Plus, Living Homages to Carlo Ginzburg and Robert Thurman; Russian Persecution of Aristotelians; a Recording of JSR's Livestream with Jessica Riskin; the “American Homer”; &c.
Not to seem flip within such a serious company, I want to respond to your request for support as if a comment could cause a wallet to shift in its seat…Help change language, pour money into these mouths so they may speak more richly.
Meanwhile, you need a Medici donor level, and therefore would only need one reader. The Medici would read or not read.
But their severe, quiet, single gaze would not be nearly as much fun as the cacophony you are raising on the market floor over the price of beef, or whether beef should have a price at all. And soup too. And whatever that has to do with AI or ethics and how did we get here all of a sudden?
You may be stuck with the penny stinkards and the cheap seaters, while, hopefully still nailing the nobility to their chairs with just enough space to move their butts.
I vote for O. Henry. Wonderful storyteller, checkered career. New York, Texas, Carolinas. The true spirit of the people of his time. He wrote Jail. His most famous book is The Four Million. Complete Works— 13 books in one, 1,168 pages.
Strictly speaking there can be no American Homer, because, as Milman Parry and Albert Lord demonstrated, the quasi-historical Homer was "only" an especially impressive singer of tales within a completely oral tradition, whose performances were transcribed into written form but who was not an author in the modern or even classical sense. Thus Virgil is not the Roman Homer, Dante is not the Italian Homer, and Shakespeare is not the English Homer. However, if we seek for modern equivalents in American letters, we'd be looking for authors who composed epics in the broad definition proffered by the late Frederick Turner, preferably in verse although prose would be acceptable. This removes lyric (and occasional dramatic) poets like Frost and Dickinson from the contest. By process of elimination, we might be left with Moby-Dick as a kind of American Iliad and Leaves of Grass as a kind of American Odyssey. Some squinting may be required...
I believe he told stories wherever he went, in addition to his published work. Shoes and Ships, wild adventures with fascinating hoaxes, tin horn dictators and rogues, cowboys, frogs. Endless coincidences and tricks. At a large cast of sometimes recurring characters.
I read rather than write on substack, so I have no one to effuse to. I'd comment more, but I'm not trained in philosophy or the humanities, so I don't have much novel to add. I guess, in general, I find the general vibe a but intimidating and instinctively try to keep my mouth shut and my ears (eyes) open. But I do love reading it!
Carlo Ginzburg must have been, and indeed was, the only person who could trace a lineage of influence from Marcus Aurelius's Meditations, through to the Russian Formalists, along the way illuminating some Voltaire and other things. Vale.
Thank you for raising awareness about Svetlana Mesyats and her plight. What an atrocity! And I speak as an Aristotle translator, myself.
As to the Hinternet Foundation, I'll be making a donation pronto.
P.S. To help spread the word, I posted about Svetlana Mesyats at https://beautifulwisdom.substack.com/p/aristotle-on-trial
Not to seem flip within such a serious company, I want to respond to your request for support as if a comment could cause a wallet to shift in its seat…Help change language, pour money into these mouths so they may speak more richly.
Meanwhile, you need a Medici donor level, and therefore would only need one reader. The Medici would read or not read.
But their severe, quiet, single gaze would not be nearly as much fun as the cacophony you are raising on the market floor over the price of beef, or whether beef should have a price at all. And soup too. And whatever that has to do with AI or ethics and how did we get here all of a sudden?
You may be stuck with the penny stinkards and the cheap seaters, while, hopefully still nailing the nobility to their chairs with just enough space to move their butts.
Say HI to Yesman for us.
I vote for O. Henry. Wonderful storyteller, checkered career. New York, Texas, Carolinas. The true spirit of the people of his time. He wrote Jail. His most famous book is The Four Million. Complete Works— 13 books in one, 1,168 pages.
Confirmed historical identity, not strictly an oral storyteller = not the American Homer.
Strictly speaking there can be no American Homer, because, as Milman Parry and Albert Lord demonstrated, the quasi-historical Homer was "only" an especially impressive singer of tales within a completely oral tradition, whose performances were transcribed into written form but who was not an author in the modern or even classical sense. Thus Virgil is not the Roman Homer, Dante is not the Italian Homer, and Shakespeare is not the English Homer. However, if we seek for modern equivalents in American letters, we'd be looking for authors who composed epics in the broad definition proffered by the late Frederick Turner, preferably in verse although prose would be acceptable. This removes lyric (and occasional dramatic) poets like Frost and Dickinson from the contest. By process of elimination, we might be left with Moby-Dick as a kind of American Iliad and Leaves of Grass as a kind of American Odyssey. Some squinting may be required...
I believe he told stories wherever he went, in addition to his published work. Shoes and Ships, wild adventures with fascinating hoaxes, tin horn dictators and rogues, cowboys, frogs. Endless coincidences and tricks. At a large cast of sometimes recurring characters.
I read rather than write on substack, so I have no one to effuse to. I'd comment more, but I'm not trained in philosophy or the humanities, so I don't have much novel to add. I guess, in general, I find the general vibe a but intimidating and instinctively try to keep my mouth shut and my ears (eyes) open. But I do love reading it!
Carlo Ginzburg must have been, and indeed was, the only person who could trace a lineage of influence from Marcus Aurelius's Meditations, through to the Russian Formalists, along the way illuminating some Voltaire and other things. Vale.