languagehat.com: UP OR DOWN.

languagehat.com: UP OR DOWN.

is about the poem and the song "А напоследок я скажу".

and the comments give a lot of different great translation attempts; saw that page too late and couldn't submit mine:

When it all ends I will just say -
You have your leave with no obligation
As into madness I descend -
Or rise to folly’s higher elevation.

What was your love - you tasted doom
Just fleetingly, but what’s the matter -
You ruined me - unskillfully,
And did not know any better...

A cruel miss... A hunter must
Expect no pardon having  bungled -
A body walks and sees the light
But it is empty and abandoned.

Few thoughts still animate the head
But hands are hanging in despair
Like flock of birds across the sky
All smells and sounds leave the air...

When it all ends I will just say...

The Angel of History

The Angel of History

A Klee drawing named “Angelus Novus” shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating.  His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread.  This is how one pictures the angel of history.  His face is turned toward the past.  Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe that keeps piling ruin upon ruin and hurls it in front of his feet.  The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed.  But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them.  The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.                                                         

 — Walter Benjamin,

  Ninth Thesis on the Philosophy of History

The drawing was a surprise. After reading the above, I expected something Durer-like. Poor Benjamin had quite an imagination.

Gilbert Chesterton: The Man Who Knew Too Much: Chapter IV. The Bottomless Well - Free Online Library

Gilbert Chesterton: The Man Who Knew Too Much: Chapter IV. The Bottomless Well - Free Online Library:

"Do you think England is so little as all that?" said Fisher, with a warmth in his cold voice, "that it can't hold a man across a few thousand miles. You lectured me with a lot of ideal patriotism, my young friend; but it's practical patriotism now for you and me, and with no lies to help it. You talked as if everything always went right with us all over the world, in a triumphant crescendo culminating in Hastings. I tell you everything has gone wrong with us here, except Hastings. He was the one name we had left to conjure with, and that mustn't go as well, no, by God! It's bad enough that a gang of infernal Jews should plant us here, where there's no earthly English interest to serve, and all hell beating up against us, simply because Nosey Zimmern has lent money to half the Cabinet. It's bad enough that an old pawnbroker from Bagdad should make us fight his battles; we can't fight with our right hand cut off. Our one score was Hastings and his victory, which was really somebody else's victory. Tom Travers has to suffer, and so have you."

Then, after a moment's silence, he pointed toward the bottomless well and said, in a quieter tone:

"I told you that I didn't believe in the philosophy of the Tower of Aladdin. I don't believe in the Empire growing until it reaches the sky; I don't believe in the Union Jack going up and up eternally like the Tower. But if you think I am going to let the Union Jack go down and down eternally, like the bottomless well, down into the blackness of the bottomless pit, down in defeat and derision, amid the jeers of the very Jews who have sucked us dry--no I won't, and that's flat; not if the Chancellor were blackmailed by twenty millionaires with their gutter rags, not if the Prime Minister married twenty Yankee Jewesses, not if Woodville and Carstairs had shares in twenty swindling mines. If the thing is really tottering, God help it, it mustn't be we who tip it over."

Well, this was rather commonplace as a political view in pre-war Europe, I suppose... And someone is always after the good old country in Chesterton. Funny that some people even in his time thought these were the Catholics like himself, on top of his list of usual suspects. Then again, Father Brown's villain is frequently a Protestant - when he is not a materialist.

languagehat.com: THE LITTLE GOLDEN CALF.

languagehat.com: THE LITTLE GOLDEN CALF.

Reading about the adventures of Ilf and Petrov in English translation leaves me with a mixed feeling. On the one hand, I understand how this is terribly interesting for anyone who is studying Soviet culture. The book is indeed revealing in many ways, and was so popular that references to it became a part of the language itself. On the other hand, the admirers of the book seem to forget something that it does not show: two talented provincial journalists making a name for themselves in the capital by ridiculing the downtrodden in a political system that was becoming more and more cruel every day. I don't know if I am correct in noticing some similarity in style between I&P's writings and the journalism of young Trotsky. What I think they have in common is a sincere disdain for people that don't share their point of view, and a naïve faith that their talent, youth, vigor make them closer to the essence of life and gives them a natural right to ridicule those who couldn't - or didn't want to - join the "festival of life" ("праздник жизни", words that they made an idiom).

