I was surprised when I read "The Great Galeoto" to find that it was about gossip and the detrimental effect that gossip can have on the people about whom it circulates. In our world full of cheating movie stars and scandalous singers and athletes gossip has become ubiquitous.
What is so tantalizing about the stories of what goes on in other people's lives? Does it somehow provide affirmation that the rest of us are decent people because we don't do that, or nobody knows about it if we do? I've read theories of language development that state humans developed language because of the desire to gossip and it appears to be present in every human culture and language. For some reason we have some basic need to discuss the status and affairs of others.
Which leaves me to wonder if it is as detrimental to people now as it was when Echegaray wrote "The Great Galeoto"? Are reputations and relationships as delicate? We are certainly more inured to scandalous tales but just because they're more public and more known doesn't mean they're less harmful.
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Saturday, September 18, 2010
The Magic of Libraries
One of the challenges inherent in this monumental task we have undertaken is the relative obscurity of the authors who have won the prize. For those of us who have chosen to delve into the history of the award it makes it difficult for us to find the early works. They are mostly available through academic sources and also, because of that, ridiculously expensive. Plus many of the texts are used for language study which makes it difficult to find texts in English.
Which brings us to The Library.
The library has always been one of my favorite places, a magical storehouse of knowledge that I can access for FREE! But lately when I go I've been getting mostly movies and an occasional book or CD. I might walk by the information desk on my way to the non-fiction stacks or talk to them if the checkout computer isn't working. I have certainly not been making full use of the library's services. Until now.
In my quest to not pay a hundred dollars to read the next installment of Nobel winners I turned to the library. The St. Paul Public library has saved me in the past with Happy Boy; they had it in their basement and I was able to check it out. The Great Galeoto and Mireio presented a larger problem. The St. Paul library did not have them in their collection, and I happened to know that the copies owned by the Minneapolis Public library were checked out. What to do? I searched the University of Minnesota Library and there they both were, in English and on Campus. Fabulous! Except I do not have borrowing privileges at the U of MN libraries and the person in my house who used to does not anymore either. Hmmm....
I decided to go out on a limb and see if I could get them through inter-library loan. I stepped up to the information desk and sheepishly said "Um...yeah...um...can you..." And voila 5 minutes and 4 days later one of them is in my hand! Magic!!
I love the library.
A photo of Echegaray: Winner 1904
Which brings us to The Library.
The library has always been one of my favorite places, a magical storehouse of knowledge that I can access for FREE! But lately when I go I've been getting mostly movies and an occasional book or CD. I might walk by the information desk on my way to the non-fiction stacks or talk to them if the checkout computer isn't working. I have certainly not been making full use of the library's services. Until now.
In my quest to not pay a hundred dollars to read the next installment of Nobel winners I turned to the library. The St. Paul Public library has saved me in the past with Happy Boy; they had it in their basement and I was able to check it out. The Great Galeoto and Mireio presented a larger problem. The St. Paul library did not have them in their collection, and I happened to know that the copies owned by the Minneapolis Public library were checked out. What to do? I searched the University of Minnesota Library and there they both were, in English and on Campus. Fabulous! Except I do not have borrowing privileges at the U of MN libraries and the person in my house who used to does not anymore either. Hmmm....
I decided to go out on a limb and see if I could get them through inter-library loan. I stepped up to the information desk and sheepishly said "Um...yeah...um...can you..." And voila 5 minutes and 4 days later one of them is in my hand! Magic!!
I love the library.
A photo of Echegaray: Winner 1904
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Losing Steam
It appears that our project is losing steam. We finished Rome (an incredible feat), we finished A Happy Boy (which was very happy by the way) and now we're on to....um a couple of guys. Yup, only one third (not me) of our trio has managed to be with it enough to find and get the materials.
I actually looked them up on Amazon and found that they are very expensive. I also found that you absolutely-for-sure cannot trust what language amazon says the text is in because I previewed a text they said was in English and found it to be completely in Spanish. Now, I would like to improve my Spanish but I do not think I would get as much out of the Spanish text as I would one that was translated for me.
So, we will carry on...somehow. This project may take more like 20 years rather than the ten I originally projected, but hey, that's life.
