tradition is not optional and the price of noncompliance may be the ultimate price. <br />
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When people are consistently unable to comply with society's requirements, they are relegated to be "released". "Release" is a semi-mythical exile for members of this society who do not fit in, or who have reached the ends of their lives. Children do not know what it means, and it seems that many adults don't know either. The Giver is a story of one boy, Jonas, who finds out the real meaning of release.<br />
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The book is named after the one person the society employs to act as the repository for all the culture's emotional history, including its painful history, of which everyone else is blissfully ignorant. Through a sort of visceral, sense-memory transfer, the Giver shares these experiences with the Receiver, who will become the next Giver, ensuring a redundant source of these memories. Twelve-year-old Jonas is presented with the honor of becoming the Receiver, while his friends are being apprenticed to become teachers or scientists or day care providers. The Giver also functions as a sort of uber-Elder, being consulted by the council of Elders on matters of policy for the society.<br />
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What my kids found most impressive about this book, aside from the sheer weirdness of its controlled society, was that the members of the society had lost the ability to see color or hear music. Jonas, as the Receiver, is gradually given the ability to experience color and music, and with this the sublime and painful emotions that come with their nuances. This society is predicated on the notion that there must be severe limits placed on human experience so that people will not suffer, so that there will be equilibrium in society. One is reminded of ascetic movements that extol the plain, such as the Amish, and of Buddhism's assertion that desire is suffering. Many have tried to reduce human suffering by reducing our ability to feel, or even to perceive, never mind our ability to procreate. Placing restrictions on behavior is the basis of civilized society, but when is it too much? When does it lead to pathology, to dehumanization? It's a good thing this book, <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/2001-07-20-the-giver.htm" target="_blank">banned in some school districts</a>, is required reading in our kids' public school. Far from advocating dehumanizing practices, it encourages kids to appreciate the wide range of experiences that make us human, and to weigh their worth.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7577359360217478849.post-53799689424445761072009-11-09T21:26:00.000-08:002009-11-23T12:48:35.860-08:00A Confederacy of Dunces<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmEizXvo_ODdwuVU_O6nO3u0Fta4bExZretFh67uQQH7MosVTG93tzEFzWAeHjESUhWD83q5f7vfoLcjeU79EmTGMrAcojxY1BnTAw9nJlDXRWnjtJFgvl7JAkvEkgZz-zaZsR3K2o8uY/s1600-h/new-orleans-building.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmEizXvo_ODdwuVU_O6nO3u0Fta4bExZretFh67uQQH7MosVTG93tzEFzWAeHjESUhWD83q5f7vfoLcjeU79EmTGMrAcojxY1BnTAw9nJlDXRWnjtJFgvl7JAkvEkgZz-zaZsR3K2o8uY/s200/new-orleans-building.jpg" /></a><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b>A Confederacy of Dunces</b> by John Kennedy Toole<br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: x-small;">(written in the 1960’s, published in 1980, 11 years after Toole’s suicide)</span><br />
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This book is a broad, rip-roaring farce but it also deals with serious issues of alienation and coping as an outsider. The author took his own life after years of trying to get published with no luck. It was his mother who finally got someone to read the work and realize its genius.<br />
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Ignatius J. Reilly, the hero of <i>A Confederacy of Dunces,</i> is a morbidly obese, over-educated, indignant misfit who hides his insecurities behind his intellectualism. He is a spoiled, peevish agoraphobic slob who, at age 30, lives with his mother in New Orleans and blames everyone else for all of his problems. He is hostile, gluttonous, scholarly, prudish, delusional, brazen, libidinous, visionary and completely hilarious. Ignatius J. Reilly is my homeboy.<i> </i><br />
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<i>A Confederacy of Dunces</i> was first published in 1980, when I was in high school, but I honestly don’t remember who gave it to me or how I came to read it. It certainly wasn’t required in school and I didn’t take any English classes in college. I remember identifying with Ignatius, with his high-falooting put-downs, his crazy indictments of “modern society”, his harkening back to some golden age of humanity. My adolescence in New York City was pretty rocky, and the comfort of someone with more outlandish problems than my own was welcome. <br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">There is much to love about this novel. It's the story of the spoiled and socially retarded Ignatius and his dysfunctional relationship with his mother, his colleagues and his community, the city of New Orleans, which is a palpable character throughout. Bourbon Street, the Charles River, the bars and stores and streetcars named Desire. Wrought-iron balconies, jazz tunes and steamy decay prevail. The people who live there are a cast of characters indeed: the earnest itinerant, the hard-up cop, the sleazeball barkeep, the miserable neurotic business owners, the useless professor, the cranky old romancer - the list of oddballs is long and they all make up Toole's confederacy of dunces.<br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">Ignatius’s Bible is early medieval philosopher Boethius’s <a href="http://www.exclassics.com/consol/conintro.htm" target="_blank">The Consolation of Philosophy</a>, a work which plays a significant role in the unfolding of Confederacy’s plot. Fortuna and her Wheel of Fortune are regularly invoked to take the blame for various twists and turns of fate, or just as often, for the consequences of Ignatius’s deliberate decisions. Ignatius does a lot of blaming, often in very colorful language too. His particular brand of emotional immaturity is a classic: blame someone or something else for every shortcoming, inconvenience or misfortune encountered, including those for which one is personally responsible. His Goddess, Fortuna, allows him to do this with impunity.<br />
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<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anicius_Manlius_Severinus_Boethius" target="_blank">Boethius</a>'s Consolation is a dialogue between himself and Fortuna which argues that hardship must be endured with philosophical detachment. This is the furthest from how Ignatius reacts to life. Ignatius's pyloric valve, a character in its own right, reacts violently to any stress in his life, dramatically opening and slamming shut in response. Ignatius too, reacts violently to any diversion from his expected plan of non-stop self-indulgence.<br />
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</div>Another appealing aspect of Ignatius is his absurdly positive body image. This is a morbidly obese man whose digestion has been utterly ruined by near-constant indulgence in junk food and soda. Nonetheless he refers to his body as "muscular" and "imposing". This may be in part due to a southern tolerance for fat, as several other characters are favorably impressed with his girth. He considers himself to be a likely target of sexual predation by both females and males. While many of the illustrations of Ignatius make him look rather like a bumbling Oliver Hardy, I imagine him more as a portly <a href="http://www.bubblegun.com/features/15oliver.html" target="_blank">Oliver Reed,</a> brooding, brilliant, dishevelled and disoriented in everyday reality. <br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">There are a lot of sexual themes in the book, mostly treated in a grotesque or absurdist context. Ignatius is a horny but prudish virgin who has run-ins with the gay scene, a pornography ring, and a "sexually liberated" New York gal who shows him her undercarriage. He has strange fantasies. A lady in my book club thought he had been sexually molested by Professor Talc, due to a comment about "underdeveloped testicles", but that may have just been Ignatius's hallmark, outrageous hyperbole. <br />
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The range of characters in this novel is impressive. There's Jones, a young itinerant black dude who is trying to avoid "vagrancy", and who knows he is being exploited by his boss. There is the working class coterie of Ignatius's Mom, Santa, the mom's commie-focused suitor, and the chronically masqueraded cop Mancuso. There are the sleazy denizens and proprietors of the "Night of Bliss" bar. There is a misguided teen, a tow-the-line shopkeeper, a senile secretary, a militant feminist New Yorker, an ineffectual and phony professor, and many more. An entire essay could be written about any of these characters, they are so rich and and contextually provocative.<br />
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My book club read this recently and the only thing everyone agreed on was that the the Levys were believable. The Levys are a not atypical, quite dysfunctional bourgeois family that owns a failing and obsolescent pants factory where Ignatius "works". All of us found the members of this family to be very believable, probably because we are familiar with upper-middle-class suburban families and lifestyles. The husband has inherited a business he hates, from a father he resents. The wife is a carping, misguided and utterly ineffectual would-be progressive whose furious and far-fetched calls for social justice might be reminiscent of some Marin "actions for peace" such as taking mass photographs of naked women in trees, etc.<br />
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Some have written that <i>A Confederacy of Dunces</i> couldn't have been published during Toole's lifetime because it is too politically incorrect. It contains controversial portrayals of blacks, Jews and gays and this is considered political plutonium in the New York publishing community. The fact that Toole's own people, working class Irish Catholics (as well as intellectuals and every other character in the book) are shown with all their foolish foibles, should erase any claim of prejudice or bigotry. If anything, this work is very much along the lines of <i>Gulliver's Travels</i> by Jonathan Swift, in which humanity is likewise seen in all its ridiculous, frenzied striving. <br />
