The plague

originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
Of course Nabokov is better than Bellow. Derek Jeter is better than Phil Rizzuto. Milton is better than Andrew Marvell. Beethoven is better than Schubert. George Eliot is better than Thackeray. No reason for culling.
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I'd give Milton a 98, but you can't dance to him.
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I did the points to lit greats once on the Squires Board to distinguish between "we can tell x is great" and I can give every wine in the world a precise point. He didn't think it was funny. I, by the way, think you guys are all overrating most of these people. If we are giving "To His Coy Mistress" a 99, what will you have left for poems by Shelley, Dickinson, Yeats, etc., etc. And if Nabokov gets a 99, I take it the biggies of early 20th century Modernism, Ulysses, Magic Mountain, Man Without Qualities, all get 110? The point of my original post really was that "better" wasn't an interesting concept unless your aim was culling. Mine isn't.
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Yeah, good point. This is why I am not a professional critic...

Still, I like "To His Coy Mistress" as well as those poems from Shelley and certainly Dickinson (well, better actually), but then Marvell's metaphors associated with vegetable time scales appeal to my own sense of geologic time scales...
 
originally posted by Carl Steefel:
Still, I like "To His Coy Mistress" as well as those poems from Shelley and certainly Dickinson (well, better actually), but then Marvell's metaphors associated with vegetable time scales appeal to my own sense of geologic time scales...
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Great response.

My favorite poem with the word "mistress" in the title, however, must go to John Donne's "Elegy XX: To His Mistress Going to Bed."

Other poems with "mistress" in the title...

...oh, I'll stop.
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
originally posted by Yixin:
Bellow is for adolescent wannabe Eng Lit majors.
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I never met an actual adolescent wannabe Eng Lit major who liked Bellow. Few actual just post-adolescent Eng Lit majors like Bellow.

I agree with Sharon. Of course Nabokov is better than Bellow. Derek Jeter is better than Phil Rizzuto. Milton is better than Andrew Marvell. Beethoven is better than Schubert. George Eliot is better than Thackeray. No reason for culling.
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With the exception of Marvell I'd gladly give the others up.
 
Great response.

My favorite poem with the word "mistress" in the title, however, must go to John Donne's "Elegy XX: To His Mistress Going to Bed."

Other poems with "mistress" in the title...

...oh, I'll stop.
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That's some poem.
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
Of course Nabokov is better than Bellow. Derek Jeter is better than Phil Rizzuto. Milton is better than Andrew Marvell. Beethoven is better than Schubert. George Eliot is better than Thackeray. No reason for culling.
Click to expand...

I'd give Milton a 98, but you can't dance to him.
Click to expand...

I did the points to lit greats once on the Squires Board to distinguish between "we can tell x is great" and I can give every wine in the world a precise point. He didn't think it was funny. I, by the way, think you guys are all overrating most of these people. If we are giving "To His Coy Mistress" a 99, what will you have left for poems by Shelley, Dickinson, Yeats, etc., etc. And if Nabokov gets a 99, I take it the biggies of early 20th century Modernism, Ulysses, Magic Mountain, Man Without Qualities, all get 110? The point of my original post really was that "better" wasn't an interesting concept unless your aim was culling. Mine isn't.
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How can anyone only assign 110 points to The Man Without Qualities? I know, I know, it wasn't finished. But that still doesn't mean it's only 10% over perfection.
 
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
originally posted by Carl Steefel:
Still, I like "To His Coy Mistress" as well as those poems from Shelley and certainly Dickinson (well, better actually), but then Marvell's metaphors associated with vegetable time scales appeal to my own sense of geologic time scales...
Click to expand...

Great response.

My favorite poem with the word "mistress" in the title, however, must go to John Donne's "Elegy XX: To His Mistress Going to Bed."

Other poems with "mistress" in the title...

...oh, I'll stop.
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I had forgot about this one...

I love that line:

O, my America, my Newfoundland,

I knew somebody who did their Ph.D. on Donne and claimed that all these ribald poems from Donne were actually filled with hidden religious meanings. A completely contrarian point of view, but a bit difficult to buy into after rereading...
 
The first line is a hoot; I'd forgotten what a lewd lyricist he was.

Brings to mind Gulliver at the beginning of his Travels talking about Bates, his old master.
 
Maybe there's a translation of the title as Man without Characteistics. The most recent and complete one (some years old now, so maybe there is an even more recent and more complete one I don't know about) is Man Without Qualities. I don't know German and so can't speak to the difference.

Everybody thinks that all of Donne's poems are simultaneously religious and sexual. This is an article of faith and an interpretive lust since the New Critics. It's never hard to make sex mean God and vice versa.
 
Man Without Qualities is pretty amazing, mostly on the level of Magic Mountain, though Musil starts to waver after a point. It has some of the most luminous passages I have ever read.
 
I guess I don't fall into the 'everyone' category, 'cause this association makes no sense to me.

I always thought of 'Eigenshaften' as translating to 'characteristics,' but maybe 'qualities' is just as good in the context.
 
originally posted by Ian Fitzsimmons:


I always thought of 'Eigenshaften' as translating to 'characteristics,' but maybe 'qualities' is just as good in the context.
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I think Eigenschaften is better translated as "characteristics" or "features," but I think there is a meaning of "qualities" that that also has those meanings, even though it is not the most common one.
 
"Qualities" is such a better word, in English. Even if it's less spot-on, its intrinsic sounds in its own language are non-negligible. I mean, "characteristics"... you might as well say The Man Without Technical Specifications.

By the way, this book kills my world. But I have never gotten more than a third of the way in! Despite loving it in an almost unwholesome way.
 
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
originally posted by Ignacio Villalgordo:
Georges Five does not carry any of the wines on the list...please do not post anymore about this place...
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?
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Just a Lyonnais/Spanish in-joke, Sharon.

Protecting a valued, not-so-well-known asset from excessive plundering...
 
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