I actually looked them up on Amazon and found that they are very expensive. I also found that you absolutely-for-sure cannot trust what language amazon says the text is in because I previewed a text they said was in English and found it to be completely in Spanish. Now, I would like to improve my Spanish but I do not think I would get as much out of the Spanish text as I would one that was translated for me.
So, we will carry on...somehow. This project may take more like 20 years rather than the ten I originally projected, but hey, that's life.
Saturday, May 1, 2010
Next up
After Rome it seems that all of us have been a little slow to get the material for our next author.
Bjørnstjerne Martinus Bjørnson is a Norwegian author who is famous for his stories of Norwegian peasant life. He was very involved in politics and from his biography I gather that his written work has a strong political stance. I guess I had better pay my library fines so I can check out the books.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Fin
Done with Mommsen. I read the last ten pages after our meeting because I felt that after such time and effort I couldn't get to the end and not complete the book. It would be like getting a block from the finish line in a marathon and not finishing when you were still capable of running. Lame.
Lots of food for thought in Mommsen. It makes you think about the root of our culture and where our values, and problems, come from. Our trajectory is so similar and yet I still have hope for our future, as a country and as a global community. We can do better.
Lots of food for thought in Mommsen. It makes you think about the root of our culture and where our values, and problems, come from. Our trajectory is so similar and yet I still have hope for our future, as a country and as a global community. We can do better.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Extensions and Weird Egyptians
Thank goodness we decided to give ourselves an extension on the deadline. I now have a chance of finishing the book. It's still going to be close though, I think I have about a hundred and fifty pages left to read and three days to read them. Doable but not easy.
So the Egyptians...yup...they were weird. It seems that Cleopatra was married to her brother. Gross! I read about this sibling sex phenomenon in the news recently because they have just done some genetic research on King Tut and found that he was a little disabled and that this particular kind of problem generally happened only when there wasn't enough genetic diversity. They said he was married to his sister or his mother was his sister or something like that. I thought it was news that the ancient Egyptians accepted that as normal, but apparently I was wrong. Mommsen knew about it, and put it in his book. They don't teach you that in high school world history. Incest! Yikes.
So the Egyptians...yup...they were weird. It seems that Cleopatra was married to her brother. Gross! I read about this sibling sex phenomenon in the news recently because they have just done some genetic research on King Tut and found that he was a little disabled and that this particular kind of problem generally happened only when there wasn't enough genetic diversity. They said he was married to his sister or his mother was his sister or something like that. I thought it was news that the ancient Egyptians accepted that as normal, but apparently I was wrong. Mommsen knew about it, and put it in his book. They don't teach you that in high school world history. Incest! Yikes.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Deadlines
The deadline is looming for Mommsen and I have 300 pages left. I feel like I'm in school again, reading as fast as I can and kind of dreading opening the book.
His writing is engaging for a history text. I love his little asides about who he thinks is right or wrong, and the personal additions about the characters that are written as if they are his old friends. But MAN I can't tell a Lucianus Lacullus from a Marius Lucretanus (and I'm making those up because I can't remember actual names) for the life of me! Who are these people and where do they come from?!
My only hope for this text is that I can get some solid glimpse of Roman life and the way the world has been shaped by it. And that I can finish it in time for our discussion - which is kind of like climbing Everest.
His writing is engaging for a history text. I love his little asides about who he thinks is right or wrong, and the personal additions about the characters that are written as if they are his old friends. But MAN I can't tell a Lucianus Lacullus from a Marius Lucretanus (and I'm making those up because I can't remember actual names) for the life of me! Who are these people and where do they come from?!
My only hope for this text is that I can get some solid glimpse of Roman life and the way the world has been shaped by it. And that I can finish it in time for our discussion - which is kind of like climbing Everest.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Progress
I like to think that we, as a people, have made progress in the last two thousand years; that we're more diplomatic and less violent.
After reading more about Rome though I wonder if that's true. Maybe we don't put heads on spikes and drag dead bodies through the street but have we really made any progress? Lately I've been thinking that our progress has been all in weapons design. We don't have to physically fight, we just shoot 'em, or bomb 'em, or torpedo 'em out of the water. It's no less damaging to those involved and far more damaging to the earth.