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</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7577359360217478849.post-72547173723431162142009-11-03T12:54:00.000-08:002009-11-03T13:31:09.972-08:00Puccini's Triptych ("Il Trittico")<b>Il Trittico</b> (The Triptych) By Giacomo Puccini, (1918) <br />
(San Francisco Opera, September 2009)<br />
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A triptych is a work of art divided into three parts (from the Greek τρίπτυχο, from <i>tri-</i> "three" + <i>ptychē</i> "fold"). In European-derived cultures it is traditionally associated with religious subjects, the centerpiece of which provides the focal point. Many triptychs were constructed as <a href="http://www.artandarchitecture.org.uk/fourpaintings/daddi/production/triptychs_tabernacles_1.html">tabernacles</a>, or a set of paintings with hinged wings which could be closed to hide and protect the images inside. Puccini's <i>Il Trittico </i>is just this sort of triptych, unfolding its lyrical wings to expose the hidden connection between its three seemingly disparate operas.<br />
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Il Trittico comprises three consecutively composed one-act operas: <i>Il Tabarro</i> (The Cape), a violent tale of romantic and social disappointment among the working poor; <i>Suor Angelica</i> (Sister Angelica), the heart-wrenching centerpiece focused on a submissive birthmother who is sent to a convent; and the famous <i>Gianni Schicchi,</i> a social farce set in the medieval Florence of Dante Alighieri. <br />
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</div><div style="color: #666666; text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://www.artandarchitecture.org.uk/fourpaintings/daddi/artist/bernardo_daddi_1.html">Triptych by Bernardo Daddi (active c.1320-1348)</a></span></i><br />
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</div>Giacomo Puccini is probably most famous for his exquisite romantic tragedies, <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_boh%C3%A8me" target="_blank">La Boheme</a></i> and <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madama_Butterfly" target="_blank">Madame Butterfly</a></i>. <i>Il Trittico</i> gives us some very different works: violent, un-romantic, farcical in turn. Some have compared <i>Il Trittico</i> to the French theater of horror, <a href="http://www.grandguignol.com/" target="_blank">Le Grand Guignol</a>, which sometimes alternated its graphic horror programs with comedies. This has been done primarily because the great Italian maestro, Arturo Toscanini, rashly called the first opera, <i>Il Tabarro</i> (The Cloak), "<i>un grand guignol di estremo cattivo gusto</i>" (a horror show in extremely poor taste). Thanks to this, others have wrongly expanded this analogy to the entire triptych. This is wrongheaded on several counts. The only part of The Triptych with any violence is <i>Il Tabarro</i>, which includes one crime of passion, and no gratuitous horror. It is more in line with the naturalist or <a href="http://www.analekta.com/en/album/Verismo-Opera-Arias.215.html" target="_blank">verismo movement</a> which sought to expose the very real plight of the less fortunate in society. <br />
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Puccini's chosen framework, the triptych, suggests that the work should be viewed from a religious or spiritual perspective. We know that Puccini composed each piece consecutively, and that he was adamantly opposed to their being performed separately. The plays of the Grand Guignol, in contrast, were presented for the sole intent of viscerally appalling the audience using shock value even to the point that the success of an evening's fare was registered by how many people in the audience fainted. While Puccini is often accused of gratuitous sentimentalism (which might be compared to the gratuitous sensationalism of Le Grand Guignol), I would argue that the plays in <i>Il Trittico</i> are not at all gratuitous, but rather form a cohesive picture Puccini very deliberately wanted to draw.<br />
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</div>The triptych's Cloak (or Cape), <i>Il Tabarro</i>, opens to reveal a slummy Paris embankment at dusk with dock workers, rag pickers and organ grinders all drinking and singing to keep their blues away. The opera's female lead is Giorgetta, a disaffected young woman who is the wife of a much older barge owner, Michele. Giorgetta is having an affair with Luigi, a dockworker her age. The misery of the relatively wealthy Giorgetta and Michele is contrasted with the loving relationship of the destitute rag-picker Frugola and her husband, the dockworker Talpa. Giorgetta sings a duet with her lover, Luigi, reminiscing about their carefree youth. Michele sings to Giorgetta and bemoans the loss of their early love, and the death of their baby son. He remembers holding them all close inside his cloak. Giorgetta refuses to kiss him and he wonders if he is too old for her, whether she loves another. They fight a lot. <br />
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My impression was that Giorgetta married Michele, who is twice her age, to improve her social lot. She was initially happy with her new station and her baby, but once the baby died, so did Giorgetta's enthusiasm for her marriage. Young and lusty, bored with her old but loving husband, she bides her time from tryst to tryst with her dockworker. Michele is hard-working, adoring and jealous. This is a disaster waiting to happen. <br />
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So what place does <i>The Cloak</i> play in this triptych? It is the presentation of triptych as tabernacle, a narrative cloak that opens up to reveal its icons. The cloak opens and we have the starting point, humanity at its animalistic core: scrounging survival on the primordial banks of a dirty, watery world. The elder Michele once used to cloak to protect, to gather in the family. By the end of the opera he uses it to hide and then disclose his dirty work, that of eliminating his competitor. The curtain closes on his cloak's revelation: a silverback has defended his territory. <br />
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The centerpiece of the Triptych, <i>Suor Angelica</i>, takes place in an overtly religious setting, a convent, which invokes images of the Madonna, sacrifice, and the pain of a lost son, a symbol of Christ. Sister Angelica is a birthmother who has been banished from her upper class family to the convent after surrendering her child to adoption. When the story opens it has been seven years since she gave birth and she has resigned herself to her convent life, becoming an adept gardener and herbalist. Her aunt visits her to get her to sign away her inheritance rights, and while there, the aunt shames Angelica for dishonoring the family. Angelica begs the aunt for news of her son and the aunt tells her that he is dead. Angelica crumbles, signs the aunt's papers, and proceeds to poison herself. Realizing that she is committing a sin by committing suicide, Angelica prays to the Virgin Mary to forgive her, to deliver her, and to show her a sign of her forgiveness. The final scene is Sister Angelica's dying vision of a small boy inviting her to heaven. Sinner and saint, the lost and the redeemed: these comprise the center panel of the triptych in <i>Suor Angelica</i>. <br />
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<div style="color: #444444;"><i><b><span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span></b><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Il Tabarro/Suor Angelica/Gianni Schicchi, by <a href="http://www.artbydru.com/" target="_blank">Dru</a>, 2008, Acrylic on Canvas</span></b></i><br />
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</div>The final panel in the series is the most famous, Puccini's social comedy <i>Gianni Schicchi</i>. The scene opens with the extended Donati family hovering over the dead body of wealthy family elder, Buoso. Rinuccio, one of the sons, wants to marry the lower-class daughter of Gianni Schicchi, and he tries to bribe a relative into allowing this if the dead man's will is favorable to her. As it turns out, his will leaves everything to a local monastery and all the relatives gnash their teeth in anger, curse the dead man, and refuse to let Rinuccio marry his lower-class beloved. In their greedy desperation, they finally allow Rinuccio to talk them into allowing Gianni Schicchi to come over and figure out a way to change Buoso's will in their favor. One of Puccini's most beautiful arias, "O mio babbino caro" is sung by Lauretta as she tries to cajole her father into helping Rinuccio's revolting relatives. Schicchi agrees and sends his daughter away so that she will be innocent of what he is about to do. What follows is a comedy of errors in which the greedy relatives get their comeuppance and the young lovers prevail. The triptych closes on an upbeat. The unrepentant sinners have been punished, the repentant have been redeemed, and the innocent have their lives ahead of them.<br />
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Why would Puccini have so wanted these three operas to be performed together? They do form a cohesive unit, not only as a triptych depicting different types of sinners, their punishments and penances, but also as a narrative of Puccini's attitude towards these things. The first two operas feature "fallen women", both of whom have lost children, the last two feature ambivalent and controversial attitudes towards the Church. In the course of the evening we are transported from the primitive to the sublime to the ridiculous. Ending the series with a comedic farce suggests that there is some sin so banal that it only worth ridicule. One could track the seven deadly sins or the ten commandments through Il Trittico to get a better idea of Puccini's vision in Il Trittico. I've included links to the libretti below in case anyone is interested in doing a more in depth study of this matter.<br />
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Is the triptych a commentary on Catholicism's Madonna-whore complex? The centerpiece, the only piece with an overtly religious theme, shows a birthmother as Madonna, with the promise of her lost Christ child returning at the end to redeem her. The whore Giorgetta and the virgin Lauretta flank the centerpiece of this triptych, Suor Angelica, a true tragic figure who represents both. <br />
