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Post by Maolsheachlann on Dec 5, 2018 22:18:03 GMT
I have been reading Slavophile Russian writers-- Solzhenitzyn and Dostoyevsky.
One thing that makes me nostalgic is the whole idea of a nation as a spiritual, organic entity-- of the National Question as a topic for discussion.
This seems to have been common in Ireland up until recently. I think there are parallels with Russia and Ireland.
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Post by cato on Dec 6, 2018 11:14:54 GMT
I have been reading Slavophile Russian writers-- Solzhenitzyn and Dostoyevsky. One thing that makes me nostalgic is the whole idea of a nation as a spiritual, organic entity-- of the National Question as a topic for discussion. This seems to have been common in Ireland up until recently. I think there are parallels with Russia and Ireland. I have been reading on and off Joseph Pearce's biography of Solzhenitzyn. In many ways he is a writer for our soft totalitarian age. His Harvard address is worth reflecting on too as he identified many of the spiritual ailments of the West 40 years ago . He upset many on the US right by doing so , during the cold war , but his critique on weak leadership in particular proved to be prophetic.
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Post by Maolsheachlann on Dec 6, 2018 11:25:29 GMT
I have been reading Slavophile Russian writers-- Solzhenitzyn and Dostoyevsky. One thing that makes me nostalgic is the whole idea of a nation as a spiritual, organic entity-- of the National Question as a topic for discussion. This seems to have been common in Ireland up until recently. I think there are parallels with Russia and Ireland. I have been reading on and off Joseph Pearce's biography of Solzhenitzyn. In many ways he is a writer for our soft totalitarian age. His Harvard address is worth reflecting on too as he identified many of the spiritual ailments of the West 40 years ago . He upset many on the US right by doing so , during the cold war , but his critique on weak leadership in particular proved to be prophetic. It is the Harvard address that got me interested. His simultaneous critique of both Marxism and Western liberalism is very similar to that of John Paul II. I think there is a real danger that we simply become habituated to the evils in the West. I have been guilty of this myself. For instance, I always tend to argue that media bias isn't such a big deal and that, as long as you are not being actively censored, you don't have much to complain about. However, Solzhenitsyn himself came from a background of the most active government censorship, but he DIDN'T share this view at all. He considered Western "virtual" censorship to be something greatly to be denounced. That is just one example.
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Post by Maolsheachlann on Dec 12, 2018 10:26:14 GMT
I'm reading the Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. I've previously read Notes from Underground (which is good, but very intense) and Crime and Punishment (which I found rather disappointing, considering its reputation). I'm enjoying the Brothers Karamazov a lot more, although some parts are a bit of an effort.
Dostoyevsky is interesting because he is an acknowledged literary giant who was a Christian, conservative, and nationalist. His contemporary admirers usually deal with this by dismissing his views and concentrating on the purely literary element of his writing.
Religion is a central theme of the Brothers Karamazov. A lot of it is set around a monastery.
I find Dostoyevsky hard going a lot of the time but I do enjoy him, especially the philosophical passages (and there are lots of those). One thing I prize in fiction is dialogue-- I can't bear a film or book where there is little dialogue and we are supposed to find profound meaning in the fact that a character pauses for twenty seconds between putting on his left sock and his right sock. Dostoyevsky is the opposite-- everybody in his novels talks all the time, at great length, and they explictly address the themes of the novel. In fact, for everything that actually happens in his stories there is an ocean of analysis by the characters. His characters are all very self-aware, even morbidly self-aware. They are constantly examining and re-examining their own thoughts and actions. This is quite funny-- I don't know if it's supposed to be, though I guess it must be deliberate to some extent.
I sympathise a lot with the narrator of Notes from Underground. He's very much an opponent of modern rationalism, for which he takes as a symbol the Crystal Palace (the exhibition hall built for the Great Exhibition in London in 1851). He's of the view that, even if you build a perfectly rational society, humankind will rebel against it because they don't want to be engineered and dehumanised. This is very much something that preoccupies me-- I dread a rationalised society, one that fulfils our physical needs but ignores our more intangible yearnings.
Dostoyevsky was a Slavophile-- he wanted Russia to look to its own past and traditions, rather than to copy the West. I'm completely in sympathy with this, I think every culture should prize its own distinctveness instead of trying to be "outward-looking" at all costs. The Russia portrayed in Dostoyevsky reminds me of Ireland as it used to be, or as it was portrayed in affectionate stereotype (and I think those things are usually linked): most people are poor (or at least on fixed incomes), everybody seems to be well-read, everybody talks at great length, everybody is willing to speechify at every opportunity, and everybody is either religious or anti-religious or both, depending on their mood. Also, everybody is always discussing the National Question, the state and character and destiny of Russia, which reminds me of the time when people would do the same with Ireland-- I can still remember this.
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Post by cato on Dec 18, 2018 13:24:01 GMT
On a thread I cannot find Maolsheachlann was discussing burning books.
