tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-662354893678982752.comments2023-07-31T01:11:16.619+10:00Being in LieuJAAChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17069803445911906934noreply@blogger.comBlogger68125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-662354893678982752.post-54042165463099856342015-10-16T00:45:17.005+11:002015-10-16T00:45:17.005+11:00Great discussion! Thank you all.Great discussion! Thank you all.Kathryn (KL) Lancehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01801435890997786332noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-662354893678982752.post-27359181973102943072015-10-16T00:44:45.580+11:002015-10-16T00:44:45.580+11:00Great discussion! Thank you all.Great discussion! Thank you all.Kathryn (KL) Lancehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01801435890997786332noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-662354893678982752.post-3256760000605753352015-08-16T14:33:05.855+10:002015-08-16T14:33:05.855+10:00Thank you too, Annette. I'm so glad you've...Thank you too, Annette. I'm so glad you've brought his voice to this discussion.<br /><br />jJAAChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17069803445911906934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-662354893678982752.post-55572469949660910992015-08-15T02:47:21.764+10:002015-08-15T02:47:21.764+10:00As my husband, a philosopher, lay dying in the ICU...As my husband, a philosopher, lay dying in the ICU, with tubes in every orifice, I whispered in his ear, "Who said 'We have art in order not to die of the truth'"? He took a pen and pad and wrote "Nietzche". That was his next to last communication. (His last:" Tell George to fix the roof")<br />Thank you for this stimulating exchange. It feels like his spirit is still alive.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02943083387697838713noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-662354893678982752.post-47308904094314311482015-03-19T10:11:38.671+11:002015-03-19T10:11:38.671+11:00I would suggest for the moment David Malouf (I'...I would suggest for the moment David Malouf (I'm thinking especially of his early novel An Imaginary Life, and his most recent collection of essays The Writing Life), the early novels of Christina Stead (I'm only saying the early novels because when I read something from her later work -- I think it was her collection of stories -- it seemed that the fire had gone out, but I cannot be sure of her other works), some of Elizabeth Jolley, Helen Garner, Brian Castro, and the French-Australian Catherine Rey... and while I haven't yet read them, what I've heard makes me want to read the work of Elizabeth Harrower, and the one slim book by Mudrooroo (Wild Cat Falling). Then, much earlier, there is the astonishingly eccentric Such is Life by Joseph Furphy & ditto The Pea Pickers by Eve Langley...JAAChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17069803445911906934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-662354893678982752.post-56631438866808706772015-03-18T02:45:49.857+11:002015-03-18T02:45:49.857+11:00Le vrai est trop simple, il faut y arriver toujour...Le vrai est trop simple, il faut y arriver toujours par le compliqué. -- George Sand<br /><br />which australian writers would you recommend to me, except murnane and patrick white (the exclusion of both is not based on dislike)?*https://www.blogger.com/profile/05680450955867041830noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-662354893678982752.post-88701916710070612052015-03-07T07:32:54.413+11:002015-03-07T07:32:54.413+11:00So crazy, and so not at all but entirely apt, to h...So crazy, and so not at all but entirely apt, to have this random insertion of 'professional voice overs' as part of this conversation about quoting Nietzsche. JAAChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17069803445911906934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-662354893678982752.post-82094744020334874712015-03-07T03:02:47.989+11:002015-03-07T03:02:47.989+11:00thanks for the direct german and the camus french,...thanks for the direct german and the camus french, Death Zen! just to note what I found in wikipedia, it should all be taken with a large grain of salt: "Der Wille zur Macht (1888) is an anthology of material from Nietzsche's notebooks of the 1880s, edited by his friend Peter Gast, supervised by his sister Elisabeth Nietzsche, and misrepresented by her as his unpublished magnum opus. All but 16 of its 1067 fragments can be traced to source texts in the historical-critical edition of Nietzsche's writings, Kritische Gesamtausgabe: Werke, though 204 of the 1067 sections involve patching together paragraphs not originally juxtaposed by Nietzsche, or dividing continuous passages into multiple "aphorisms" and re-arranging their order, and much of the text has been lightly edited to correct punctuation errors. Because of its misrepresentation of Nietzsche's private notes as an all but finished magnum opus, it has been called a "historic forgery"."<br />Nonetheless, I too hope to use the quote (after also being struck by it in the Tartt novel) for my own purposes (art call on genomic integrity)! :)<br />rachelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18372343770794015771noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-662354893678982752.post-9530154138735094502015-01-31T22:00:57.954+11:002015-01-31T22:00:57.954+11:00Wow is just the simple word that may explain that ...Wow is just the simple word that may explain that how much I liked it. It was nicely stuffed with the material I was looking for. It’s great to be here though by chance.