贴一些自2000年写的读书笔记。
以下的是贴在 amazon.com 的书评。
2000.03.17 Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
2000.06.17 The Color Purple by Alice Walker
2000.06.20 High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
2000.07.04 Eternal Curse on the Reader of These Pages by Puig Manuel
2000.07.05 The Sizesaurus by Stephen Strauss
2001.02.28 The Buenos Aires Affair by Manuel Puig
2001.02.28 The Third Man and The Fallen Idol by Graham Greene
后来写的很多就是抄书了。
2006.02.05 Beloved by Toni Morrison
2006.02.26 Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
2006.03.11 Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler
2006.03.15 Aspects of the Novel by E.M. Forster
2006.06.19 The History of Mr Polly by H.G. Wells
2006.06.21 The Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad
2006.06.26 Deliverance by James Dickey
2006.07.04 The Confidential Agent by Graham Greene
- posted on 07/07/2006
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh **** A very beautiful book, March 17, 2000
This is a very beautiful book. It stirs all my senses with vivid description of colors, sounds, smells, tastes, touches, and feelings.
The Color Purple by Alice Walker **** The more I wonder, the more I love., June 17, 2000
"I think us here to wonder, myself. To wonder. To ast. And that in wondering bout the big things and asting bout the big things, you learn about the little ones, almost by accident. But you never know nothing more about the big things than you start out with. The more I wonder, he say, the more I love." These words intrigued me.
I saw the movie first and then read the book. The movie has captured the mood of the book successfully, although the book has a little more stories about Nettie in Africa and about the love between Celie and Shug.
This book is not only about black women. It is also about finding love and contentment in daily life, especially in adversity.
"If she (Shug) come, I be happy. If she don't, I be content. And then I figure this the lesson I was suppose to learn." And this is the lesson we all should learn.
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby ***** Funny and talkative. Do all guys think like Rob?, June 20, 2000
I saw the movie first and loved it. It follows the book so closely that the book is almost like a movie script. But the parts that are not in the movie are equally funny and smart.
Rob is a very self-conscious guy. Following all his thoughts, even the ones he tries not to think about, is an eye-opening experience for me. I especially enjoyed his string of thoughts right before he had sex with Marie. Is that how a guy thinks? So different from us girls.
Overall, Rob is a very believable character. Even if you have seen the movie, this book is still a fun read.
Eternal Curse on the Reader of These Pages by Puig Manuel ***** An inspiration on the reader of this novel, July 4, 2000
Don't be scared of the title. You won't be cursed.
Almost the entire book consists of conversations betweent two men, Ramirez and Larry, taken place in New York City. Ramirez is a 74-year old man from Argentina who has lost most of his memory and is now in a wheelchair. Larry is a 36-year old guy (with a Ph.D. in history but now is jobless) who is paid to push Ramirez around three times a week. Following their conversation, the readers will figure out the identities of these two people, their personalities, their past, their dreams, their regrets, their views on life, work, politics, love, sex, etc., as well as what is happening to/around them at that time.
This is my first Puig's book. I picked it because of the sinister title. This book shows that Puig has a creative way to construct the plot and a deep understanding of human minds. Very often I stop and smile at the dialogue, because I am reminded of the real way that people talk: sometimes inefficient and frustrating.
My friend recommends all his other books, incudling Kiss of the Spider Woman and The Buenos Aries Affair. This book is good enough for me to go on reading his other ones.
The Sizesaurus: From Hectares to Decibels to Calories, a Witty Compendium of Measurements by Stephen Strauss ***** Get a sense of all the measures and scales, July 5, 2000
This is a fun book to read, and must have been a fun book to write. There are two parts in the book. Part I consists of 14 interesting essays, answering the questions such as: What would Santa Claus have to do to deliver all his presents in one night? Which celestial body is equal in volume to 54,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Big Macs? How loud must a noise be to have lethal effects? How hot would Hell be and how cold would Hell have to be before it froze over? What is the amount of air pressure required to burst a condom? Part II defines and explains all sorts of common and uncommon measures and scales, with lots of tables, illustrations and interesting examples.
My favorite essay is: How many jumping Chinese does it take to start an earthquake?
This book gives the readers a new understanding of all the measures and scales, in a very witty way.