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Libretti<br />
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<a href="http://www.karadar.it/Librettos/puccini_tabarro.html" target="_blank">Il Tabarro</a><br />
<a href="http://opera.stanford.edu/Puccini/SuorAngelica/libretto.html" target="_blank">Suor Angelica</a><br />
<a href="http://opera.stanford.edu/Puccini/GianniSchicchi/libretto.html" target="_blank">Gianni Schicchi </a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7577359360217478849.post-84725708384422470572009-10-04T12:18:00.000-07:002012-07-04T01:36:04.473-07:00Dreaming in Hindi<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
by Katherine Russell Rich (2009)<br />
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Recently my Mom heard the author of <span style="font-style: italic;">Dreaming in Hindi</span> talking on NPR, and since my Mom knows that I like Bollywood movies and have been studying Hindi, she decided to buy me the book. The good news is that there is lots of material of genuine interest to those concerned with language learning and second language (and writing system) acquisition. The bad news is that there is something very bizarre about Ms. Rich's diction which begs the question of whether she is deliberately strangling English grammar to emulate a linguistically disoriented state, or whether she really does not have a very firm grasp of English grammar.<br />
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As a person, the author is very likable. She is a middle-aged, divorced, rather bourgeois New Yorker who survived breast cancer and then decided to run off to India and study Hindi for a year. That takes some nerve. She is also something of a naive, curious sweetie, and with very little background information on India or Hindi, she plunges head-first into a Rajasthani adventure. The book alternates between her memoir and her research into language learning. While she is not a very talented writer (and is arguably incompetent as an editor), I was touched by how earnest she was in trying to understand her adopted culture, and the processes by which we gradually assimilate another language.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="color: #444444; font-size: x-small;">Palace at Udaipur, Rajasthan</span></i></td></tr>
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Why she chose the state of Rajasthan as the place to study is unclear, since Hindi is not the standard register there. This complicates her language learning inasmuch as the Hindi she is learning in class is significantly different from the Mewari spoken on the streets and in her host family. We learn that Hindi is considered something of a colonial language in India since most people speak other languages or widely divergent dialects of Hindi. Several Rajasthani variants claim or are struggling for language status.<sup><a href="http://www.bastigiri.org/crs/faqs.html" target="_blank">1</a></sup><br />
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Alienation and the re-creation of one's sense of self play a large part in this book. Katherine arrived in India a few weeks before the events of 9/11/01. As an American, after 9/11 she is sequestered away, then brought out as a symbol of a fellow nation terrorized by radical Islam, and then shunned as the GW Bush administration does not respond aggressively enough against Pakistani-sponsored attacks within India. At this early point the author's language skills are paltry and her disassociation begins. She alternates between seeking solace among her fellow expatriates and delving head-first into various immersive situations such as working as a tutor for poor, deaf children. Working with deaf children doesn't do much for her Hindi, as most of the educated people with whom she makes contact speak English, but it does provide food for thought on the nature of language, multilingualism and second language learning.<br />
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Some Indians may be uncomfortable with a number of the cultural and political issues discussed in the book. Much has been written about the Indian dowry system which requires a daughter's family to pay sometimes exorbitant, debilitating sums to a prospective groom for marriage. This has been linked in some cases to female infanticide, dowry murder, and instances of repeat dowry abuse by the groom's family. In a side-note Ms. Rich reveals that it costs twice as much for a family to procure an engineer husband as it does to procure one who is a physician. It wasn't specified, but I wonder whether engineers in India make twice as much as doctors do. In the United States the situation is the reverse, with physicians generally making twice as much as engineers or more.<br />
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The terrorism storyline includes India as both victim and as perpetrator, and a controversial parallel is made with America's experience during 9/11 vs. its subsequent military forays into Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. In the case of India, it too suffered terrorist bombings at the hands of Islamist-sponsored terrorists. On December 13, 2001, while the author was in India, there was a high-profile terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament<sup><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_Indian_Parliament_attack" target="_blank">2</a></sup>. India expected at least strong condemnation from the GW Bush administration, which Rich's Indian contacts claimed was not sufficiently forthcoming. Little information is provided on the organizations responsible for this and other, similar attacks inside India, such as <a href="http://www.cfr.org/publication/17882/" target="_blank">Lashkar-e-Taiba</a> and <a href="http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/para/jem.htm" target="_blank">Jaish-e-Mohammed</a>. A good deal is revealed however, about Hindu fundamentalist organizations inside of India.<br />
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This brings us to India as perpetrator of terrorism. Hindu fundamentalist-supported massacres occurred in Gujarat in early 2002 in response to a local train fire in which Hindus were killed. Mention of the train fire was omitted from Rich's book, but is the accepted instigation on both sides, although each claims a different source of the fire. Those who justify the massacres are certain that the train fire was set by local Muslims. Others claim that the fire was an accident which was blamed on the Muslims. Rich gives some in-depth and damning reportage on the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bajrang_Dal" target="_blank">Bajrang Dal</a> and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), both groups part of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindutva" target="_blank">Hindutva</a>, or Hindu nationalist, movement. She provides an incendiary quote from the founder of the RSS, M.S. Golwalkar, who admired Hitler and who is quoted across the Internet as being an exemplar of Hindu fascism.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxdd28YL286TXYpHVAV59_x3KtGigNqfuawvoC1kryRaNIQBa4BNMxLewzsiiAL5EfZN_zXYKCA6KdHqlEU3IEd2mb85TeLYXu6GL5pEjxC4V2ueQiCxRSpapFjtD3_yALgjJbh33U64k/s1600-h/bollywood+movie+poster+babul.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxdd28YL286TXYpHVAV59_x3KtGigNqfuawvoC1kryRaNIQBa4BNMxLewzsiiAL5EfZN_zXYKCA6KdHqlEU3IEd2mb85TeLYXu6GL5pEjxC4V2ueQiCxRSpapFjtD3_yALgjJbh33U64k/s320/bollywood+movie+poster+babul.jpg" /></a>While these less than laudable fringe views of Indian society may besmirch the rosy-hued lenses through which many yoga and biryani-loving Americans see India, it's important to remember that India is a secular, multi-ethnic, multi-religious democracy. Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Jains, Buddhists and Zoroastrians all hold political positions and people of many faiths hold high federal office. In choosing which country in South Asia is most like America, one would have to choose India. Ms. Rich's many exotic experiences tend to drown out any commonalities our nations may have, and the common humanity is all too often blurred by a culturally bewildered, exoticising eye. Nonetheless, we do meet some charming and distinguished characters such as selected local teachers, poets and expatriates.<br />
<br />
The on-going acculturation story is intertwined with Rich's post-facto deconstruction of her language-learning experience. Her thesis is that learning a new language creates a new identity. You cannot be the same person speaking a different language. This is a bit overstated, but along the way we are regaled with fascinating forays into neurolinguistics and applied language learning research. Ms. Rich is not someone who easily picks up languages and she wants to find out all she can about those who do, and what might make it easier to do so.<br />
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One approach to this is to evaluate motivation. The impact of competition is discussed and it is noted that, like novelty, it can be motivational or demotivational. The Stimulus <a href="http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Psychology/Cognitive/~~/dmlldz11c2EmY2k9OTc4MDE5NTEzMDA3Mg==" target="_blank">Appraisal Theory</a> proposed by Austrian scholar Klaus Scherer, outlines five ways in which one appraises an experience, and depending on the responses, one can come up with a good picture of a person's attitude towards anything. Ms. Rich talks with linguist <a href="http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/humnet/teslal/jschumann/" target="_blank">John Schumann</a> about his research into second-language acquisition which builds on the motivational model. Schumann notes that many language learners never get beyond a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin" target="_blank">pidgin</a>-state, while others go on to various levels of fluency. The markers for success in Schumann's view are highly subjective and vary widely from person to person. This doesn't tell us much about natural linguistic aptitude, only strength of motivation.<br />
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The standard claims of the existence of a childhood "language-learning window" are made. In my opinion this is a somewhat tenuous marker for long-term second-language ability. I have known many people exposed to multiple languages as children who did not gain or retain fluency as adults because the language was not consistently used or did not continue to be used. On the other hand I have known many adults who were not exposed to multiple languages as children who subsequently became fluent in foreign languages. Genuine immersion, motivation and natural ability are much more reliable indicators of language acquisition success. <br />