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.synapsetalent.com/" rel="nofollow">professional voice overs</a> <br />Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17086551720120046510noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-662354893678982752.post-17298920000657102562014-06-13T23:22:08.865+10:002014-06-13T23:22:08.865+10:00Brilliant! Not at all overkill. Thank you so much....Brilliant! Not at all overkill. Thank you so much.<br /><br />jJAAChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17069803445911906934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-662354893678982752.post-48128430462260355172014-06-13T22:24:09.013+10:002014-06-13T22:24:09.013+10:00It's maddening the way the web has made the so...It's maddening the way the web has made the sourcing of quotations so much more difficult. Whether they're totally mangled, ridiculously misattributed, entirely fabricated, or reduced to "lite" versions, f'd-up quotations are spreading like MRSAs and they're killing off the good ones at the rate of, oh, a thousand a day. :)<br /><br />Anyway, I was once hired for a research task that required me to look into the same sentence of Nietzsche's that prompted your search. The following info from my notes might be of interest:<br /><br />—————————<br />"We have art in order not to die from the truth" appears in no published English translation of <i>The Will to Power</i> (from the <i>Nachlass</i>), in which Nietzsche wrote, « Wir haben die <i>Kunst</i>, damit wir <i>nicht an der Wahrheit zugrunde gehen</i>. » (Italics are Nietzsche's.) <br /><br />In the first English translation, Ludovici rendered that as, "Art is with us in order that we may not perish through truth." Walter Kaufmann's final revision of R.J. Hollingdale's translation of Book III produced the version that's almost always cited by, shall we say, serious writers: "We possess <i>art</i> lest we <i>perish of the truth</i>." (Italics are Kaufmann's.)<br /><br />It's likely that the lite version, "We have art in order not to die from the truth," came directly from <i>Le mythe de Sisyphe</i>, in which Camus wrote: « L'art et rien que l'art, dit Nietzsche, nous avons l'art pour ne point mourir de la vérité. » Justin O'Brien (accurately) rendered it in English as, “'Art and nothing but art,' said Nietzsche; 'we have art in order not to die of the truth.'" <br /><br />"We have art in order not to die of the truth" is all over the place in popular fiction, self-help books, etc., and of course generates nearly 10x as many Google hits as English translations from <i>The Will to Power</i>.<br /><br />Note that Nietzsche's remarks about the function of art in his earlier essay, "Richard Wagner in Bayreuth," from <i>Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen</i> (<i>Untimely Meditations</i> as translated by Hollingdale, or <i>Unfashionable Observations</i> as translated by Richard T. Gray) may be useful when interpreting his later and much more famous statement.<br /><br />For example, from Gray's <i>Unfashionable Observations</i>, p. 279:<br /><br />"But the greatness and indispensability of art lies precisely in the fact that it arouses the <i>semblance</i> of a more simple world, of an easier solution to the riddles of life. No one who suffers from life can do without this semblance, just as no one can do without sleep. The more difficult our knowledge of the laws of life becomes, the more ardently we desire that semblance of simplification, even if only for brief moments—the greater becomes the tension between the universal knowledge of things and the intellectual-moral capacity of the individual. Art exists <i>so that the bow does not break.</i>" (Italics are Gray's.)<br />—————————<br /><br />There's more, but the above is probably already overkill. ;) Thanks for your wonderful post!<br /><br />P.S. to Anthony: Yes, I prefer the (now-standard) translation by Kaufmann, too, for the reasons you mention. Death Zenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16373723664062526406noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-662354893678982752.post-59649883157216795922014-06-11T17:11:25.055+10:002014-06-11T17:11:25.055+10:00Here is jaac ventriloquising Anthony:
Hello,
I e...Here is jaac ventriloquising Anthony:<br /><br />Hello,<br /><br />I enjoyed your post about hunting down a Nietzsche fragment, and tried to post the following comment, but I am never able to successfully comment on Blogspot blogs: <br /><br />The ambiguities of translation. I much prefer the potency of the second translation, the richness of possession against the flatter, subtler 'have', the richness of allusion in 'lest, despite its archaic nature, and all the implication of destruction in 'perish'.<br /><br />Not sure if you are able to add that comment on my behalf. If not, not a problem, wanted anyway to let you know that I really enjoy what you do on being in lieu.