As a little footnote I only discovered today that Northern Ireland Prime minister Sir James Craig came down to Dublin in 1925 and took his Dail seat for one day. Why? To vote for the censorship of publications Act. So much for conservative Fenian philistines persecuting W B Yeats and his co-religionists.
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Post by Maolsheachlann on Dec 18, 2018 14:56:37 GMT
William Morris once said that Thomas Carlyle was a genius but someone should have punched him in the head once every hour.
That's how I feel about W.B. Yeats. I think he is the greatest poet ever to write in the English language. But whenever he castigates "Biddy and Paudeen", I am firmly on the side of Biddy and Paudeen.
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Post by Séamus on Dec 21, 2018 12:19:25 GMT
I've mentioned elsewhere that I was reading the life of (now Blessed) Anne Marie Javouhey, foundress of the Sisters of St Joseph of Cluny. It's remarkable how often the present can be seen in history, with Mother Javouhey often taking charge of crumbling monastic buildings, possibly already in a state of degeneration before the Revolution. She had a willingness to reach the colonial world also, despite the great needs in France itself; perhaps the surprising bit is that the British-controlled Freetown (Sierra Leone) invited her presence having heard of the service done in French Senegal and Bourbon(Reunion), at a time when no catholic church existed (in Freetown)(1820s). A great cooperation existed with the abolitionist governor, called in the book Sir F MacCarthy. Due to the surname I thought I'd try looking him up- he was sir Charles MacCarthy, born in Cork (not sure where the F initial came in). His father was French but he seems to have borrowed the surname from his mother's side and, unusually, served in the army of three different nations and , later, in the British colonial government. He was also a regular correspondent with Wilberforce. He seems to have died quite young, shortly after the events described. Not surprising- Mother Anne Marie herself barely survived yellow fever while caring for the sick in Freetown
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Post by cato on Dec 21, 2018 13:07:17 GMT
I was a bit disappointed when I looked over the books I had read this year. I think I completed half of them and have a stack of half read tomes. I think I ll spend January finishing off unfinished books and reading fewer things on line. That's the aspiration anyway.
This week I started David Mc Cullagh's life of De Valera Vol 1, which seems to contradict what I wrote above. This biography is well researched and balanced. Although the story is familiar to most of us McCullagh writes in a lively fresh way. I think it's the best Irish history book I came across this year.Well worth a look.
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Post by Séamus on Mar 14, 2019 8:24:43 GMT
I've been reading an old life of (Bl) Marie Thérèse deSoubiran, someone I've always found rather amazing among foundresses. But aside from that, a fascinating literary coincidence occurred in her life- a fire had broken out in one building, at one stage a religious(at the time it was a béguinage) and several orphans were trapped in a roof. "A ladder had been brought but it was too short to reach the roof...Two of the orphans jumped to the ground, astonishingly suffering no hurt. Then a man of great strength- an ex-convict who ever afterwards was a highly-respescted and respectable citizen- took the base of the ladder on his chest and held the ladder while the orphans came down. The last to descend was Mother Alexandrine. As she stepped on to the ladder the whole roof crashed in an eruption of flames" The whole episode sounded so much like Jean Valjean that I had to check the dates. It happened near the end of 1861, Les Miserables was published in 1862 making it virtually impossible for Hugo to have based Valjean on the unknown ex-convict even if the story of this fire had become well-known, which may or may not have been the case. Perhaps it's a striking coincidence, or maybe it reflects positively on the rehabilitation system of the time?
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Post by Stephen on Apr 3, 2019 21:25:19 GMT
Just about finished Kenneth Clarks book on the Gothic Revival. Very good introductory book in to the movement. I read the 3rd edition that was published in 1962, which I think is much better than the original 1928 first edition.
The Gothic Revival is often a forgotten movement because critics say it produced little great works. This movement changed the Face of British and Irish towns.
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Post by cato on Apr 5, 2019 11:16:07 GMT
I recently finished two different type of biography . One was C S Lewis by James Como part of the A Very Short Introduction series published by Oxford University Press 2019. At only 186 pages it is an excellent introduction to his life and it covers all his works religious and literary. I have a soft spot for short concise well argued books. I don't need to know what Lewis had for breakfast on his 60th birthday but this book gives a good account of Lewis the man and the writer. He also discusses briefly his coolness towards Catholicism of the Roman variety .
The other book was less satisfactory but is still worth a read . Eliot Guerriero's Benedict XVI His Life and Thought is good as an introduction although it is 678 pages long. The author gives good summaries of documents and books but is to my ears somewhat unsympathetic to Benedict's liturgical vision. I noted several factual errors in his coverage of this theme so dear to the former Pope .
There is very little about Benedict the person. In fact I found the portrayal somewhat lifeless. Benedict is a private man but we learn little about his personality here. The book could have done with photos too which is a normal feature of books this size. Published by Ignatius Press last year.
