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iSteve commenter Deogolwulf writes:
“Tolkien’s masterpiece The Lord of the Rings is obviously inspired by Wagner’s hyper-masterpiece The Ring.” — Steve
It obviously isn’t, at least not positively so. (Tolkien may have been a little negatively inspired to set the record straight against Wagner’s abomination of myth.) Both took from the same ancient and medieval sources, which Tolkien understood well, and which Wagner didn’t. Tolkien loves the old myths, and sees truth and goodness woven into them as in a beautiful tapestry; Wagner sees them as bonds, seeks to unravel them, and to set man free to spin new myths as he wishes, beyond good and evil, truth and falsehood. Tolkien mourns the passing of the old world, slowly fading, slipping or hiding away, overtaken by a lesser new world; Wagner has the old world go up in flames or crash down in tumult, overtaken by a new world in which, free of gods and hidebound myths, society is to be built anew beyond good and evil, without authority, hierarchy, law, or property of any kind. Tolkien is a laudator temporis acti, a reactionary; Wagner a revolutionary iconoclast. They are very different indeed.
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Vs. contemporary America’s rings:
Admirably well put.
Wotan desires to use his power responsibly (note the almost touching and distinctly pre-modern ring to that idea - forgive the pun).
So he carves on the spear the laws that bind him to his people. And those laws sustain his power.
If he transgresses those laws he loses his power. In other words, Wotan symbolizes social power. From that social power he creates social order, freedom and love. At least that’s the idea, or the hope.
But there’s another kind of power – economic power.
Alberich, the gnome (think Paul Krugman, or some such person) who is mocked and humiliated by the Rhine daughters, grabs the gold in compensation for his sexual frustrations. In other words, the desire for economic power over society takes its origin in the will’s frustration as it expresses itself in love. Freud was to say no more on the subject (but at least we know where he got the idea from). And now we’re back to Wotan’s Paradox. To be morally responsible his power must be self-limiting. But limited power is a contradiction, a paradox.Conclusion: Power can not be made morally responsible. This is the beating heart of the human paradox.
This is why so many do not like Wagner. It's also why so many cling to the Right and Left even though they're both so obviously intellectually and morally bankrupt. Ideologues can’t accept an unpleasant fact that Wagner had the genius to see and the courage to face 140+ years ago. But of course their response is as dishonest as their rejection of reality is cowardly. By the way, ever do any research on what he went through to bring The Ring to the stage? Holy Wotan Batman! Let's just put it this way, he was no quitter or cry baby (two other reasons for many today to despise him, instead of themselves).But the key point is The Ring is, ultimately, not pessimistic or even tragic, it’s triumphant! Before Wagner and other thinkers and artists of the 19th and 20th century, the point of Tragedy was to reconcile us to life by submitting to society. It continued to be what it was in its origins, a religious ritual. But Wagner, and not just Wagner, represented the end of ancient thinking. Man’s real tragedy is not his failure to conform to society. It’s his failure to accept his inadequacy. Obviously it’s society’s failure too. No individual or group is perfectly adequate to the world they live in and must respond to. Darwin made the same point, albeit from a different perspective. This is why their work is still capable of being very disturbing to some people (namely those committed to a final answer to all of our problems). Mankind isn’t bad and stupid because it’s sinful and ignorant. Mankind is simply imperfect. And that imperfection is the source of mankind’s need not just for stability, but for innovation as well. It’s also why stability and innovation are irreconcilable. As is idea and reality, theory and data, individual and group, etc. The funny thing is we don't seem to have a problem accepting that in regard to theory and data, but not with the rest. But the point still stands. When it comes to our social and economic problems there are no final answers. Again, for some this is a discouraging state of affairs. But for more courageous spirits it’s an opportunity. The person who can accept the irresolvable tension between us and the world are the truly tough-minded. The weak regress to a primitve need for final answers. That's why the tough-minded don't need to hide their weaknesses. Whereas the weak often don the mask of toughness.This is why the weak-minded (the Right or Left, ie; the Polarized) no matter how intelligent they otherwise might be, are so easily shocked by the tough-minded, and why correspondingly the tough-minded are always irritated by the weak-minded. The fact is, to put it bluntly, Wagner was tough-minded and Deogolwulf, et al. are not.Replies: @Deogolwulf, @Deogolwulf
Some interesting points Deogolwulf. Could you do it more like this ?
The naked ladies in Arthur Rackham’s illustrations for the Wagner Ring made a strong impression on young Tolkien, and he loved the music. Tolkien was a a romantic young English Catholic whose books include a lot of stirring rhetoric speeches echoing the great speeches of Catholic Emancipation in England and Ireland. Daniel O’Connell made a stirring speech against an English prosecutor named Sauron, calling him The Outsider. Hobbits are 19th century virtuous poor, closely resembling the poor Irish living in sand caves on the Irish west coast. Tolkien did a romantic story like Drake’s Drum, using dignified language like Arthur Bryant and lost languages like ‘The Secret Language of Ireland’.
Except Hobbits aren’t poor. They resemble prosperous English yeomen farmers.Replies: @Wokechoke, @Alden
http://blog.discoveringireland.com/tolkiens-middle-earth-comes-to-county-clare/Replies: @Wokechoke, @bruce
Wagner was a revolutionary iconoclast who lost his nerve in old age. Well,, a revolutionary anyway. Wagner took aim at the gods, it was Nietche who twilit the Idols, the usual object of iconoclasm. Whatever one thinks of Wagner’s use of myth, he remains virtually peerless among orchestrators. Debussy, Ravel, Mahler (at least at his best and when conducted by Boulez), Stravinsky were also marvelous at creating sounds out of orchestral instrumental combinations, but Wagner actually brought (or rather called forth) instruments into being (which gives Alberich’s workshop a bit of nuance, eh?) So that he could combine them orchestrally (euphonium, bass clarinet).
That said for all Wagner’s greatness he does not stand alone at the pinnacle of his medium as Tolkien does.
Wagner's antisemitism is funny because he owes most to Jews like Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer, and is much owed to by Jewish movie composers.
Somewhat related: when Sibelius maintained that a symphony much express a single idea in a coherent manner, Mahler replied that, on the contrary, a symphony must cover everything.
On topic: Given the radical readings of The Ring, I find it somewhat surprising that there has not been an environmentalist/ecoterrorist themed staging. OTOH it's a very long piece, it might get old fast.Replies: @SunBakedSuburb
Nah… good, but we’re missing what most people who listen to Wagner get from him.
The joy of grabbing your broadsword and cutting the knots that have gathered while the city was asleep; the flames that burn away the rot that’s been gathering while we were occupied by foreign masters; the superluminous awareness you get from lifting the heavy stones and throwing them at the hated structures and symbols of your own stale world.
In practical terms for Americans: A million bulldozers manned by millions of young men crushing the filthy decadent horror of 21st century USA. Sweeping out the bad and letting us build a better one, fit for humans not for robots.
Wagner would approve. There’s understanding in his stuff that to create you must destroy.
Tolkien drew upon motifs from books of Genesis and Revelation; parts of Beowulf; bits of Wagner; fragments of Malory and Macpherson’s “Ossian”; dabs of Norse sagas; the Gaelic legends; the Breton lays; the Chanson de Roland; the Poema del Cid; Orlando Furioso; The Fairie Queen; Paradise Lost, and a host of other ancient and medieval sources.
Hope this helps.
Oh, and I just remembered… fuck Joe Biden.
A similar world view infuses T.H. White’s The Once and Future King.
For me, the most striking common feature of Wagner’s and Tolkien’s Ring is that both took about 20 years to write, which means they gestated a very long time in the minds of their creators. This gives both works a certain deep quality that not even the greatest genius could achieve on the quick.
For those unfamiliar with Wagner’s Ring: It is a 16 hours long cycle of four operas comprising a lot of annoying and largely superfluous singing. But the orchestra part… Lorin Maazel has recorded a 70 minutes excerpt with the Berlin Philharmonics, called The Ring without Words, which shows why this is such a great work. Before listening, consider – a 16 hour cycle about love, passion, magic, heroism, betrayal, murder, vengeance is about to start and at the end the old world will be destroyed. So certainly a big story. What will the prelude be like? Then let Wagner surprise you.