The Buenos Aires Affair by Manuel Puig *** A well crafted thriller, February 28, 2001
"This tongue-in-cheek thriller involves the abduction of a woman, an insidious threat of sexual violation, and an impending murder, and gives a powerful portrait of two mutilated lives -- the victim and the criminal who are psychologically dependent on each other: Gladys Hebe D'Onofrio, a 35-year-old sculptor of little achievement, now frightfully alone, tormented by sexual fantasies and perpetually in search of the ideal lover; and Leo Druscovich, an outwardly confident and successful art critic and editor, deeply troubled by a terrible guilt that surfaces in his repeated sexual failures."
As usual, Manuel Puig uses many devices in telling the story. Each chapter has a different structure and style. It is interesting to see how the seemingly disjointed stories all come together to make sense in the end. It is an interesting read.
The Third Man and The Fallen Idol **** Graham Greene tells story with rich inner thoughts, February 28, 2001
On the backcover of the book:
THE THIRD MAN
Rollo Martins is invited by his school-friend hero, Harry Lime, to post-war Vienna, 'a smashed dreary city' occupied by four powers...
Everyone has a racket, but Martins learns that Lime 'was about the worst racketeer who ever made a dirty living'. What's more, LIme has just been killed - by accident? The truth is almost more than Martins can stand...
THE FALLEN IDOL
Philip is a small boy left in a large Belgravia house with Baines, the butler, and 'thin, menacing, dusty' Mrs Baines. And Baines has a girl-friend. Soon Philip is 'caught up in other people's darkness...'
Greene writes in the preface that "The Third Man was never intended to be more than the raw materiall for a picture". Still, the novel is not lack of intricated plots, suspenses, character's thought processes, and Greene's typical sharp wits. The Fallen Idol was not written for the films. It is a short story with intensity and suspense: a boy got involved in the lives of adults.
Graham Greene is the master of suspense, even in these two rather short stories. - posted on 07/07/2006
Beloved by Toni Morrison 2006.02.05
Just finished Toni Morrison's Beloved. I had read Song of Solomon before and discovered how powerful Morrison's writing was. Her stories are unreal but taken from something larger than life, and thus appears to be more real. Of the two, Beloved is a more intimate book. It is an epic story about American slavery through the lives of three generations of women (and ghost). I am once again captivated by the power in Morrison's language, imagination, emotion, and depth of history. It is as if the whole history of American is inside of her and the book is just one explosive explosive imaginary after another and never ending. How much suffering and history are inside of her to write a book of such weight and scale?!"It was a kind of selfishness I never knew nothing about before. It felt good. Good and right. It was big, and deep and wide and when I stretched out my arms all my children could get in between. I was that wide. Look like I loved em more after I got here. Or maybe I couldn't love em proper in Kentucky because they wasn't mine to love. But when I got here, when I jumped down off that wagon--there wasn't nobody in the world I couldn't love if I wanted to. You know what I mean?"
http://jorielle-music.blogspot.com/2006/02/book-beloved-by-toni-morrison.html
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison 2006.02.26
Today I Finished Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. I bought it several years ago because it was on several reading lists. However, I was unable to bring myself up to read it. I knew it was about a black young man, coming from the deep South, learning about the injustice of the society before the civil rights movement. I thought I would not be able to relate the black experience in America. The reviews in the book all rave about it, saying how energetic, forceful, savage it is. I thought I knew what this book is about.
Of course I was wrong. I should never assume I understand a great book before having the privilege to read it. Everyone has something to offer in life. Great authors have more to offer to me because I am tuned to written words. I've found the language of Invisible Man full of energy, strength, and humor. The idea about why he is an invisible man is not what I thought. It is not a book about how miserable a black man was in a society of injustice. It is really about one man's path of self discovery, of learning about reality and about life. It is relevant not particularly to certain race or country of people, but it is a lesson and experience shared with all people.