Стихи Льва Лосева

Ссылки на любимые стихи Лосева, на съеденье поисковикам:

ВАВИЛОН: Тексты и авторы: Лев ЛОСЕВ: "Послесловие": Книга стихов: I

ВАВИЛОН: Тексты и авторы: Лев ЛОСЕВ: "Послесловие": Книга стихов: II

А вот еще, более старое: "Стихотворения"

25 декабря 1997 года

В сенях помойная застыла лужица. В слюду стучится снегопад.
Корова телится, ребенок серится, портянки сушатся, щи кипят.

Вот этой жизнью, вот этим способом существования белковых тел
живем и радуемся, что Господом ниспослан нам живой удел.

Над миром черное торчит поветрие, гуляет белая галиматья.
В снежинках чудная симметрия небытия и бытия.

The Management Myth

The Management Myth

I can't but solidarize with someone kicking the manager when the manager isn't looking, having been mostly on the receiving end of performance management myself.

That disclaimer having been made, I can say that Eckel's (and, even more so, the "New-Yorker" article authors's) - position is something I find very revealing and sympathetic. But I am far from being what you call a disinterested party, and I know it.

And, when I think about that, I can find that modern programmer is actually managed better than your average intellectual worker of the past: we are permitted to keep a semblance of self-respect most of the time. One can say this is what "scientific management" is really about, all the "great manager" myths notwithstanding.

М. Л. Гаспаров Прошлое для будущего

М. Л. Гаспаров Прошлое для будущего: "Прошедшее нужно знать не потому, что оно прошло, а потому, что, уходя, не умело убрать своих последствий. В.О. Ключевский"


"XVIII век был веком движения культуры вширь — среди невежественного дворянства. Начало XIX века было временем движения этой дворянской культуры вглубь — от поверхностного ознакомления с европейской цивилизацией, к творческому ее преобразованию у Жуковского, Пушкина и Лермонтова. Середина и вторая половина XIX века — опять движение культуры вширь, среди невежественной буржуазии; и опять формы культуры упрощаются, популяризируются, приноравливаются к уровню потребителя. Начало XX века — новый общественный слой уже насыщен элементарной культурой, начинается насыщение более глубинное — русский модернизм, время Станиславского и Блока. Наконец, революция — и культура опять движется вширь, среди невежественного пролетариата и крестьянства. Сейчас мы на пороге новой полосы распространения культуры вглубь: на периферии еще не закончилось поверхностное освоение культуры, а в центре уже начались новые и не всем понятные попытки переработки усвоенного: они называются «авангард»."

languagehat.com: BARABTARLO.

languagehat.com: BARABTARLO.

LH quotes a distinguished scholar of Nabokov:

"Помочь общему возрожденію не только словесности, но и вообще русской цивилизаціи могло бы безусловное и массовое отшатываніе рѣшительно отъ всего, произведеннаго совѣтской властью, какъ отшатываются съ отвращеніемъ отъ порчи или заразы, и это едва ли не въ первую очередь относится къ рѣчи, во всѣхъ ея формахъ, въ томъ числѣ и письменной (литературный языкъ — послѣдняя и наименьшая забота).

That a scholar of this caliber could fail to know that the orthographic reform was not in fact Soviet (although the Soviets did carry it on) perhaps shows the degree of his immersion in his subject.

The LH article and discussion not only points to this -- slightly ridiculous for a Soviet-born native speaker -- position of prof. Barabtarlo, but also explains his peculiar name (turns out to be a hyphenation of two Jewish names, Barab-Tarlo).

Another thing that strikes me in Barabtarlo (and the orthographic peculiarity has almost made me forget it) is this:

Помочь общему возрожденію не только словесности, но и вообще русской цивилизаціи ...

 Surely "Russian civilization"  sounds too much like the post-soviet patriotic press (unless he means "civilization in Russia", something the Russian original doesn't seem to support). Next thing to expect is "Russian logic" or "Russian truth"... I know that this view has a long tradition, it's just mildly surprising given whom it comes from; then again, maybe not.

Бунинская "Книга"

... и проблемы английского перевода на Language Hat: http://www.languagehat.com/archives/003652.php

Читаю Michael Braddick, God's Fury, England's Fire

God's Fury, England's Fire: A New History of the English Civil Wars
by Michael Braddick

Подзаголовок: "Новая история английской гражданской войны". До этой книги я как-то не представлял себе, до какой степени гражданская война была вызвана внеэкономическими факторами. Конечно, из наших школьных учебников торчала борода Маркса; кроме того, в те времена были совершенно объективные экономические трудности. То, что на самом деле страсти разгорались вовсе не вокруг лозунгов типа "землю крестьянам" или "хлеб голодным", а вокруг Реформации, причем экономические, финансовые и политические вопросы были явно на втором плане, явилось для меня некоторым сюрпризом. Другой сюрприз -- это то, до какой степени эта гражданская война была катастрофическим и определяющим событием в истории Англии. Прежде я читал только Гизо, а у Гизо, конечно, были свои идеи; его история английской гражданской войны обращается, конечно, к современным Гизо французам с педагогической целью: показать, как у англичан все было прилично, цивилизованно, и что лучший строй -- конституционная монархия. Так что интересно...