The annoying superfluous parts are things like Siegfried forging his hammer and singing "I'm forging my hammer" for 10 minutes.
Then there is the orchestra part. There are few things like a 90 piece orchestra playing The Ride of the Valkyies.Replies: @Prester John
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OMGötterdämmerung ! Time to burn modern-day Walhalla to the ground.
Actually, both artists are products of their time & professions. They use mythological material & motifs, but are mentally far from them- which is perfectly natural, since authentic myth-makers were possessed of a primitive mind & had little knowledge of the world “as it really is”, in comparison with us.
The chief difference between Wagner and Tolkien is that Wagner was a genius & Tolkien a talent; and while they share numerous motifs, the central thing for Wagner was sacralization of erotic desire. Basically, Wagner is all about sex & death & deification through Eros – something which is completely absent in Tolkien. Wagner is, in this respect, a typical product of the Aesthetic Age, while Tolkien was writing in the age of high Modernism, a very different cultural climate.
What they share are many cultural homologies & remade motifs from Germanic heroic legends, but these are – while very evident- their raw substance they work on. Unlike Wagner, Tolkien draws from a variety of creation myths (ancient Egyptian, Hindu-Buddhist etc.), so that his “world” is, when analyzed, much more complex than relatively simple Wagner’s Teutonic stories, which were, mentally & typologically, not a big deal.
That’s the theory.
Personally, I don’t care for both of them.
Wagner’s Gesammtkunstwerk is doomed to failure from the get-go.
It seems that powers of various modes of expression (words, sounds, pictures/colors, ..) are clearly separated & by combining them you won’t get anything superior, but basically- inferior (just consider opera, which is clearly inferior, in its best examples, to drama as regards dramatization & emotional power in depiction of human condition).
Tolkien- I would not read him even if you pay me.
Just, when I think of it – most classics are overrated- Homer, Virgil, Ariosto, Tasso, Cervantes, Schiller, Goethe, … are now virtually unreadable. Changes in sensibility & mentality sink them.
I wonder if they sang differently when this stuff was written.
While it is true that old and even ancient writings can be difficult to understand and read, they are considered "great" and classics because of the themes and actions which they involve.
No they aren't comic books or the millions of forgettable crap books/films, etc. cranked out every year (and in the past, only thousands).
But the value of old works and studying them is that they force you to think as the authors themselves did. The best of these embody the moral and ethical choices which even today all humans face.
Because they are derived from only a handful of literate men (usually men) over long time periods, their initial impact and influence keeps them alive for a few. Yes, some scholarship is needed to understand the context of the authors. They had vastly different religious and scientific ideas when they wrote these. That affected the outcomes of their stories and judgments.
So they are best studied in a scholarly setting. Or aided by accompanying notes.
But human emotions and conflicts have not changed much. Only the details of their expression.
True, I don't grab classics for recreation. But they should be taught and educated people need to be exposed. The conceit that only "the modern" is worthwhile is horribly wrong.
That error is why the Woke (and other Red Guard acolytes) want to erase knowledge of history and tear down statues and burn old books. These older works are the vaccine against Year Zero thinking.Replies: @Bardon Kaldian
If you think Cervates is unreadable I pity you.
https://youtu.be/BUg2cp23rGE
One for your collection
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/commonwealthbank_meet-our-new-executive-manager-of-indigenous-activity-6967286709646479362-p1UB?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios
It was always accepted that Lord Of The Rings was a warning about Germany at that time.
The Wagner stuff is just piffle
The endless moving west moving west had to do with the migration of people’s moving from the central Asian steppes to Central and Western Europe. According to Tolkien. Read what Tolkien wrote and said about his sources. Original sources in some form of the original languages.
Wagner used the Song of the Nieblings as the plot and characters for his Ring operas. He did no original research. Just turned a standard text of a historical epic poem like the Iliad Odyssey and Beowulf into his great operas.
Hobbits are 19th century virtuous poor, closely resembling the poor Irish living in sand caves on the Irish west coast.
Except Hobbits aren’t poor. They resemble prosperous English yeomen farmers.
The Shire didn’t have nobles. But otherwise it had the standard English set up. Wealthy Gentry like the Baggins family, lesser Gentry yeomen who owned their land tenants who rented their farms and sufficient tradesmen for construction and manufacturing.
Deogowf is still around. Cool.
https://decider.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/hart-to-hart-jewelry.jpg
https://media.radaronline.com/brand-img/KGeyGWC92/0x0/christopher-walken-natalie-wood-confessed-three-witness-explode-casejpg-1647371808661.png
Replies: @Clark Kent, @Known Fact
WTF does Robert Wagner and Christopher Walken have to do with this story?
E.R.Eddison fits in between, as a peer of Tolkien in that medium but who rode with the Nietzsche/Wagner thematics.
I was struck that the trolls in The Hobbit speak in working class Cockney accents. The great General Strike of 1926 paralyzed the rainy little island just eleven years before the story was published; fear and loathing of the power of an activist proletariat is not hard to discern as an undercurrent in Tolkein’s tales.
The thing about inspired art flowing from myth is that different folks are able to interpret it differently, depending upon their own depth of understanding along with their own peculiar vagaries toward the subject. Plus, whatever they have read before–in this case, possibly Bernard Shaw?
The writer’s interpretation is one of YMMV. In fact, there is no particular reason to suppose any of it. Pace the writer’s opinion, the two ‘free actors’ in the music-drama, Siegfried and Bruhilde, die at the end. Murdered and suicide (the good wife’s reaction); they are not available to ‘build the world anew’ so it is an open question as to who among those that remain, could? Or even if they are inclined toward it.
Valhalla burns, but there is nothing in the story to indicate that the Gods will not be replaced with New Gods. Possibly gods less corrupt. Possibly not. After all, the Rhine Nixies recover their gold, and presumably have not learnt a lesson–they are, after all, nixies. Women. Loge is still around, in spirit, and, as he says, “Who knows what I will do?”
Finally, the notion that what is to come will exist ‘without authority, hierarchy, law, or property of any kind”, is not written into (or implied from) the libretto. So that argument is speculation. It’s all left up in the air– I suppose the writer’s guess is as good as mine, or anyone’s, for that matter.
One could consider Wagner the progenitor of not just movies (Gesamtkunstwerk) and film music, but also ambient music, in the sense of short correlation length and detailed, self-contained moments. (Wagner, like classical music and human speech, does demand attention unlike proper ambient.) A telling detail is that by his own account he used his dog as a judge when testing fragments of music on the piano. The moments work well and mesh together from one to the next, but even his attempt at symphony has little of the global “crystalline” consistency that is associated with proper classical music.
Wagner’s antisemitism is funny because he owes most to Jews like Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer, and is much owed to by Jewish movie composers.
Somewhat related: when Sibelius maintained that a symphony much express a single idea in a coherent manner, Mahler replied that, on the contrary, a symphony must cover everything.
On topic: Given the radical readings of The Ring, I find it somewhat surprising that there has not been an environmentalist/ecoterrorist themed staging. OTOH it’s a very long piece, it might get old fast.
Both approaches are done well by their respective champions. Mahler's symphonic sagas have their peaks and valleys, and three hours later the finale is just over the horizon. In contrast, Sibelius's novelettes are stunningly emotional and capture the attention throughout. See Sibelius's Symphonies 3 and 4.
Plato’s ring: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_of_Gyges#Cultural_influences
For Wagner, these ancient myths were merely a vehicle for the philosophical and political ideas contained in his works, just as modern art forms like TV and film use familiar tropes that have developed over decades. This makes sense when you have to write the text and music for your “music dramas,” developing a new mythology is just too much work.
I haven’t read the books, but I found the Ring films to be tedious, with the Hobbits particularly irritating.
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it’s a good paint job and I love the earrings. As to the rings…
Tractor-trailer crash in Tennessee spreads alfredo sauce across all lanes of interstate
https://creativereview.imgix.net/content/uploads/2011/03/mman19902000_0.jpg
Does anyone have an input on whether Tolkein is popular in German speaking Europe?
