On May 25, 2010, at 2:32 AM, John Carl wrote: > yo Adrie, > > On Mon, May 24, 2010 at 1:31 PM, Fam. Kintziger-Karaca < > [email protected]> wrote: > >> >> ps, probably of no importance , but i can read Kant in German, because of >> my German ancestors >> and doing my military service in Germany, long time ago. >> >> Regards , Adrie >> >> >> > Caught my eye because at our weekly lunch meeting today it was mentioned, by > Gaetane who speaks French natively, english as a second language and Polish > with some Russian, that reading Tolstoy in Russian is a far cry from > reading the translations.
Hi John, I've been thinking this too. I got burnt reading some bad Nietzsche translations. But I've wondered about English translations of Buddhist texts and English translations of Plato and Aristotle too. > > Man I wish I spoke Russian; a beautiful language. > > However, what I'm really interested in these days is Faust. Never read it, > never thought much about it except for a passage in ZAMM that caught my eyes > and rang my bell. Pirsig talking to Chris, talking about pursuing ghosts > and failure. For some reason it makes me goose pimply. When I read it and > moreso today. > > There's a passage I read tonight in Royce, talking about Faust... > > "Faust is a man in whom are combined all the strengths and weakness of the > romantic spirit. No Excellence he deems of worth so long as any excellence > is beyond his grasp. Therefore his despair at the sight of the great world > of life. So small a part of it is his. > > He knows that he can never grow great enough to grasp the whole, or any > finite part of the whole. Yet there remains the hopeless desire for this > wholeness. Nothing but the infinite can be satisfying. Hence the despair > of the early scenes of the first part. Like Byron's Manfred, Faust seeks > death; but Faust is kept from it by no fear of worse things beyond, only by > an accidental re-awakening of old childish emotions. He feels that he has > no business with life, and is wholly a creature of accident. He is clearly > conscious only of a longing for a full experience. But this experience he > conceives as mainly a passive one." Faust? German? > > See, what gets me here with Royce's description is "the accidental > re-awakening of childish emotions." > > That seems important to me. That there is something in the re-awakening of > childish emotions that signifies more, much more than Bo's cold-blooded > "reversion to lower levels of hierarchical patterns". This isn't any sort > of "lowerness". This is profound. > > Royce explains some more: > > "The satisfactory pleasure can never be given him, and why? Because he will > always remain active. Satisfaction would mean repose, repose would mean > death. Life is activity. The meaning of a man is work, and that no one is > wholly lost so long as the power of accomplishment remains his. But if work > is the essence of life, (head hands and heart-jc) then satisfaction must be > found not in feelings but in deeds. > > The world is good if we can make it so. Not otherwise." > > Royce, Pessimism and Modern Thoughts > > > The world and what we make of it. > > Two fountains of knowledge for your aesthetic considerations: > > http://www.wimp.com/dubaifountain/ OH MY GOD!!! That was soooooo beautiful... The Moors? ___ Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
