What are you currently reading?

Started by facehugger, April 07, 2007, 12:36:10 AM

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Florestan

#11000
Quote from: Dry Brett Kavanaugh on June 01, 2021, 12:44:08 PM
The real world is beyond the three dimensional space and time, and unknown to us. We will never be able to see or theoretically understand the real picture of this world because our perception and understanding are constrained within a 3D space and time, according to Kant (and Schopenhauer). Imo, this is also what Niels Bohr indicated in the quote I posted on the other thread.

Yes, exactly and precisely. Niels Bohr was absolutely right --- and so was Kant via Schopenhauer. There is no way any human can escape time and causality.
Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

Florestan

Quote from: Dry Brett Kavanaugh on June 01, 2021, 12:44:08 PM
I will check out writings of Pascal and Unamuno. Specially, Unamuno looks interesting.

Both of them are well worth reading.

Start with Pascal, though, I'd say.
Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

SimonNZ

#11002
Quote from: aligreto on June 01, 2021, 12:34:28 PM
Orwell: Down and Out in Paris and London





This was a very rapid read in comparison to my last read [Dickens: Our Mutual Friend - see Pickwick Club]. My initial reaction to this book is that I am very thankful that I was never that poor so that I experienced the hunger and deprivation that is illustrated in this work. The juxtaposition of this work and the mention of Dickens strikes me as opportune because Orwell was describing the plight of the poor worker in the context of working in some well to do hotels and the gruelling life of servitude that these unfortunate people had to endure in order to serve the well to do their daily meals. The dichotomy of the two modes of life is well contrasted by Orwell even though he primarily focuses on the lower end of the social scale. I am also very glad that I was not dining in those exclusive Parisian hotels that Orwell describes from a cleanliness and hygiene point of view.

The other interesting side of his account is the people and characters that he met and knew and their outlook on Life. Orwell's social commentary and philosophy are also both interesting.

"It is a feeling of relief, almost of pleasure, at knowing yourself at last genuinely down and out. You have talked so often of going to the dogs — and well, here are the dogs, and you have reached them, and you can stand it"

I think about that line often.

I also like / am intrigued by how dispassionate his tone is throughout the book, given that elsewhere he's capable of writing with considerable venom (Burmese Days, for example).

Glad to hear you liked it.


TD: amongst everything else on the go I'm knocking off Frederick Pohl's Starburst, recommended somewhere as one of his best, and they were right.




aligreto

Quote from: SimonNZ on June 02, 2021, 02:31:03 PM
"It is a feeling of relief, almost of pleasure, at knowing yourself at last genuinely down and out. You have talked so often of going to the dogs — and well, here are the dogs, and you have reached them, and you can stand it"

I think about that line often.

I also like / am intrigued by how dispassionate his tone is throughout the book, given that elsewhere he's capable of writing with considerable venom (Burmese Days, for example).

Glad to hear you liked it.

Yes, I enjoyed it but it does not make for pretty reading. I had read it before, decades ago, and I had forgotten how realistic it was.
I have actually started Burmese days again and I am enjoying this immensely so far but, more anon.

Dry Brett Kavanaugh

Hermann Hesse: Life and Art.  Joseph Mileck

ritter

#11005
Cross-posted from the opera sub-forum:

Quote from: ritter on June 03, 2021, 06:52:51 AM
Revisiting this recording of one of Gaetano Donizetti's lesser-known operas, the late Caterina Cornaro:



I've never been much of a fan of Donizetti (IMHO, he did not have the genius of Rossini nor the melodic gift of Bellini, and was the precursor of the undeniably vulgar and provincial streak that permeates much of Italian opera in the second half of the 19th century), and this is certainly not one of his better scores.

I'm actually listening to this as background music while reading this book on the conductor Gianandrea Gavazzeni:



The recording of Caterina Cornaro was made live in 1995–the year before the conductor's death at the age of 86—in Gavazzeni's (and Donizetti's) hometown of Bergamo, with the conductor's second wife, the estimable soprano Denia Mazzola, in the lead. It could therefore not be more appropriate, and as background music works perfectly well  ;).

