Well, like I previously stated, since I moved to the English part of Canada 15 years ago, I go about my daily life in this language also. Yet, it takes strong emotional reactions for me to naturally switch to my mother tongue. Like anger that will make me instinctively swear in French (calisse d'ostie de tabarnack being my favourite, haha!!!). Or, a more defined example : when a dog came to meet me yesterday, I happily talk to it in French (even though this Filipino dog has little chance of understanding my mother tongue, haha).

When someone comprehends the phenomena world for the first time through language, it comes with a strong emotional impact. So the use of these words - albeit repeated numerous times - can still be associated with an emotional baggage. But when it is a subsequently learned dialect and the subject in question has a more defined comprehension of the world, there is less emotional impact in realizing that d-o-g refers to the furry animal, because the process has once been associated, at a younger age, with the word chien : it becomes a pure translation, much like a scientific-detached operation.

As far as my personal reading experience goes, I usually indulge more in non-fiction than the fiction counter-part. And for some reason, I will usually read non-fiction in English, but if I do pick up say a Dostoevsky novel, than I will without a doubt read it in French. Both the English and French versions are obviously translated, yet one finds me better than the other (even though I read more often in English than I do French nowadays). Or even better, I will often prefer Hemingway in French than in its original language. Some elements will obviously be Lost in Translation, yet the book will speak to me in a more familiar tone.

Propaganda/Art/Advertising/Information
Propaganda is a form of communication aimed towards influencing the attitude of a population toward some cause or position.

Napoleon crossing the Alps by Jacques-Loius David 1801

1876

A hundred years later - apparently there is a need for a huge fence.

1938

You got the feeling?




What distinguishes one from the other? Surely it is just an aesthetic judgement.

In my view, the difference is often in the social position of the messenger and the messages role within the value system of the society. Of course what we usually identify as propaganda is either when we are looking from the outside in or when viewing propaganda of our own vs an outsider e.g. a wartime enemy.

In One flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the dominant discourse is identified by the narrator as a "Combine". The institutional setting - of an asylum where the construct is explicitly of control for the patient's own good - allows the author to lay bare a reality that plays out throughout our own social discourses although sometimes cloaked in different terms like 'advertisement', public health, school rules or the 'rule of law'.

p206 (McMurphy and his twelve followers[apostles] are heading toward the ocean for a fishing trip. The passage is the 'Chief' viewing the change in the countryside since he was last free.)

Or things like five thousand houses punched out identical by a machine and strung across the hills outside of town, so fresh from the facotry they're still linked together like sausages, a sign saying"NEST IN THE WEST HOMES -NO DWN. PAYMENT FOR VETS," - a playground down the hill from the houses, behind a checker-wire fence and another sign that read " ST.LUKE'S SCHOOL FOR BOYS" - there were five thousand kids in green corduroy pants and white shirts under green pullover sweaters playing crack-the -whip across an acre of crushed gravel. The line popped and twisted and jerked like a snake, and every crack popped a little kid off the end, sent him rolling up against the fence like a tumbleweed. Every crack. And it was always the same little kid, over and over.
All that five thousand kids lived in those five thousand houses, owned by those guys that got off the train. the houses looked so much alike that, time and time again, the kids went home by mistake to different houses and different families. Nobody ever noticed. They ate and went to bed. The only one they noticed was the little kid at the end of the whip. He'd always be so scuffed and bruised that he'd show up out of place whereever he went. He wasnt able to open up and laugh either. It's a hard thing to laugh if you can feel the pressure of those beams coming from every new car that passes, or every new house you pass.

Self Portrait as Zeuxis by Rembrandt Van Rijn

c. 1662
82.5 x 65 cm.
Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Collogne

If you are interested in Rembrandt's self portraits:
http://www.rembrandtpainting.net/rem...aits.htm#about

Update and Thanks

Finished One Flew Over the Cuckoo's nest last night in bed. Also, I just realised that I have not written something on the Jungle Book. So I will attempt to write something on both sometime today.


10,000 views of this thread.

Taken in isolation that seems like alot of views, but it is not really - is it? ha
Thanks to all my loyal followers - for your repeat visits. Just having you return makes building up my record of this reading odyssey alot easier.

I am going to visit my aunt up the coast for two nights in approximately 48 hours. So I will be absent from the thread in all likelihood during that time. As a consequence, I will list my next two books given that I might be straddling two in the next four days.

Washington Square by Henry James
The Illiad by Homer

I will focus on getting an example of James's writing prior to my departure - I suspect there will be plenty of time to talk about The Illiad after I return.

