Some inspiring words, from that most inspiring of men…
An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.
Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.
I have decided to stick with love.
Hate is too great a burden to bear.
His note on the translation and his aims ends like this (after props to Dryden, which also won me over).
But I think it is not out of order for me to say that “completing” this translation of the work of such a great poet means a great deal to me personally, since I had previously translated his Eclogues and his Georgics, and I am in love with his voice as I hear it in all these poems, telling how it is with all created beings, the very leaves on the trees, very rooted plants, the beasts in the fields, the shepherds trying to keep their world together with song replying to song replying to song, the bees in their vulnerable hives, doing their work, the soldiers doing their work of killing and dying, the falling cities, and the kings and fathers, and their sons, and Dido, and Palinurus, and Deiphobus, and Mezentius the disrespecter of gods, and the mortal son of Venus, the creature Aeneas, carrying his household gods to build a city, heroic and vulnerable, himself subject to monstrous rage, himself not always unconfused, all of them, all of us, creatures, created beings, heroic and vulnerable, and Virgil’s telling it as it is, in his truth-telling pitying voice.
His version has a gorgeous ‘swing’ from beginning to end, and you are likely to find a beautiful line just by opening the book.
These are dollhouse dioramas, all of grisly crime scenes (how is John Waters not involved in this?), created by Glessner, a self-trained artist and forensic scientist in the middle of the last century, They were, and in some cases still are, used to train detectives.
Times writer William Hamilton, or his editor, had the inspired idea of touring the show with Jennifer Smith, the head of Forensics for the Washington, DC police, picking up on things that civilians would miss in the very detailed, yet decorative little rooms.
In my two visits (both relatively quick) it seemed to sit a little oddly at the Renwick (although the newly reopened museum’s pushing of boundaries of craft seems to me overall positive–the first show in 2016 was fantastic). The Nutshells’ oscillation between dark humor, sort of a particularly bleak 1950s noir, clashes with the dollhouse presentation, at least for me. Still, the show is undeniably fascinating, and certainly has engaged an audience. After the Times piece, I bet there will be audiences waiting on Penn. Avenue to see it.
Glessner was a Chicago native, and I wonder whether the wonderful Thorne Rooms–decorative miniatures at the Art Institute of Chicago, were an inspiration? These are done to the same scale as Glessner’s, 1 inch = 1 foot, but portray mostly elegant interior design , Americanrooms from the colonial period through the 1940s. No corpse in sight. My early years were spent in Chicago, and a visit to these was always a particular treat.
Photos don’t really do them justice (in reproduction, they look like the actual rooms you find in historical sites or recreated in museums, but when you consider the 1″ scale, the detail of the workmanship becomes clear:
Virginia Drawing Room, 1754, c. 1940, One of the Thorne Rooms from the Art Institute of Chicago
Having been involved in creating media for K-12 teacher professional development (among many other educational topics over the years), I have seen many trends admirable or baleful blow through the zeitgeist.
A current obsession is ‘resilience’ (taking a role akin to positive psychology or learning styles in previous periods). I am not qualified to say whether resilience, the practice of teaching with an eye to fostering individual self-agency, perseverance, learning from failure etc. is actually, as is sometimes claimed, an approach with a neurological basis, or whether it reflects a sounder pedagogy that any others per se. It certainly goes down easily (would a teacher want a kid not to be resilient? does anybody seek, except perhaps strategically in soap operas, want a reputation as ‘fragile’?)
And yet…
Some questions occur, prompted on my own and in part by a provocative talk called “Resilience, Grit, and Other Lies” given at a library conference and archived online.
A few natural questions, prompted by the talk and qualms I have had about this line of thinking. Individual self-efficacy is a fine notion, and experiences for students that foster it might have the potential to do good, but if they happen in circumstances that are structurally dysfunctional, couldn’t this backfire? Doesn’t self-efficacy (and by implication resilience) have a developmental dimension? How do you know what fosters it and when, versus just causing frustration. Is context not key?
More seriously, if individual resilience or grit is a key message, what happens to responsibility beyond the individual student’s effort? Does it melt away when other units/dimensions are concerned? If you are in a significantly under-resourced school, are the inequalities that led to that reality ignored, are the people and systems responsible let off the hook with a shrug and the message that students can overcome based on grit?