People are all basically invisible, because other people in the society (including themselves) refuse to see them as who they are. Everyone only sees what he wants to see, so other people become a figure, an idea, an abstract object to their view of the reality. We need to first understand this, and then to understand ourselves so we can see ourselves. After learning all this, we go into the absurd world and start living. The only way to live is to live with love.As the organ voices died, I saw a think brown girl arise noiselessly with the rigid control of a modern dancer, high in the upper rows of the choir, and begin to sing a cappella. She began softly, as thought singing to herself of emotions of utmost privacy, a sound not addressed to the gathering, but which they overheard almost against her will. Gradually she increased its volume, until at times the voice seemed to become a disembodied force that sought to enter her, to violate her, shaking her, rocking her rhythmically, as though it had become the source of her being, rather than the fluid web of her own creation. // I saw the guests on the platform turn to look behind them to see the thin brown girl in white choir robe standing high against the organ pipes, herself become before our eyes a pipe of contained, controlled and sublimated anguish, a thin plain face transformed by music. I could not understand the words, but only the mood, sorrowful, vague and ethereal, of the singing. It throbbed with nostalgia, regret and repentance, and I sat with a lump in my throat as she sank slowly down; not a sitting but a controlled collapsing, as though she were balancing, sustaining the simmering bubble of her final tone by some delicate rhythm of her heart's blood, or by some mystic concentration of her being, focused upon the sound through the contained liquid of her large uplifted eyes. // There were no applause, only the appreciation of a profound silence. - p.105
http://jorielle-music.blogspot.com/2006/02/book-invisible-man-by-ralph-ellison.html
So why do I write, torturing myself to put it down? Because in spite of myself I've learned some things. Without the possibility of action, all knowledge comes to one labeled "file and forget," and I can neither file nor forget. Nor will certain ideas forget me; they keep filing away at my lethargy, my complacency.
Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?
Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler 2006.03.11
Conversation between Rubashov and No.402:"OUR IDEAS OF HONOUR DIFFER."
Darkness at Noon is another great book after Invisible Man that I have just finished. The internal politics in the Soviet book reminds me of the politics in Invisible Man. Both main characters became disillusioned with their political movement when they themselves were sacrificed. Both had to find a solution, work out a resolution, so they could come to terms with the world, to reach salvation. They both learned the confrontation between individuals and the mass. In one case, one finds individuals are invisible to the mass; in the other case one finds that the mass (and history) does not obey the ethics and morality of individuals. The only way for individuals to attain peace and salvation is through introspection, self discovery, and self realization. Only when the individual has gone to the end of the self can he realize his relation to mankind, history, and the world as a whole.
"HONOUR IS TO LIVE AND DIE FOR ONE'S BELIEVE."
"HONOUR IS TO BE USEFUL WITHOUT VANITY".
"HONOUR IS DECENCY--NOT USEFULNESS."
"WHAT IS DECENCY? WE HAVE REPLACED DECENCY BY REASON."
"Sometimes he would respond unexpectedly to a tune, or even the memory of a tune, or of the folded hands of the Pieta, or of certain scenes of his childhood. As if a tuning-fork had been struck, there would be answering vibrations, and once this had started a state would be produced which the mystics called "ecstasy" and saints "contemplation"; the greatest and soberest of modern psychologists had recognized this state as a fact and called it the "oceanic sense". And, indeed, one's personality dissolved as a grain of salt in the sea; but at the same time the infinite sea seemed to be contained in the grain of salt. The grain could no longer be localized in time and space. It was a state in which thought lost its direction and started to circle, like the compass needle at the magnetic pole; until finally it cut loose from its axis and travelled freely in space, like a bunch of light in the night; and until it seemed that all thoughts and all sensations, even pain and joy itself, were only the spectrum lines of the same ray of light, disintegrating in the prisma of consciousness."
I also think about my grandfather. I wonder if he had ever come to peace with his Party and his Country before the end.
(In the news today, Milosevic died in prison before trial.)
http://jorielle-music.blogspot.com/2006/03/book-darkness-at-noon-by-arthur.html
Aspects of the Novel by E.M. Forster 2006.03.15
Reading E.M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel. It is a series of lectures given in Trinity College, Cambridge, in the spring of 1927. Reminds me of the essays read by Virginia Woolf to the Arts Society at Newnham and the Odtaa at Girton in October, 1928, published as the acclaimed A Room of One's Own. Similar period and both literature critics. Forster divides novels into several aspects: the story, people, the plot, fantasy, prophecy, and pattern and rhythm. I just finished the people chapter. He is sometimes insightful but other times tedious and had the marks of the time. For people, some characters are flat and some are round. All Dickens characters are flat, and most Austen characters are round. "The characters in Jane Austen give us a slightly new pleasure each time they come in, as opposed to the merely repetitive pleasure that is caused by a character in Dickens. They combine so well in a conversation, and draw one another out without seeming to do so, and never perform. Unlike Dickens, she was a real artist, she never stooped to caricature, etc. Her characters though smaller than his are more highly organized. They function all round, and even if her plot made greater demands on them than it does, they would still be adequate. All the Jane Austen characters are ready for an extended life, for a life which the scheme of her books seldom requires them to lead, and that is why they lead their actual lives so satisfactorily." He went on analyzing one sentence in Mansfield Park:"Lady Bertram did not think deeply, but, guided by Sir Thomas, she thought justly on all important points, and she saw therefore in all its enormity, what had happened, and neither endeavoured herself, nor required Fanny to advise her, to think little of guilt and infamy."
