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[Florestan]

And the Huns were an army with any number of different ethnicities represented, of course.

Of course.

What I find amusing is that for genuine Romanian nationalists I am too cosmopolitan, while for non-Romanians I might come across as a Romanian nationalist. 

And anyway, since 1980s the fashion among Romanian nationalists has been to downplay the Roman ingredient and to exalt the Dacian one, all the way to pretending that it is in fact the latter who taught Latin to the former. Reading through all 400-something pages of one such internet board has been an inexhaustible source of chuckles and downright Homeric laughters. 

[ritter]

What I find amusing is that for genuine Romanian nationalists I am too cosmopolitan, while for non-Romanians I might come across as a Romanian nationalist. 

That has a name: "contrarian" 

[Karl Henning]

There are two prequels and I believe two sequels to the series to bring it to seven....I believe.

You may well be right; in an Author's Note to Prelude to Foundation (1988) Asimov spells out a "future chronology" of his books.  At that time there were six Foundation novels, and just the one, then-hot-off-the-press prequel.


Thread Duty:  I have indeed started to re-read Foundation.

[Christo]

BTW, Attila is a Gothic name meaning "little father"; his ethnicity itself is uncertain, and even it were indeed a Hun, Hungarians are not descendants of Huns. Árpád and the Magyars, on the other hand...

There's no single Hungarian descendancy, no more than there is a Romanian one - or German or French, for that matter. The Magyar story is played large in a dominant nationalist idea of history, but that's about all that can be said of it. What we know for sure is that for many centuries many different steppe peoples settled in the great Carpathian basin, and that no doubt these multi-layered settlement patterns somehow left their traits. But just how the Hungarian language developed, is largely unknown, isn't it?

Oh, I certainly do not claim the there is a continuous tradition of naming Romanian children Constantin which dates back to Constantin the Great's days, for the simple reason that there were no Romanians back then. But for instance Constantin Cantacuzino (1598 - 1663), an influent and powerful aristocrat, Constantin Șerban (d. 1682) and Constantin Brâncoveanu (1654 - 1714 ), Princes of Wallachia and Moldavia, were not a 19th century creation.

Constantin is a standard Christian name, like those of any of the apostles and saints; the real testing case would be Traian - and I doubt if you'll find examples of that 'pagan' name before the 19th c.

As to the Wikipedia entry: many thanks! It appears to be, as expected, very much a Renaissance thing, isn't?

[Florestan]

That has a name: "contrarian" 

And yet in dealing with both parties I do nothing but state the obvious: that Romanian is a Romance language and that the Romanian people is a neo-Latin one, no less than the Italians, Spaniards, French of Portuguese (with apologies to other that I have no time or space to nominate). I am pretty confident you won't find one single mainstream non-Romanian historian or linguist who documentedly claims otherwise.

Anyway, your post reminded me an anecdote about one of my intellectual heroes. Miguel de Unamuno was taking a walk in Madrid with a friend and they arrived in front of the Ateneo. "De que se trata en la conferencia de hoy?", he asked. "Lo ignoro", replied his friend. "Pues entramos, estoy en contra!" 

[Bogey]

One of my favorite authors.  I was able to find an Ace Double like the one above. I love these old sci-fi paperbacks.

[Florestan]

There's no single Hungarian descendancy, no more than there is a Romanian one - or German or French, for that matter.

Precisely what I have already stated in plain English: the Romanian people, just like every other European people, is a mixture.

The Magyar story is played large in a dominant nationalist idea of history, but that's about all that can be said of it. What we know for sure is that for many centuries many different steppe peoples settled in the great Carpathian basin, and that no doubt these multi-layered settlement patterns somehow left their traits. But just how the Hungarian language developed, is largely unknown, isn't it?

I am not an expert in Hungarian linguistics, but my understanding is that the language belongs to the Fino-Ugric family, togther with Finnish and Estonian, although they are not mutually inteligible.

Constantin is a standard Christian name, like those of any of the apostles and saints;

Correction 1: a standard Christian name in Orthodox countries, such as Greece, Russia or Romania (certainly a "Byzantine" heritage and influence). I haven't heard about that many Constantin(e) in UK, France, Germany or The Netherlands. John, Peter, Paul and George are obviously much more common in Western Europe than Constantin(e).

Correction 2: it was originally a pagan name; it became Christian only after Constantine the Great, feasted as a saint together with his mother Helena in both the Catholic and the Orthdox churches, but at different dates.