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What it takes to excel at language learning depends on what type of learning you are doing. Ms. Rich notes that people with lower inhibitions learn to speak more readily since they are not afraid to make mistakes. This doesn't mean that their grammar will be perfect, nor that they will develop advanced listening comprehension skills, but it does mean that they will learn to communicate more quickly. I have seen this in action and can confirm that this is indeed the case. When dealing with reading, writing and listening comprehension, other proclivities come in to play such as aural and visual pattern recognition.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="color: #444444; font-size: x-small;">Devanagari: the syllabery used in writing Hindi,<br />Sanskrit, Marathi and Nepali.</span></i></td></tr>
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Ms. Rich had some difficulty learning the devanagari alphabet, which is used to write Hindi. Alphabets rely on sequential visual pattern recognition and the ability to quickly associate a visual sequence with a series of sounds and a group of meanings. There is a fascinating description of how different areas of the brain are stimulated when presented with a written word (in which the Russian word for "fleece" is misspelled, but never mind). Ms. Rich quotes a study that suggests there is a "Chinese region" in the brain which recognizes Chinese writing. My guess is that people with photographic memories, people who easily imprint icons, are better at learning Chinese. Since the Chinese have no other writing system, you either have a situation in which the writing system fits the neurologic predisposition of he population, or the population gradually selects for people with superior photographic memories. As with the tendency for the Chinese, who speak a tonal language, to have superior musical pitch, those who can memorize the most characters generally have better photographic memories.<br />
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It woule seem that the Chinese associate their characters first with ideas, rather than sounds, whereas users of phonetic writing systems associate the writing first with sound, then meaning. (I recently read that Chinese characters contain radicals also associated with a sound.) Once you can read an alphabetic script, you can sound out virtually any word in the language but not necessarily know its meaning. In Chinese you learn the picture with its meaning, but the character may sound completely different depending on the dialect or language (Japanese and Korean also use Chinese characters), and will also encounter numerous homophones for a given character (cf. Japanese on and kun pronunciations). This might suggest a trade-off in memory efficiency and I'm sure some Ph.D. somewhere is studying the effect of so much picture memorization on various areas of cognition and creativity. <br />
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Speaking of creativity, my favorite study in the book is one from the <a href="http://www.ru.nl/cognition/" target="_blank">Nijmegen Institute of Cognition and Information</a> in the Netherlands. This study shows that multilingualism spurs greater linguistic association, suggesting that the associative imagination may be especially sensitive among multilinguals. Apparently when bilinguals sits down to read, every word they encounter stimulates other words they know in other languages. This is like the mind of a poet, whose imagination is constantly stimulated to branch any given word or image into a web of associated words and images. As someone who has studied many languages, I can vouch for this being partly the case. The more words we know in any language, the more we naturally compare sounds and meanings. The more languages one learns, the easier it becomes to learn more languages as one explores, navigates and imprints phonetic and lexical inventories, grammars, idioms, and patterns of intonation. <br />
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Do we really become other people when speaking another language though? I don't think so. Yes, we express ourselves using different nuances and conceptual frameworks when speaking different languages and this can alter our experience of time, space and interconnectedness. The realization that there are many more ways to show emphasis or respect or desire than our native language offers probably increases linguistic intelligence. Do we become something other than ourselves when this happens though, or is it simply that the map of ourselves is expanded? Studies in stroke victims have showed that language information can be very compartmentalized, with victims recalling only one language and not another, or even one category of speech over another. Yet, as the Dutch study above suggests, the healthy brain is able to reach across these compartments to find a word's mirror-sibling in another language, to launch the ship of associations that allows us to synthesize seemingly disparate, random sounds and ideas.<br />
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Studies on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neuron" target="_blank">mirror neurons</a>, neurons which fire when we do something and when we watch it done, have shown that these neurons also fire when people <i>read</i> about something being done<sup><a href="http://www.physorg.com/news78073175.html" target="_blank">3</a></sup>. It has been suggested by <a href="http://cbc.ucsd.edu/ramabio.html" target="_blank">V.S. Ramachandran</a> that mirror neurons, and the mimicking behavior they control, were instrumental in the evolution of human language, and possibly in language acquisition today.<sup><a href="http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/ramachandran/ramachandran_p1.html" target="_blank">4</a></sup> If we are wired to mimic that which is around us, and then to assign meaning to our mimicry, we must favor a neurological composition that imprints these patterns and their associated meanings. What renders one's makeup flexible enough to easily switch one meaning pattern for another? Is the ability to add vocabulary in one language similar to that of adding vocabulary in others? If we are repeatedly exposed to new syntactic structures as adults, we can indeed assimilate them, which would suggest that repeated exposure and true immersion really is the key to learning a new language. The number of repetitions one person versus another needs to remember a given word or syntactic structure varies. So does the ability to easily recognize audio-visual patterns associated with meaning. These innate aptitudes, given the same amount of exposure, will determine whether someone more or less easily learns a new language. <br />
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Getting back to Katherine Rich and her adventure in learning Hindi, it is fair to say that her ability to integrate into her surroundings was indeed limited by her inability to penetrate the language, but I would add that it was further hindered by her lack of cultural preparation and her questionable choice of locale for studying Hindi. Her squeamish revulsion at some of the cultural and political circumstances could have been avoided had she not had to waste so much emotional capital on bring shocked and then paralyzed by her shock. I still admire that she was brave enough to throw herself into a foreign culture, to attempt to learn the language, and to try and understand the linguistic processes helping or hindering the process. Had she taken more time to try and understand the anthropology and political history <i>before</i> embarking, she would have come away more successful on all counts. <br />
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<span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Hindi Language-Learning Links</span><br />
<br />
Writing System (Devanagari):<br />
* <a href="http://www.avashy.com/hindiscripttutor.htm" target="_blank">Hindi Script Tutor</a><br />
<br />
Language:<br />
* <a href="http://www.unilang.org/course.php?res=69&id=hindi_0&pagenum=index" target="_blank">UniLang Hindi Lessons Online</a><br />
* <a href="http://hindiboloblog.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Hindi Bolo Blog</a></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7577359360217478849.post-48326964401085724512009-08-15T15:49:00.000-07:002012-05-06T16:20:30.496-07:00Soviet-era Limericks<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-size: 100%;">Here are some translations I did of Russian chastushki from the Soviet era. The chastushka is a form of Russian folk verse, often sung to the strains of a guitar, balalaika or accordion.</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><span style="font-size: 85%; font-style: italic;">Red cow of the collective farm, we all admire</span></span></span><span style="font-size: 85%;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> <span style="font-style: italic;"><br />How you give us milk and lots of fertilizer.</span></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijADUSYdyuYsU7inhjnSiGHq9CIo72TdT48kjiy4NrKw1xcErMOqxuO4z5MqYNQDApy44dQNWNF0eTFyXcufB8Zvw0RaL2xAEB9meNiLrpw0Ez30bvPxQDmGLGy4Osm5N-wEe3tLZME5Q/s1600-h/lenin2.gif"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5386557677936580914" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijADUSYdyuYsU7inhjnSiGHq9CIo72TdT48kjiy4NrKw1xcErMOqxuO4z5MqYNQDApy44dQNWNF0eTFyXcufB8Zvw0RaL2xAEB9meNiLrpw0Ez30bvPxQDmGLGy4Osm5N-wEe3tLZME5Q/s200/lenin2.gif" style="cursor: pointer; float: right; height: 139px; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; width: 105px;" /></a></span><span style="font-size: 85%;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> <span style="font-style: italic;"><br />Instead of being fed, you were sent to school for Marxists,</span> <span style="font-style: italic;"><br />Labor leaders are still awaiting cream because of this.</span> <span style="font-style: italic;"><br />The whole collective farm is very, very proud of you,</span></span></span><span style="font-size: 85%;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> <span style="font-style: italic;"><br />Oh horned one, you're our very own main attraction true.</span> <span style="font-style: italic;"><br />For in response to Lenin's own appeal throughout the land,</span></span></span><span style="font-size: 85%;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> <span style="font-style: italic;"><br />You heaped a load of fertilizer on the socialist plan.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">What sort of Bolshevik is this</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Climbing on the armored car?</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">He wears a little buttoned cap,</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">He can’t pronounce the letter r.<br />His arm is lifted to the sky,<br />Can you guess who this is? Try!</span></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgivrrNihVNBwpa_JIi_X9NXodSJ8cGYVli_ghI00sxkIsjbXGJJd2ALWAKQuXwQQgtXDsHupAVL75p_fDIETiGfDwGPpRyVDbLeuDS4lompTjjFRw7eJv4DTiHr5jhyphenhyphenM4PGPwK0r2ZeeA/s1600-h/tires.gif"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5386557198308842594" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgivrrNihVNBwpa_JIi_X9NXodSJ8cGYVli_ghI00sxkIsjbXGJJd2ALWAKQuXwQQgtXDsHupAVL75p_fDIETiGfDwGPpRyVDbLeuDS4lompTjjFRw7eJv4DTiHr5jhyphenhyphenM4PGPwK0r2ZeeA/s200/tires.gif" style="cursor: pointer; float: right; height: 115px; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; width: 200px;" /></a><br />