I think of Jin Yong's novels. All his characters are FLAT.
http://jorielle-music.blogspot.com/2006/03/book-aspects-of-novel-by-em-forster.html
The History of Mr Polly by H.G. Wells 2006.06.19
This book is on John Carey's 50 books of 20th century, and is mentioned in E.M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel. This is a story about an ordinary man searching for the meaning of life. Before the age of 37, he lived the most ordinary life and dreamed the idealistic dreams. After a mid-life crisis, he left everything behind and started traveling, eventually finding his place in the world.
The traveling part of the story reminds me of other stories of lone traveler such as Herman Hesse's Knulp and Siddhartha. Although I like the way Wells tells the story for most of the book, I don't like the part concerning the travel. Maybe it is too romantic and not realistic as other parts. I am also reminded of Alice Walker's Color Purple when the main character finally comes to peace with life. However, this book did little to inspire me.
I am returning to Graham Greene. He's like an old friend. He has almost never failed me.He was walking slowly, after his habit, and thinking discursively. (p.184)
http://jorielle-music.blogspot.com/2006/06/book-history-of-mr-polly-by-hg-wells.html
The reality of the case arched over him like the vault of the sky, as plain as the sweet blue heaven above and the wide spread of hill and valley about him. Man comes into life to seek and find his sufficient beauty, to serve it, to win and increase it, to fight for it, to face anything and dare anything for it, counting death as nothing so long as the dying eyes still turn to it. And fear and dullness and indolence and appetite, which, indeed, are no more than fear's three crippled brothers, who make ambushes and creep by night, are against him, to delay him, to hold him off, to hamper and beguile and kill him in that quest. He had but to lift his eyes to see all that, as much as part of his world as the driving clouds and the bending grass; but he kept himself downcast, a grumbling, inglorious, dirty, fattish little tramp, full of dreams and quivering excuses. // "Why the hell was I ever born?" he said, with the truth almost winning him. (p.188)
I'm going to absquatulate. (p.212)
The Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad 2006.06.21
I listened to a few other Conrad's fictions on tapes a few years ago, but was never fully engaged. This time I had a lot of difficulties getting into this book. Took me over a year to complete this short book. Maybe it was the narratives in the beginning. It was a story within a story within a story--"we" listening to a story told by Marlow about his story with Kurtz. If I had not seen Apocalypse Now, I would not have followed the story initially. Only toward the very end, when Marlow was confronting Kurtz, I became involved in the narratives. Then I found the power of the language and the imagination.
Interestingly, I read this book back to back with The Quiet American by Graham Greene. That was a story about Vietnam, same location as Apocalypse Now, so when I was reading Heart of Darkness, I was only able to imagine the Vietnam war era.
The Secret Sharer is in the same book. It was a little shorter and easier to read. I enjoyed it greatly. The back cover says: "The saga of a young, inexperienced skipper forced to decide the fate of a fugitive-sailor who killed a man in self-defense. As he faces his first moral test the skipper discovers a terrifying truth--and comes face to face with his secret self." and describes Conrad as a major psychological writer. Very true especially to this story, which is psychologically intense."I saw on that ivory face the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror--of an intense and hopeless despair. Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge? He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision--he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath:
http://jorielle-music.blogspot.com/2006/06/book-heart-of-darkness-by-joseph.html
"The horror! The horror!" (p.117)
Kurtz was a remarkable man. He had something to say. He said it. Since I had peeped over the edge myself, I understand better the meaning of his stare, that could not see the flame of the candle, but was wide enough to embrace the whole universe, piercing enough to penetrate all the hearts that beat in the darkness. He had summed up--he had judged. "The horror!" He was a remarkable man. After all, this was the expression of some sort of belief; it had candour, it had conviction, it had a vibrating note of revolt in its whisper, it had the appalling face of a glimpsed truth--the strange commingling of desire and hate. And it is not my own extremity I remember best--a vision of greynees without form filled with physical pain, and a careless contempt for the evanescence of all things--even of this pain itself. No! It is his extremity that I seem to have lived through. True, he had made that last stride, he had stepped over the edge, while I had been permitted to draw back my hesitating foot. And perhaps in this is the whole difference; perhaps all the wisdom, and all truth, and all sincerity, are just compressed into that inappreciable moment of time in which we step over the threshold of the invisible. Perhaps! I like to think my summing-up would not have been a word of careless contempt. Better his cry--much better. It was an affirmation, a moral victory paid for by innumerable defeats, by abominable terrors, by abominable satisfactions. But it was a victory! That is why I have remained loyal to Kurtz to the last, and even beyond, when a long time after I heard once more, not his own voice, but the echo of his magnificent eloquence thrown to me from a soul as translucently pure as a cliff of crystal. (p.119)
Deliverance by James Dickey 2006.06.26
Deliverance is on Modern Library top 100 fictions of 20th century list. I did not know it was a book when I saw the movie several years ago. The movie was very well made. The thrills was unexpected. However, it was hard to imagine how the same story could be written in a book ranked among and higher than books such as On the Road, Catcher in the Rye, Heart of Darkness, A Room with a View, Brideshead Revisited, Sophie's Choice....