At about halfway through this month:
Novels
Part of Labyrinth
The Invisible Man
The Great Gatsby
The Jungle Book
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Shakespeare Play
Midsummer Night's Dream

+ Poems

The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling

Kipling's writing has an affectionate and caring tone in his fables. There are subtle moral lessons that, for the most part, are still appropriate today. "Children's literature" can carry an implied assessment of it being less than other genres, if that is true, then it is most certainly an unfair assessment of The Jungle Book. The simple prose and linear plot certainly would make it easier for budding readers to enjoy and follow yet amongst this simplicity are great moments of irony and insight.

A pleasure.

My favourite character: Little Toomai

Washington Square by Henry James

Henry James, OM (15 April 1843 – 28 February 1916) was an American writer who spent the bulk of his career in Britain. He is regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He was the son of Henry James, Sr. and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James.

James alternated between America and Europe for the first 20 years of his life, after which he settled in England, becoming a British subject in 1915, one year before his death. He is best known for a number of novels showing Americans encountering Europe and Europeans. His method of writing from the point of view of a character within a tale allows him to explore issues related to consciousness and perception, and his style in later works has been compared to impressionist painting.


Portrait of Henry James (1843-1916), Annie Louise Swynnerton
Annie Louisa Robinson Swynnerton (1844 – 24 October 1933) was an English painter.[1]
She was born in Hulme in Manchester. She was one of seven daughters of solicitor Francis Robinson; she began painting to contribute to the family's support. Later she trained at the Manchester School of Art and the Académie Julian in Paris. She married sculptor Joseph Swynnerton in 1883 and lived with him in Rome for much of her maturity.
She was an active feminist and suffragette.[2] With Susan Dacre she founded the Manchester Society of Women Painters in 1876.
Among her creations were Cupid and Psyche.
In 1922 she became the first female associate of the Royal Academy since the 18th century. She died on Hayling Island in 1933.



Washington Square

First edition cover.

Chapter IV (The Narrator describing Dr Sloper's and his daughter Catherine's relationship) p22.

'Is it possible that this magnificient person is my child?' he said.
You would have suprised him if you had told him so; but it is a literal fact that he almost never addressed his daughter save in the ironical form. Whenever he addressed her he gave her pleasure; but she had to cut her pleasure out of the piece, as it were. There were portions left over, light remnants and snippets of irony, which she never knew what to do with, which seemed too delicate for her own use; and yet Catherine, lamenting the limitations of her understanding, felt that they were too valuable to waste, and had a belief that if they passed over her head they yet contributed to the general sum of human wisdom.

Intertextual Reference from Washington Square
The 19th century "keeping up with the Jones's" by Arthur Almond fiancee to cousin of Catherine Sloper (protagonist)
Nearing the end of his pontificating on the need to keep moving into new houses says, quote p26

"Don't you think that's a good motto for a young couple - to keep "going higher"? That's the name of that piece of poetry - what do they call it - Excelsior!

The Poem in question, was inspired by the state seal of New York.

Excelsior

The shades of night were falling fast,
As through an Alpine village passed
A youth, who bore, 'mid snow and ice,
A banner with the strange device,
Excelsior!

His brow was sad; his eye beneath,
Flashed like a falchion from its sheath,
And like a silver clarion rung
The accents of that unknown tongue,
Excelsior!

In happy homes he saw the light
Of household fires gleam warm and bright;
Above, the spectral glaciers shone,
And from his lips escaped a groan,
Excelsior! "

Try not the Pass!" the old man said:
"Dark lowers the tempest overhead,
The roaring torrent is deep and wide!"
And loud that clarion voice replied,
Excelsior!

"Oh stay," the maiden said, "and rest
Thy weary head upon this breast!"
A tear stood in his bright blue eye,
But still he answered, with a sigh,
"Excelsior!"

Beware the pine-tree's withered branch!
Beware the awful avalanche!"
This was the peasant's last Good-night,
A voice replied, far up the height,
Excelsior!

At break of day, as heavenward
The pious monks of Saint Bernard
Uttered the oft-repeated prayer,
A voice cried through the startled air,
Excelsior!

A traveller, by the faithful hound,
Half-buried in the snow was found,
Still grasping in his hand of ice
That banner with the strange device,
Excelsior!

There in the twilight cold and gray,
Lifeless, but beautiful, he lay,
And from the sky, serene and far,
A voice fell, like a falling star,
Excelsior!

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (February 27, 1807 – March 24, 1882) was an American poet and educator whose works include "Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline. He was also the first American to translate Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy and was one of the five Fireside Poets.

The Fireside Poets (also known as the Schoolroom or Household Poets)[1] were a group of 19th-century American poets from New England.