<span style="font-size: 85%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-style: italic;">A car is standing on the hill,</span></span><span style="font-size: 85%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-style: italic;">But with no tires it won't go far,</span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-style: italic;"><span style="font-size: 85%;">All the tires were dragged away,<br />To make condoms for our collective farm.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #333333; font-size: 78%;">Illustrations by Herb Allred</span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-size: 100%; font-style: italic;"><span style="font-size: 85%;">More of my <a href="http://www.plumsite.com/palace/chast.htm" target="_blank">Частушки </a> translations</span><br /></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7577359360217478849.post-23574287080141896542009-08-07T21:44:00.000-07:002009-08-14T16:54:20.130-07:00Deep in Siberian Mines (Pushkin)<a style="" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPtMFrwEZrkLN77sHa8tdzbnAQbbhZFYiNftmLBUrI6NR0GPNWZ6bRAOtdIp5uJG6Lxn0N-DVqy8xBltAScx_xF4fpJJdzHrPud7XAejkBhekqgoS1jO6WebnezxNMhKrF-o7os9_sL-g/s1600-h/5.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 154px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPtMFrwEZrkLN77sHa8tdzbnAQbbhZFYiNftmLBUrI6NR0GPNWZ6bRAOtdIp5uJG6Lxn0N-DVqy8xBltAScx_xF4fpJJdzHrPud7XAejkBhekqgoS1jO6WebnezxNMhKrF-o7os9_sL-g/s200/5.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5367467087257715410" border="0" /></a><span style=";font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:85%;" ><b style="color: rgb(51, 0, 51);">Deep in Siberian mines</b><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">by Aleksandr Pushkin, 1827<br /></span><span style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153);"><span style="font-size:85%;">translated by Alfia Wallace<br /></span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Deep in Siberian mines<br />hold your proud endurance high,<br /></span></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Your woe-filled work will not be lost</span><b style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></b><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">nor the striving of your mind.<br /></span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br />Misfortune's stalwart sister,</span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br />Hope, lurks in dungeons' gloom,</span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br />she'll waken and you'll jump for joy,</span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br />so know the wished-for day will come:</span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br /></span></span><span style=";font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:85%;" ><a style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVQMyBpsHFGS2_WqsAsmzmjK0Y0R83_wou0bewfr4lIUvu5xUUVx7Gc2OnQSl51P30RlWBjpY-fYvB7563-pxntblAVXO_v4RtkDD71mEP5rJgbdZ-FI8j-otpYdI085jBHIWK1tK27xo/s1600-h/siberian-cave.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 152px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVQMyBpsHFGS2_WqsAsmzmjK0Y0R83_wou0bewfr4lIUvu5xUUVx7Gc2OnQSl51P30RlWBjpY-fYvB7563-pxntblAVXO_v4RtkDD71mEP5rJgbdZ-FI8j-otpYdI085jBHIWK1tK27xo/s200/siberian-cave.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5367466582761438594" border="0" /></a></span><span style=";font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:85%;" ><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Love and friendship will o'errun you</span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br /></span></span><span style=";font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:85%;" ><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">through the sombre, shackled gates,</span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br />As my free voice now comes to you</span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br /></span></span><span style=";font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:85%;" ><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">through these craggy grates.<br /></span><br />Your leaden chains fall to the floor,<br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">your prison will collapse -</span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br />as freedom greets you at the door -</span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br />your brothers hand you a sword.<br /><br /></span> <b style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br /></b><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Во глубине сибирских руд...</span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br /><br />Во глубине сибирских руд</span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br />Храните гордое терпенье,</span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br /></span></span><span style=";font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:85%;" ><i><span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_4h3eQgufYhciLEY381INJBeFG3YUBdzzn0WO1C0MpEv1C2LjqMxdgUibAuacVDFdyO1C1OhxN0zOikXr1xoSFq6Dx7qwqq96FvuP-N-ncdDNu_VRz7Ja8PdCJftOQBvRt3rjLav5P9Q/s1600-h/24.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 159px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_4h3eQgufYhciLEY381INJBeFG3YUBdzzn0WO1C0MpEv1C2LjqMxdgUibAuacVDFdyO1C1OhxN0zOikXr1xoSFq6Dx7qwqq96FvuP-N-ncdDNu_VRz7Ja8PdCJftOQBvRt3rjLav5P9Q/s200/24.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5367467769445364370" border="0" /></a></span></i></span><span style=";font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:85%;" ><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Не пропадет ваш скорбный труд</span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br /></span></span><span style=";font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:85%;" ><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">И дум высокое стремленье.</span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br /></span></span><span style=";font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:85%;" ><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Несчастью верная сестра,</span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br />Надежда в мрачном подземелье</span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br />Разбудит бодрость и веселье,</span><br /></span><span style=";font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:85%;" ><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Придет желанная пора:</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> Любовь и дружество до вас</span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br />Дойдут сквозь мрачные затворы,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> Как в ваши каторжные норы</span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br />Доходит мой свободный глас.</span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br />Оковы тяжкие падут,</span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br />Темницы рухнут - и свобода</span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br />Вас примет радостно у входа,</span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br />И братья меч вам отдадут.</span> <i><span style="font-size:78%;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br />1827</span><br /><br /></span></i><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:78%;" ><span style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153);">Images: Abandoned Siberian mine from the 1930's; Old Siberian house</span></span><i><span style="font-size:78%;"><br /></span></i></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7577359360217478849.post-61289759590840344772009-07-27T14:00:00.000-07:002010-06-06T13:17:32.302-07:00Love and Sex with Robots<span style="font-size: 100%;"><span id="btAsinTitle"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red; font-weight: bold;">Love and Sex with Robots</span>: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships by David Levy (Nov. 2007)</span></span></span><br />
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<blockquote style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-size: 85%;">"<b>Let's face it</b> . The singularity is a religious rather than a scientific vision. The science-fiction writer Ken MacLeod has dubbed it ”the rapture for nerds,” an allusion to the end-time, when Jesus whisks the faithful to heaven and leaves us sinners behind.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 85%;">Such yearning for transcendence, whether spiritual or technological, is all too understandable. Both as individuals and as a species, we face deadly serious problems, including terrorism, nuclear proliferation, overpopulation, poverty, famine, environmental degradation, climate change, resource depletion, and AIDS. Engineers and scientists should be helping us face the world's problems and find solutions to them, rather than indulging in escapist, pseudoscientific fantasies like the singularity."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 85%;"><br />