Eventually I made myself pick up the book last weekend on the flight to Colorado. A book about a river trip seems quite appropriate after reading some Joseph Conrad. The book is in great details, almost like the movie script. The screenplay is also by James Dickey, so the movie is very close to the book. James Dickey is supposed to be a famous poet. I expected beautiful language or long paragraphs of philosophical discussions. But this book has none of these. The introduction is very slow. Dialogues are used to state the theme and at times seems unnatural. The description of the canoe trip reminds me of our canoe trip to Boundary Waters (BWCA) last year, and I can appreciate the story better. The book tells the story of the four-man canoe trip from beginning to end effectively, and at night the chilling story gave me nightmares. Otherwise, I am not impressed with this book and don't understand why it is so highly rated.
We started watching the movie last night. Lewis is more self-absorbed than I had imaged (and remembered). The movie presents less thought processes and decision makings, but more action and the results of the decisions.
Why "deliverance"?
1 : the act of delivering someone or something : the state of being delivered; especially : LIBERATION, RESCUE
2 : something delivered; especially : an opinion or decision (as the verdict of a jury) expressed publicly
http://jorielle-music.blogspot.com/2006/06/book-deliverance-by-james-dickey.html
The Confidential Agent by Graham Greene 2006.07.04
Finished Graham Greene's The Confidential Agent in two days. I picked up the book from my in-law's library after I finished Madame Bovary. Was thinking about reading DH Lawrence because Bovary story reminded me of Rainbow. Then I saw on the shelf this Greene novel that I had not read. Found on the internet, Graham Greene on The Confidential Agent:
The Confidential Agent was written in six weeks in 1938 after my return from Mexico. The Spanish Civil War furnished the background.... I was struggling then through The Power and the Glory, but there was no money in the book as far as I could foresee. Certainly my wife and two children would not be able to live on one unsaleable book.... so I determined to write another "entertainment" as quickly as possible in the mornings, while I ground on slowly with The Power and the Glory in the afternoons.
The Confidential Agent has a intense story of the hunter and the hunted. Now I see the similarity between this and The Power and the Glory. In each story, the main character is being chased by the law everywhere he goes. We know he is not completely innocent but because we are intimate with his thoughts, we care for him.
The opening scene between two rival agents on the cross-channel steamer--I called them D. and L. because I did not wish to localize their conflict--was all I had in mind, and a certain vague ambition to create something legendary out of a contemporary thriller: the hunted man who becomes in turn the hunter, the peaceful man who turns at bay, the man who has learned to love justice by suffering injustice. But what the legend was to be about in modern terms I had no idea.
I fell back for the first and last time in my life on Benzedrine. For six weeks I started each day with a tablet, and renewed the dose at midday. Each day I sat down to work with no idea of what turn the plot might take and each morning I wrote, with the automatism of a planchette, two thousand words instead of my usual stint of five hundred words. In the afternoons The Power and the Glory proceeded towards its end at the same leaden pace, unaffected by the sprightly young thing who was so quickly overtaking it.
The Confidential Agent is one of the few books of mine which I have cared to reread--perhaps because it is not really one of mine. It was as though I were ghosting for another man. D., the chivalrous agent and professor of Romance literature, is not really one of my characters, nor is Forbes, born Furtstein, the equally chivalrous lover. The book moved rapidly because I was not struggling with my own technical problems: I was to all intents ghosting a novel by an old writer who was to die a little before the studio in which I had worked was blown out of existence. All I can say as excuse, and in gratitude to an honoured shade, is that The Confidential Agent is a better than Ford Madox Ford wrote himself when he attempted the genre in Vive Le Roy.
from Ways of Escape, pp.69-71
A few years ago Matt told me about Greene's morning writing habit. So it is true. I really should learn from him, one day.
http://jorielle-music.blogspot.com/2006/07/book-confidential-agent-by-graham.html - Re: 读书笔记posted on 07/08/2006
Thank you 阿姗 for sharing with us.