Thanks. I was never interested in the Lord of the Rings. But the original Wagner version sounds interesting.
What’s the best way to experience the Wagner version? Is there a good translation or any good plays/movies of it?
You can probably find free (with ads) videos on youtube, but the subtitles may be in French or Hungarian. Not much like a live performance, but infinitely cheaper.
Make sure you listen to a version that features Hans Hotter as Wotan. His was one of the greatest voices--in any genre, in any range--of the last century.
https://youtu.be/ZMSThCi28H8
And just for a laugh, ZeroHedge has this.
https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/filling-gasoline-cars-could-become-cheaper-charging-evs-uk
After you’ve done the Crosswords, puzzle me this: Can you think of anything that the Wokels have clutched to their bony bosoms that hasn’t been a fuck-up?
Thank you: well summarized. An important item from ‘other medieval sources’ is the Niebelungenlied, also critical to Wagner.
If the Rhine was the ‘river of proto-Germanic expansion’, then the Danube was the ‘river of migration-era expansion’. Interestingly, the headwaters of the two are not far apart, and there is a whole medieval geography of the second part of the Niebelungenlied, describing the journey of the Burgundians from their kingdom on the middle Rhine, over the watershed divide and down the Danube to Etzelberg, Attila’s fortress, probably at modern Esztergom.
Now the Rhine and the Danube are roughly at right angles to each other. But if you eliminate the bend and make the Rhine flow south, continuing south as the Danube, you pretty much have Tolkien’s map of Middle Earth, adding that you have to dry up the North Sea, with Doggerland connecting England (The Shire) to the Continent.
Vienna is Minas Tirith!
OT — How big of a screwup do you have to be to not be able to rely on reflexive hatred of Russians by Czechs?
Excerpt:
An estimated 70,000 protesters from the far-right and far-left rallied in central Prague against the Czech government on Saturday.
The organizers of the demonstration said the Czech Republic should be militarily neutral and ensure direct contracts with gas suppliers, including Russia.
The protesters condemned the government for supporting sanctions against Russia over its war in Ukraine and accused it of being unable to cope with soaring energy prices.
Petr Fiala, who leads the center-right five-party coalition, said the protesters did not have the country’s best interests at heart.
“The protest on Wenceslas Square was called by forces that are pro-Russian, are close to extreme positions and are against the interests of the Czech Republic,” Fiala said. “It is clear that Russian propaganda and disinformation campaigns are present on our territory and some people simply listen to them.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/czech-republic-thousands-take-part-in-prague-anti-government-demonstration/ar-AA11qZkV
Literally everything is Russian disinformation. In Czecha. As long as you don’t know any history, that — no, there’s nothing that can make that make sense. They’re not following a narrative, they’re remembering the price of gas and watching Zelensky buy Swiss mansions. Is the Swiss government also controlled by Putin?
Here is, ironically, a fine spectacle of a massive Munich 1938 re-enactment.
Wagner was an Ur-Wokel.
Agree, plus what I said while I was trying to not call Steve ignorant: the critics who accused Robert Graves of simply riffing off Suetonius and Tacitus, knew only Suetonius and Tacitus, so the accusation made sense to them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Ring_des_Nibelungen
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Ring_des_Nibelungen_discography
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Ring_des_Nibelungen_(Georg_Solti_recording)
Unz Review appears to only display a maximum of 50 Spotify tracks per link.
Tolkien lived a quiet life boozing it up with his crony’s and telling his son Christopher bedtime stories about little people. Wagner threw Natalie Wood off a boat with Christopher Walken.
Except Hobbits aren’t poor. They resemble prosperous English yeomen farmers.Replies: @Wokechoke, @Alden
Possibly the most materially comfortable people in history.
Wagner would have made epic films if he’d been around at the same time as Tolkien. The Beyreuth productions were like films in certain respects. A big glowing TV.
All I know is that Wagner is certainly the best for attacking VC-held villages.
And don’t forget …
The Ring films revolve around a cursed video tape; whomever watches the tape dies seven days later, unless the tape is copied and shown to another person, who then must repeat the same process.
https://decider.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/hart-to-hart-jewelry.jpg
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Replies: @Clark Kent, @Known Fact
Brainstorm — almost a great film, and a personal favorite. Poor Natalie — is Robert Wagner the white OJ?
I never watched Hart to Hart but I’d know the back of Stephanie Powers’ head anywhere. (Now if I could just find The Girl From UNCLE, season 1 (thankfully the only season!)
Other than the word “Ring” in the title, I don’t see much similarity between Wagner and Tolkien at all.
On the other hand, CS Lewis really was a great imbiber of Wagner in his youth, and in his autobiographical Surprised by Joy he talked about how his appreciation of myth helped prepare the way for his adult conversion to Christianity. In addition to Wagnerian music he was a voracious reader of sagas in various languages and a lover of walks in the countryside.
That particular combination has a very relatable and predictable affect on a youth in the first bloom of manhood. The bourgeoning familiarity with fine art and great tragic themes, which parallels one’s own entry into the world of adult responsibility (rather dramatically so, in Lewis’ case, in the form of combat service in WWI), along with the aesthetics of nature and its secret poetry of hidden trails, cozy copses of trees, and heavy grey skies portending doom, always seems to fill one’s head with a world of tantalizing possibilities just out of reach. Lewis became a connoisseur and an addict of mythic experiences.
But this is not exactly what propelled him into Christianity. He wasn’t fully prepared for that until it all slammed shut. When his inner experience dimmed and the world grew flat again, he tried to force the woods and the words and the music to speak to him as they once had, and ended up failing in despair. His sincere conversion began not because Christianity offered easy answers, but because Christianity makes it quite clear that the Platonic world he longed for could not be possessed in the here and now.
We are lucky indeed if we get to experience that Platonic world, but we are not truly blessed until it slams shut on us. If it doesn’t, then we go through life being intoxicated by myth and we never get to see it turning to dust in our hands until it is too late.
Straight dope:
Tolkien probably down played Wagner’s influence upon him for political reasons of course—he didn’t want to be associated with the anti Semitic Wagner. Still, the influence of Wagner is slight. The most immediate influences would be the prose fantasies of William Morris(well at the end of the world, glittering plain, et al.) and the Worm Ouroboros of er Eddison. The conception of the epic fantasy novel comes from these. Beowulf, saga of the volsungs, and Norse mythos more generally are also large influences in terms of plot elements and tone. Malory is also important, for example, the structure where the fellowship is having adventures together and then break up into their separate sub quests in the latter half comes from morte de Arthur.
Less commonly recognized is the influence of American pulp writers on Tolkien. I see heavy influence of Howard and Clark Ashton smith upon Tolkien. Read the Phoenix on the sword and the Solomon Kane story Moon of Skulls, and compare the mines of Moria to the latter. There are many other influences present; Shakespeare, Greek mythology and other ancient writers too. Tolkien denies ever having read Orlando furioso or the Italian romances.
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I don’t think I’ve ever hit the “Hide More” button as quickly.
David “Spengler” Goldman noted the parallels between Wagner and Tolkien almost two decades ago https://asiatimes.com/2003/01/the-ring-and-the-remnants-of-the-west/
Wagner’s Ring goes in so many different directions that it’s difficult to distill, but central to it is the love between Siegfried and Brünnhilde, a love based on purity and innocence, a love worth renouncing divinity and facing mortal death. The final duet from Siegfried is one of my favorite pieces in opera. If the Ring had ended there, it would still be a monumental work in Western art.
In the final scene of Götterdämmerung, Brünnhilde extols the truth and purity of Siegfried’s love and the treachery of the gods. It’s a bit much to accuse Wagner of wanting to go “beyond good and evil, truth and falsehood”.
I strongly prefer wagner’s ring to Tolkien’s for the storyline. I find Tolkien’s character development simplistic where characters are either good or evil and they are all tempted by a seemingly one dimensional force of evil. Wagner’s ring has many twists and turns and various levels of character complexity. I wish that someone would make an epic movie or series based on it.