The group is typically thought to comprise Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, William Cullen Bryant, John Greenleaf Whittier, James Russell Lowell, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.,[2] who were the first American poets whose popularity rivaled that of British poets, both at home and abroad, nearly surpassing that of Alfred Lord Tennyson. The name "Fireside Poets" is derived from that popularity: The Fireside Poets' general adherence to poetic convention—standard forms, regular meter, and rhymed stanzas—made their body of work particularly suitable for memorization and recitation in school and also at home, where it was a source of entertainment for families gathered around the fire. The poets' primary subjects were the domestic life, mythology, and politics of the United States, in which several of the poets were directly involved. The Fireside Poets did not write for the sake of other poets; they wrote for the common people. They meant to have their stories told for families.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey

This is a powerful depiction of the impact of institutional power upon human lives. Kesey explores the mechanisms and ethics of dissent in a controlled environment. To what extent are we responsible for our own actions and the fate of others are two key questions that get posed and re-posed thoroughout the story. Keyes gives plenty of space for the voices of his characters to define themselves and the irony of an ostensiblely 'deaf and dumb' witness to the horrors morphing into the self-liberated narrator to this tragedy is delicious.

I devoured this wonderful novel.

In chapter 6 - Catherine declares a love of operatic music especially Bellini and Donizetti. The author uses the voice of his suitor Morris Arnold to express his own distaste of melodrama and exagerration, narrator parses the views of Morris for the audience here:

He had been to places that people had written books about, and they were not a bit like the descriptions. To see for yourself - that was the great thing; he always tried to see for himself. He had seen all the principal actors - he had been to all the best theatres in London and Paris. But the actors were always like the authors - they always exagerrated. He liked everything to be Natural. Suddenly he stopped, looking at Catherine with his smile.
'Thats what I like you for; you are so natural! Excuse me,' he added;'you see I am natural myself!'

As you would be able to tell in your own reading of Washington Square, James is an unapologetic realist. But without the opportunity, the above quote is an example of the author using his character's voice to proffer some literary criticism within his work.



Domenico Gaetano Maria Donizetti (Italian: [doˈmeːniko ɡaeˈtaːno maˈria donidˈdzetti]; born 29 November 1797 – died 8 April 1848) was an Italian composer from Bergamo, Lombardy.

Donizetti came from a non-musical background but, at an early age, he was taken under the wing of composer Simon Mayr[1] who had set up the Lezioni Caritatevoli and had enrolled him by means of a full scholarship. There he received detailed training in the arts of fugue and counterpoint, and it was from there that Mayr was instrumental in obtaining a place for the young man at the Bologna Academy. In Bologna, at the age of 19,[2] he wrote his first one-act opera, the comedy Il Pigmalione, although it does not appear to have been performed during his lifetime.

However, moving to Paris in 1838, Donizetti set his operas to French texts; these include La favorite and La fille du régiment and were first performed in that city from 1840 onward. It appears that much of the attraction of moving to Paris was not just for larger fees and prestige, but his chafing against the censorial limitations which existed in Italy, thus giving him a much greater freedom to choose subject matter.[7] By 1845 severe illness caused him to be moved back to Bergamo to die in 1848.


The Daughter of the Regiment



The Famous Tenor Aria: Ah mes Amis
Lyrics
Ah! mes amis, quel jour de fête!
Je vais marcher sous vos drapeaux.
L'amour, qui m'a tourné la tête.
Désormais me rend un héros,
Ah! quel bonheur, oui, mes amis,
Je vais marcher sous vos drapeaux!
Qui, celle pour qui je respire,
A mes voeux a daigné sourire
Et ce doux espoir de bonheur
Trouble ma raison et man coeur! Ah!

Le camarade est amoureux!
Et c'est vous seuls que j'espère.
Quoi! c'est notre enfant que tu veux!
Écoutez-moi, écoutez-moi.
Messieurs son père, écoutez-moi,
Car je sais qu'il dépend de vous
De me rendre ici son époux.

Notre fille qui nous est chère
N'est pas, n'est pas pour un ennemi.
Non! Il lui faut un meilleur parti,
Telle est la volonté d'un père.
Vous refusez?
Complètement.D'ailleurs, elle est promise...
... a notre régiment...

Mais j'en suis, puisqu'en cet instant
Je viens de m'engager, pour cela seulement!
Tant pis pour toi!
Messieurs son père...
Tant pis pour toi!
... écoutez-moi!
Tant pis pour toi!
Ma votre fille m'aime!
Se pourrait-il! quoi! notre enfant!

Elle m'aime, vous dis-je, j'en fais serment!
Eh! quoi... notre Marie...
Elle m'aime, j'en fais serment!
Que dire, que faire?
Puisqu'il a su plaire, Il faut, en bon père
Ici, consentir. Mais pourtant j'enrage,
Car c'est grand dommage
De l'unir avec
Un pareil blanc-bec!
Oui, c'est un grand dommage!
Eh! bien?
Si tu dis vrai, son père en ce moment
Te promet son consentement
Oui, te promet son consentement

Pour mon âme,Quel destin! J'ai sa flamme,
Et j'ai sa main! Jour prospère! Me voici
Militaire et mari!