<br /><br />Anthony<br />@timesflow<br />timesflowstemmed.com JAAChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17069803445911906934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-662354893678982752.post-57097660201503731962014-01-22T10:41:24.716+11:002014-01-22T10:41:24.716+11:00Thank you for visiting, Davidly, and for pointing ...Thank you for visiting, Davidly, and for pointing out what I could have been more explicit about in my post. Yes indeed -- the near homonymous aspect of the names in this not-quite synopsis is extraordinary. In fact it might very well give a concentrated impression of Castro's crunchings between Brendan Costa and Christopher Brennan in his novella. The deliberate playing around with his own name, too, and somewhat with his identity -- like Costa, Castro is of part Chinese descent and is an academic and writer (although in Adelaide now, not in Sydney) -- is wonderfully unsettling, in the manner of -- while also very different from -- his fellow Adelaidian, J M Coetzee. The name Bernadette Brennan, however, was a pure gift to Castro's project. How he (and she) must have chuckled! She, apparently, bears no familial connection at all to the equally present-in-our-historical-world poet-academic Christopher Brennan -- except for teaching in the very same department at the same university not yet a century apart. Perhaps the very detailed differences of these almost doublings and triplings, and the easefulness of the jarrings in the narrative flow -- all that interferes so gently with an apparently straightforward read -- both arise from and are constitutive of anxiety in writing. JAAChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17069803445911906934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-662354893678982752.post-26863630474088830482014-01-22T03:24:35.490+11:002014-01-22T03:24:35.490+11:00Thanks, Jen, for your comment to me over at Time F...Thanks, Jen, for your comment to me over at Time Flow Stemmed, your thoughts on the subject, and - to the extent that it is such - this tip.<br /><br />I cannot resist noting at the outset that within this brief synopsis appear the near homonymous Costa, Castro, Brendan, Brennan, and Brennan, the somewhat anti-mnemonic effect of which no literary review would be complete without. Talk about looking back a little and checking!davidlyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04754707934311038544noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-662354893678982752.post-54821810775376588542013-12-22T13:12:40.155+11:002013-12-22T13:12:40.155+11:00The trilogy isn't so very different from '...The trilogy isn't so very different from 'Spurious' the blog, and I do think there is something missing in the experience of reading these pieces. Iyer himself would probably identify this something as the very thing he's pushing against -- writing's belief in itself as literariness since, as he puts it in his White Review manifesto 'Nude in your hot tub, facing the abyss, (a literary manifesto after the end of literature and manifestos)', 'we are all born too late for Literature'. And yet, and yet... There is an aspect of the great incisiveness and honesty of his fictional writings which is so aware of its gestural aptness that it works hard to avoid the possibility that, even now at this supposed other end of literature (which position I can't quite agree with as it suggests that our 'writer-ancestors' were little more than dupes, and also places someone like Krasznahorkai, by inference, in an odd position), incisiveness and honesty could still be turned into moments of reading that push beyond the nostalgia for Literature. That take us by surprise.<br /><br />Thanks for your comment, Anirudh.JAAChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17069803445911906934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-662354893678982752.post-74185226330446150262013-12-22T05:56:50.585+11:002013-12-22T05:56:50.585+11:00I'm yet to read Iyer's trilogy. I tried &#...I'm yet to read Iyer's trilogy. I tried 'Spurious' but it seemed to try too hard, which didn't work for me.<br /><br />Nice to see a new post.akhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15385267278249934192noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-662354893678982752.post-21726780345732331032013-06-15T11:44:23.041+10:002013-06-15T11:44:23.041+10:00It sounds haunting.It sounds haunting.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-662354893678982752.post-66577063785756273432013-06-12T09:44:43.914+10:002013-06-12T09:44:43.914+10:00Why is it that, two years after Thierry Marchaisse...Why is it that, two years after Thierry Marchaisse's correction of my translation of the title of his piece (almost to the day), I have only now changed it? Why not earlier? Perhaps I thought it more 'honest' to leave my original title as it was, given that this series of comments would have elaborated on what might have been wrong with it. Today, however, I have embraced the formal possibilities -- permissions -- of the weblog. After all, my post is only a sign.JAAChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17069803445911906934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-662354893678982752.post-8745543254239426352013-03-15T08:56:31.401+11:002013-03-15T08:56:31.401+11:00Yes, indeed. This is the strange drama, I think, o...Yes, indeed. This is the strange drama, I think, of writing anything.JAAChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17069803445911906934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-662354893678982752.post-9616591222719768212013-03-15T06:28:45.602+11:002013-03-15T06:28:45.602+11:00I write down other people's sentences and send...I write down other people's sentences and send them to friends or put them up online occasionally. When I see others writing down sentence after sentence written by other people - on blogs or or Facebook - I envy their reading discipline. That having read, they type what they like and preserve it. But I worry that it might