- posted on 07/09/2006
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller 2005.11.29
I just read Arthur Miller's Death of A Salesman. A powerful play! I was not prepared for the shocking climax. Reminds me of two other plays I read recently. I'm surprised to note that these great plays are all about a seemingly normal family with two grown sons, and the story takes place within one or two days. By the end of the play, we learn some unspeakable sad stories about the family. Are all the American families so tragic, and all family conflicts rooted so deeply in the past?
Death of A Salesman by Arthur Miller
Long Day's Journey into Night by Eugene O'Neill
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams
I'm beginning to enjoy plays. A good play tells a complex and big story in a short time. It shows the genius of the playwright. Nowadays there are movies, but movie scripts are different from plays. In a movie, the story telling doesn't have to be so focused, and many technological devices can be used, but the result is usually less intense. I'd like to read more plays.
http://jorielle-music.blogspot.com/2005/11/play-death-of-salesman.html
Cocktail Party by T.S. Eliot 2005.11.29
After Death of a Salesman, I decided to keep reading plays. I just finished T.S. Eliot's Cocktail Party. This is the first Eliot’s work I've read. I was prepared for him by Leonard Bernstein's Unanswered Question lectures in which he compared Eliot to Stravinsky. I can see exactly what Bernstein meant. Arthur Miller is a classic, a romantic, a Schubert, a Chopin, a Mahler, who takes his subject seriously and writes directly from the heart. Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee William, Albee are the same way. They express the deepest feelings of our existence through their work.
In comparison, T.S. Eliot and Stravinsky are playful with and removed from their subject, in the same way that Calvino and Vonnegut are. Their works are more intellectual construct than emotional outcries. We find ourselves first intrigued by their works, and upon further introspection, we come to see our existence in connection with the outside world.
In the old days, art was also not a tool for self-expression as in the romantic period. Bach and Mozart wrote for the pure creative joy. I try to think of old dramatic works for comparison. Old opera composers such as Monteverdi and Handel wrote to entertain. I read Voltarie's Candide and ancient Roman plays by Platus, and they were in a way playful like Eliot's Cocktail Party. Perhaps we have come to a full circle that goes between the need for self-expression and the celebration of our creativity.
And there is Shakespeare, who is so removed from his subjects but his works are so close to our existence--our feelings and knowledge--that we often forget ourselves in his plays and we are immersed in the world and the life he has created for us in the image of our own world and life.
http://jorielle-music.blogspot.com/2005/11/plays-fictions-music-from-ts-eliot.html - Re: 读书笔记posted on 07/09/2006
阿姗 wrote:what kind's of tragic?
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller 2005.11.29
death?
the story without shocking climax, should be like the real life.
No climax, no paining, shouldn't be too tragic.
- posted on 07/09/2006
阿姗 wrote:
In the old days, art was also not a tool for self-expression as in the romantic period. Bach and Mozart wrote for the pure creative joy. I try to think of old dramatic works for comparison. Old opera composers such as Monteverdi and Handel wrote to entertain. I read Voltarie's Candide and ancient Roman plays by Platus, and they were in a way playful like Eliot's Cocktail Party. Perhaps we have come to a full circle that goes between the need for self-expression and the celebration of our creativity.
This remaind me the definition of Art itself, nowadays "Artists" create the things for diference. I'm tired of the "new things", most of art work make like the way the Japanese design digtal product.
What the real-creativity is? maybe there is something in the centre of circle, it's should be the combine of self-expression and the celebration of our creativity. - posted on 07/09/2006
我不喜欢“推销员之死”,一直喜欢不起来。
阿姗谈到的蒙特威尔第和享德尔的歌剧倒很令我喜欢,享德尔的歌剧
现在在不断发掘,前不久我还看了一场Acis and Galatea(唤醒我对
“变形记”的狂喜)。。。
蒙特威尔第的三部歌剧,百听不腻,百看不腻。
Orfeo
Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria
L'incoronazione di Poppea
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudio_Monteverdi
这就是所谓的“经典”吧!
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