Ah, my friends, what a day for celebrating
I shall march under your flags.
Love, which has turned my head,
from now on is making me into a hero.
Ah, what happiness, yes my friends
I shall march under your flags
Yes, she for whom I live and breathe
has deigned to smile upon my vows.
And this sweet hope of happiness
has shaken my mind and my heart

Ah, my friends, what a day for celebrating!
I shall march under your flags.
for my heart, what a destiny!
I have her heart, and I have her hand!
Day of Rejoicing!
I am here,soldier, soldier and husband!
for my heart, what a destiny!
I have her heart, and I have her hand!
(Does she love you? Does she love you?)
This I swear
(are you sure? are you sure?)for my heart, what a destiny!
I have her heart, and I have her hand!
Day of Rejoicing!
I am here,soldier, soldier and husband!

Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la Prison by Michel Foucault

Discipline, he suggests, developed a new economy and politics for bodies. Modern institutions required that bodies must be individuated according to their tasks, as well as for training, observation, and control. Therefore, he argues, discipline created a whole new form of individuality for bodies, which enabled them to perform their duty within the new forms of economic, political, and military organizations emerging in the modern age and continuing to today.

Historically, the process by which the bourgeoisie became in the course of the eighteenth century the politically dominant class was masked by the establishment of an explicit, coded and formally egalitarian juridical framework, made possible by the organization of a parliamentary, representative regime. But the development and generalization of disciplinary mechanisms constituted the other, dark side of these processes. The general juridical form that guaranteed a system of rights that were egalitarian in principle was supported by these tiny, everyday, physical mechanisms, by all those systems of micro-power that are essentially non-egalitarian and asymmetrical that we call the disciplines.

A Panopticon.

The irony of being A Big Nurse type figure in a school has not been lost on me. One of the fundamental requirements of being a teacher is to keep an eye on the class at all times.







I wonder is meditation and that supreme act of discipline: freeing oneself or completely enslaving oneself? Both??!?




It is enough to believe you are being surveilled to behave as if you are actually surveilled.

Impressions
p62

Dear father, you don't know him,' said Catherine, in a voice so timidly argumentative that it might have touched him.
'Very true; I don't know him intimately. But I know him enough. I have my impression of him. You don't know him either.'
She stood before the fire, with her hands lightly clasped in front of her; and her father, leaning back in his chair and looking up at her, made this remark with a placidity that might have been irritating.
I doubt, however, whether Catherine was irritated, though she broke into a vehement protest. 'I don't know him?' she cried. 'Why, I know him - better than I have ever known any one!'

When I first read this chapter - I wanted to comment on the explicit patriarchy within the text. Then when I read it again, I wanted to comment on this specific passage and how is it that with some people we feel that we know them much better than others when it could be said time or information makes it perhaps 'unreasonable' as in Catherine above.

But, when writing it out the quote - I became particularly interested in the "I doubt" of the narrator. Why is it - in this very specific observation of Catherine that James qualifies his omniscient narrator...hmmm

If you have thoughts on that last observation feel free to contribute.


About the same time as James is writing this work, Impressionism was sweeping painting in Europe and North America. We are, or should be familiar with French Impressionism - so I thought given we are focussed on the impressions of a North American women - hence:


Self Portrait Lilla Cabot Perry c 1890s

Lilla Cabot Perry (January 13, 1848 – February 28, 1933) was an American artist who worked in the Impressionist style, rendering portraits and landscapes in the free form manner of her mentor, Claude Monet. Perry was an early advocate of the French Impressionist style and contributed to its reception in the United States. Perry's early work was shaped by her exposure to the Boston school of artists and her travels in Europe and Japan. She was also greatly influenced by Ralph Waldo Emerson’s philosophies and her friendship with Camille Pissarro. Although it was not until the age of thirty-six that Perry received formal training, her work with artists of the Impressionist, Realist, Symbolist, and German Social Realist movements greatly affected the style of her oeuvre.

I thought the influence of Monet was seen best in the following work


Monet-s Garden at Giverny by Lilla Cabot Perry

Must have been some garden.

Me Vioci!

If you shed every simile and metaphor that describes the 'self' what remains?
So complete is the instrumentalising colonisation, we think that we are full of things to disclose about our 'self' but they are mere assimilated representations.

Of course, we have this very powerful construct of a differentiated 'self'. According to coventional constructs, the most explicit process of differentiation appears to take place in 'adolescence'. We try and make ourselves different, most particularly from the most familiar - the family. But, even this, is a flimsy facade because so much of this construction is imitation of peers that it - this process of differentiation- as a construct of explanation, seems to be nothing of the sort. What seems to take place is that we adopt another performative mode instead of defining ourselves as different. As a process of differentiation - it is differentiation of a prior assimilated representation...all the modes by which we imitated our parents.