Will we always fight? Have there ever been peaceful human beings on earth?
After reading more about Rome though I wonder if that's true. Maybe we don't put heads on spikes and drag dead bodies through the street but have we really made any progress? Lately I've been thinking that our progress has been all in weapons design. We don't have to physically fight, we just shoot 'em, or bomb 'em, or torpedo 'em out of the water. It's no less damaging to those involved and far more damaging to the earth.
Will we always fight? Have there ever been peaceful human beings on earth?
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Blood and Guts
As I read farther into The History of Rome I'm amazed at the violence that existed in the Roman world. I wonder at how they could have sustained the wars and given rise to the culture that exists today when they regularly massacred so many people.
It's a different world than one I'm familiar with a world in which the decapitated bodies of statesmen are dragged through the streets while their heads hang in the forum. Can you imagine what would go through our minds if senators were being murdered and literally hung up to dry inside our halls of government? Horrible. And this is the foundation of our culture. Hmm...
I also wonder how they fed all of these soldiers and politicians and who was doing all of the work? I'm assuming it's the women and the slaves doing all of the actual labor to ensure survival, but Mommsens says nothing about that. He also mentions nothing about the daily life of your average Roman (or Latin, or Italian, etc.) just blood and guts.
Maybe it will get more sedate as I read farther, but somehow I doubt it. It will soon be March fifteenth, the Ides of March, and that makes me think of the bloody death of Ceasar. I haven't gotten anywhere near that in the book but I know it's coming and that makes me think that things don't cool off for the Romans.
It's a different world than one I'm familiar with a world in which the decapitated bodies of statesmen are dragged through the streets while their heads hang in the forum. Can you imagine what would go through our minds if senators were being murdered and literally hung up to dry inside our halls of government? Horrible. And this is the foundation of our culture. Hmm...
I also wonder how they fed all of these soldiers and politicians and who was doing all of the work? I'm assuming it's the women and the slaves doing all of the actual labor to ensure survival, but Mommsens says nothing about that. He also mentions nothing about the daily life of your average Roman (or Latin, or Italian, etc.) just blood and guts.
Maybe it will get more sedate as I read farther, but somehow I doubt it. It will soon be March fifteenth, the Ides of March, and that makes me think of the bloody death of Ceasar. I haven't gotten anywhere near that in the book but I know it's coming and that makes me think that things don't cool off for the Romans.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Mommsen is Hard
Mommsen is proving to be more difficult to get through than I anticipated. I'm finding that I'm slow to make progress and staying motivated to read it is a challenge.
The problem is context. I don't understand any of the geographic places or the different populations he's talking about. There are the Romans, The Latins, and the Italians...Aren't they all the same? Guess not. Then there's Numidia and Numantia, are they the same? Is one a city and the other a country? I recognize Libya and there was one reference to Tunisia. These only sort of help, at least I can locate the general vicinity but otherwise it's the Jabberwocky of geography.
The problem is context. I don't understand any of the geographic places or the different populations he's talking about. There are the Romans, The Latins, and the Italians...Aren't they all the same? Guess not. Then there's Numidia and Numantia, are they the same? Is one a city and the other a country? I recognize Libya and there was one reference to Tunisia. These only sort of help, at least I can locate the general vicinity but otherwise it's the Jabberwocky of geography.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
I got it!
Mommsen. Our second author. The History of Rome
I wasn't sure I would be able to get my hands on an abridged copy before our next meeting. Amazon only listed 2 available and those were gone before I could get them, ahem....
It's o.k though, thankfully I have a spouse in school with access to an excellent academic library containing a copy of the above.
Tonight we managed to get to the aforementioned library, locate the book and check it out before we got a parking ticket. Practically miraculous! Then to celebrate all of our hard work, and good luck, we went for beers and burgers. Was that smart? Perhaps not, but it was fun.
I wasn't sure I would be able to get my hands on an abridged copy before our next meeting. Amazon only listed 2 available and those were gone before I could get them, ahem....
It's o.k though, thankfully I have a spouse in school with access to an excellent academic library containing a copy of the above.