What a fascinating figure Gavazzeni was! A grand seigneur of the baton and the operatic pit, a very gifted writer, and an indefatigable champion of obscure works (many of which, truth be said, lapsed back into oblivion immediately after he had revived them). He was a man of wide-ranging cultural interests, and seems to have met and befriended most of the leading Italian cultural luminaries of the 20th century (in music, painting, and literature). Even if he concentrated his conducting activity mostly on the Italian operatic repertoire of the 19th and early 20th century, his writings display an acute appraisal of —and respect for— styles that were diametrically opposed to his tastes. He was, for instance, a good friend of Petrassi, frequented Luigi Nono, and collaborated with Sylvano Bussotti (the latter was stage director for several opera productions led by Gavazzeni).

Gavazzeni was also a composer, but stopped writing music around 1940 (when he realised his works were out of step with modern trends). As far as I know, none of his compositional output has ever been recorded.

He's one of the few artists who have been given the greatest tribute at La Scala when he died: Riccardo Muti conducted the funeral march of Beethoven's Eroica in the empty theatre, with all the doors open so that the music could be heard on the streets surrounding the opera house.

For someone who never achieved (probably never sought) star status, there's a very sizeable bibliography on the man and his art (apart from his own writings, which are really enjoyable, particularly his dairies from 1950 to 1976, Il sipario rosso). The book I'm reading now is loving tribute to the man, his art, his writing, and the places he frequented (starting with Bergamo). A delightful read!

Alternating between the book on Gavazzeni mentioned above, and Philippe Blay's recently released biography of Reynaldo Hahn:


Clearly the biography the composer needed (previous works by Bernard Gavoty —in French— and Daniel Bendahan —in Spanish— were useful, but incomplete and relying mainly on recollections and reminiscences). Thoroughly researched, with a wealth of detail (excessive at times, TBH), and very readable. An excellent biography as well as a good depiction of the conservative cultural milieu associated with the grand monde (as a result, anything remotely avant-garde or "modern" is conspicuously absent) in France at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. I'm about 200 pages into the book (it has some 600 in total), and of course Marcel Proust plays a significant rôle at this stage.

Philippe Blay is the leading authority on Hahn, and it shows. Recommended to anyone with an interest in the composer or in art in France during his lifetime.

As a matter of trivia, there's a very tenuous connection between Hahn and Gavazzeni, as the latter —in his diaries mentioned above— confessed to being intrigued by Hahn's composition Nuit d'amour bergsmasque (Gavazzeni had a keen interest in anything related to his hometown). AFAIK, Nuit d'amour bergsmasque has never been recorded (or even performed in living memory).

Artem

A few books that i finished recently.


Very French little book, almost like a painting.


My expectations for it were high, but it was not all that great in the end.


Essential for Bolano fans. It includes a few interviews and speeches, but mostly short newspaper columns where Bolano talks about his favourite literature, mostly from Latin America and Spain. So that book has been a great resource for me to discover previously unknown to me writers.

SimonNZ

#11007
Quote from: Benji on February 01, 2021, 04:08:45 PM
Do you know the book Travellers in the Third Reich? If not you might find it a good companion read to your current reading. (I haven't finished reading my copy yet but it was well reviewed)

Found this in a secondhand bookshop and had to go back to remember who it was who gave me the heads-up and say thanks again.



Also found that it was Vers La Flamme I recommended Down And Out In Paris And London to, not Aligreto, which is why I was confused when he said he'd read it before.

Total goldfish memory.

aligreto

Quote from: SimonNZ on June 04, 2021, 05:18:08 PM
Found this in a secondhand bookshop and had to go back to remember who it was who gave me the heads-up and say thanks again.



Also found that it was Vers La Flamme I recommended Down And Out In Paris And London to, not Aligreto, which is why I was confused when he said he'd read it before.

Total goldfish memory.


Hey, I have moments like that all of the time  ;D

Dry Brett Kavanaugh


SimonNZ

half way through:



on the 1994 Rwandan genocide, and Rwandan history.


Artem

A new author for me. A book that deals with Germany, memory, WWII. A very strong recommendation.


Dry Brett Kavanaugh

Quote from: Artem on June 08, 2021, 04:37:30 AM
A new author for me. A book that deals with Germany, memory, WWII. A very strong recommendation.



Nice cover. I will look for a copy.