I’m sure there is nuance I am missing–it can’t be just about individual merit full stop, and good counter arguments to my skepticism must exist. To continue in the negative column, however, it is worth noting that resilience is a darling of Silicon Valley, which has among its ideological biases an emphasis on the individual rather than the any larger unit. (Shades of Maggie Thatcher’s “there is no such thing as society”). It is also true that resilience and its related pedagogies really caught fire around the time of the great recession, in which forces beyond most individuals’ personal control were abundant and highly visible. (And God knows, some solace, even if merely notional, was perhaps in order. )
Still, it seems on balance to perhaps to be notional in the sense that is mostly perhaps a good story, as if schooling was a narrative arc, ‘first there was such promise, then I struggled and there were terrible times, but I found my inner grit and triumphed.’ “You can do it, just hunker down and pull yourself up by your bootstraps.” It would make Dickens or better Horatio Alger smile.
Philosopher Robin James catches some of this “it makes a good story” –although situating it a sort of complicated context of pop music among other things.
“Resilience is a specific type of therapeutic overcoming. It has three steps: (1) perform damage so that others can see, feel, and understand it; (2) recycle or overcome that damage, so that you come out ahead of where you were even before the damage hit; (3) pay that surplus value–that value added by recycling–to some hegemonic institution, like white supremacist patriarchy, or capital, or the State, something like that. This isn’t just coping–it’s a very, very specific form of coping designed to get individuals to perform the superficial trappings of recovery from deep, systemic issues, all the while reinforcing and intensifying the very systemic issues it claims to solve. Resilience is how patriarchy hides behind superficial feminist liberation, how white supremacy hides behind superficial multiculturalism.” – Robin James, Resilience & Melancholy: Pop Music, Feminism, Neoliberalism
Horatio Alger, the apostle of grit from yesteryear.
Not sure what I make of all of it…and still even see the appeal in “the story,” its potential to be an approach that could help inspire others, or yourself, to find perseverance and strength. But the ideological trappings are there too, and not at all comfortable. If you are interested in the topic, do listen to the presentation. One quotation, in particular, stayed with me, “We needed a revolution, we got resilience.” Alf Hornberg – Professor of Human Ecology, Lund University.
Enjoying Paul Bailey’s “Uncle Rudolf,” set in the early 20th century, and focused on a celebrated Romanian tenor who aspired to Mozart and Verdi, but ended up singing operetta to international acclaim, but increasing disgust. Late in the novel, the narrator, the tenor’s nephew, relates,
“I came to understand, in the years of Uncle Rudolf’s continuing musical re-education, the nature of the distaste he felt for the culture in which operetta had flourished. He had been party to a despicable frivolousness, he said. The gypsies he’d impersonated weren’t real, because they all turned out to be kings or princes or barons, and what were the brigands he’d played but a bunch of rabid nationalists, crude beasts forever casting roguish glances at love-sick lunatic maidens? In the streets of Vienna, Bucharest, and Budapest, a black operetta was being enacted daily while he was behind the footlights singing of a liberty and freedom indistinguishable from tyranny. He had betrayed not only Jean de Reszke and Georges Enesco, but his own best instincts as well. He had sung the kind of music that was enjoyed by those who brought about Europe’s destruction. Such was his conviction in old age , which I refrained from arguing against.
Earlier, in the book, Andrei, the nephew, hears Handel for the first time. His uncle performs at a Christmas party that Andrei is present at as a child:
It is the not-so-famous pianist I remember best, simply because he was my uncle’s regular accompanist. His name was Ivan but he wasn’t Russian. Uncle Rudolph called him Ivan he Terrible whenever he hit a wrong note or was out of time. The prima donna refused to sing that first Christmas and the cabaret artist was so drunk that he forgot his words, to everyone’s amusement, and so it was that my uncle, who was not sober, beckoned Ivan Morris over to the piano.
–You must forget Danilo, and the Gypsy Baron, and the Vagabond King, and that bloody idiot of a brigand Zoltan, and all of the other halfwits in my repertoire.
My uncle cleared his throat, signalling to Ivan that he was ready to begin, and then sang the aria from Handel’s Jeptha in which the anguished father offers up his only child for sacrifice:
Waft her, angels, through the skies, Far above yon azure plain; Glorious there, like you, to rise, There, like you, for ever reign.
I was unaware of Jephta’s plight and I had never heard Handel’s music before, but I did understand , at the age of seven, that I had just listened to something radiantly beautiful.