be a sickness. Running away. Writing my own sentences is also only a temporary respite but I seem to struggle through something when I write sentences of my own, even if they are sentences on the sentences of others. That struggle is lacking when I copy the sentences of others without reflecting on them and sometimes, in the hurry to copy and share, without even attending to them.akhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15385267278249934192noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-662354893678982752.post-76877380630988085572013-02-15T15:55:51.548+11:002013-02-15T15:55:51.548+11:00For a spirited dusting out of my coal hearth, Kerr...For a spirited dusting out of my coal hearth, Kerryn Galsworthy's essay is a good place to start: http://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/what-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-australian-literature/JAAChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17069803445911906934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-662354893678982752.post-81587575016946089712013-02-06T21:34:07.324+11:002013-02-06T21:34:07.324+11:00the overlooked, the digressive voice has a far bet...the overlooked, the digressive voice has a far better chance. Perhaps this is the very reason it is often excised. After all, who wants to be reminded? As Frederick concludes. <a href="http://claremontplumbing.com/" rel="nofollow">plumber claremont</a><br />Sammyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13182526765240519199noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-662354893678982752.post-80093611452152103002012-10-09T22:33:13.637+11:002012-10-09T22:33:13.637+11:00Hi Anirudh,
Thank you for your comment. Yes, they...Hi Anirudh,<br /><br />Thank you for your comment. Yes, they are each of them fascinating writers: Josipovici and Murnane. I have the latest Murnane and look forward to reading it -- and no doubt blogging about it -- soon. When Murnane taught creative writing, I gather, he was a fierce, uncompromising teacher who didn't believe that writing could be taught, and yet I admire his uncompromising stance in his writing. Thank you for the link to those letters. I look forward to reading through them.JAAChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17069803445911906934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-662354893678982752.post-80566210815288587782012-10-09T21:48:05.013+11:002012-10-09T21:48:05.013+11:00Hi JAAC, I came across this blog via Steve Mitchel...Hi JAAC, I came across this blog via Steve Mitchelmore's Twitter account and stayed to read about two of my favourite writers - Josipovici and Murnane - both of whom I see on few blogs but always stay to read about when I do see them since, even if what is written or quoted is not new to me, I am interested simply in seeing how these two writers have mattered to the reader. <br /><br />I looked for 'The Breathing Author' after reading of it here and found it at: http://tinyurl.com/9dobpbo.<br /><br />I have read only 'Barley Patch' by Murnane so far - read it twice in the space of two months. It was completely unlike anything I had read. I found refreshing - no, inspiring - the sense it gives off of just not doing (in writing) what one does not want to do. Entirely doing away with deadwood.akhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15385267278249934192noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-662354893678982752.post-46928964433545546362012-09-05T16:20:03.044+10:002012-09-05T16:20:03.044+10:00Thank you too for your thoughtful response. Your r...Thank you too for your thoughtful response. Your reading of her essay is admirably clear. While I very much hold with Knoop that digression can be read as a 'parallel narrative strategy' -- and even concede that its designation can be subject to interpretation -- I consider her attempt to minimise its significance to be unhelpful. Her own use of the term is rather slippery. On the one hand, she rightly questions any assumptions about the paramount importance of plot, particularly when it comes to texts such as Kundera's, which rely, as she puts it, on a unity of theme rather than a unity of action. This is the position from which she is able to state: 'If everything in the text is used to create a unique ensemble, then none of its elements are digressive'(p. 118). And yet so easily does the plot-defined digression slip back into the discussion, such as on p. 123, where she declares that she 'would not call [L'Immortalité] digressive, as it is impossible to discern a single main plot...', after which she goes on to consider that one plot line might be considered a digression from another in a 'wider, heterogeneous plot'. In her argument, interpretation precedes any determination of digression. However, as we have just seen, it also seems possible to state categorically that there is no digression where the structure of a text makes such a finding too uncertain. Perhaps, leaving aside whether any textual feature might be defined as 'digression' per se, further discussion of the effect of this 'narrative strategy' in Kundera's novels might have allowed some means of passing beyond this difficulty. By concluding that the digressive features in Kundera's texts are only an 'illusion', she misses the opportunity to investigate what Susan Sontag might have called the particular 'erotics' of his texts.<br /><br />best wishes,<br /><br />jenJAAChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17069803445911906934noreply@blogger.com