[MD] daffy

[MarshaV]

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 <
> kintziger_karaca at hotmail.com> 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?    


 
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