I’ve not read Dante since college (though I’ve downloaded Chris’s ebooks and will give it another go over the half term), but your description of the technical achievement reminded me of Vikram Seth’s novel in verse ‘The Golden Gate’ which is written (like Onegin) in iambic tetrameter. Have you come across that?
No - I know very little about literature, and have even less experience with it. I’ve read a bit of Dumas, Tolkien, Shakespeare, Voltaire… and a number of contemporary popular authors, but that’s about it. I already have more books than I can house, but they’re nearly all non-fiction.
I’ve been reading a couple Guardian articles in which 2019 Nobel Lit winner Handke has been lambasted by writers like Rushdie & Zizek
Tell me about it.
It’s inevitable, but I nonetheless find it annoying. He won the literature prize, not the peace prize. Khrushchev said it: “Is he the best? Then give him the prize!”
I’m not sure where the line is crossed. Apparently this guy’s done a good deal of work as an apologist for certain hate crimes and ethnic cleansing while romanticising deprivation. I don’t know how much of that’s true but there seems to be a consensus.
I put this in another thread but it’s about a great protest book by a Soviet dissident so really it should be here. The book – To Build a Castle – is still OOP AFAIK, but you can get it for Kindle now. Not gonna lie – I found out about this book because one of the Pussy Riot girls, while in jail, mentioned that it was important to her and got her through the time.
I suppose this man qualifies for having a mad trip – Vladimir Bukovsky passed away a few weeks ago. I found out just by chance. He was a leading figure of the Soviet dissident movement and spent a good deal of his life in camps and psychiatric wards. I read his great protest-memoir To Build a Castle before leaving Amsterdam – it’s one of only a handful of books that I took with me to Lithuania & now Czechia. I think I’m going to re-read it.
There’s also a new OpenDemocracy article about him which I haven’t read yet
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/vladimir-bukovsky-globalny-politik-en/
His website:
This short lettr is interesting re: protest and British playwrights and the great Paul Scofield, plus not idealising Bukovsky.
The release of the Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky was something that the British actor David Markham, a conscientious objector during the second world war, had campaigned for tirelessly.
Every year on Bukovsky’s birthday, David stood outside the British Medical Association with a placard of Bukovsky round his neck, urging the BMA to intercede on his behalf.
At first Markham was alone, but gradually he was joined by others, including Tom Stoppard and Harold Pinter. Together they set up the British section of the Campaign Against Psychiatric Abuse. Markham also put on a transcribed account of Bukovsky’s trial at the Young Vic with Paul Scofield.
When Bukovsky was finally released as part of a prisoner exchange, David met him at the airport and sat beside him at his first press interview. From there he was driven straight to David’s East Sussex house, Lear Cottage, where hordes of reporters were waiting. David’s wife, the poet Olive Dehn, threw her arms around Bukovsky and ushered him into the house.
To the disappointment of David, a proud anarchist, the two men’s politics later diverged, and Bukovsky got involved with friends of Margaret Thatcher. The dissident never really appreciated how many years David had spent drawing attention to his plight.
Spring 2020, a translation of Feinberg’s Pianism as Art will be out
Composer-pianist Samuil Evgenyevich Feinberg (1890-1962) became one of the founders of the modern Russian school at the Moscow Conservatory, where he enjoyed universal esteem. The language of his seminal book is exquisite, its ideas invaluable, its conclusions compelling. Feinberg assays the piano’s kaleidoscopic possibilities more completely than has ever been expressed in a single volume, perceptively analyzing style, sound, technique, rhythm, pedaling, and the vital connection between poetry and music, among a host of fascinating musical material. Feinberg became strongly attuned to social justice, equality and access, and one reads within his book’s pages a lifetime of wisdom and humanity experienced through the piano’s unique voice. This is its first complete translation into English (publication date: spring 2020).
http://robertrimm.ag-sites.net/pianism_as_art_________________________130568.htm
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Very good.
I’ve read it in Russian and dat mofo is so incredibly knowledgeable and genzui in every way
Definitely a closeted mofo
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University paper on Feinberg. Page 58-71 might be of interest
INTERVIEWS/CORRESPONDENCES (Translated from Russian to
English) …58
Psychologist A.V. Vitsonsky …58
Leonid Feinberg (brother) …68
Alexander Goldenweiser …69
https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5122&context=etd
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Yeah I came across that as I was doing research for my own Scrib thesis
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@Dr.TM did you wrote your thesis about some specific Scriabin work or general?
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I selected specific Etudes from each set: op 8, 42 and 65
Will post the thesis on here when it is approved tru. Still needs some tweaking
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Has anyone read Eiji Yoshikawa’s 1000 page novel on Musashi? I’m listening to a 3-4 hour podcast about it now and it sounds fascinating. Parts of it remind me of Virgil’s Aeneid which I adored.
Just came across Olga Tokarczuk’s recent Nobel lecture (fuck it’s too long) and acceptance speech. The pomp and ceremony of diz sheeyat a bit pathetic from ma ATM perspektiv
transcript cummah
haha fuck check da sailor hat chicks in dat first vid. Sweden wid da bizar kink
I’ve only read 3 or 4 of his novels but I get the feeling Coetzee, who won the Nobel in 2003, is one of the more overrated writers today. I’ve found his writing rather cold and dull.
Does anyone have Leonard Bernstein’s Infinite Variety of Music?
I think I’ve got my father’s copy somewhere in storage if you need a reference, but don’t have an ebook.
No worries.