Olalla II
How did R. L. Stevenson intend Olalla to be pronounced – in English, since he wrote in English? (The Spanish pronunciation is discussed in the comments to Baia, the post at Language Hat’s that inspired this and the previous one.)…
Winterings in Trans-Scythia
Fragments of a blog
Winterings in Trans-Scythia
Fragments of a blog
Olalla
On Independence Day, Language Hat wrote: Reading The Recognitions… involves encountering a whole lot of allusions, and one of them was to a Saint Olalla. Wanting to make sure I was pronouncing that right (/oˈlayə/, in Americanized form), I looked…
The Underground Man as Richard Thaler’s nightmare
From Britannica’s entry on Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground: The views and actions of Dostoyevsky’s underground man demonstrate that in asserting free will humans often act against self-interest… When he turns to reason for salvation, it fails him, and he…
Kipling and Carlyle
Reading Faramerz Dabhoiwala‘s review of three books on British imperial history, I saw this quote from 1911 concerning West Indians of color: …lazy, vicious and incapable of any serious improvement, or of work except under compulsion. In such a climate…
Quitanda
Late in May, Chris Bertram posted this photograph on Crooked Timber under the title Brazil, shop at night. The shop is in Pirenópolis, a city in the state of Goiás. The sign in the center of the photograph reads: “Temos…
Blok in the dialect of Brescia
At Language Hat‘s, a link to and discussion of Alexander Blok in Dialèt Bresà, a translation or “transplantation” of Alexander Blok’s famous poem, Night, Street, Lamp, Drugstore, into a Gallo-Italic language, by Valentina Gosetti. The language is her native dialect,…
The father of shale as the antipode of the theoretical physicist
Charles Seife writes about Stephen Hawking’s association with George Mitchell, the father of the American shale revolution: In 2002, Hawking met the oil baron George P. Mitchell and began a decadelong relationship that ended only when the magnate died in…
The most generous SOB of them all
About ten days ago, Language Hat wrote about the 1928 novel The Cynics by Anatoly Mariengof (alternatively transliterated as Marienhof): Given its low profile, I probably wouldn’t have read it if Joseph Brodsky hadn’t called it one of the most…
Dim and mighty
Here’s an extract from The Rainbow (1915) by D. H. Lawrence describing Will Brangwen’s infatuation with German religious art: These were the finest carvings, statues, he had ever seen. The book lay in his hands like a doorway. The world…
They had better think again
Adam Kirsch writes in the New Criterion: If millions of people think Rupi Kaur is a poet, comparing her to Wallace Stevens won’t convince them otherwise. I believe I understand correctly what Kirsch is saying here but I wish he…
New money vs. old gentry: Bannon interviewed by Minton Beddoes
Back in September 2018, Steve Bannon was interviewed by Zanny Minton Beddoes at the Open Future Festival in New York. The event was organized by The Economist. At that moment, the interviewer had served as its editor-in-chief for three and…
The tortoises of 1921
Tortoises, consisting of six long, unrhymed poems by D. H. Lawrence, was printed in 1921 in New York City (by Thomas Seltzer). In Baby Tortoise, Lawrence writes: Voiceless little bird,Resting your head half out of your wimpleIn the slow dignity…