Dry Brett Kavanaugh

#11013
'"Old and Fabulous Records of Classical Music" by Haruki Murakami will be published soon in this month.  This is a collection of essays on 486 classical music records he likes. Hope an English edition will be published soon.  Jfyi and I haven't read it yet.

https://tower.jp/article/feature_item/2021/05/19/1111

SimonNZ

That's Japanese only? You're killing me.

I've been waiting years for his jazz writings to be translated.

Dry Brett Kavanaugh

#11015
Quote from: SimonNZ on June 08, 2021, 09:02:28 AM

I've been waiting years for his jazz writings to be translated.

Sorry, that's a good indication that this book may not be translated either.
Publishers think, or know, that unlike his novels, his essays about old music won't sell.
Hope I am wrong and you will read them in English, though.

Iota




Even if this was the only book Dickens had ever wrote, I'd still consider him one of the great writers in the English language, it just spills over with so many virtues. And so witty at times too (as he so often is).
There are still some glaring gaps in the list of his novels I've read, which I really must plug before my own final exit down the plughole.

Jo498

Quote from: Dry Brett Kavanaugh on June 01, 2021, 12:44:08 PM
I will check out writings of Pascal and Unamuno. Specially, Unamuno looks interesting.
As you already know, Kant and S explained that what appears to be the world are not real, but our limited and biased perception. Colors are not real. Lights with different wave lengths stimulate eyes, and eyes send electrochemical signals to the brain, which creates the perception of colors. So colors are not there in the real world, but they are a creation by our brain. Same about the sound, odor, taste, etc. Air waves and odor particles stimulate ears and noses, they send signals to the brain, and the brain creates the perception of sound and odor. So there is no sound or smell in the real, physical world.
Kant proceeds that the 3 dimensionality of the world and unidimensional time are perceptions created by our neurological activities as well.
This is not Kant, but a vaguely kantian late 20th/21st century "scientistic"  reinterpretation of Kant.
It is *not* our physiological activities that create perceptions. All this biological stuff is part of the picture that is conjectured by science. But Kant wants to get at a far deeper level. Both the theoretical concepts of science as well as the perceptional structure of any being "like us", i.e. a being that has senses AND understanding (so angels could "perceive" differently and God most certainly does it differently via intellectual intuition that is not discursive and split into senses and understanding) are already dependent on the forms of intuition (Anschauungsformen) space and time as well as on some other structures (categories of understanding, incl. logic, causality). This is not neurological or physiological, that would be a re-interpretation. One can do this but I think this mostly misses the point of Kant and uses empirical science to provide something that according to Kant could never be provided empirically, because it is the a priori precondition of empirical knowledge. Empirical knowledge cannot be its own foundation (or maybe it can, but this would be profoundly Anti-Kantian ;))
If it was neurological it would not be a priori and analysable by pure reason. It would also be in a sense question begging because neurology presupposes the more basic sciences like physics and these fundamental sciences according to Kant presuppose the epistemic structures he tries to analyse.

Cold comfort: Kant himself is inconsistent because he presupposes some kind of primordial causality by which things in themselves "affect" (affizieren) our senses (to get the whole process of perception and knowing started). But this cannot be "real" causality because causality as used in theoretical physics etc. (recall that the inspiration for the Kantian project is to explain how mathematical natural science is possible) is a feature of understanding "impressed" on the things in themselves.

Morale: One should bite the bullet and either become a realist or a complete idealist (i.e. get rid of things in themselves that can affect despite causality only coming "later" via understanding). The Kantian way to have both is not stable and probably inconsistent.




Tout le malheur des hommes vient d'une seule chose, qui est de ne savoir pas demeurer en repos, dans une chambre.
- Blaise Pascal

Artem

Quote from: Dry Brett Kavanaugh on June 08, 2021, 07:47:58 AM
'"Old and Fabulous Records of Classical Music" by Haruki Murakami will be published soon in this month.  This is a collection of essays on 486 classical music records he likes. Hope an English edition will be published soon.  Jfyi and I haven't read it yet.

https://tower.jp/article/feature_item/2021/05/19/1111
That looks extremely interesting. Did anybody like his book with Ozawa? I'm yet to pick it up.

Artem

Quote from: Dry Brett Kavanaugh on June 08, 2021, 07:43:31 AM
Nice cover. I will look for a copy.
There's also a NYRB version of that novel with a different title, which I assume is a more direct translation.