There is definitely an 'emotional labour' in trying to mediate between different performance roles that we have to adopt particularly when we have to carry the burden of a distinct 'self' in the proverbial backpack. These constructed roles can hit crisis points where the cultural imperatives of two discourses collide: work vs family, family vs country...

Probably my last post for a couple of days.......'phew' they said.

Seriously though, if you have any comments about the thread, what you think I do well, what you think I could improve on, what you might think I should do more of or something new.
Please take this invitation to make a polite suggestion...

Give me something to tackle or think about when I come back.

I am upto ~pg 80 in Washington Square...My guess is that I will have time to finish it and no more. But I will take The Iliad up just in case.

Speak to you Friday afternoon/evening Sydney time.

Ciao.

How do you find reading books such as One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and The Jungle Book? I assume you've seen the movies at this point in your life. Do you find your impressions and visualizations of the book colored by the movies? I generally make a point of reading books before seeing movies where I can help it to avoid just that. It drives me a little crazy when I can't help but imagine some directors view of a book, especially when it's not entirely keeping with the context of the book. Also, I'd rather be disappointed with a movie, than a book, reading the book first helps that.

The Great Gatsby is one of my favorites, I have yet to watch it in movie form... I worry it'll ruin it for me.

Back home.
I managed to add 3 books to my cart from my Aunt's place.

The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus
The Quiet American by Graham Greene
The Color Purple by Alice Walker

I did not do much reading. I found and borrowed a copy of a Collection of Aeschylus plays:
Prometheus Bound, The Suppliants, Sevan Against Thebes and The Persians - and I read a lil bit of Prometheus Bound but that was it.
So it was basically two days off from the challenge.
I will give an update of what I got upto tommorrow.

Teaser:


Not my photo but I went to this lookout.

Speak to you soon.

Digger's Pre Easter Getaway



So successful were the English genocide of the Eastern Coastal Areas of New South Wales, that the above is about as detailed picture that you get for the pre-existing tribal clan areas of Indigenous Australia.
In 1770, Captain Cook noted the 'three Brothers' which constitute the main topographical features of this area. Within 50 years in 1821, Port Macquarie was being used as a penal settlement for 'secondary convicts' because Newcastle in its 30 years was flourishing so much that it was now too populace to accept more convicts. Digger's own background extends back to the earliest white settlers in the Newcastle region with his Cal ancestor being the first baby born in the region in 1803.

Hunter northward was the Woorimi Nation, Biripi around Wauchope both using Gadtang langauge groups. Who knows how many Baripi there were back then, they apparently scattered upon the establishment of the colonial settlement.

Now the census data for the Hastings council area total population of 72,000, with only 258 self-identified Australian Aboriginal in 2012 .

I went on a number of site-seeing drives over the two days I was up there. Of the total area approximately 50% is Forest, rainforest (southernmost temperate rainforest on the planet).
We had a picnic within sight of the :



Although we did not go to the top of the lookout from there...the quiche, Garden Salad and flask of coffee was too tempting by that stage.

We then drove down through the Kerewang State forest toward Kew...
here is a picture of the drive and view through it - the forest is pretty dense and so there were not many panoramic views...



We found a very small hamlet for a coffee stop which was accompanied by an extremely well made caramel tart on a shortbread base. The perfect combination on a temperate late afternoon reststop within a vale of native Australiana.

As seen in the previous post - we ended up at the North Brother Lookout over looking the local wetland and lakes district.

Apart from meeting a long-time French-Australian friend of my Aunt who was also staying with her - most of the rest of the trip was catch-up conversations and home-made curries.

Zayana - glad to see you have maintained your interest in my blog. Hard to know where the 'views' are coming from but it pleases me its not an all-male audience.

Re: Your comments.

I have yet to read a book in this 'challenge' where I have seen the movie recently enough for it to over-shadow the experience of the novel. In Cuckoo's, the McMurphy is a red-head and I certainly found it hard not to have Jack's face emerge in some of my imaginings of the scenes. The only times I anticipated the plot were: I recalled how McMurphy would choose to stay and how the narrator escapes but other than that I could not recall the movie in great detail.
Broadly speaking, I am more a language driven reader than a plot-driven reader. Which is to say, I am more interested in the language and how a story is being told as to being critically focussed upon the plot. As a result, I can know what is going to happen, most of the time, and not have my reading or watching experienced spoilt.


I have not seen The Great Gatsby - but I think you would enjoy seeing the sumptuous and glamorous party scene. I assume you liked Moulin Rouge or Chicago - I think the costuming and aesthetic was as rich in Gatsby as those - so even if the plot is spoilt there will be a visual feast for you anyway Zayana.


Thanks for following - hope you continue to post here.