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Post by Maolsheachlann on Apr 5, 2019 11:58:30 GMT
I recently finished two different type of biography . One was C S Lewis by James Como part of the A Very Short Introduction series published by Oxford University Press 2019. At only 186 pages it is an excellent introduction to his life and it covers all his works religious and literary. I have a soft spot for short concise well argued books. I don't need to know what Lewis had for breakfast on his 60th birthday but this book gives a good account of Lewis the man and the writer. He also discusses briefly his coolness towards Catholicism of the Roman variety . The other book was less satisfactory but is still worth a read . Eliot Guerriero's Benedict XVI His Life and Thought is good as an introduction although it is 678 pages long. The author gives good summaries of documents and books but is to my ears somewhat unsympathetic to Benedict's liturgical vision. I noted several factual errors in his coverage of this theme so dear to the former Pope . There is very little about Benedict the person. In fact I found the portrayal somewhat lifeless. Benedict is a private man but we learn little about his personality here. The book could have done with photos too which is a normal feature of books this size. Published by Ignatius Press last year. I love the Very Short Introduction series. They are short enough to slip in your pocket, but substantial enough to read for a few hours if you are stuck on a bus or a waiting room or somewhere like that. (And how much of life is composed of hanging around!) I've been walking around with A Very Short Introduction to Russian Literature by Caitríona Kelly for months now. I often read it in the queue in the supermarket. I sometimes wonder if Lewis's coolness to Catholicism is not somewhat overstated and if some comments by J.R.R. Tolkien have not influenced this. "C.S. Lewis and the Catholic Church" by Joseph Pearce is a good book in this regard, although I don't like Pearce's writing style.
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Post by Maolsheachlann on Apr 12, 2019 14:49:42 GMT
I've been reading Unlocking the Prison Muse: The Inspirations And Effects Of Prisoners' Writing In Britain, by Julian Broadhead. It's about prison writing.
It's interesting that Irish people have played a central role in the history of British prison writing. The first line of the first chapter of the book is: "The name of Oscar Wilde is synonymous with prison writing." Brendan Behan is the second most famous name in the genre. And there was another Irish author called Jim Phelan who was imprisoned for republican activities in Britain, and who became a well-known writer. He lived as a tramp by choice.
There is actually a newspaper for prisoners in the UK, called Inside Time.
I find prison very interesting. It's an interesting laboratory for the human spirit. The book tells a story of Pablo Picasso being asked to sign a petition for the release of Russian political prisoners, but declining because he said they wrote better in prison. The story is apocryphal, but I feel a certain sympathy for that point of view. Not that I support people being imprisoned in order to encourage them to write, but I often find myself in favour of less drastic curtailments of freeedom because they are more fruitful (artistically, culturally, spiritually etc.) than freedom. I remember being refused alcohol in a restaurant in America, because I didn't have ID. This had nothing to do with age-- you just needed ID to buy alcohol in that particular place. I mourned the lack of my brandy and cola, but I was rather pleased at the strictness of the law.
Does anyone on this forum have any personal insight into prison life? (Not that I expect anyone has been locked up, but you might know someone who was, or you might have done prison ministry, or known a prison employee, or some such thing.)
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Post by Séamus on Apr 15, 2019 1:03:44 GMT
...prison is something you don't like to ask about even if it's generally known that the person had been there. I know someone who trained as a prison-guard, but whose career only lasted two months after he lost prison keys. Even that's probably not for mentioning.
Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich is one other example that comes to mind
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Post by Séamus on Jun 16, 2019 9:28:48 GMT
I've recently finished three long-shelved books about Ireland,all of which were probably written for their generational audience only,which only made them more interesting. COUNTRY OF MY CHOICE by Kees VanHoek (1945) is erroneously named. The much- traveled writer was in Ireland when the Second World War broke and had actually little choice but to live there. His writing is romantic and flowery,but not always outdated as some of the buildings etc described would hardly have changed CONOR CRUISE O'BRIEN INTRODUCES IRELAND is a '69 collection of essays by a largely intellectual and progressive elite. They often speak of the conservative populace in unpositive terms (strangely, as in the '80s book,Catholic Bishops come out relatively unscathed- the product of the populace mostly ) The 1985 MEMORY IRELAND is by Australian poet Vincent Buckley who was a Trinity academic for several years. Like the '60s essayists he seems largely socialist. He wrote mostly about the HBlock hunger strike and bemoaned the perceived lack of interest of Dubliners. It would be easy to dismiss reading something like the VanHoek book as nostalgia,but,while many images- like the idillic countrysides,full churches and whole streets stopping for the Angelus may seem gone forever, what actually struck me more was the (romantic also)discriptions of factories,agricultural colleges and other industries...the Carlow sugar factory was so modern he called the machinery 'robots'. It debunks a 'a preEU basketcase' such as old Ireland is so often thought of. You can't help feeling that the academics in the later books talking about joining the EEC and involvement in the UN were very much standing on the shoulders of the day-to-day workers. An interesting part of the Buckley book was hearing how many poetry readings events there were in pubs etc,around 1981 Ireland. He describes the organisation as generally being a complete farce,but the events were still pretty plentiful
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