Tonight we managed to get to the aforementioned library, locate the book and check it out before we got a parking ticket. Practically miraculous! Then to celebrate all of our hard work, and good luck, we went for beers and burgers. Was that smart? Perhaps not, but it was fun.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
First Meeting
Last night we had our first meeting. It was an auspicious beginning to what, I think, will be a fulfilling marathon of reading.
Rene Sully-Prudhomme (pen name) was a writer who proved to be great fuel for conversation. I think he was a man divided between his heart and his head. It seemed that he tried to reason his way through matters of the heart, which always fails miserably, all while being so artistically mature. But he was young and we were reading his journals, which of course, are never meant to be read publicly. But poems...
At The Water's Edge
To sit and watch the wavelets as they flow
Two - side by side;
To see the gliding clouds that come and go
And mark them glide;
If from low roofs the smoke is wreathing pale,
To watch it wreath;
If flowers around breathe perfume on the gale,
To feel them breathe;
If the bee sips the honeyed fruit that glistens,
To sip the dew;
If the bird warbles while the forest listens,
To listen too;
Beneath the willow where the brook is singing,
To hear its song;
Nor feel, while round us that sweet dream is clinging
The hours too long;
To know one only deep over mastering passion -
The love we share;
To let the world go worrying in its fashion
Without one care -
We only, while around all weary grow,
Unwearied stand,
And midst the fickle changes others knows,
Love - hand in hand
Rene Francois Armand Prudhomme
Rene Sully-Prudhomme (pen name) was a writer who proved to be great fuel for conversation. I think he was a man divided between his heart and his head. It seemed that he tried to reason his way through matters of the heart, which always fails miserably, all while being so artistically mature. But he was young and we were reading his journals, which of course, are never meant to be read publicly. But poems...
At The Water's Edge
To sit and watch the wavelets as they flow
Two - side by side;
To see the gliding clouds that come and go
And mark them glide;
If from low roofs the smoke is wreathing pale,
To watch it wreath;
If flowers around breathe perfume on the gale,
To feel them breathe;
If the bee sips the honeyed fruit that glistens,
To sip the dew;
If the bird warbles while the forest listens,
To listen too;
Beneath the willow where the brook is singing,
To hear its song;
Nor feel, while round us that sweet dream is clinging
The hours too long;
To know one only deep over mastering passion -
The love we share;
To let the world go worrying in its fashion
Without one care -
We only, while around all weary grow,
Unwearied stand,
And midst the fickle changes others knows,
Love - hand in hand
Rene Francois Armand Prudhomme
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Early Difficulties
When we hatched the idea for this adventure we imagined that it would be easy to find works by all of the authors, they're Nobel Prize winners after all, but the first two authors have proved us wrong.
We thought we found success at first when we located a book of Rene Sully-Prudhommes poems on Amazon. The listing said that the work was in English and 64 pages long. We ordered it, but when it came we were all disappointed to find that the book was actually in French and only sixteen pages long. Since none of us speak or read french the booklet was of no use to us.
Luckily we managed to find a book on Nobel laureates at the library that contained some poems by Sully-Prudhomme and selections from his journal, which gives us even greater insight into the mind of the poet than we expected. Our author won the prize when he was 62 and the selection of his journal that we have is from when he was in his twenties.
He seems to be heartbroken and melancholy. While he writes often of women he doesn't seem to really understand them. He is funny at times too, changing abruptly from one thing to the next and makes dramatic, sweeping statements that tend to the preposterous, here's one of my favorites:
"I cannot think how an ugly woman can appear at a ball; it does not make sense. It is a strange illusion on the part of women to imagine that the clothes make one forget about the face and the figure! I hate ugliness, I hate it to the point where I am harsh and unfair toward these poor disgraced creatures. Ugliness is a groping, a stupidity, a farce of nature's; it revolts me. An ugly woman covered in finery is and can only be a prop, and one regrets that the clothes do not hide her completely."As if a woman appears at a ball only for the amusement of others! No wonder he was unsuccessful in love.
But I'm being hard on poor Rene. He is also full of very beautiful musings and observations on the nature of life and happiness, like this:
"...happiness is possible, it exists! These attacks of joy last for a minute at most with me, just long enough to plunge my face in the refreshing stream and to withdraw it, the time it takes for hope to wing its way through the night of thought and vanish..."Lovely.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
List of Laureates
Here is a list of all of the Nobel Laureates in Literature.