Isaiah Berlin and Counter-Enlightement

From a discussion on Language Hat:

"I'm reading about that right now in Isaiah Berlin's "The Counter-Enlightenment," where he talks about Vico and Hamann and Herder and all those guys who saw difficulties with the program. People sometimes think Berlin was taking their side (I remember being quite taken aback by his long and quite favorable piece about the repellent Joseph de Maistre some years ago)"

As regards Berlin's essay on de Maistre, I rather liked it, and was also grateful for the epigraph from Hugo:

Un roi, c'est un homme équestre,
Personnage à numéro,
En marge duquel de Maistre
Écrit : Roi, lisez : Bourreau.

As for the counter-enlightement, for me, the most important observation of Berlin's was that, paradoxically, the Enlightement thinkers shared with the conservatives and Christian theologists of all kinds one fundamental approach: that all really important questions could be formulated, and that they all have answers that are not in contradiction with each other; as compared to this fundamental assumption it was not as important whether the answers were revealed by God, or were discoverable by science, or both, or whether all of them were knowable. Both the Enlightement thinkers and their early critics were living in a universe that could, in principle, be understood inside a single, non-contradictory, philosophical system.

Enter people like Machiavelli, saying that one can't be an efficient ruler and have a clear conscience, or people like Herder or even Montesquieu, saying that every culture can be only understood in its own terms. That was, for Berlin, at the root of both the Romantic movement and his own understanding of life as a tragic choice, not the search for a way to both eat and preserve the proverbial pie. What makes the choice tragic, in the original sense of the word, is that you have to reject something to have something else. This, I think, was the reason Berlin was trying to "stress test" the Enlightement and was so interested in its critics and in all manner of "against the current" thinkers.

Beckwith III: Empires of the Silk Road

(previous posts on the subject here and here)

Finally finished "Empires of the Silk Road". I must say that the epilogue has pleasantly surprised me. I think it deserves to be published separately (was it perhaps intended to be published separately and only included in the book due to some vagary of the publishing process?)

Overall, I am very glad I have read the book and the epilogue. It will definitely forever change my way of reading "conventional" history centred on urban civilizations, and forever change the way I will be thinking about nomads. Beckwith, in fact, promotes the view that "pure" nomads are fiction; the Central Eurasian cultures were, according to him, always complex, with the nomads being just one link of a complicated chain of interaction between agriculturalists, merchants and pastoralists.

There are, however, things that seem less evident. First of all, the whole idea of a "cultural complex", when traced over cultures spanning continents and millennia, seems a little arbitrary. Someone tracing recurrent cultural similarities reliably must, of course, be on to something. But this something could be telling more about the author than about the subject of the study. This is, again, akin to what Lev Gumilev used to call "passionary" people and cultures (пассионарность, пассионарии). Gumilev could have been on to something when observing that historical change comes in waves. But his definition of "passionary" is such that only Gumilev himself was able to say if it applied to any particular culture, person or period or not.

"Central European cultural Complex" could be something of this sort. I am just being naïvely suspicious here, it could be a well-established term in the field for all I know.

If we are saying that peoples that had similar customs as regards a ruler's bodyguard and similar elements of folklore belong to the same cultural complex and must have deeper similarities, are we being a bit arbitrary? All people eat and drink -- is it cultural? All rulers -- modern ones included -- have a bodyguard of some sort; tales of a prince overthrowing an unlawful ruler are necessarily common, because most political collisions in a tribal society or a monarchy are about someone ousting the "bad" chieftain, prince or king (the victor is always the rightful ruler, of course). This means that -- at least as far as a non-specialist can see -- there is a possibility of being arbitrary and always finding a similarity when one is required to prove a point. There are similarities that are not meaningful at all: both Henry VIII and Ivan IV had many wives and had some former ones executed or imprisoned; both kings were pious, learned and had some theological ambitions; is it significant culturally, or is it similar circumstances producing similar personalities? Again, I am no specialist; Beckwith is one. But it is this part seems most suspicious to me -- if it says more about myself than it does about Beckwith, I have no idea.