If you haven't done so already, read the late Roger Scruton's "The Ring of Truth", a superb analysis of this work.
Well said.
Tolkien vs Wagner…
Maybe it’s more like religions where there are those who come from the tree vs those who come from the earth or clay.
Some of the old “myths” have people coming from wood while other myths mainly from the lower portion of the desert have God making them from the dust, dirt or clay. Almost the same religion everywhere with minor rewrites. You can even find a bird in a tree on the old structures in South America, the Norse, Persians some others. The thing with the bird from my understanding is that the bird at the top of the tree isn’t always here or the same, Odin had Ravens, while another may have an eagle.
Futhorcs were Southern and believed in newer and the son, while Futharcs were Northern and believed in the elder without the son, so I’m not sure if all this laid out quite right in who would believe in what. I guess you could look at it too like a new and old testament of lore.
Weird. Never saw this as an either-or issue, given we are talking about two very different kinds of art (both masterpieces) in two entirely separate eras.
That said, they both seem to enrage the right people, which is very much to their credit.
I always thought the rings were just a nod in the direction of Wagner/Germania myth sort of like how the big Maguffin in the new Top Gun movie is an unshielded thermal exhaust port.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLZjbnhhvgQReplies: @David
Tolkien’s work strikes me as unBiblical and, theologically, very strongly Platonic. (In an other age, he might have been condemned, not as a heretic, but as a recidivist pagan!) His AinulindalĂ« could stand well as a poetic embellishment of the creation-myth in Plato’s Timaeus. What he owes to Plato and the Greeks is often overlooked, the Ring of Gyges being superficially the least of it.
The German family that settled near me in NC in the mid 1700s ended up spelling it Wagonner but pronouncing it the American Wagner. Their Reformed church stopped using German in 1855.
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Is this from the latest MOMA exhibit?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAAp_luluo0Replies: @tr, @jamie b.
J. R. R. Tolkien raps with an accent that sounds like Mark Twain? Who knew!
E. Michael Jones’s take on Wagner’s Ring Cycle: the story of Capitalism in Germany
Video Link
Some critics see a link between CS Lewis’ Space Trilogy and Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. In Lewis’ novel and third part of the trilogy, That Hideous Strength, the character Ramson stands for Tolkien, while his enemies are Royal Society eugenicists like Bertrand Russell, both Huxleys, Koestler, Wells, etc. -where eugenics means forcible depopulation- and the Tavistock institute, here called “N. I. C.E.). Lewis’s ultimate villain, a maniacal disemboweled head ( a jab at Bentham, whose head and body are preserved at University College, London?), wants to destroy all carbon-based life on earth ( like modern zero carbon emissions plutocrat advocates), echoing Sauron’s dystopian future for middle earth.
The idea here is that Christian academics like Tolkien and Lewis knew what globalist thinking tanks were planning for humanity: death. Sauron as the ultimate technocrat, destroying Middle Earth’s harmony between nature and man, Paradise lost.
Jeremy Bentham s head:
https://londonist.com/london/jeremy-bentham-s-body-gets-a-new-box
On the connection between Lewis and Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.
https://jaysanalysis.com/2022/05/07/tolkien-and-c-s-lewis-exposed-the-elites/
Wagner was masterful in subtle irony. Fricka nagging Wotan over his marginally legal subterfuge, i.e. Wotan pimping out Fricka’s sister in trade for a new crib. After the Queen herself suggested to Wotan that he ought to get the Giants to build the castle for them. Now, once the deed’s done, she’s deeply offended!
Then, after she hears about the Ring forged from the stolen gold, she begins to devise her own devious (but banal) plot, asking Loge whether it would be possible for her to make some jewelry out of the plunder, and possibly use the gold’s magic to control Wotan’s wandering and lustful soul?
I suppose she was planning this, right after she returned the gold to the Rhine Sprites? The ones she herself detests? LOL
Or Loge, wryly admonishing the gaggle of whining water nymphs to forget about ever basking in the wondrous light of their gold. Instead, they should bask in the new splendor of the gods! Loge is, of course, the only one who understands the bottom line, and is the only one really disgusted with the entire episode. I guess you could say Erde knows, but she’s something of a whore, willing to trade her knowledge for sex.
I wonder if Wagner’s keen insight into women was due to his relationship with Cosima?, said to be quite the nag.
Anyhow, was Tolkien ironic? Were his characters more than two-dimensional? Did they reflect the ins and outs of wide-ranging human action, both personal and political? I must let others comment on that. I read his stories as a kid, found them pretty well done, for that sort of adventuresome thing.
It's like the lands before time, It's known that the surface that we walk on now once constituted a single surface that for some cataclysmic reason broke apart. The date and time of it of course we don't know or do we. We're always so afraid to research the "myths".
I know one thing, the chimera, tell the origin or the mix of the king ie..dragon, lion what bird. Whether or not they come from the ancient God tree or from the dust of the earth, mortal man. They mixed (Nephilim), but over time through successive generations and mix they became mortal, which the very mortal Jewish people hope to avoid spoiling their closeness to God by not mixing.
To share that knowledge is to spread God, the existence of God and the word of God. To say that things existed and exist.
What’s the best way to experience the Wagner version? Is there a good translation or any good plays/movies of it?Replies: @That Would Be Telling, @Polistra, @Ralph L, @TelfoedJohn, @Kylie
There’s an excellent English translation by Andrew Porter that lets you follow it almost word for word, it’s that good.
I’m not sure that an epic movie could ever be made of Wagner’s masterpiece. The orchestra is central to this work, what with leitmotivs and all. Too much would be lost in transferring to celluloid, just like most great works of literature do not come off well on the big screen.
If you haven’t done so already, read the late Roger Scruton’s “The Ring of Truth”, a superb analysis of this work.
You had me until Homer. I haven’t read all you mention, but the Iliad and to a lesser extent the Odyssey still hold up. The characters, their motivations, their thoughts and actions all seem very recognizable, modern and relevant. I agree with your point about opera and will add that although I love orchestral music, I find the current opera style of signing intolerable. It is admirable in terms of the skill and practice required but a complete waste in terms of being something I could enjoy.
I wonder if they sang differently when this stuff was written.
Indeed. I saw the Ring cycle at the Met in NYC, and it is loong.
The annoying superfluous parts are things like Siegfried forging his hammer and singing “I’m forging my hammer” for 10 minutes.
Then there is the orchestra part. There are few things like a 90 piece orchestra playing The Ride of the Valkyies.
Not when Lauritz Melchior or Max Lorenz sang it!
The Wagner stuff is just piffleReplies: @Alden
Tolkien always denied LOTR and The Hobbit had anything to do with WW1,WW2 and Nazi Germany.
The endless moving west moving west had to do with the migration of people’s moving from the central Asian steppes to Central and Western Europe. According to Tolkien. Read what Tolkien wrote and said about his sources. Original sources in some form of the original languages.
Wagner used the Song of the Nieblings as the plot and characters for his Ring operas. He did no original research. Just turned a standard text of a historical epic poem like the Iliad Odyssey and Beowulf into his great operas.
Michelin should hire her to portray Bibendum at street fairs. Memphis has some spare paint in which to dip her.
Tractor-trailer crash in Tennessee spreads alfredo sauce across all lanes of interstate
Except Hobbits aren’t poor. They resemble prosperous English yeomen farmers.Replies: @Wokechoke, @Alden
The Baggins family were more than Yeomen. They were Gentry farmers. And don’t forget many many tenant farmers were far more prosperous than some of the yeomen farmers.
The Shire didn’t have nobles. But otherwise it had the standard English set up. Wealthy Gentry like the Baggins family, lesser Gentry yeomen who owned their land tenants who rented their farms and sufficient tradesmen for construction and manufacturing.
Excerpt:
An estimated 70,000 protesters from the far-right and far-left rallied in central Prague against the Czech government on Saturday.
The organizers of the demonstration said the Czech Republic should be militarily neutral and ensure direct contracts with gas suppliers, including Russia.
The protesters condemned the government for supporting sanctions against Russia over its war in Ukraine and accused it of being unable to cope with soaring energy prices.