There are 105 winners in all and if we read one author a month it will take us 8.75 years to finish. Hmmm...that's a bit more time than I thought....plus the eight more winners that will be new to the list. Yikes! That's committment!
This is from the Nobel Prize website: www.nobelprize.org
There are 105 winners in all and if we read one author a month it will take us 8.75 years to finish. Hmmm...that's a bit more time than I thought....plus the eight more winners that will be new to the list. Yikes! That's committment!
This is from the Nobel Prize website: www.nobelprize.org
- Herta Müller
- Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio
- Doris Lessing
- Orhan Pamuk
- Harold Pinter
- Elfriede Jelinek
- J. M. Coetzee
- Imre Kertész
- V. S. Naipaul
- Gao Xingjian
- Günter Grass
- José Saramago
- Dario Fo
- Wislawa Szymborska
- Seamus Heaney
- Kenzaburo Oe
- Toni Morrison
- Derek Walcott
- Nadine Gordimer
- Octavio Paz
- Camilo José Cela
- Naguib Mahfouz
- Joseph Brodsky
- Wole Soyinka
- Claude Simon
- Jaroslav Seifert
- William Golding
- Gabriel García Márquez
- Elias Canetti
- Czeslaw Milosz
- Odysseus Elytis
- Isaac Bashevis Singer
- Vicente Aleixandre
- Saul Bellow
- Eugenio Montale
- Eyvind Johnson, Harry Martinson
- Patrick White
- Heinrich Böll
- Pablo Neruda
- Alexandr Solzhenitsyn
- Samuel Beckett
- Yasunari Kawabata
- Miguel Angel Asturias
- Shmuel Agnon, Nelly Sachs
- Mikhail Sholokhov
- Jean-Paul Sartre
- Giorgos Seferis
- John Steinbeck
- Ivo Andric
- Saint-John Perse
- Salvatore Quasimodo
- Boris Pasternak
- Albert Camus
- Juan Ramón Jiménez
- Halldór Laxness
- Ernest Hemingway
- Winston Churchill
- François Mauriac
- Pär Lagerkvist
- Bertrand Russell
- William Faulkner
- T.S. Eliot
- André Gide
- Hermann Hesse
- Gabriela Mistral
- Johannes V. Jensen
- The prize money was with 1/3 allocated to the Main Fund and with 2/3 to the Special Fund of this prize section
- The prize money was with 1/3 allocated to the Main Fund and with 2/3 to the Special Fund of this prize section
- The prize money was with 1/3 allocated to the Main Fund and with 2/3 to the Special Fund of this prize section
- The prize money was with 1/3 allocated to the Main Fund and with 2/3 to the Special Fund of this prize section
- Frans Eemil Sillanpää
- Pearl Buck
- Roger Martin du Gard
- Eugene O'Neill
- The prize money was with 1/3 allocated to the Main Fund and with 2/3 to the Special Fund of this prize section
- Luigi Pirandello
- Ivan Bunin
- John Galsworthy
- Erik Axel Karlfeldt
- Sinclair Lewis
- Thomas Mann
- Sigrid Undset
- Henri Bergson
- Grazia Deledda
- George Bernard Shaw
- Wladyslaw Reymont
- William Butler Yeats
- Jacinto Benavente
- Anatole France
- Knut Hamsun
- Carl Spitteler
- The prize money was allocated to the Special Fund of this prize section
- Karl Gjellerup, Henrik Pontoppidan
- Verner von Heidenstam
- Romain Rolland
- The prize money was allocated to the Special Fund of this prize section
- Rabindranath Tagore
- Gerhart Hauptmann
- Maurice Maeterlinck
- Paul Heyse
- Selma Lagerlöf
- Rudolf Eucken
- Rudyard Kipling
- Giosuè Carducci
- Henryk Sienkiewicz
- Frédéric Mistral, José Echegaray
- Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
- Theodor Mommsen
- Sully Prudhomme
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
The Beginning
January of 2010 we begin to read the winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Our first author is Sully-Prudhomme, a French poet who won in 1901.
Our first author is Sully-Prudhomme, a French poet who won in 1901.
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