25 Comments

The conversation was illuminating as always and I am very grateful to DBH for yet another introduction to a great author and a very nice person at that. That being said, it also induced a strong fit of melancholy in me. If a such a gifted and wise man as Henry Weinfield, who has sought beauty his whole life, cannot glimpse its ultimate source behind the veil of this mortal world, how can a philistine like me dare to believe?

The most shocking revelation for me that there are universalist readings of Dante since I don’t remember Inferno picturing a place frequented by hope. But, admittedly, I haven’t read it since high school when I knew very little about theology and nothing about universalism.

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Very inspiring as always! I hope you write something about Hölderlin and reenchantment in the future. We need more discussions about what we can do to bring about a new poetical "foryngelse" in our own time. Blessings!

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En foryngelse er nødvendig, men det er alderens visdom også.

That’s probably very poor Danish.

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Det er i alle fall korrekt norsk. I completely agree, should have written "fornyelse" or "oppstandelse". I just really wanted to use the word "foryngelse"!

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Should that be fald rather than fall?

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In Norwegian it's "fall", the same as the old Norrøna form; the Danish use "fald".

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Can’t you all just switch entirely to English? A richer vocabulary and you all know it anyway.

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I fear I get the Scandinavian tongues confused quite often.

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We are as confused as you are. Even the dialects in Norway can be difficult to understand for Norwegians themselves. Yes, some people agree with you, but Wergeland, Ibsen and Hamsun simply do not sound as beautiful in translation.

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Συνήκατε ταῦτα πάντα; λέγουσιν αὐτῷ· ναί. ὁ δὲ εἶπεν αὐτοῖς· διὰ τοῦτο πᾶς γραμματεὺς μαθητευθεὶς τῇ βασιλείᾳ τῶν οὐρανῶν ὅμοιός ἐστιν ἀνθρώπῳ οἰκοδεσπότῃ, ὅστις ἐκβάλλει ἐκ τοῦ θησαυροῦ αὐτοῦ καινὰ καὶ παλαιά.

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Κἀγὼ ὑμῖν λέγω, Ποιήσατε ἑαυτοῖς φίλους ἐκ τοῦ μαμωνᾶ τῆς ἀδικίας, ἵνα, ὅταν ἐκλίπητε, δέξωνται ὑμᾶς εἰς τὰς αἰωνίους σκηνάς.

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btw, the note at this point of your translation is particularly prayer/thought-provoking. Luke's 16th chapter is such a treasure trove.

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It reads somewhat differently in the 2nd edition.

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The note in question, the whole chapter, or both?

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οἱ δὲ εἶπαν· ἀκουσόμεθά σου περὶ τούτου καὶ πάλιν

Pre-ordered.

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Blessings of the Sunday of Zacchaeus!

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I haven't listened to the conversation yet (looking forward to it), but I'll buy anything with a Redon chariot on the cover.

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Very clever.

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Eighteen months after being introduced to H.W. here I've had the good fortune to pick up his An Alphabet for only £3! (I'd have been a fool no to.) And how utterly charming it is; I'm so very glad that I did. If only I could find his other books for a similarly generous pricing I'd snap up every one of them in a heartbeat. Thanks, Dr. Hart.

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Incredible… I was thinking of buying my first Mallarme book, this has given me a good excuse!

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Thanks for this. Much to chew on, and more books to add to the pile! (Harvey's, that is; yours are already in another pile.)

I just started taking a painting class and my teacher quoted Giorgio Morandi as saying nothing is more abstract than reality, which in a backhanded way came back to me when you were talking about Chardin. Sometimes the distance between abstraction and concreteness when rendering "reality" seems not that great. Morandi makes his bottles bottle-y as effectively as Chardin made his plums plum-y, even though their approaches are (superficially, at least) radically different.

Nice shout-out to John Harbison. I have not heard that ballet -- will look out for it.

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