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Ivan Mosjoukine (Mozzhukhin) as Edmund KeanI thought I was through with my Kean project, but Sunday evening I checked to see what was on TCM and the onscreen guide promised Kean with Anthony Hopkins, the version I had blegged about a while back! Knowing this slot was usually reserved for silent movies I had my […]
B O D Y literature has the short story “Melancholy Leaves from Democracy’s Autumn Trees” by Jiří Hájíček, translated from the Czech by Gale A. Kirking. The story was originally in the collection The Wooden Knife and included in the English translation of Rustic Baroque. My post on this story and three others included with […]
Winstonsdad’s Blog is hosting Polish Literature month in October and since I’m not very good at posting in a timely fashion with others I thought I would read and post about these books over the next few months. I’m sure there will be more to add to this list. I’m also including a list of […]
I will be occupied for a few days with my Father’s Day presents. Perfect car-centric gifts for this redneck…NASCAR tickets and a Ford (Madox Ford). See y’all in a few days.
Honduran archaeologist Ricardo Agurcia Fasquelle, Executive Director of the Copán Association, presents this inaugural lecture in the Great Battles Series. Until recently scholars depicted the ancient Maya as a peaceful civilization devoid of warfare. This somewhat romantic notion has been overturned by evidence of a starker reality: during the Classic period (ca. 250—900 CE) an […]
Edmund Kean: or, The Life of an Actor by Alexander Dumas The English adaptation by G. H. Jessop and J. St. Maur (published 1881) Note: I’m not sure what happened but this post returned to draft status after being posted. There have been no changes since the original post yesterday. After I read the pictured […]
Kean by Jean-Paul Sartre (1953) Based on the play by Alexander Dumas Translated from the French by Kitty Black The Devil and the Good Lord and Two Other Plays by Jean-Paul Sartre (New York: Vintage, 1960)Related posts: See this post for an introduction to Edmund Kean and some history on Dumas’ and Sartre’s plays. This […]
Another historical drama, but this one is less like a soap opera than last week’s recommendation. A Royal Affair, directed by Nikolaj Arcel, is “set in the 18th century, at the court of the mentally ill King Christian VII of Denmark, and focuses on the romance between his wife, Caroline Matilda of Great Britain, and […]
Dr. Patrick Hunt, Stanford University, speaks. Hannibal, a Carthaginian commander who lived ca. 200 BCE, is considered one of the greatest military commanders in history. His use of the environment in his warfare against Rome in the Second Punic War—often called the Hannibalic War—set precedents in military history, utilizing nature and weather conditions as weapons […]
Edmund Kean by James Northcote (1819) Picture source at the National Portrait GalleryEdmund Kean (1787 – 1833), an English actor noted for his leading roles in Shakespeare, was as famous for his personal life as for his professional one. His messy divorce, many affairs, adultery trial, and riotous excesses were fodder for gossip. His stage […]
A link to my post on the novel IMDb.com link From The New York Times: a review of the movie and an article on Kertész and the movie (both of which I’ll reference in the post) Since I posted so much about the book in the link above I’ll try and keep this post short. […]
“But who can judge what is possible or believable in a concentration camp? Who could explore, exhaust all those countless ideas, inventions, games, jokes, and ponderable theories, which are easily accessible and transferable from a make-believe world of fantasy into a concentration-camp reality? You couldn’t, even if you mustered the totality of your knowledge.” (148) […]
This 2008 TV miniseries covers parts of the English Civil War, using the fictional Angelica Fanshawe and historical Edward Sexby as focal points (although there is some historical basis for her character). Peter Flannery wrote the screenplay. Parts of the series are cartoonish and skip over major events, but overall I enjoyed it. I wish […]
So I went the WorldCat route in trying to obtain a copy of the BBC performance of Jean-Paul Sartre’s “Kean” with Anthony Hopkins in the title role. There are only two libraries listed with copies and neither loan audio-visual material. So I’m out of luck with that approach. If anyone has a copy or knows […]
Here’s an excerpt from The Paris Review’s interview with Imre Kertész. One quote from it: To me, there were three phases, in a literary sense. The first phase is the one just before the Holocaust. Times were tough, but you could get through somehow. The second phase, described by writers like Primo Levi, takes place […]
Or an update to the state of the blog. So I think by announcing a November read-along it’s clear I plan on continuing the blog. I needed some time away (despite erratic posting) to think about what I wanted to do with the blog. There were many issues leading to the earlier post on continuing […]
I’ve been reading Truth’s Ragged Edge: The Rise of the American Novel by Philip F. Gura and while it’s been enjoyable (more posts on that later) it has highlighted a huge gap in my reading. For anyone interested in the topic I highly recommend it, and for a taste of it go to one of […]