Petr Fiala, who leads the center-right five-party coalition, said the protesters did not have the country's best interests at heart.
"The protest on Wenceslas Square was called by forces that are pro-Russian, are close to extreme positions and are against the interests of the Czech Republic," Fiala said. "It is clear that Russian propaganda and disinformation campaigns are present on our territory and some people simply listen to them."
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/czech-republic-thousands-take-part-in-prague-anti-government-demonstration/ar-AA11qZkV
Literally everything is Russian disinformation. In Czecha. As long as you don't know any history, that -- no, there's nothing that can make that make sense. They're not following a narrative, they're remembering the price of gas and watching Zelensky buy Swiss mansions. Is the Swiss government also controlled by Putin?Replies: @Bardon Kaldian
It is not disinformation, but a confirmation that many people are worthless whores. Those Czech protesters protest simply from their precious arses, being afraid of energy crisis & inflation.
Here is, ironically, a fine spectacle of a massive Munich 1938 re-enactment.
What’s the best way to experience the Wagner version? Is there a good translation or any good plays/movies of it?Replies: @That Would Be Telling, @Polistra, @Ralph L, @TelfoedJohn, @Kylie
As others here have mentioned: the music without the words.
It takes a few listenings, and is best done without distractions (i.e. music video and filmed performances generally detract rather than add).
https://www.unz.com/isteve/wagner-vs-tolkien/#comment-5526820
What’s the best way to experience the Wagner version? Is there a good translation or any good plays/movies of it?Replies: @That Would Be Telling, @Polistra, @Ralph L, @TelfoedJohn, @Kylie
Most modern video recordings will be subtitled, but it helps to read a synopsis first (don’t worry about spoilers–the heroine always dies or marries in opera).
You can probably find free (with ads) videos on youtube, but the subtitles may be in French or Hungarian. Not much like a live performance, but infinitely cheaper.
Following Wagner “word for word” is entirely missing the point.
Wagner without words is the best way to start.
It’s the music which is transcendent.
https://cdn.bushwickdaily.com/post_image-image/v4fT1tXlCF4hJDS8_gSHig.jpgReplies: @The Alarmist, @Meretricious, @Hypnotoad666, @Escher, @prosa123, @XBardon Kaldlan
William Cullen Bryant is spinning in his grave.
Speaking of thermal, this Grand Thumb discussion has a very interesting blurb on how citizens are detectable via heat and how one might make themselves less noticable.
I hate to contradict Deogolwulf, who must be a better expert of the medieval Germanic world than I am. But as regards Nibelungenlied, Tolkien doesn’t get the spirit at all. His is a good versus evil universe with fighting and adventure figuring prominently. Nibelungenlied has a far more mature psychology, and no manichean dichotomy.
Wagner's antisemitism is funny because he owes most to Jews like Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer, and is much owed to by Jewish movie composers.
Somewhat related: when Sibelius maintained that a symphony much express a single idea in a coherent manner, Mahler replied that, on the contrary, a symphony must cover everything.
On topic: Given the radical readings of The Ring, I find it somewhat surprising that there has not been an environmentalist/ecoterrorist themed staging. OTOH it's a very long piece, it might get old fast.Replies: @SunBakedSuburb
“when Sibelius maintained that a symphony must express a single idea in a coherent manner, Mahler replied that, on the contrary, a symphony must cover everything”
Both approaches are done well by their respective champions. Mahler’s symphonic sagas have their peaks and valleys, and three hours later the finale is just over the horizon. In contrast, Sibelius’s novelettes are stunningly emotional and capture the attention throughout. See Sibelius’s Symphonies 3 and 4.
Less commonly recognized is the influence of American pulp writers on Tolkien. I see heavy influence of Howard and Clark Ashton smith upon Tolkien. Read the Phoenix on the sword and the Solomon Kane story Moon of Skulls, and compare the mines of Moria to the latter. There are many other influences present; Shakespeare, Greek mythology and other ancient writers too. Tolkien denies ever having read Orlando furioso or the Italian romances.Replies: @SunBakedSuburb
“Less commonly recognized is the influence of American pulp writers on Tolkien. I see the heavy influence of Howard and Clark Ashton Smith upon Tolkien.”
Along with Lovecraft, it’s heartening to see the pulpsters Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith collecting their due as creative and literary writers. Their work has always been influential; Howard’s corpus — mostly short stories and novellas — is second only to Tolkien’s in the fantasy/myth making spectrum. Smith’s short stories are incredibly weird, and poetic. Howard created his own mythology of the world, featuring fantastic heroes and villains that rival the Norse and Greek traditions. All before he fired a bullet into his head at age 30.
The “unBiblical” Tolkien was also an Arthurian. Perhaps this is why he professed Christ worship?
Since you often make good comments, this is surprising.
While it is true that old and even ancient writings can be difficult to understand and read, they are considered “great” and classics because of the themes and actions which they involve.
No they aren’t comic books or the millions of forgettable crap books/films, etc. cranked out every year (and in the past, only thousands).
But the value of old works and studying them is that they force you to think as the authors themselves did. The best of these embody the moral and ethical choices which even today all humans face.
Because they are derived from only a handful of literate men (usually men) over long time periods, their initial impact and influence keeps them alive for a few. Yes, some scholarship is needed to understand the context of the authors. They had vastly different religious and scientific ideas when they wrote these. That affected the outcomes of their stories and judgments.
So they are best studied in a scholarly setting. Or aided by accompanying notes.
But human emotions and conflicts have not changed much. Only the details of their expression.
True, I don’t grab classics for recreation. But they should be taught and educated people need to be exposed. The conceit that only “the modern” is worthwhile is horribly wrong.
That error is why the Woke (and other Red Guard acolytes) want to erase knowledge of history and tear down statues and burn old books. These older works are the vaccine against Year Zero thinking.
I repeat- non-specialist.
Of course one should use footnotes & other works clarifying details, historical context etc. It helps.
So, without going into boring details, I'll just enumerate a few I find very alive: Confucius, Heraclitus, Plato, Tacitus, Plutarch, Marcus Aurelius, Sophocles, Herodotus, ...
Just, Homer isn't one of them. I guess his morality is so alien to me, or I would say to most modern men, that he is either boring or repulsive. Let's be frank: Achilles & Odysseus are scoundrels. Achilles, being given all his magical armor, weapons etc. has nothing "heroic" around him (I use the term "heroic" in ordinary, modern sense). He's just a bully who (mis)uses his superhuman strength to beat others. There is nothing like fair play with him. And, mentally-emotionally, he's no better than Shitavious from da hood. He does not possess a code of honor that would move us.
In other words- Achilles is a glorified punk, a scoundrel. He may have inspired generations & generations, but that says something unflattering about those generations, not about Homer, who was - unlike Confucius - an extreme case of pre-modern mind.
Cervantes is ... Â the novel's beginning. One can see his historical significance, but, after reading the best 19th -20th novels, Cervantes doesn't appeal too much (at least to me). He is absorbed into vastly richer & more nuanced contemporary works, from the 1860s to the 1930s.
As far as Goethe goes, even his masterwork is lacking. What, on earth, is Faust doing that is, actually, "Faustian"? He spends most of his time banging Gretchen & Helen (he'd better have signed a pact with signor Casanova than with Mephistopheles). There is nothing "heroic", let alone "tragic" about him. Worst of all- nothing "Faustian".
I'm just repeating myself: many canonical literary works don't age well, including classics. Morality, sensibility, world-views, perception & striving of individuals ... in many cases have so changed over time that these, once highly hailed works, now look like interesting fossils & not much more.Replies: @Bardon Kaldian, @Muggles, @kaganovitch, @Not Dale Clevenger, @nebulafox, @BB753, @Esso
Well, may I ask, what WOULD you read?
Tier 1- Plato, Confucius, Shakespeare, Montaigne, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Proust, ...
Tier 1-2- Tacitus, Villon, La Rochefoucauld, Whitman, Herzen, Conrad, Faulkner, Nietzsche, Mann, Broch, Lawrence (both of them),...