Then there is his moral and aesthetic approach: Central Eurasians as poor victims of evil Modernism. Modernism, for Beckwith, seems to be the root of all evil and the biggest injustice in history. I beg to differ. The biggest injustice in history, for me, is the fact that for millennia history was like a history of a prison camp -- and written by the guards, too. We only know of warriors, sometimes eclipsed by the shamans. To caricature Beckwith, then, one might say that he seems to disapprove of Stravinsky more than of Tamerlane. Not only does his moralistic approach seem to interfere with his study. It also seems to be very wrong fundamentally.

Толстой, Алданов и смысл истории

Опять интересная статья Language Hat: WAR AND PEACE: THE SUMMING UP.

Я опять не удержался и, конечно, вставил свои две копейки про Алданова -- рискуя, очевидно, прослыть маньяком, потому что я туда уже про Алданова писал.

А интересно, что дискуссия как раз пошла в направлении, которое Алданова -- и в "Загадке Толстого", книге, которую я сразу вспомнил всвязи с этой статьей, и в "Ульмской ночи" -- интересовала чрезвычайно. Я даже думаю, что добрая половина алдановского интереса к Толстому именно от этого. Дискуссия пошла о роли случайности и закономерности в истории. Конечно, всякий, кто сдавал экзамены по марксизму-ленинизму, сразу при этих словах хватается за то, за что он хватается, чтоб истребить, испепелить и вообще къебенезировать. Но ведь, правда, хороший вопрос. Что девятнадцатый век без Наполеона? Что английская история без Генриха VIII? Но, с другой стороны, мировые войны и религиозные реформы не вполне определяются прихотями одного человека.

А у Алданова все очень интересно. В кратком пересказе получается, что противоположность случайности и закономерности -- в истории -- мнимая, потому что все, в сущности, случайность, так как ничего не определяется единственной причинно-следственной цепочкой. То, что марксисты считают основной причиной -- это необходимое, но не достаточное условие; масса других факторов, часть из которых вполне субъективны или индивидуальны, могут дать нашим "объективным предпосылкам" реализоваться, а могут -- и не дать. А тут еще то обстоятельство, что "задним числом" всегда можно найти предпосылки чего угодно. Так что "объективная необходимость" вместе с самими марксистами, ее провозглашающими -- вовсе не необходимость. Алданов приводит два примера: Девятое Термидора (во Франции, конечно) и Двадцать Пятое Октября (в России, конечно) -- одно событие он изучал по документам во французских архивах, другому сам был свидетелем. И вот -- обоих легко могло не быть, как он убедительно показывает. И ведь оба этих события изменили мир. При этом для обоих событий характерно не только очень сильное влияние случайных факторов (дождь в Париже, Ленин в Петербурге), но и очень сильная зависимость обоих от одного человека (без Ленина в Петербурге, например, восстания, очевидно, не было бы: именно он переубедил всех остальных; а его там легко могло бы и не быть). Еще более неустойчиво, добавлю от себя, начало Первой Мировой: легко могла начаться не так, не тогда и течь по-другому. А ведь буквально все в следующие сто лет от этого зависит.

А про Толстого и его понимание истории мне запомнилась у Алданова ироническая деталь: взялся человек доказать, что личность не играет роли в истории, и выбрал для этого, в качестве примера, Наполеона: надо быть Толстым, чтоб выбрать такой неподатливый материал.

Beckwith II: Empires of the Silk Road: Lev Gumilev and Bertrand Russel

Continuing to chew through Empires of the Silk Road (prvious post on the subject here)

Reading Beckwith, I definitely have some thoughts to share (or, at the very least, to note for myself); however, I must stress -- let's say, as a disclaimer -- that those are naïve views; not necessarily in the sense of youthful inexperience, but in the sense of coming from someone who doesn't and can't, through lack of knowledge, distinguish what is commonplace in modern Orientalism from what is peculiar to Beckwith. I might then be repeating what everybody knows, or trying to force an open door, or replying to ideas that have nothing to do with what Beckwith really meant. The authors overwhelming scholarship, amazing depth of knowledge and erudition commands great respect. What I write about the book is written for the fun of writing it, no more, no less.