As to the Wikipedia entry: many thanks! It appears to be, as expected, very much a Renaissance thing, isn't?

All those Italian, Polish, German or Hungarian scholars were indeed Renaissance men, or even later. But I very much doubt that they also instructed all those illiterate and unschooled Romanian peasants they were visiting and interviewing what to answer when questioned about their ethnicity and language.

[Karl Henning]

One of my favorite authors.  I was able to find an Ace Double like the one above. I love these old sci-fi paperbacks.

I need to read some.  Back in the Deeps of Time, when there was a Borders on Washington Street, I leafed a bit through Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? but (not at all fairly, to the author) I was a little annoyed that it so little resembled Blade Runner.

In my defense, somehow I was jonesing for a view of Blade Runner at the time.

[Bogey]

I need to read some.  Back in the Deeps of Time, when there was a Borders on Washington Street, I leafed a bit through Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? but (not at all fairly, to the author) I was a little annoyed that it so little resembled Blade Runner.

In my defense, somehow I was jonesing for a view of Blade Runner at the time.

Anyone who saw he movie first is probably guilty of this act....I as well.

[Bogey]

[bwv 1080]

[Spineur]

I rarely reread books I have read previously unless it is a lifetime endeavor like Proust A la recherche du temps perdu.  Today I suddenly felt a very strong urge to read this Bulgakov book on Molière for the 4th time



Bulgakov in one of my favorite author and this is probably his most touching book.  His best is naturally "Le maitre et Margerite"

[aligreto]

What a title   

[Jaakko Keskinen]

So far Royal Highness has proven a very enjoyable read. My favorite characters so far are the dry-witted minister Knobelsdorff and naturally Imma and Samuel Spoelmann. Imma is hilarious with her excellent sarcasm. I love especially the part where she discusses with Klaus Heinrich the steamer Imma and her father had crossed the ocean in. Imma says the ship had five storeys to which Klaus Heinrich asks: "Counting from below?" In the blink of an eye Imma answers: "Of course. Six, counting from above." 

[Todd]

A brief (<90 text pages) thesis by David Nicolas at the Naval Postgraduate School about China's proposed $900 billion+ "One Belt, One Road" initiative, which, if completed and successful, could force a major geopolitical realignment, and significantly reduce the strategic advantage the US has due to its overwhelming naval superiority.  The author is more sanguine about the implications of the project than I am and spends basically no time covering the implications of the shift from sea-based to overland shipping, relying on economic efficiency as the sole reason, though the financial and economic interconnectedness of the projects exposes vulnerabilities that other great powers might be able to exploit if needed.  When I see such eye watering amounts of money, I always wonder how much ends up lining the pockets of various people.  This subject is way too big for one brief thesis and will take decades to play out, so more reading will be needed, and this serves as really just a primer on the topic.  It's well enough written as far as theses go.

[Christo]

Count Lev Tolstoy: The death of Ivan Ilyich, Kreutzer Sonata, other later stories
+ plus his religious writings ('The Lion and the Honeycomb') as edited by A.N. Wilson in his better days.

[Ken B]

The third in a series of French readers, this a selection of short stories.

[asin]B009O30DO2[/asin]

Coming soon: Bel-Ami en francais.

[Drasko]

[ritter]

Well, Draško...you're watching a film by one of my favourite directors ever (if not my very favourite), and reading a book by an author I find fascinating... What next? listen to some Boulez, perhaps? 

Regards,

[Karl Henning]

Just finished re-reading (this morning) Foundation and Empire.  The first volume (arguably) sets up the The-Foundation-is-inevitable theme;  the wild exogenous variable in the second volume therefore makes for a more engaging narrative.  In ways that are not crucial to that superior narrative, the second volume also (I can see in this re-reading) amply justifies my friend Charles's remark, "I re-read it [the Foundation trilogy] and was disgusted at how sexist it is."

I suppose the argument would be, that the entrenched sexism in society required slow, gradual remediation.  But where we might observe that the scripts in The Twilight Zone (e.g.) do not have much in the way of interesting female characters, somehow the arrant condescension is more in-the-bone in Foundation and Empire.  It is possibly even more vexatious because the science-fiction genre is so often all about telling us how wonderful the future is, and better than the present.  Well, of course, I shall go on and complete the series nonetheless.