</span></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: right;"><blockquote><span style="color: #666666; font-size: 85%;">from <a href="http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/biomedical/imaging/the-consciousness-conundrum/1" style="font-style: italic;" target="_blank">The Consciousness Conundrum</a> by John Horgan, on the IEEE website, June 2008</span></blockquote></div></div><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivOuk8rfG8wrnWdFJkchYQw5sxFi0MozBSlebswsw4yD-WSubQgD_UvOU6buJN3dusQ7ttIbp0p6COvpFT4vcrjOaje8-lk6bebTFCTGYLYArVLW11-4SF1VlF6LPoqGcceE24iDIIsGc/s1600-h/7853-iRobot.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5367428493284865986" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivOuk8rfG8wrnWdFJkchYQw5sxFi0MozBSlebswsw4yD-WSubQgD_UvOU6buJN3dusQ7ttIbp0p6COvpFT4vcrjOaje8-lk6bebTFCTGYLYArVLW11-4SF1VlF6LPoqGcceE24iDIIsGc/s320/7853-iRobot.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 320px; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; width: 220px;" /></a>The New York Times recently published an article on its cover entitled "<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/science/26robot.html?_r=1&ref=science" target="_blank">Scientists Worry Machines May Outsmart Man</a>" (7/25/09). It suggests that we may be on the cusp of a post-human era in which computerized superintelligences reign on Earth. The moment this starts to take place is called "The Singularity", meaning the latest in several <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity" target="_blank">technological singularities</a> which have changed the way humans live and process information. Technologists and futurists called <span style="font-style: italic;">Singulatarians</span> are worried about how the public will deal with the ramifications of this event. After all, we have already been giving up our jobs and human interactions to robots and artificial intelligence (AI) systems plenty over the past several decades. Are we ready for robot bosses and lovers?<br />
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David Levy's book "Love and Sex with Robots" includes an edutaining history of AI, robotics and sex toys and presents this alongside a sometimes disturbing psychological study of our emotional attachment to inanimate objects such as dolls, cars and yes, robots. This is all fascinating, but Levy makes the annoying mistake of insisting throughout that it is simply a hop, skip and a jump from loving a doll and using a vibrator to falling in love with and marrying a robot. I'm not talking a cyborg here, either - Levy insists that the AI will be so convincing and customizable, the sexual prowess so indefatigable, that the lure of the robot lover will be much more compelling than that of any human lover.<br />
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Research on human interactions with computerized systems shows that people like to interact with AI that behaves in an empathetic manner, and that we tend to respond as we would to a kind person when dealing with a "kind" computer program. Levy claims that a simulation of a human being would be just as good as a real human being inasmuch as it can be programmed to behave in the way we would like. He uses examples of people who use sex dolls and vibrators to bolster his argument, as these marriageable robots (and humans?) are ostensibly just dolls with really good programming.<br />
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Japanese culture plays a large part in the book. The Japanese are great pioneers in robotics and their animist religion allows them to see robots as beneficent living things, much as a sacred rock or sand sculpture. Levy tries to make a case that, because of this cultural premise, the Japanese are quicker to accept non-human and even inanimate objects as being equally valid to humans. He also tries to say that Western culture has tended to paint robots as sinister a la Hal in <span style="font-style: italic;">2001: A Space Odyssey</span>, but remembering the likable robots in Star Wars, Lost in Space, and The Jetsons, I don't buy that argument.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMbTzW75Da3DXNnaS5TUfh3u5wYAoVW9yGwPLoZpul9HxjV5HU2mZC9N3lrHfAissUjtcVERHPAr1K9glhnK98uhM7ZECTJ6RPvX9eVWXZ_-CBoCHxyuKRkKTnQSCGGBW58Fyzytlcak8/s1600-h/Astroboy2.gif" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5367429965936244370" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMbTzW75Da3DXNnaS5TUfh3u5wYAoVW9yGwPLoZpul9HxjV5HU2mZC9N3lrHfAissUjtcVERHPAr1K9glhnK98uhM7ZECTJ6RPvX9eVWXZ_-CBoCHxyuKRkKTnQSCGGBW58Fyzytlcak8/s320/Astroboy2.gif" style="cursor: pointer; float: right; height: 320px; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; width: 216px;" /></a><br />
The New York Times magazine from July 26, 2009 has an article called <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/magazine/26FOB-2DLove-t.html" target="_blank">Love in 2-D</a>, which is all about lonely Japanese men who carry on relationships with stuffed pillowcases emblazoned with the images of scantily clad young cartoon women. The one man whose photo was included with the article looks like your classic "loser", the likes of which we also have plenty in the West. Perhaps it is Japan's higher public tolerance for what we regard as fetish behavior (panty vending machines, rape comics, etc.) which Levy is confusing with the synergistic compassion and empathy that living creatures feel for one another. Levy would argue that this compassion and empathy can be virtually reproduced, creating the requisite chemical responses in us humans that render their source, their inspiration moot.<br />
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Robot minders are now being used in Japan to monitor senior citizens who are left alone. Japan also boasts a highly successful brothel chain specializing in the rental of sex dolls. My husband, who also read the book, made a compelling suggestion when we were driving the other day. He works at a Veterans' hospital where he regularly encounters men with serious post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), men who are so psychologically disabled by this condition that they cannot have normal relationships, so no one takes care of them, and their health further deteriorates. A robot-minder who cared for them, provided talk therapy, made sure they took their medicines, and yes, had sex with them, my husband argues, would greatly improve these alienated and deteriorating veterans' lives. Even if they only talked and had sex with them it would be an improvement.<br />
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My husband then asked whether I would prefer spending time with an AI-programmed robot of my late father (may he rest in peace) or a to-be-unnamed person whom I don't like. Seeing as I'd rather spend time alone than with someone I dislike, it wasn't entirely a fair question, but it did make me miss my Dad. The father-robot would be programmed with my father's bank of interests, deductive abilities, ethnic and local background, communicative style and sense of humor. That I'd like to see. Or would I?<br />
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Am I being sentimental in embracing the frailty, the foibles of life, of preferring them to pre-programmed perfection? This response is inevitable when being banged over the head by Levy's insistence that there really is no difference between being inspired by an inanimate or an animate object. It's not that I discount the real and potential value of robots, or even that I haven't experienced strong emotional responses to things like paintings and characters in novels. My objection is to Levy's facile reductionism. Yes, we may one day better understand how our brain works - memory, inspiration, creativity, attraction, deduction and a host of other brain activities - but, despite Levy's incessant urgings, we really aren't there yet. As a specialist in computer chess and games he confuses the ability to deduce with the whole of one's humanity.<br />
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Getting back to the notion of an imminent "Singularity", some proponents of this perceived inevitability (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singularitarianism" style="font-style: italic;">Singulatarians</a>, who are a variant of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism">Transhumanist</a> Movement) tout that supreme AI will solve all of humanity's problems, ushering in an era of peace and prosperity for all. This is the view of the Zeitgeist movement, which blames the current global monetary system for all the world's ills. Their online forum actually features posts in which movement activists assure members that drunk driving will not be a problem in the future because vehicles will a) fly, and b) include avoidance sensors, and c) be so well-padded and well-suspended that any collision would be rendered harmless. The movement also claims that since technology will take care of all drudge tasks, humans will be free to engage solely in creative and self-improving endeavors. Opponents warn that robots will steal even more (if not all) human jobs and their supremacy will lead to further natural degradation and humans living under a totalitarian regime, not to mention a further degradation of telephone and internet support services.<br />
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So, will a significant number of us be schtupping robots in the next few decades? Will people be marrying robots in 2050, as Levy prognosticates? Who knows? I have to agree with the quote at the beginning of this blog entry though - we have serious problems to tackle. The puerile fixation on how far we can take the blow-up doll is disappointing. The notion that a profit motive driven by the popularity of long-distance robo-sex using the Internet and haptic interfaces will make this happen sooner - is just creepy.<br />