Tier 2- Cellini, Gibbon, Blake, Chekhov, Flaubert, Kafka, ..
Tier 3- Orwell, Goncharov, Zola, Hemingway, Camus, ...
Good/great only in parts: Dante, Melville, some Upanishads, Bible, Goethe, Joyce ...
Waste of time: Homer, Virgil, Rabelais, Schiller, Cervantes, ....
As Matt Foley would say: “Well, la-de-frickin-da!”
What a great post!
For me, Wagner’s Ring is like Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Goethe’s Faust, inexhaustible. Like any masterpiece it’s as rich and as complex as life itself. And like life it defies final interpretation (maybe this is why some people don’t like it).
And the reason it defies final interpretation is because the whole work evolves out of a irreducible paradox. The paradox of The Ring is that there are two powers in the world, imaginative and economic. And by imaginative is meant the shaping power that produces the ideas that man lives by. The idea in this case being whoever controls the shaping power that creates the ideas that mankind lives by controls mankind. Full Spectrum Dominance indeed.
From this perspective what we might as well call Wotan’s Paradox is this:
Wotan desires to use his power responsibly (note the almost touching and distinctly pre-modern ring to that idea – forgive the pun).
So he carves on the spear the laws that bind him to his people. And those laws sustain his power.
If he transgresses those laws he loses his power. In other words, Wotan symbolizes social power. From that social power he creates social order, freedom and love. At least that’s the idea, or the hope.
But there’s another kind of power – economic power.
Alberich, the gnome (think Paul Krugman, or some such person) who is mocked and humiliated by the Rhine daughters, grabs the gold in compensation for his sexual frustrations. In other words, the desire for economic power over society takes its origin in the will’s frustration as it expresses itself in love. Freud was to say no more on the subject (but at least we know where he got the idea from). And now we’re back to Wotan’s Paradox. To be morally responsible his power must be self-limiting. But limited power is a contradiction, a paradox.
Conclusion: Power can not be made morally responsible.
This is the beating heart of the human paradox.
This is why so many do not like Wagner. It’s also why so many cling to the Right and Left even though they’re both so obviously intellectually and morally bankrupt. Ideologues can’t accept an unpleasant fact that Wagner had the genius to see and the courage to face 140+ years ago. But of course their response is as dishonest as their rejection of reality is cowardly.
By the way, ever do any research on what he went through to bring The Ring to the stage? Holy Wotan Batman! Let’s just put it this way, he was no quitter or cry baby (two other reasons for many today to despise him, instead of themselves).
But the key point is The Ring is, ultimately, not pessimistic or even tragic, it’s triumphant!
Before Wagner and other thinkers and artists of the 19th and 20th century, the point of Tragedy was to reconcile us to life by submitting to society. It continued to be what it was in its origins, a religious ritual.
But Wagner, and not just Wagner, represented the end of ancient thinking. Man’s real tragedy is not his failure to conform to society. It’s his failure to accept his inadequacy. Obviously it’s society’s failure too. No individual or group is perfectly adequate to the world they live in and must respond to. Darwin made the same point, albeit from a different perspective. This is why their work is still capable of being very disturbing to some people (namely those committed to a final answer to all of our problems).
Mankind isn’t bad and stupid because it’s sinful and ignorant. Mankind is simply imperfect. And that imperfection is the source of mankind’s need not just for stability, but for innovation as well. It’s also why stability and innovation are irreconcilable. As is idea and reality, theory and data, individual and group, etc. The funny thing is we don’t seem to have a problem accepting that in regard to theory and data, but not with the rest. But the point still stands. When it comes to our social and economic problems there are no final answers.
Again, for some this is a discouraging state of affairs. But for more courageous spirits it’s an opportunity. The person who can accept the irresolvable tension between us and the world are the truly tough-minded. The weak regress to a primitve need for final answers. That’s why the tough-minded don’t need to hide their weaknesses. Whereas the weak often don the mask of toughness.
This is why the weak-minded (the Right or Left, ie; the Polarized) no matter how intelligent they otherwise might be, are so easily shocked by the tough-minded, and why correspondingly the tough-minded are always irritated by the weak-minded.
The fact is, to put it bluntly, Wagner was tough-minded and Deogolwulf, et al. are not.
While it is true that old and even ancient writings can be difficult to understand and read, they are considered "great" and classics because of the themes and actions which they involve.
No they aren't comic books or the millions of forgettable crap books/films, etc. cranked out every year (and in the past, only thousands).
But the value of old works and studying them is that they force you to think as the authors themselves did. The best of these embody the moral and ethical choices which even today all humans face.
Because they are derived from only a handful of literate men (usually men) over long time periods, their initial impact and influence keeps them alive for a few. Yes, some scholarship is needed to understand the context of the authors. They had vastly different religious and scientific ideas when they wrote these. That affected the outcomes of their stories and judgments.
So they are best studied in a scholarly setting. Or aided by accompanying notes.
But human emotions and conflicts have not changed much. Only the details of their expression.
True, I don't grab classics for recreation. But they should be taught and educated people need to be exposed. The conceit that only "the modern" is worthwhile is horribly wrong.
That error is why the Woke (and other Red Guard acolytes) want to erase knowledge of history and tear down statues and burn old books. These older works are the vaccine against Year Zero thinking.Replies: @Bardon Kaldian
I am talking about different things, not about current popular culture. My thesis is, and I am not offering anything “revolutionary new”: for most “educated non-specialist patient readership”, most of the oldies are virtually dead.
I repeat- non-specialist.
Of course one should use footnotes & other works clarifying details, historical context etc. It helps.
So, without going into boring details, I’ll just enumerate a few I find very alive: Confucius, Heraclitus, Plato, Tacitus, Plutarch, Marcus Aurelius, Sophocles, Herodotus, …
Just, Homer isn’t one of them. I guess his morality is so alien to me, or I would say to most modern men, that he is either boring or repulsive. Let’s be frank: Achilles & Odysseus are scoundrels. Achilles, being given all his magical armor, weapons etc. has nothing “heroic” around him (I use the term “heroic” in ordinary, modern sense). He’s just a bully who (mis)uses his superhuman strength to beat others. There is nothing like fair play with him. And, mentally-emotionally, he’s no better than Shitavious from da hood. He does not possess a code of honor that would move us.
In other words- Achilles is a glorified punk, a scoundrel. He may have inspired generations & generations, but that says something unflattering about those generations, not about Homer, who was – unlike Confucius – an extreme case of pre-modern mind.
Cervantes is … Â the novel’s beginning. One can see his historical significance, but, after reading the best 19th -20th novels, Cervantes doesn’t appeal too much (at least to me). He is absorbed into vastly richer & more nuanced contemporary works, from the 1860s to the 1930s.
As far as Goethe goes, even his masterwork is lacking. What, on earth, is Faust doing that is, actually, “Faustian”? He spends most of his time banging Gretchen & Helen (he’d better have signed a pact with signor Casanova than with Mephistopheles). There is nothing “heroic”, let alone “tragic” about him. Worst of all- nothing “Faustian”.
I’m just repeating myself: many canonical literary works don’t age well, including classics. Morality, sensibility, world-views, perception & striving of individuals … in many cases have so changed over time that these, once highly hailed works, now look like interesting fossils & not much more.
With Koran it's even worse, while Buddhist Tripitaka is so whiny & studded with logical errors a healthy discerning man wouldn't have anything to do with it.
But I can't help noting that the works which you cite as being, well, not valuable, are in fact keystones of many subsequent literary tropes.
Homer's poems (as attributed to him, handed down) form the basis of many subsequent literary works. The Iliad is a lengthy revenge story with numerous twists and turns, betrayals. The source of soap operas for millennia. And the "Trojan Horse" remains a potent contemporary symbol.
The Odyssey remains the prototype "journey" saga, again where our hero faces many obstacles and twists to return home which is not quite the same as he left.
Cervantes "tilting at windmills" is an iconic image based upon a complex historical reality which he captured for future readers. The helpful sidekick is seen in most contemporary serial fictions.
The point of the "Faustian" bargain is of course the perils of selling your soul to the devil. This has happened in various forms throughout history but his story, stripped down to a religious type of phrase, remains the gold standard of this trope.
