What are you currently reading?

[Florestan]

Not a phobia, no one's afraid of the Russians anymore. Мore like disgust. Yes, I loved Leo Tolstoy for a long period of my life, I don't know how I do now. But Tolstoy was an opponent of everything that formed the basis of Russian life. He was constantly protesting the very principles. He was officially excommunicated from the state's church, which effectively put him outside the social framework. Many of those named by you chose to move far and away, some of them even before the Bolshevik coup. Bortkiewicz is a Pole who was born in Ukraine and went to Austria.

The same thing must have happened to me. In my childhood and youth I was force-fed with all this Russian/Soviet music, which was played incessantly on radios, TVs and from records. There was little else in the country where you couldn't just go to a record shop and buy Beethoven's symphonies performed by Karajan, the Ring performed by Knappertsbusch, or Chopin's nocturnes performed by Arthur Rubinstein. Mahler or Richard Strauss and many, many other composers were not known at all. But, from morning to evening, there was Shostakovich non-stop in the same two or three interpretations. Plus couple of others. Khrennikov, Sviridov, Khachaturian. Rodion Schedrin. Yes, it was stiffling and perverse.

Tchaikovsky, or course. The slow part from the fifth with that most fantastically beautiful solo was repeated several times during the broadcast of Brezhnev's funeral. Rachmaninoff was represented by a couple of pieces and of course the introduction to the second concerto, which, according to the propagandists, was supposed to illustrate some broad march of the revolutionary people or some accomplishments. In general, all music in USSR illustrated something. The class struggle, the aspirations of the working people, etc. And you know, it works. If I carelessly hear something from those times, the marches or aspirations immediately arise in my head. I want to stand up from sofa and march straight to the victory of communism in the whole world.

By the way, in my town was possible to listen to long and medium wave radio transmissions from Bucharest. There was, fortunately, almost no revolutionary Russian music, but there was much else, various and in best performances. I listened to Radio Bucharest every day. And on the shortwaves you could catch a programme of Radio Liberty in Romanian (it was not jammed), where you could listen to new Western popelar music in whole albums!!! From Grateful Dead and Chick Corea to Led Zeppelin and AC/DC.

P.S.: Do you know, that famous Tolstoy's novel title was not translated correct? It was not War and Peace at all. War and Society is closer. The word мир has two meanings in Russian language. Тoday both meanings are spelt the same, in Tolstoy's time there were two different spellings, мир и мір.

You cannot blame Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff for the misuse of their music by the Soviet propaganda.

War and Society makes no sense. War and Peace does. Besides, I have never seen the letter i used in the Russian alphabet.

As for Bortkiewicz, he never considered himself anything other than Russian. He even quoted God Save the Tsar in his First Symphony titled From my Homeland.

[AnotherSpin]

You cannot blame Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff for the misuse of their music by the Soviet propaganda.

War and Society makes no sense. War and Peace does. Besides, I have never seen the letter i used in the Russian alphabet.

As for Bortkiewicz, he never considered himself anything other than Russian. He even quoted God Save the Tsar in his First Symphony titled From my Homeland.

Did I blame anyone? I just recall what it was in the USSR.

In the old orthography, until 1918, more letters were used, including i. Also, the sign ъ was used at the end of nouns. In the first editions, the title of Tolstoy's novel was Война и Миръ. And, of course, it made sense. How the war was reflected in the lives of different parts of society. Have you read the novel? If not, read it, it's a great book.

I am not familiar with Bortkiewicz's music. There was no mention of him in the USSR, and later I listened to completely different music. The description of his first symphony says that it contains many different quotations, including Ukrainian folk melodies.

[Florestan]

Did I blame anyone? I just recall what it was in the USSR.

In the old orthography, until 1918, more letters were used, including i. Also, the sign ъ was used at the end of nouns. In the first editions, the title of Tolstoy's novel was Война и Миръ. And, of course, it made sense. How the war was reflected in the lives of different parts of society. Have you read the novel? If not, read it, it's a great book.

I am not familiar with Bortkiewicz's music. There was no mention of him in the USSR, and later I listened to completely different music. The description of his first symphony says that it contains many different quotations, including Ukrainian folk melodies.

Do you imply that all translators across the world got it all wrong for a century and a half and that not a single one of them was aware of Tolstoy's own spelling of Russian?

I have read the novel. I will re-read it soon.

www.sergeibortkiewicz.com

[Brian]

That was a fascinating post, Another Spin, thank you. In many "free" societies the only equivalent experience is a song that was "ruined" by memories of an ex-girlfriend or ex-boyfriend. 

One always carries one's young musical experiences, and is always influenced by them, for better or worse. Yours being so different from mine I'm grateful you shared them.

And like with the songs ruined by exes, there is no question of a composer being at "fault" or not - just in how you approach the music.

[AnotherSpin]

Do you imply that all translators across the world got it all wrong for a century and a half and that not a single one of them was aware of Tolstoy's own spelling of Russian?

I have read the novel. I will re-read it soon.

www.sergeibortkiewicz.com

I can't imply anything about the translators of the world. I only know how the title of the novel is translated into English.