CES (formerly the Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas is the ultimate nerd destination, and yes, once my husband and I made a vacation of it. We learned that it isn’t all that accessible for your ordinary gear head consumers, more B2B and a media showcase, but as an anthropological experience it’s certainly something.
This year’s probably has a full plate of drama, given that everything with a chip in it may have a security vulnerability, but the sad/funny chapter has been inadvertently been penned by a company that created a piece of luggage that follows you around. Here is what you need to know:
So far, all these bags seem more like proof of concepts than gadget of the year. A market exists for suitcases that cater better to those with mobility impairments, but I am not yet convinced this is the solution.
90Fun plans to take preorders for the Puppy 1 during the second half of 2018 in a crowdfunding project, which means it’s got some time to work out the kinks. For now, think of it as an actual, untrained puppy. In theory, it’s cute that a dog will follow you wherever you go, but pair that with the idea of enlisting a puppy to drag your luggage around the airport… and it’s about as useful as it sounds.
Somehow the sight of it falling helplessly to the ground makes me feel for it too…which is completely ridiculous!
On a Tristan und Isolde kick because of a writing assignment. It’s an opera I don’t think I got until I turned 50 (and saw the Met’s weird but gorgeously sung production.)
One of Wagner’s many inamoratas, Mathilde Wesendonck, helped inspire the opera, and he wrote thus to her: “… I have never written anything like it before–you will indeed marvel when you hear it.” “To me Tristan remains a wonder! I….I shall be eternally grateful to you for the fact that I have written Tristan. ”
Rediscovered an old, but still insightful paean to editors by the poet and memoirist Blake Morrison.
Novelist Thomas Wolfe, whose mammoth manuscripts were transmuted into literature by the great editor Maxwell Perkins.
“A graduate student of mine at Goldsmiths College expressed similar nostalgia in an email: “I have a notion of editors in days of yore,” he wrote, “being straight-backed and terrifying, all integrity and no bullshit, responding to a vocational calling and above all driven by a love of the word, brave enough not only to champion the best but also to tell their authors whatever might be needed to improve the work. And that now such personalities are as distant a myth in publishing as yer Shanklys and yer Cloughs are to football, that sharp-dressed corporate beasts run the show, reluctant to make decisions of their own, and ill-equipped to challenge those who rule a star-led system, so that everyone from JK Rowling to David Eggers suffers from the lack of scissors that might have been to their benefit.”
and later…noting that some writers don’t hesitate to knock editors, he calls T.S. Eliot to the stand,
“Those who can, write; those who can’t, edit – that seems to be the line. I prefer TS Eliot. Asked if editors were no more than failed writers, he replied: “Perhaps – but so are most writers.”
This article is now more than a decade old, and editors and editing standards have declined even more precipitously. (Newspapers being a particularly baleful example.) At a time that everything I read (or write for that matter) seems to need them urgently.
An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.
But I think it is not out of order for me to say that “completing” this translation of the work of such a great poet means a great deal to me personally, since I had previously translated his Eclogues and his Georgics, and I am in love with his voice as I hear it in all these poems, telling how it is with all created beings, the very leaves on the trees, very rooted plants, the beasts in the fields, the shepherds trying to keep their world together with song replying to song replying to song, the bees in their vulnerable hives, doing their work, the soldiers doing their work of killing and dying, the falling cities, and the kings and fathers, and their sons, and Dido, and Palinurus, and Deiphobus, and Mezentius the disrespecter of gods, and the mortal son of Venus, the creature Aeneas, carrying his household gods to build a city, heroic and vulnerable, himself subject to monstrous rage, himself not always unconfused, all of them, all of us, creatures, created beings, heroic and vulnerable, and Virgil’s telling it as it is, in his truth-telling pitying voice.
Enjoying Paul Bailey’s “Uncle Rudolf,” set in the early 20th century, and focused on a celebrated Romanian tenor who aspired to Mozart and Verdi, but ended up singing operetta to international acclaim, but increasing disgust. Late in the novel, the narrator, the tenor’s nephew, relates,
CES (formerly the Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas is the ultimate nerd destination, and yes, once my husband and I made a vacation of it. We learned that it isn’t all that accessible for your ordinary gear head consumers, more B2B and a media showcase, but as an anthropological experience it’s certainly something.
A Few Reasonable Words 