An Elegant Gift

I have never been one for celebrations be they: social, religious or personal. If I was religious I would be offended with the co-opting of the principal Christian traditions to the base commercial interests of the traders. Of course, I do not trumpet my views but tend to grumble to myself - at the lack of social decorum of these corporations with their naked subversion of the sacred for the profane.

Not much of a Birthday guy either - having had only one birthday 'party' since I was ten and that was a suprise 30th (which horrified me till I was about 5 drinks into it). It is not a deep childhood trauma nor a personal shyness - but I do not see the point of celebrating my arrival or anyone else's. Well I can see the point - but I just think its an excuse to get pissed as much as anything else in Australia anyway.

Having said that, I received quite a beautiful gift from my Aunt (though she was abit early) for my 40th see below.


Lake Lucerne: Sunset Sample Study 1845 Watercolour 243x311mm Turner Bequest (Print) (Tate Gallery, London)

Joseph Mallord William Turner, RA (baptised 14 May 1775[a] – 19 December 1851) was a British Romantic landscape painter, water-colourist, and printmaker. Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, but is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivalling history painting.[1] Although renowned for his oil paintings, Turner is also one of the greatest masters of British watercolour landscape painting. He is commonly known as "the painter of light"[2] and his work is regarded as a Romantic preface to Impressionism. Some of his works also are cited as examples of Abstract Art existing prior to recognition in the early twentieth century.

Self-Portrait c1799


It was not an original - the Digger's are not a family of oligarchs. But it was a print that my grandparents bought when on holiday in the UK more than 40 years ago. My grandfather was a big fan of Turner and this small gift was bestowed to me yesterday. Now I need to find a very discreet , small frame to accomodate this petite watercolour.

I know I have not divulged much about myself but I have disclosed the most important characteristic - my incessant curiosity. So, even though I ostensibly adjourned my reading whilst on holiday or at least I may have given that impression, I did manage to sneak in some reading. I mean it is impossible, isnt it to not want some brain food?

Aeschylus Prometheus Bound: Prometheus has been bound to a rock with adamantine wedges for his transgressions against Zeus. In what must be one of the earliest iterations of the soliloquoy's in the Western tradition

pg23-25 Penguin Classics 1968 ed

Prometheus: O divinity of sky, and swift-winged winds, and
leaping streams,
O countless laughter of the sea’s waves,
O Earth, mother of all life!
On you, and on the all-seeing circle of the sun, a god!

See with what outrage
Racked and tortured
I am to agonize
For a thousand years!
See this shameful prison
Invented for me
By the new master of the gods!
I groan in anguish
For pain present and pain to come:
Where shall I see rise
The star of my deliverance?

What am I saying? I know exactly every thing
That is to be; no torment will come unforeseen.
My appointed fate I must endure as best I can,
Knowing the power of Necessity is irresistible.
Under such suffering, speech and silence are alike
Beyond me. For bestowing gifts upon mankind
I am harnessed in this torturing clamp. For I am he
Who hunted out the source of fire, and stole it, packed
In pith of a dry fennel-stalk. And fire has proved
For men a teacher in every art, their grand resource.
That was the sin for which I now pay the full price,
Bared to the winds of heaven, bound and crucified.

Ah who is there?
What sound, what fragrant air
Floats by me – whence , I cannot see?
From god, or man, or demigod?
Have you come to this peak at the world’s end
To gaze at my torment? Or for what?
See me, a miserable prisoner,
A god, the enemy of Zeus,
Who have earned the enmity of all gods
That frequent the court of Zeus
Because I was too good a friend to men.

Ah, ah! I hear it again, close to me!
A rustling – is it of birds?
And the air whispering with the light beat of wings!
Whatever comes, brings fear.

Prometheus Nicolas-Sébastien Adam (1762) Louvre

In Greek mythology, Prometheus (/prəˈmiːθiːəs/; Greek: Προμηθεύς, pronounced [promɛːtʰeús], meaning "forethought")[1] is a Titan, culture hero, and trickster figure who is credited with the creation of man from clay, and who defies the gods and gives fire to humanity, an act that enabled progress and civilization. Prometheus is known for his intelligence and as a champion of mankind.



Apart from that special sentence that has been bouncing in my head for days that I bolded, I thought I would draw the attention of the pagan readers to the similairity between Jesus and Prometheus....have a think upon this passage and Christ on the Cross.
Apologies if that offends the faithful in my audience.

I finished Washington Square last night. I will write up my thoughts on it sometime today.
I am going to read The Quiet American Graham Greene next.



Henry Graham Greene, OM, CH, (2 October 1904 – 3 April 1991) was an English writer, playwright and literary critic.[1] His works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world. Greene was noted for his ability to combine serious literary acclaim with widespread popularity.