The most authoritative Russian dictionary of the 19th century, Dahl's dictionary, gives the following interpretation of the word мир:

"universe; substance in space and force in time (Khomyakov).
- One of the earths of the universe; esp.
- our earth, globe, light;
- all people, all light, the human race;
- a community, a society of peasants;
- gathering"

It would be translated as War and World, but it doesn't sound pretty.

Happy re-reading. The more I read the book, the more clearly I saw the influence that Schopenhauer had on Tolstoy. Of course, everyone will find something there for oneself.

[Brian]

English translations of Russian literature often have significant disagreements over the titles—e.g. Dostoevsky's "Demons" or "The Possessed" or "Devils," and even Turgenev's "Fathers and Sons," which should actually be "Fathers and Children," but the "Sons" name became so famous that it is now kind of too late and many translations present the wrong "Sons" because that is the name people know.

[AnotherSpin]

English translations of Russian literature often have significant disagreements over the titles—e.g. Dostoevsky's "Demons" or "The Possessed" or "Devils," and even Turgenev's "Fathers and Sons," which should actually be "Fathers and Children," but the "Sons" name became so famous that it is now kind of too late and many translations present the wrong "Sons" because that is the name people know.

Exactly. And, on the other hand, many books by foreign authors are published in Russian with titles quite far from the original. A famous example, Salinger's book, is called Above the Abyss in the Rye in Russia. There are many examples.

[AnotherSpin]

That was a fascinating post, Another Spin, thank you. In many "free" societies the only equivalent experience is a song that was "ruined" by memories of an ex-girlfriend or ex-boyfriend. 

One always carries one's young musical experiences, and is always influenced by them, for better or worse. Yours being so different from mine I'm grateful you shared them.

And like with the songs ruined by exes, there is no question of a composer being at "fault" or not - just in how you approach the music.

I know what you mean. But still, it seems to me that an artist or composer cannot be completely free of the environment in which he/she lives. He/she may want to, but it's unlikely to work out. One way or another, he/she reflects what is going on around him/her.

[andolink]

Mircea Cărtărescu (b. 1956): Solenoid

[Florestan]

Mircea Cărtărescu (b. 1956): Solenoid

Very curious abou what you think.

[Brian]

I've heard very good things about the artistry of Solenoid, but have also heard it is creepy "body horror" which is not a genre I enjoy very much. 

[andolink]

Very curious abou what you think.

At 203 pgs. into it, I'm thoroughly enjoying it.  The writing style is in no way forbidding or difficult and the phantasmagorical parts are wonderfully "mind-blowing".  I'm having a lot of fun with this one!

[AnotherSpin]

Not so much reading as keeping it within reach.

[AnotherSpin]

The book is for those readers who want to throw off the shackles of conditioned thinking and find freedom.

The transcripts of the tapes of Sri Nisargadatta's talks have been put into literary form by Maurice Frydman, who has taken a few liberties that do not in any way interfere with the main message of the book.

[Henk]

 

[SimonNZ]

Finished



A reworking into book form of a highly regarded and popular series of lectures given at Oxford (those made availabe in podcast form as Approaching Shakespeare).


I was going to start on China Mieville's study of the cultural impact of the Communist Manifesto, but after the above will instead go straight into another of Emma Smith's:

[Brian]

"possibly the best book on Shakespeare, full stop"?! That is some very high praise on the cover.

What is the perspective? Obviously if you went straight to another of her books you must have enjoyed it.

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

Do you imply that all translators across the world got it all wrong for a century and a half and that not a single one of them was aware of Tolstoy's own spelling of Russian?

Tolstoy himself gave the French title as La Guerre et la Paix, not La Guerre et le Monde.

[Henk]

Good book, covers it all. I understand the confusion about the term Anthropocene, the difficulty of dating it, considering the complexities, but isn't just the emergence of modern humans from it's beginning that we can take as the starting point of the geological age Anthropocene at least in an informal way. But also formal. Since human existence on Earth is so recent and a short time on a geological scale, the time between emergence of humans and the 'great acceleration' of the second half of 20th century, when the geological records register human impact on the planet most convincingly, is almost insignificant. Right? The problem then is that the geological timescale is too detailed, since it even breaks down such short timescales like that of human existence, as mentioned above, into parts (Pleistocene and Holocene cover human time on the planet, the reason for the split between them is the transition from a glacial to interglacial period, but since there were so many of them earlier I don't understand why exactly this split is considered so crucial in terms of geological time scale. Edit: it's for pragmatic reasons as it is registered well in ice cores). I would propose that the Anthropocene counts as a period following the Quartenary (of which Pleistocene and Holocene are epochs) or even as an era (higher level than period), this seems most logical, defined as the era in which one specific mammal, humans, get dominant, though I'm not firm in this position. The era could be of an extremely short time span, we don't know yet, but is yet still defendable.

[SimonNZ]

"possibly the best book on Shakespeare, full stop"?! That is some very high praise on the cover.

What is the perspective? Obviously if you went straight to another of her books you must have enjoyed it.

Heh, I hadn't noticed that. They could have just left it with the "brilliantly illuminating" bit.