There are of course many other examples great and small. Melville's Moby Dick is a whale of a tale (sorry...) but the main takeaway is that monomaniacal focus on past problems rarely leads to happiness.
While other cultures and languages have similar iconic literary classics with similar tales of human failing and/or enlightenment, the ones cited in modern English use have demonstrated universality and staying power. Despite the factual contexts presented being rather odd or just crazy.
I am no great student of classic literature. But like viewing classical artwork in museums (mainly) we can pick up on many useful insights and even clues for the future.
Some great Greek writer (who? I can't name at the moment) once wrote there are only what, about five basic literary plot types. That needs to be observed and taught.
I can't help but think that Moby Dick has relevant value in judging contemporary Wokism. Irrationally blaming others for all of your problems and attempting to hurt the "others" is just a road to self inflicted personal death, one way or another.
The "Great White Whale" indeed...Replies: @Bardon Kaldian
" Die Leiden des Jungen Werthers" seems much more 'modern' to me, though.Replies: @Bardon Kaldian
It reminds me of when I read Crime and Punishment in high school and thought, "you know, that Raskolnikov has some compelling ideas."Replies: @Wokechoke
1) Men will display suicidal courage in war. This often isn't in the service of their cause. It is for the other men who they have forged unusually deep ties with, that have few analogues in peace.
2) Higher levels of civilization can't always offset brute force.
3) It is the flaws and limits in man that make their abilities all the more meaningful.
4) Choosing to embrace life-even with all the suffering and eventual death involved-is preferable to being stuck in a static dreamworld, no matter how pleasant. Once you stop living, actively participating in the life that is yours and only yours, you might as well be dead.Replies: @BB753, @Polistra
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAAp_luluo0Replies: @tr, @jamie b.
Sorry, can’t even stomach rap as parody.
I repeat- non-specialist.
Of course one should use footnotes & other works clarifying details, historical context etc. It helps.
So, without going into boring details, I'll just enumerate a few I find very alive: Confucius, Heraclitus, Plato, Tacitus, Plutarch, Marcus Aurelius, Sophocles, Herodotus, ...
Just, Homer isn't one of them. I guess his morality is so alien to me, or I would say to most modern men, that he is either boring or repulsive. Let's be frank: Achilles & Odysseus are scoundrels. Achilles, being given all his magical armor, weapons etc. has nothing "heroic" around him (I use the term "heroic" in ordinary, modern sense). He's just a bully who (mis)uses his superhuman strength to beat others. There is nothing like fair play with him. And, mentally-emotionally, he's no better than Shitavious from da hood. He does not possess a code of honor that would move us.
In other words- Achilles is a glorified punk, a scoundrel. He may have inspired generations & generations, but that says something unflattering about those generations, not about Homer, who was - unlike Confucius - an extreme case of pre-modern mind.
Cervantes is ... Â the novel's beginning. One can see his historical significance, but, after reading the best 19th -20th novels, Cervantes doesn't appeal too much (at least to me). He is absorbed into vastly richer & more nuanced contemporary works, from the 1860s to the 1930s.
As far as Goethe goes, even his masterwork is lacking. What, on earth, is Faust doing that is, actually, "Faustian"? He spends most of his time banging Gretchen & Helen (he'd better have signed a pact with signor Casanova than with Mephistopheles). There is nothing "heroic", let alone "tragic" about him. Worst of all- nothing "Faustian".
I'm just repeating myself: many canonical literary works don't age well, including classics. Morality, sensibility, world-views, perception & striving of individuals ... in many cases have so changed over time that these, once highly hailed works, now look like interesting fossils & not much more.Replies: @Bardon Kaldian, @Muggles, @kaganovitch, @Not Dale Clevenger, @nebulafox, @BB753, @Esso
I’d add that few, very few writings survive. The Hebrew Bible or Old Testament is, let’s be frank- laughable. Even if we let old Yawheh off the hook, most Biblical characters are atrocious: Abraham the pimp & at the same time a proto-Al Qaida lunatic (the famous sacrifice episode); Judith- Babylonian honey trap; David – no comment. Great literature can be found in some prophets & wisdom writing, but in Torah- not, with only a few exceptions. If we turn to the New Testament, there we breathe an atmosphere of hysterical Middle Eastern Kebab, hyper-emotional freaks awaiting the end of times that will never come. It is true that Jesus uttered many morally wonderful & unforgettable sayings, but he is inseparable from the KABOOM apocalypse he continually announces & which is a sincerely delusional failure.
With Koran it’s even worse, while Buddhist Tripitaka is so whiny & studded with logical errors a healthy discerning man wouldn’t have anything to do with it.
Wagner’s Ring vs. Tolkien’s Ring?
Of the two, I liked The Volsunga Saga the best.
(If you haven’t read it, do so. It is the well from which the later derivatives draw their water. It’s nowhere near as long, has a refreshing barbarian quality to it and puts the greed, vengeance and murder stuff right up front, where it belongs. No romantic gushiness, no Christian moralizing.)
I have read that Tolkien was attempting to create an Anglo-Saxon mythology he thought was lacking because of the Norman conquest and the replacement of the Anglo-Saxon elite and culture by the new French overlords (Tolkien was a professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford). Ironically, subsequent genetic studies (not available in Tolkien’s time) have shown that there isn’t all that much Anglo-Saxon in the British people. Most of their genetic heritage comes from the pre-Anglo-Saxon Celtic peoples of Britain, whose linguistic heritage now exists only on the fringes of Britain in Wales and the Scottish islands.
Tolkien was one of those British “conservatives” (Waugh, Amis, Oakeshott, etc.) for whom “being conservative” means viewing the world of your childhood as ipso facto perfect, and everything after is beneath contempt. Not that you would lift a finger to “turn back the clock,” since that would require action and ideas, both of which are infra dig to the smug Oxonian. (Hence the appeal of Catholicism, which eliminates the need for either thought or action, unlike Lutheranism).
Thus Tolkien expressed a sneering contempt for those vulgar “nazzies.” He’s getting what he deserves from Amazon.
Also, his books are boring.
Hans Blumenberg's Die Legitimität der Neuzeit has been translated in English; as to Höhlenausgänge I do not know.
I would have counseled you to read those books before making the above quoted assertion.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/12/05/the-dragons-egg
Because if one does agree with that, then clearly the English excel at literature. And I challenge anyone to really get to know Beowulf, learning some minimum of Old English in the process, and not see how that particularly English excellence was already present circa 900.
It all seems so old, so awkward and so foreign if one does not work at it. But if one perseveres, there suddenly comes a crystalline moment when one realizes that the Beowulf poet was truly a progenitor of Chaucer and Shakespeare, of the ability to transform a range of human experience from the everyday to the noble into beguiling words. For me, as with many of us, it came in the flyting in the 8th fitt. But I'm a slow learner: I had to learn enough Old English to do my own translation, because I could not find one of the hundreds out there, and dozens I looked at, that I truly liked. Then and only then did the moment come to me. But I trust it comes much faster to most, though they persevere less.Replies: @Wokechoke
I confess that when I tried to read I, Claudius, I felt like I was basically reading Suetonius. I loved the miniseries but the novel just felt like a chronicle. What was I missing?
OT:
With so much twaddle on this site about what women want, and with so many “Men” of Unz having no romantic partners other than Mrs. Palm and her five daughters, I thought it’s time to offer up some friendly advice about having better luck with women. Now, I claim no expertise, this is strictly what I’ve noticed and read over the years.
1. Don’t be fat. If you are fat, lose weight, and don’t bother whining about how it’s so difficult. While men might accept overweight women, to a point, the feeling is most assuredly not reciprocated. Women hate fatties. Okay, a fat yet muscular type might be acceptable, think of a football lineman, but a blob who can’t walk up a flight of stairs without getting winded is totally unacceptable.
2. Develop some typically male interests. Tinkering with cars, woodworking, fishing, home repairs, things like that. Even though women may not be into such activities themselves, they respect men who are. Video gaming is okay, if not taken to an extreme.