Although Greene objected strongly to being described as a Roman Catholic novelist rather than as a novelist who happened to be Catholic, Catholic religious themes are at the root of much of his writing, especially the four major Catholic novels: Brighton Rock, The Power and the Glory, The Heart of the Matter and The End of the Affair.[2] Several works such as The Confidential Agent, The Third Man, The Quiet American, Our Man in Havana and The Human Factor also show an avid interest in the workings of international politics and espionage.

Greene suffered from bipolar disorder,[3] which had a profound effect on his writing and personal life. In a letter to his wife Vivien, he told her that he had "a character profoundly antagonistic to ordinary domestic life", and that "unfortunately, the disease is also one's material".[4] William Golding described Greene as "the ultimate chronicler of twentieth-century man's consciousness and anxiety." [5] Greene never received the Nobel Prize in Literature, though he finished runner-up to Ivo Andrić in 1961.

École Supérieure des Beaux Arts de l’Indochine

The long and distinguished history of the Hanoi University of Fine Art may be traced back to the colonial École Supérieure des Beaux Arts de l’Indochine (1925-1945) (the Indochina College of Fine Arts) which trained successive generations of Vietnamese students — and a smaller number of students from Cambodia and Laos — in the western art tradition, laying the essential groundwork for the development of a distinctive Vietnamese style of modern art. The École des Beaux-Arts de l’Indochine in Hanoi was the predecessor of the Hanoi College of Fine Arts (vi:Trường Đại học Mỹ thuật Việt Nam).

The école was established by the French colonial government, along similar lines to the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts d’Alger, established 1843, and École des Beaux-Arts de Tunis, established 1923. The school was for all students who were then known to the French as Indochinese — including Tonkinese (Bắc Kỳ), Annamese (Trung Kỳ), Cochin Chinese (i.e., not ethnic Chinese but inhabitants of Nam Kỳ), Khmer, and Lao — although inevitably most students were drawn from Hanoi itself.[2][3]

Though the co-founders are usually credited as the first director Victor Tardieu and the Vietnamese artist Nam Sơn.[4][nb 1] Tardieu was succeeded by the sculptor Évariste Jonchère who was director from 1938 to 1945.[5][nb 2]

French artists who were teachers at school and other art schools in the south of Vietnam include several winners of the Prix d'Indochine, since from 1925 winning the prize included a year teaching at the school. Teachers included Joseph Inguimberty,[6] and Alix Aymé, wife of the deputy commander of the French forces.


Nam Son was the pen name of

Nguyễn Nam Sơn, real name Nguyễn Vạn Thọ (1890-1973) was a Vietnamese painter and co-founder of the École des Beaux-Arts de l’Indochine in Hanoi in 1925.


Van Tho , The Man with a Pipe


The pipe scene at the beginning of the Quiet American - is somewhat evoked in this image.

A taste of Greene

pg 44 Penguin Classic

I wished I had never heard the rumour about Phat Diem, or that the rumour had dealt with any other town than the one place in the north where my friendship with a French naval officer would allow me to slip in, uncensored, uncontrolled. A newspaper? Not in those days when all the world wanted to read about was Korea. A chance of death? Why should I want to die when Phuong slept beside me every night? But I knew the answer to that question. From childhood I had never believed in permanence, and yet I had longed for it. Always I was afraid of losing happiness. This month, next year, Phuong would leave me. If not next year, in three years. Death was the only absolute value in my world. Lose life and one would lose nothing again forever. I envied those who could believe in a God and I distrusted them. I felt they were keeping their courage up with a fable of the changeless and the permanent. Death was far more certain than God, and with death there would be no longer the daily possibility of love dying. The nightmare of a future of boredom and indifference would lift. I could never have been a pacificist. To kill a man was surely to grant him an immeasurable benefit. Oh yes, people always, everywhere, loved their enemies. It was their friends they preserved for pain and vacuity.

The First Indochina War (generally known as the Indochina War in France, and as the Anti-French Resistance War in contemporary Vietnam) began in French Indochina on 19 December 1946 and lasted until 1 August 1954.

1951
Giáp launched yet another attack on May 29 with the 304th Division at Phủ Lý, the 308th Division at Ninh Bình, and the main attack delivered by the 320th Division at Phat Diem south of Hanoi. The attacks fared no better and the three divisions lost heavily. Taking advantage of this, de Lattre mounted his counter*offensive against the demoralized Viet Minh, driving them back into the jungle and eliminating the enemy pockets in the Red River Delta by June 18, costing the Viet Minh over 10,000 killed


Giap (Brother Van, left), Chairman Ho

Võ Nguyên Giáp (25 August 1911 – 4 October 2013) was a General in the Vietnam People's Army and a politician. He first grew to prominence during World War II, where he served as the military leader of the Viet Minh resistance against the Japanese occupation of Vietnam. Giáp was a principal commander in two wars: the First Indochina War (1946–54) and the Vietnam War (1960–1975). He participated in the following historically significant battles: Lạng Sơn (1950), Hòa Bình (1951–52), Điện Biên Phủ (1954), the Tết Offensive (1968), the Easter Offensive (1972), and the final Ho Chi Minh Campaign (1975).