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<span style="font-size: 78%;"><span style="color: #666666;">Images, I, Robot movie poster, 20th century Fox; Astroboy by Osamu Tezuka, Dark Horse Comics</span></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk6c_gK1b3UqqPE5jrLDgjYZIN4suoC1yp6OCUMquMAI-GSP4TKUi-o2ZD0NmX0fB4NfosXnjtKyWDDki7T0m6Rw7KqbBu4xi2HWID_IoQZePYLAgahUK2J5ap0YIySwpbr-OORJWTDgk/s1600-h/robot-sex-tech-support.gif" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5367424454191653010" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk6c_gK1b3UqqPE5jrLDgjYZIN4suoC1yp6OCUMquMAI-GSP4TKUi-o2ZD0NmX0fB4NfosXnjtKyWDDki7T0m6Rw7KqbBu4xi2HWID_IoQZePYLAgahUK2J5ap0YIySwpbr-OORJWTDgk/s320/robot-sex-tech-support.gif" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 252px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 320px;" /></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7577359360217478849.post-9382936504037413642009-05-05T10:32:00.000-07:002009-07-26T15:02:13.980-07:00Gypsy Wedding (Marina Tsvetaeva)<a style="" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj77OqSHAbG4rzBbeZcCSeXePCrBYNwvQxbPIvhKW0bB4fe4Ef_nV-Iowt37oslQsy0bF813fPR3Sa8ov2Qna0p5N2wTfrEgFYH3pR4AhfYJMNuOYQL6FHvv9HIdJgeh3YObWSkohpkkLY/s1600-h/chast.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 216px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj77OqSHAbG4rzBbeZcCSeXePCrBYNwvQxbPIvhKW0bB4fe4Ef_nV-Iowt37oslQsy0bF813fPR3Sa8ov2Qna0p5N2wTfrEgFYH3pR4AhfYJMNuOYQL6FHvv9HIdJgeh3YObWSkohpkkLY/s320/chast.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5332406507263130514" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">Gypsy Wedding</span><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">by Marina Tsvetaeva<br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;">June 25, 1917</span><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153);">translated by Alfia Wallace</span><br /></span><br />Hooves dance -<br />Filth flies!<br />Before her face -<br />a shawl, a shield.<br />Lose the children<br />Go on, betrothed!<br />Hey, take them now,<br />Disheveled steed!<br /><br />Dad and Mom<br />denied our freedom,<br />now the field full and spread<br />will be our newly wedded bed!<br /><br />Drunk without wine and full without bread<br />The gypsy wedding steams on ahead!<br /><br />The glass filled up,<br />The glass drunk down,<br />Guitar and moon and dirt all drone -<br />The whole camp sways to right, to left,<br />A gypsy on a prince's throne!<br />A prince a gypsy has become!<br /><br />Hey, mister - careful, how it burns!<br />That's how the wedding drinks it down.<br /><br />There, in a heap<br />of shawls and furs -<br />bells and murmurs,<br />swords and lips.<br />The clanging of spurs,<br />the answer - a necklace.<br /><br />Beneath someone's arm,<br />a whistling of silk.<br />Someone's howling like a wolf.<br />Snores from someone, like a bull.<br />Now the gypsy wedding lulls to sleep.<br /><br /><span style=";font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:85%;" ><b>Цыганская свадьба</b><br /><br /> Из-под копыт -<br /> Грязь летит!<br /> Перед лицом -<br /> Шаль, как щит.<br /> Без молодых<br /> Гуляйте, сваты!<br /> Эй, выноси,<br /> Конь косматый!<br /> Не дали воли нам<br /> Отец и мать -<br /> Целое поле нам -<br /> Брачная кровать!<br /> Пьян без вина и без хлеба сыт -<br /> Это цыганская свадьба мчит!<br /> Полон стакан.<br /> Пуст стакан.<br /> Гомон гитарный, луна и грязь.<br /> Вправо и влево качнулся стан:<br /> Князем - цыган!<br /> Цыганом - князь!<br /> Эй, господин, берегись - жжет!<br /> Это цыганская свадьба пьет.<br /> Там, на ворохе<br /> Шалей и шуб -<br /> Звон и шорох<br /> Стали и губ.<br /> Звякнули шпоры,<br /> В ответ мониста.<br /> Скрипнул под чьей-то рукою -<br /> Шелк.<br /> Кто-то завыл, как волк,<br /> Кто-то - как бык - храпит.<br /> Это цыганская свадьба спит.<br /><br /> <i><span style="font-size:78%;"> 25 июня 1917</span></i></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7577359360217478849.post-26886185373601030152009-04-23T06:42:00.000-07:002012-07-04T01:35:26.118-07:00Sacred Games, Profane Plans<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgfUbbRkdOZp9XO9Vg8h1Sdjqa1qCaRJDhwA_tmiqMmwMt03093XIqYAtSRVaATTo0GgUbL9euHl-Nw2EbuYoluMVQqEe-3mx1lgt203_uRQdth1F2TtfmYkVeeQHzOPfOFfssH_ZW9Zw/s1600-h/Rough-Guide-to-Bollywood_LO.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5332390909918631378" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgfUbbRkdOZp9XO9Vg8h1Sdjqa1qCaRJDhwA_tmiqMmwMt03093XIqYAtSRVaATTo0GgUbL9euHl-Nw2EbuYoluMVQqEe-3mx1lgt203_uRQdth1F2TtfmYkVeeQHzOPfOFfssH_ZW9Zw/s200/Rough-Guide-to-Bollywood_LO.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 200px; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; width: 200px;" /></a><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Sacred Games</span> by Vikram Chandra (2007)<br />
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My first brush with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bollywood" target="_blank">Bollywood</a> was back in my teens listening to the international music hour on WBAI radio in New York City. The hypnotic, exotic crooning of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WxTxtSWhlM&feature=related" target="_blank">Asha Bhosle</a> filled my room and transported me to an enchanted, incense-filled garden of peaceful delights. This doesn't have much to do with the reality of India, but it was an aesthetic experience which gained a foothold in my life.<br />
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A few years later I discovered the <a href="http://www.namastetv.com/" target="_blank">Namaste America</a> television show, which features Bollywood music videos, gossip and news from India. At a local Blockbuster video store I found some Bollywood movies, and my enchantment endured.<br />
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Bollywood films are famous for being long, ornate, over-wrought, lush, epic musicals. Every film promises action, suspense, romance, music and dancing. Besides the escapist and entertainment value, there is the value of learning about another culture and another language. <span style="font-style: italic;">Sacred Games</span>, in that sense, is not too different from a Bollywood film.<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>It<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>is a 900+ page epic of life in Bombay<span style="font-weight: bold;">*</span>, modern Indian politics, religious relations, crime, scandal, romance and Bollywood. Bollywood is somewhat peripheral to the plot but its influence suffuses the action as characters regularly sing Bollywood songs and invoke various film scenes and actors.<br />
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<span style="font-style: italic;">Sacred Games</span> is primarily the story of a Sikh police detective and the Bombay gangster he seeks to understand. Chandra sometimes writes beautifully, and at other times - less so. I definitely got a taste of what it felt like to be the police detective and of how Bombay gangs operate. There is plenty to thrill and chill, and a lot to mull over and consider. I won't get too into the plots, since they are pretty byzantine, and ultimately, not well-organized or resolved. Many characters are more drawn-out vignettes than anything else and they do not contribute to the plot line.<br />
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What I liked most about this novel was learning about Mumbai, its gangsters and Indian culture, although I have read reviews by Indians that this is a somewhat piss-poor rendering of that, targeted at a western audience. If the latter is true, the overwhelming amount of Hindi (and Marathi?) in it is inappropriate. While I learned to curse in Bombay-ese by page 50, the sheer volume of Hindi in the text heightens the sense of the strange and exotic to the point of being annoying, rather than intriguing, especially by page 450 when you are halfway through the book. Most of the words are not in the glossary either. To put this in perspective, I was trained as a linguist and am studying Hindi, and this was still an impediment to rather than enrichment of the whole experience. When I asked the author about this at a conference, he said that it was meant to increase the sense of immersion and that all the Hindi could be found in a glossary on his website.<br />
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This book needed much more serious editing. There are a number of plot contrivances that work up to a point, others (such as the insets), which are interesting on their own, but which should have been edited out or published separately, as they don't contribute to the storyline or even to a greater understanding of the main characters. Nonetheless, if you are interested in India and in Bombay gangs in particular, and you like crime novels, this is a fun ramble through that terrain.<br />
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*<span style="font-size: 85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Bombay is the name of the city in Hindi, Mumbai is the name in the local Marathi language.</span></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7577359360217478849.post-68769484032078428732009-04-22T21:27:00.000-07:002012-05-06T16:20:04.830-07:00Night, Street, Lamp and Pharmacy (Aleksandr Blok)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Night, Street, Lamp, Pharmacy</span> by Alexander Blok<br />
<span style="font-size: 85%;">October 10, 1912</span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-size: 85%; font-style: italic;">Translated from Russian by Alfia Wallace</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: 100%;">Night, Street, Lamp and Pharmacy</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: 100%;">A light so senseless and so slight</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: 100%;">That forty years of legacy</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: 100%;">will be the same - no chance of flight.</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: 100%;">You'll die - and then you'll start again</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: 100%;">It all repeats, an ancient stamp,</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: 100%;">Night, icy ripple of canal,</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: 100%;">Pharmacy, Street and Lamp.</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br /></span><br />
<hr align="left" height="1" style="font-family: georgia; height: 3px;" width="90%" />
<span style="font-size: 100%;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: 100%;">Ночь, улица, фонарь, аптека,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: 100%;">Бессмысленный и тусклый свет.</span><span style="font-family: monospace; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: 100%;">Живи еще хоть четверть века -</span><span style="font-family: monospace; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: 100%;">Все будет так. Исхода нет.</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br /></span><br />
<pre style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Умрешь - начнешь опять сначала
И повторится все, как встарь:
Ночь, ледяная рябь канала,
