tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post3200612510357482385..comments2024-03-27T16:48:21.039-05:00Comments on Wuthering <br>Expectations: texts chosen at random - Fench novels, Virginia Woolf, and a lot more - Auerbach says "write your own book!"Amateur Reader (Tom)http://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-22612811543115392272019-05-30T08:52:52.530-05:002019-05-30T08:52:52.530-05:00A less kind word would be "false."A less kind word would be "false."Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-5163129835524158362019-05-30T08:34:31.173-05:002019-05-30T08:34:31.173-05:00Eagleton is nothing if not glib. Me, I enjoy a go...Eagleton is nothing if not glib. Me, I enjoy a good gulp of glibbery now and again.Languagehathttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13285708503881129380noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-60490598923316120442019-05-30T08:33:04.949-05:002019-05-30T08:33:04.949-05:00That part I got - "Hail,comrade!" It'...That part I got - "Hail,comrade!" It's the guff about Homer and dyspeptic learned journals that seemed so glib,if that word is not too kind.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-14973412977038322402019-05-30T07:51:43.324-05:002019-05-30T07:51:43.324-05:00What is Eagleton talking about?
He's basical...<i>What is Eagleton talking about? </i><br /><br />He's basically saying that conservatives are fooled by the Germanic high-flown scholarship into thinking Auerbach is one of them, whereas if they bothered to read the book and engage with its ideas they'd realize he's on the other side. His details may be fuzzy, but Eagleton is more about intellectual fizz and provocative ideas than scrupulous detail (more French than German, you might say).Languagehathttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13285708503881129380noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-45116275081160827492019-05-25T12:18:54.725-05:002019-05-25T12:18:54.725-05:00Auerbach's intellectual background would be ha...Auerbach's intellectual background would be hard to replicate now, as would the conditions in which he wrote the book, thank goodness. The combination of breadth and depth is, for me, almost perfect.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-80465370200575170702019-05-25T03:55:14.739-05:002019-05-25T03:55:14.739-05:00I recently was reading through some essays by Jose...I recently was reading through some essays by Josepth Epstein. His final words on Auerbach are below<br /><br /><br />“Mimesis is a book by a man with little interest in theory, setting out definitions, or laying down laws. Yet so suggestive, so rich in understanding and insight, so useful in teaching one how to read more deeply and appreciatively is the book that it is difficult to believe that anyone will ever again have the intellectual resources to write another book about literature anywhere near as powerful. Written while the Nazis were marching across Europe, Mimesis is a strong reminder of the glory of Western literature, and by extension of Western civilization, and of what is at stake in the battle against those who would simplify, politicize, or otherwise degrade it.” Joseph Epstein Mel uhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08714473754458914681noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-5365026428382584622019-05-21T14:03:26.235-05:002019-05-21T14:03:26.235-05:00Auerbach's (accurate) description of the aesth...Auerbach's (accurate) description of the aesthetics of both the Hebrew Bible and the Gospels seems so far from Nietzsche's, even as a negative. I would hardly recognize that they are talking about the same thing. I suppose they are not.<br /><br />I ma not registered for LRB articles, but this passage just raises doubts. The sublimity in Homer is not spurious. The tragedy is not particularly posturing, whatever that means. What is Eagleton talking about? Plus, that Nazis were cheap myth-makers is not an uncommon idea. Is it? I thought everyone thought that. Nazis like Beethoven, too.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-75905798100010873212019-05-21T12:52:38.457-05:002019-05-21T12:52:38.457-05:00btw, in case you haven't read this a very ente...btw, in case you haven't read this a very entertaining essay on Auerbach by Terry Eagleton<br /><br />https://www.lrb.co.uk/v25/n20/terry-eagleton/pork-chops-and-pineapples<br /><br />"or all its formidable erudition, then, there is a fairly simple opposition at work in Mimesis, one more class-based and militant than the universal respect paid to Auerbach by conservative scholars would intimate. Realism is the artistic form that takes the life of the common people with supreme seriousness, in contrast to an ancient or neoclassical art which is static, hierarchical, dehistoricised, elevated, idealist and socially exclusive. In Walter Benjamin’s terms, it is an art which destroys the aura. There is an implied continuity in this respect between Homeric epic and the Third Reich, with its heroic myths, tragic posturing and spurious sublimity. If all this had been argued by a Trotskyist English lecturer at a redbrick English university, rather than by one of the 20th century’s most eminent Romance philologists, it would almost certainly have provoked a clutch of dyspeptic reviews in the learned journals. If you can make such claims in a dozen or so different languages, however, as Auerbach doubtless could, and if like him you know your French heroic epic from your Middle High German one, you are likely to win a more sympathetic hearing."Alokhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12947383354732747209noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-42619565145414196842019-05-21T12:51:05.724-05:002019-05-21T12:51:05.724-05:00I was mainly thinking about the Bible/Genesis chap...I was mainly thinking about the Bible/Genesis chapter, which made a deep impression on me, specially how he contrasts it with the Greek classics in the chapter that just came before. Just on the basis of these two chapters you could see him as an anti-Nietzsche (c.f. Birth of Tragedy) and his work as a defence of judeo-christian aesthetics, contra-Nietzsche. Alokhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12947383354732747209noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-27983304587378187512019-05-21T12:23:35.548-05:002019-05-21T12:23:35.548-05:00I thought it was more like an affirmation of civil...I thought it was more like an affirmation of civilization, period.<br /><br />Somebody should organize a big medieval readalong, a mix of medieval texts and books about the period. Huizinga then Chrétien then "The Making of the Middle Ages" then, I don't know, Marco Polo. Ibn Battuta. That'd be great.<br /><br />I have not read Lukacs. That's a good idea.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-44536057918189195972019-05-20T23:00:01.432-05:002019-05-20T23:00:01.432-05:00It definitely feels like an affirmation of the val...It definitely feels like an affirmation of the values of the Judeo-Christian civilization at a time when it was being destroyed, that too written by a Jew! I was also intrigued and moved in an early chapter where he writes about the gospels of Jesus Christ and the Bible. He treats Bible as any other secular text but his conclusions and interpretations in a way affirm the religious elements of the book.<br /><br />I was really bogged down in the middle because I am just so totally ignorant of the medieval history and literature, I don't even have wikipedia level knowledge of the books he discusses there. So I had to skip almost everything there.<br /><br />On what to read next, have you read Georg Lukacs? There is some overlap in his work with what Auerbach does here (i.e. representations of common people, history as realism as an onward march of democratic principles, suspicions of romanticism and irrationality etc) but he also takes it into new directions.Alokhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12947383354732747209noreply@blogger.com