Giáp was also a journalist, an interior minister in President Hồ Chí Minh's Việt Minh government, the military commander of the Việt Minh, the commander of the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN), and defense minister. He also served as a member of the Politburo of the Vietnam Workers' Party, which in 1976 became the Communist Party of Vietnam.

He was the most prominent military commander, beside Ho Chi Minh, during the Vietnam War, and was responsible for major operations and leadership until the war ended.

Chapter IV Phat Diem Cathedral

Rebuilt in the aftermath of war.

Brother Van or General Giap by any fair measure must rate as one of the finest military taciticians and generals of the 20th century.

Washington Square by Henry James

There clearly are meta-fictive themes redolent within the text - given the recurrent exploration of ideas of romanticism and realism. However, I think it is the critical focus on the family and patriachial values that define the imaginative breadth of the novel. When viewing Catherine's circumstances it hard not to sense a pervading pathos. Ultimately, the only power that Catherine can exercise is silence and denial.

Well worth the time to revisit Washington Square.

Random musings

We have evolved to instrumentalise and interpret the world. There have been compromises about the capacity and location of our senses but we are 'built' to utilise and interpret the world. Each development - at least to some extent - expands our capacity to interpret the world.
We have also have evolved to reproduce.

Is it suprising, then, if we conceive of the world in terms of use and production?

Discourse is also a primordial part of our existent.
Our first indication of life in a new human is that primordial scream.

What were we trying to say - in that first invocation?

An epigram is a brief, interesting, memorable, and sometimes surprising or satirical statement. Derived from the Greek: ἐπίγραμμα epigramma "inscription" from ἐπιγράφειν epigraphein "to write on – inscribe", this literary device has been employed for over two millennia.

What is an Epigram? A dwarfish whole;
Its body brevity, and wit its soul.
— Samuel Taylor Coleridge



One of the Epigrams that introduce The Quiet American

‘This is the patent age of new inventions
For killing bodies, and for saving souls,
All propagated with the best intentions.’

Canto 1, verse CXMII, Don Juan , Lord Byron (1822-23)

If you would like to read the full poem of Don Juan with its 17 Cantos --->

http://www.online-literature.com/byron/don-juan/0/

Commentary extract

The extract that Greene chooses is fairly straight forward. Byron’s narrator equates modern progress, political and religious dogma with a self-justifying and coldly rationalising form of ‘killing’ which is masked under the evasive terms of ‘sacrifice’ and a ‘commitment to a higher cause’. The complete canto explores, sarcastically, how modern technology is used to enslave and destroy human beings —


This is the patent age of new inventions
For killing bodies, and for saving souls,
All propagated with the best intentions;
Sir Humphry Davy’s lantern, by which coals
Are safely mined for in the mode he mentions,
Tombuctoo travels, voyages to the Poles,
Are ways to benefit mankind, as true,
Perhaps, as shooting them at Waterloo.

Apart from the section Greene chose, Byron’s poem in general is a useful indicator of a theme central to The Quiet American – transformation and self-deception. The poem is an exploration of what ‘seems’ to ‘what is’. Byron’s vision is bleak. Like Fowler, the poet sees the human condition as hopeless. If there is a moral to this wayward but rewarding masterpiece it is that human beings must break down self-deception to understand themselves and the world around them. Consider the characters of Fowler and Pyle. Both are on a journey of sorts. Fowler begins the novel in denial about his complicity in Pyle’s death. He also denies any desire to commit himself or take sides. His conception of himself is based on a number of self-deceptions. Greene’s acute psychological awareness gives us clear reasons for his narrator’s self deception. His enforced entrapment, low self regard and isolation serves his skewered image of himself. Fowler is a victim of the pain of experience. Pyle is also self-deceptive but his ignorance is based on an inexperience and innocence that refuses to ‘see’ the world outside the comfortable and stable barriers of ‘good intentioned’ dogma.
http://resources.mhs.vic.edu.au/quie...tallusions.htm


Sir Humphry Davy by Thomas Phillip (unknown)

Sir Humphry Davy (17 December 1778 – 29 May 1829) was an English chemist and inventor.[1] He is best remembered today for his discoveries of several alkali and alkaline earth metals, as well as contributions to the discoveries of the elemental nature of chlorine and iodine. Berzelius called Davy's 1806 Bakerian Lecture On Some Chemical Agencies of Electricity[2] "one of the best memoirs which has ever enriched the theory of chemistry."[3] He was a 1st Baronet, President of the Royal Society (PRS), Member of the Royal Irish Academy (MRIA), and Fellow of the Geological Society (FGS).

Davy's Lamp, a safety lamp for use in coal mines