The above being said, reading Beckwith gives me a strong sentiment of awe mixed with a definite déjà vu. Beckwith's knowledge and ability for synthesis is definitely awe-inspiring. However, the whole work, from the start, reminded me of something. First of all, of course, as already mentioned in the previous post on the subject, it reminded me of Lev Gumilev. In more than one way, in fact -- more on this later. After that -- Spengler, of course.

The more I read, the more it feels like being presented backwards. Someone -- who happened to be an orientalist -- has an axe to grind with all things modern. Especially modern art. Believes he is living in the last age of civilization (at least the civilization he likes). Then works this idée fixe of his back to the depth of his professional knowledge and emerges with a historical theory of everything -- a theory that only confirms his initial feelings of times out of joint. He then proceeds to write a book that starts far afield and deep in subject matter -- only to bring the reader to the author's original bias as a logical conclusion. Lev Gumilev was, I believe, of this mould. Beckwith appears to fit it even better.

Another thing that seems sadly familiar is the way it all comes back to the cult of warrior hero. Such cults are not necessarily limited to historians or authors of historical literature (Isaac Babel admired the warrior-heroes of the Russian Civil war that he participated in, his intoxication with violence being nearly total). This infatuation with violent freedom seems to be always aesthetic at core. It is all about the modern world, or the world created by sedentary, cleptocratic, urban culture being ugly, and that of the free and violent warrior being beautiful. As Bertrand Russel wrote when describing the romantics, they admire the tigers, not the sheep, and want to set the tiger free to admire the mighty leaps of the beast.

Lizok's Bookshelf: Listed in the Zero Years

Lizok's Bookshelf: Listed in the Zero Years: "To paraphrase, the continuing influences of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky make it difficult to export Russian writers, but Alma sees value in what “could be the classics of the future.”"

It's interesting how a -- controversial, at best -- concept, that seeks to explain a whole national literature in one sweeping phrase, has a life of its own...

What is being paraphrased is itself something that is likely borrowed from Joseph Brodsky's "Катастрофы в воздухе" ("Catastrophes in the Air"): "The trouble with Russian writers is that they still appear to be writing under the shadow of their nineteenth-century masters and try to out-Tolstoy and out-Dostoevsky each other all the time. This makes them very hard to export outside Russia. But on the other hand these books could be the classics of the future, so it would be a crime if they were to be lost to an English readership."

What Brodsky once wrote was: "Толстовская гора отбрасывала длинную тень, и, чтоб из-под нее выбраться, нужно было либо превзойти Толстого в точности, либо предложить качественно новое языковое содержание" -- quoting by my Russian edition; approximately: "Tolstoy was a mountain that was casting a long shadow, so to get out of that shadow one had to either out-perform Tolstoy in exactness of describing life, or to offer radically new language content".

The 25-year old lecture by Brodsky is just one -- admittedly, one very popular -- opinion. The reason someone from a publishing house would try to use it to prop ones view of "what is the matter with Russian literature" might well have something to do with marketing: nothing's bad about being exotic to the English reader and at the same time like the classics, right?

Empires of the Silk Road

This post in Language Hat blog and its sequels (I have also posted some comments) made me want to buy the book:

Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present by Christopher I. Beckwith

Will do this today -- looks like I am in for some education.

The preface of the book, where it goes:

"The warriors of Central Eurasia were not barbarians. They were heroes, and the epics of their peoples sing their undying fame."


reminds me of Lev Gumilev:

"Существовало мнение, что кочевая и китайская культуры несоизмеримы, что кочевники были дикарями, вторгавшимися в цивилизованный Китай, что Великая степь-китайская периферия, а "проблема хуннов-это проблема Китая" [6]. Против этого мнения говорит все доподлинно известное об истории Центральной Азии, и все-таки такое мнение существовало и не всегда встречало возражения. Почему? XIX век оставил нам в наследство концепцию, согласно которой только оседлые народы создали прогрессивную цивилизацию, а в Центральной Азии будто бы царили либо застой, либо варварство и дикость. Самое плохое в этой концепции было не то, что она неправильна, а то, что она предлагалась как достижение науки, не подлежащее критике. В этом-опасность любого предвзятого мнения."

Excellent translation of Gumilev

"Жираф":

http://www.languagehat.com/archives/003470.php

Some translations can be so truly amazing.

Interestingly, this seems -- to me -- to be producing the same impression as the original: a mixture of romantic swing with something very deliberately exquisite. The impossibility of a cute miniature painted with broad strokes.

Маяковский

Ах, Маяковский, ах, злодей,
Он партию любил, ребята,
Шершавым языком плаката.