Аптека, улица, фонарь.</span></pre>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOTA6apL7yKwM_e-YpzPXwlqrcDjbVS7Q6by3xjK1lH-1GH2_KAyFvyMXOQ3flho4RhR3AVdcc6uf6UpJ-GuwHy9vCZRISuVuqwymCcVO0pVlTw7XxGjSxPENJAGxF8hWmBDJryjWDG_k/s1600-h/Edward-Hopper-Drug-Store-80078.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5327747839917676754" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOTA6apL7yKwM_e-YpzPXwlqrcDjbVS7Q6by3xjK1lH-1GH2_KAyFvyMXOQ3flho4RhR3AVdcc6uf6UpJ-GuwHy9vCZRISuVuqwymCcVO0pVlTw7XxGjSxPENJAGxF8hWmBDJryjWDG_k/s320/Edward-Hopper-Drug-Store-80078.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 238px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 320px;" /></a><span style="color: #666666; font-style: italic;">Drugstore by Edward Hopper, 1927</span></div>
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7577359360217478849.post-55484911040858541892009-04-21T18:23:00.000-07:002009-07-13T14:40:39.840-07:00Jude the Obscure, frustrated linguist<a style="" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjn0mQD3_2pAfhkx5UEOg1FUJC4VmUupigMXTdtcWQPeonJOldpDTTyPWXX9YN0oEVnP15ftIOTiEMRGqVm-YzZPX2VCRUo0rYS3hZviinBeDXlZrrKV64DlDs__uuSz3wRWgGCNmMko2w/s1600-h/jude10.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 150px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjn0mQD3_2pAfhkx5UEOg1FUJC4VmUupigMXTdtcWQPeonJOldpDTTyPWXX9YN0oEVnP15ftIOTiEMRGqVm-YzZPX2VCRUo0rYS3hZviinBeDXlZrrKV64DlDs__uuSz3wRWgGCNmMko2w/s320/jude10.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5327640984397132402" border="0" /></a>Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy (1895)<br /><br />We'd like to think that the pursuit of happiness is available to all in the United States, even to bakery clerks who want to become college professors. If someone from an economically disadvantaged background works hard, is intelligent and so inclined, that person should be able to go to college and pursue graduate studies. In practice, people often end up doing what their parents and friends do, if for no other reason than that is the path of least resistance. If they do choose to resist though, there are scholarships, loans and work-study programs to help them along the way. In love and marriage people also often take the path of least resistance. This is a story of those who resisted social barriers in both education and love.<br /><br />There were not a lot educational opportunities for the poor in 19th century England, and there still aren't in many places. Jude Fawley is a young intellectual from a disadvantaged socioeconomic background, who dreams of studying Greek and Latin and joining the hallowed halls of theologie and academe. Cheeky orphan that he is, Jude goes to great lengths to acquire grammars, Virgil, Homer, the Greek New Testament, lectures of the Church fathers and commentaries, and spends all his free time studying and memorizing. There is a poignant scene in a working man's bar where he quotes passionately in Latin and is ridiculed and generally regarded as a freakish, pathetic upstart.<br /><br />Even most <a href="http://educationequityinternational.blogspot.com/2009/02/education-for-all-inequity-why.html" target="_blank">modern attempts at education equity</a> usually only try to get people to a high school level at most. In the developing world a middle school education is considered more than sufficient since working class children are expected to help their parents with work as soon as possible. In the United States, education equity mostly focuses on getting sufficient education for those who are challenged physically, intellectually or emotionally.<br /><br />Gifted education testing in public schools here requires parent advocacy or teacher recommendation. It costs districts money to test and grade the tests. There is no posse of lawyers threatening to sue districts over not meeting the needs of the gifted child, as there are for those with children diagnosed with autism, ADHD and other conditions requiring a modified learning environment. This is understandable, as well-to-do parents of reasonably intelligent children can pay to avail them of all sorts of opportunities, while poorer and uneducated parents don't even think to have their kids tested. In Jude's environment a similar situation prevailed: the well-to-do could afford the preparation and fees for university, the lower classes couldn't, and so didn't encourage such aspirations. Jude is saddened by his realization that there are people at the university who are ensconced there neither by virtue of hard work nor passion, but rather by privilege expected and conferred. Such examples still exist today, even in the hallowed halls of such institutions as Harvard and Yale.<br /><br />This begs the question of the meritocracy in general, and whether we are moving towards it as a culture. Growing up in a working class neighborhood in New York City I encountered hardworking (and lazy) people of all levels of intelligence. Living now in an affluent California suburb, I encounter similar distributions. There is no question that people born into affluence have more choices and that they often take for granted what they do have, regardless of their work ethic, intelligence, talent, or educational expectation.<br /><br />Now Jude isn't just a low-class, frustrated nerd - he's also a super nice guy who doesn't like slaughtering pigs or hurting women. This gets him into real trouble as a local yokel gal manages to wrastle him into a loveless marriage of convenience. It gets him into more trouble when his even nerdier cousin seduces him with her "will to be loved".<br /><br />Why is Jude so obscure? Is he obscure in the sense that no one can understand why someone of his class would have such lofty academic pretensions? Or is it his radical ideas on marriage, which he mostly inherited from his ironically named cousin Sue Bridehead? This novel outraged many when it was written due to what seemed its vociferous advocacy for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-fault_divorce" target="_blank">no-fault divorce</a> and the destigmatization of unwed motherhood. In the post-sexual-revolution era we take these freedoms for granted, even as we see the downside in a proliferation of broken families. There are good reasons to advocate for a normalization of divorce and parenthood options. Back in mid 19th century England, divorce and unwed motherhood were a black mark on a woman. Even today, women can be legitimately killed for pregnancy outside of marriage (see <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/01/23/cstillwell.DTL" target="_blank">honor killings</a>). Nature needs stability as well as dynamism, and the satisfied forces for the status quo can always be expected to pipe up and protect their interests. Hence, Jude the Obscure being banned and burned in its day.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(153, 153, 153);">"Their lives were ruined,he thought; ruined by the fundamental error of their matrimonial union: that of having based a permanent contract on a temporary feeling."</span><br /><br />It's not clear to me that Thomas Hardy was so against marriage though. While his first marriage was a long and stormy one, his second marriage seemed very happy and peaceful. Jude and Sue knew there was a pattern of unhappy marriages in their family and Jude's marriage to Arabella was certainly suboptimal. It is not marriage itself that Hardy decries in the novel, it is the inflexibility of the institution of marriage, and of society's attitude towards those unfortunate enough not to have a good outcome in it.<br /><br />Admittedly, there were a number of situations in Jude the Obscure which annoyed or disturbed me. The character of Sue Bridehead is especially maddening, an archetype of the neurotic, overly-intellectual woman. Her erudition and free-thinking nature are admirable, but sadly ruined by her frigidity, stubborness, and yes, downright perversity when it comes to dealing with authority figures. She is oppositional, passive-aggressive, hysterical, lachrymose in the extreme and a relentless flirt who doesn't put out. Not a great combo, but her intellect, youth and good looks keep men in her clutches. Arabella, the first wife, is earthy, conniving and ribald, but simpler and somehow less maddening than Sue, although certainly less suited to be Jude's wife.<br /><br />Jude himself is a gem of a character: earnest, sentient, struggling, sweetly ethereal in his academic pursuits and general morals, sullenly earthy in his undeniable masculine desires. I'm guessing that Hardy chose the fate he did for Jude out of a desire to show the result of society's lack of support for such people. It's confounding though because Jude and Sue certainly made plenty of stupid mistakes themselves - it's very hard to see them purely as victims. Then again, this is what makes the whole story believable. There is no real good guy or bad guy - everyone is perfectly human and responsible for the choices they make in the framework society<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimD6gO7QWgpNho6hoGVb8eOAntDdYpONLcRW9DRCGNTmwx71Hx5gBATPmvBVN0noRMNPpMLTRYprRaalMLUlkh6t64yYwFB0zGUUCiyAlgC6HPWKrbmYBvJBWVEkLP4Bhp8H2fcWJy5Dg/s1600-h/jude_the_obscure.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 211px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimD6gO7QWgpNho6hoGVb8eOAntDdYpONLcRW9DRCGNTmwx71Hx5gBATPmvBVN0noRMNPpMLTRYprRaalMLUlkh6t64yYwFB0zGUUCiyAlgC6HPWKrbmYBvJBWVEkLP4Bhp8H2fcWJy5Dg/s320/jude_the_obscure.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5327653813167358498" border="0" /></a> gives them.<br /><br />Finally, the language is often very beautiful. Hardy was a poet as well as a novelist, and every once in a while it shines through. Some of the language is in dialect but it's not too hard to figure out.<br /><br />This was not my favorite Hardy novel, but it was worth reading for the issues it raises, even if I don't agree with everything Hardy's characters say (total truth at all times is certainly not the best recipe for on-going affection). The characters are real and fascinating, the atmophere thick and well-drawn, and there is lots and lots to think and argue about. Regardless of Jude's foibles, we can all agree that he should have been afforded a shot at becoming a university don, or at least a school teacher. Could he have had a shot at true marital happiness? That is less clear.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: right; color: rgb(153, 51, 153); font-style: italic;">Rose "Jude the Obscure"<br /><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0