Tristan och Isolde, Tristan und Isolde, Tristan and Isolde: American viewing German opera in Swedish (Part 1)

I'm an American who teaches South Koreans German in Vietnam. I'm also an American who, from time to time, goes to German operas in Sweden. This leads to a number of delights in life, and a number of concomitant linguistic puzzles. I attended Parsifal in Stockholm last year, was taken aback by the quality of the performances and intensity of the music, and was a bit sullen at the number of things I couldn't parse (if all of the text had been in English, it still takes practice and wit to focus on music where the music is foremost, and text and story where they're necessary, to say nothing of the meaning and philosophy). Today's puzzle: how do I get the most out of Tristan und Isolde when I haven't read the German libretto and can only glancingly follow the Swedish supertitles?

Now, I'm of two minds about working through the text in opera. A friend of mine doesn't pay much attention to the words when he listens to opera, doesn't even see the need to attend operas live. The music is sacrosanct, the staging a distraction. His way sounds noble, but I can't manage it. I need the text to thread the music together, I need the story to access the sound. I agree that stagings are a distraction from accessing the highest spheres of music -- I find it hard to get excited about Regietheater -- but then again, nearly everything is a distraction from accessing the highest spheres of music. If I can't 'feel' Wagner, if I can't hear something mystical at all times throughout all four hours, then at least I have the story and the words to focus on. With a little luck, the words will be familiar enough that I will have mind to spare to devote to feelings and philosophising. Even if those words are Swedish.

Reading Sebald in English, and English vs. German syntax

In response to a friend of mine who asked whether reading W.G. Sebald in German was very different from reading him in English, and whether I thought something important was lost in translation:

Sebald in English is magnificent because the writing is magnificent. Sebald is a very at-the-surface writer because he wants you to look at things you already see. So he used a style that sort of coaxes you into a sense of "I already mostly know what this is all about." Then he gives you clues that what is at the surface is misleading, that what you can see means something else and that you are missing what's essential. And so he gives you another version, and another angle, and another clue, and another and another (making it a good bet to read the book again). He does this in a way that is not showy; it is humble and disarming and then finally all the more forceful for it. So, yeah, you can get most of that in English without worrying too much about what's missing. 

Book Review, Snark by David Denby

Best way to kill a blog: not write, even when you're inclined to, and then wait until you're no longer inclined to.

Best way to kill a blog 2: publish a too-long review of a book you're certain no one you know has read.

Here goes anyway:

David Denby, one of two film critics for the New Yorker, recently published a book called Snark. I saw him on C-SPAN discussing his tract and was immediately delighted: someone was taking on the anti-everything aspects of popular intellectual culture. So I bought his book, read it, and was left somewhat upset. I should have expected it from a typical New Yorker writer -- an extremely intelligent, well polished analysis of something just un-mainstream enough to make me feel like I was being a cultured badass, with attacks on the American neo- and theo-cons ranging from peripheral to vociferous, but with no real attack at what's at the heart of the matter. I made my way through his at times exasperating and at times spot-on book, and I don't think that he's entirely correct in his ideas about why and how we talk to (or more importantly, about) each other in this vast internet realm of links and tagging and occasionally text.

Blog Hard

The first post: account for the name, manifesto-style:

1. The 'e' is self-evident. Plus, an American friend went to Spain this summer, and returned with a stray 'e' at the beginning of assorted words (e.g. eSpain, eSpanish, eTC.). The eFfect was eHumorous.

2. "Age of Precarious" was already taken.

3. As a committed statist whose skin crawls at the mention of tax cuts and the loss of personal liberty, I want the government in my life. I want to walk amongst fellow citizens and know that their stake is my stake and that the terrain we share is a combination of the respected private and the well-fostered public. The proper balance of private and public is to my mind the main challenge of sustaining an industrial nation-state (in the long-term; the unbalance in the U.S. is what makes us big, and topsy-turvy). I attempt, and fail, to always factor in the pursuit of that balance in what I do, say, and think.

My hopes for this blog are to talk about all sorts of different topics, without falling victim to self-obsession. I've spent a long time resenting blogs and bloggers, somewhat cattily so. Now I'm a copycat.