Really, I don’t know much about politics, and I’m not usually as interested as I should be, but I found Robert Kagan’s Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order hard to put down. It is a monograph on the increasingly diverging foreign policies of the US and Europe. It’s intriguing (and sometimes awkward) to live in Europe and listen to people talk about the US and give their opinions of her foreign policy; Kagan’s treatise puts not only those opinions and the foreign policies of both the US and Europe into a context that makes sense. It doesn’t resolve anything, of course, but it should make us think about our differences from a more reasonable perspective.
I can express no kinder sign of love
Than this kind kiss. O Lord, that lends me life,
Lend me a heart replete with thankfulness!
For thou hast given me in this beauteous face
A world of earthly blessings to my soul,
If sympathy of love unite our thoughts.
— William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Henry VI: Part 2 (1590), 1.1.20
I can’t recall exactly why I bought Paul Berman’s A Tale of Two Utopias: The Political Journey of the Generation of 1968, but I think it had something to do with the title of one chapter, which is “Zappa and Havel.” I hoped it would help me understand more about the roots of the revolution(s) of 1989, and perhaps it did. But its scope extended further than I expected.
Berman clearly writes from a perspective very different from my own, but with refreshing clarity and wit. In fact, one unexpected fruit of reading the book was a chance to listen to someone assessing radical leftist ideologies and strategies from a sympathetic and yet critical viewpoint.
One of the things that most clearly divides Europeans and Americans today is a philosophical, even metaphysical disagreement over where exactly mankind stands on the continuum between the laws of the jungle and the laws of reason. Americans to not believe we are as close to the realization of the Kantian dream as do Europeans.
–Robert Kagan, Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order
On this day in 1713 Laurence Sterne was born in Ireland. Sometime after his birth (!) he wrote The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. The book was a favorite of Arthur Greeves, the lifelong friend of C. S. Lewis. Greeves encouraged Lewis to read it, but Lewis gave up after ten pages or so. But Arthur kept at him, until finally Lewis read it – to his delight. Lewis described the book quite fittingly as a madman chasing his hat on a windy day.
Tristram Shandy reminds me of Seinfeld : the narrative at times seems to run down disconnected paths, yet those paths later join in marvelous and unpredictable ways. But perhaps what I like most about the book is the juxtaposition of the elegant eighteenth-century English style with eighteenth-century English bawdy. I’ve read the story of Phutatorius and the hot chestnut to many guests, and it has never failed to amaze and tickle them.
I’m going to tell two more stories about having my use of Slovak corrected. The stories are representative of a theme of my experience here. I don’t know whether other people learning other languages in other places experience something similar – but I suspect they do. After you read them, I would be happy to hear your theory about why things happen this way – is it something about language, or human nature, or something else?
The first episode happened over a year ago, when I needed to purchase an art canvas for Anya to paint, and to have a photograph printed. I had to go to two different shops, but in both cases I would have to specify the dimensions: “I would like a canvas x cm by y cm”; “I would like a print l cm by w cm.” I was going to these shops right after Slovak, so I asked my tutor how to specify dimensions. She told me to say “x cm za y cm.” That seemed simple enough. (more…)
You may recall my bumbling mishap of several months ago in my infamous “milovanie” episode. Today I was practicing (read “murdering”) Slovak with the same friend, and yet again my tongue failed me. It happened like this: we have had a good bit of rain lately, and yesterday I was stuck walking in it, and I was not as prepared for it as I should have been. I was telling my little story in Slovak, and when I got to the end I meant to say that I was wet. I meant to say (and I know this – really), “Bol som mokry.” But I said another word (which I also know – really): “Bol som mrkvy.”
When I said this Katka laughed hard and long – in fact, it was a long time before she could stop laughing. Even I was laughing so hard I almost choked on my lunch. Because I didn’t tell her that I was wet; I told her that I was carrots.
Sigh…
“Every man has three characters—that which he exhibits, that which he has, and that which he thinks he has.”
—Alphonse Karr
One of the standard qualifications for becoming a linguist is the ability to express, as persuasively and unaffectedly as possible, complete astonishment that not every human being shares a passion for the scientific study of language.
–Moisés Silva