3. On similar note, don’t go overboard with nerdy things: sci-fi, D&D, Star Trek, Magic the Gathering, comic books, you can think of more. Do not assume that just because some women enjoy those activities they have any interest in men who do. That purple-haired tattooed girl at the comic book convention wants to drop her panties for the captain of the football team, just like 99% of other women.
4. Have some male friends. Women are extremely suspicious of friendless men. If you don’t have any male friends, find some. It’s a lot easier than finding women.
5. Do NOT infantilize women, no matter what that moron Another Dad says, and do not put them on pedestals. Women hate that.
6. If you think you might have some autistic traits, get psychiatric help immediately.
Then there’s the age factor. Yes college was cheap when I was in college too. And I could buy 4 textbooks a ream of typing paper 5 notebooks white out 4 typewriter ribbons and packs of pens for about 2/3 of a week’s minimum wage work.. nowadays many books are in the $300-$400 range. So it would take about 6 weeks minimum wage work to buy a semesters worth of college books and supplies.
But I’m aware of what college tuition from Southwest State U to Harvard to dorm fees lab fees books off campus apartments and other costs are.
Sometimes the comments on this site seem to come from a nursing home of 80 year olds whose only connection to the world is their laptops.Replies: @Barbarossa
As I recall from Catherine Millets shtupping memoir "La Vie sexuelle de Catherine M., " a good rule of thumb is that the man should be less fat than the woman. Then again, scrawniness might be bad too.
From the requirements list, a tip for you men out there: it seems like an interest in guns and gun clubs would be a compromise made in heaven. Strong hobby to get involved with, easy to make male friends, etc. Hunting should be fine too, presumably.
I agree that a too strong interest in consuming product is not great. Watching Netflix with no chill every night is much the same as having an all-consuming interest in games (but will also turn you gay, which at least solves your woman problems).Replies: @prosa123
When push comes to shove, if you are not having kids and raising them in a counter-cultural way you ain't doing squat to fix our current state of society.
I'm glad in many ways that I'm not in the market for a wife these days, but there really are good prospects out there.Replies: @nebulafox
Most of the motifs common to Wagner’s Ring and Tolkien – the cursed ring, treachery while fishing in a river, the dragon’s hoard, the sword reforged, the man born to be king – are derived from Völsunga saga. Of course Tolkien knew of Wagner, but he also knew where Wagner got his material from and mined the same source himself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLZjbnhhvgQReplies: @David
No one appears to have coined the term thermoflage yet. Or at least no one has claimed trademark status.
News from Killam (!) Avenue:
Several Norfolk State students among injured in Virginia mass shooting early Sunday morning
Two of the seven shot have since died, reducing the Sailer effect. The victims are from HBCU Norfolk State, but it took place closer to arch-rival Old Dominion (44% white, 32% black), so early headlines were inconsistent about which school was involved.
I repeat- non-specialist.
Of course one should use footnotes & other works clarifying details, historical context etc. It helps.
So, without going into boring details, I'll just enumerate a few I find very alive: Confucius, Heraclitus, Plato, Tacitus, Plutarch, Marcus Aurelius, Sophocles, Herodotus, ...
Just, Homer isn't one of them. I guess his morality is so alien to me, or I would say to most modern men, that he is either boring or repulsive. Let's be frank: Achilles & Odysseus are scoundrels. Achilles, being given all his magical armor, weapons etc. has nothing "heroic" around him (I use the term "heroic" in ordinary, modern sense). He's just a bully who (mis)uses his superhuman strength to beat others. There is nothing like fair play with him. And, mentally-emotionally, he's no better than Shitavious from da hood. He does not possess a code of honor that would move us.
In other words- Achilles is a glorified punk, a scoundrel. He may have inspired generations & generations, but that says something unflattering about those generations, not about Homer, who was - unlike Confucius - an extreme case of pre-modern mind.
Cervantes is ... Â the novel's beginning. One can see his historical significance, but, after reading the best 19th -20th novels, Cervantes doesn't appeal too much (at least to me). He is absorbed into vastly richer & more nuanced contemporary works, from the 1860s to the 1930s.
As far as Goethe goes, even his masterwork is lacking. What, on earth, is Faust doing that is, actually, "Faustian"? He spends most of his time banging Gretchen & Helen (he'd better have signed a pact with signor Casanova than with Mephistopheles). There is nothing "heroic", let alone "tragic" about him. Worst of all- nothing "Faustian".
I'm just repeating myself: many canonical literary works don't age well, including classics. Morality, sensibility, world-views, perception & striving of individuals ... in many cases have so changed over time that these, once highly hailed works, now look like interesting fossils & not much more.Replies: @Bardon Kaldian, @Muggles, @kaganovitch, @Not Dale Clevenger, @nebulafox, @BB753, @Esso
Thanks for your thoughtful response.
But I can’t help noting that the works which you cite as being, well, not valuable, are in fact keystones of many subsequent literary tropes.
Homer’s poems (as attributed to him, handed down) form the basis of many subsequent literary works. The Iliad is a lengthy revenge story with numerous twists and turns, betrayals. The source of soap operas for millennia. And the “Trojan Horse” remains a potent contemporary symbol.
The Odyssey remains the prototype “journey” saga, again where our hero faces many obstacles and twists to return home which is not quite the same as he left.
Cervantes “tilting at windmills” is an iconic image based upon a complex historical reality which he captured for future readers. The helpful sidekick is seen in most contemporary serial fictions.
The point of the “Faustian” bargain is of course the perils of selling your soul to the devil. This has happened in various forms throughout history but his story, stripped down to a religious type of phrase, remains the gold standard of this trope.
There are of course many other examples great and small. Melville’s Moby Dick is a whale of a tale (sorry…) but the main takeaway is that monomaniacal focus on past problems rarely leads to happiness.
While other cultures and languages have similar iconic literary classics with similar tales of human failing and/or enlightenment, the ones cited in modern English use have demonstrated universality and staying power. Despite the factual contexts presented being rather odd or just crazy.
I am no great student of classic literature. But like viewing classical artwork in museums (mainly) we can pick up on many useful insights and even clues for the future.
Some great Greek writer (who? I can’t name at the moment) once wrote there are only what, about five basic literary plot types. That needs to be observed and taught.
I can’t help but think that Moby Dick has relevant value in judging contemporary Wokism. Irrationally blaming others for all of your problems and attempting to hurt the “others” is just a road to self inflicted personal death, one way or another.
The “Great White Whale” indeed…
But, these works are not fresh now, as they had been before. In many cases, they remind me of philosophy.
Great philosophical ideas, from Aristotle to Hegel and Wittgenstein, are best digested & absorbed in scholars' specialist works that present those ideas in accessible form. It is simply a waste of time to read Aristotle, Locke or Hegel (never mind the difference between them). Readers' digest will more than suffice. Only a small number of philosophers are actually readable (Plato, Epicurus, Nietzsche,..).
But literature should be different. One should read those works, although most of them are in translation. Just, when you read them, you'll see they are only of historical interest & have not retained much of aesthetic power & artistic charisma.
Fossils.
You just haven’t heard the traditional classics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjoRC0F7LDM
But I can't help noting that the works which you cite as being, well, not valuable, are in fact keystones of many subsequent literary tropes.
Homer's poems (as attributed to him, handed down) form the basis of many subsequent literary works. The Iliad is a lengthy revenge story with numerous twists and turns, betrayals. The source of soap operas for millennia. And the "Trojan Horse" remains a potent contemporary symbol.
The Odyssey remains the prototype "journey" saga, again where our hero faces many obstacles and twists to return home which is not quite the same as he left.
Cervantes "tilting at windmills" is an iconic image based upon a complex historical reality which he captured for future readers. The helpful sidekick is seen in most contemporary serial fictions.
The point of the "Faustian" bargain is of course the perils of selling your soul to the devil. This has happened in various forms throughout history but his story, stripped down to a religious type of phrase, remains the gold standard of this trope.
There are of course many other examples great and small. Melville's Moby Dick is a whale of a tale (sorry...) but the main takeaway is that monomaniacal focus on past problems rarely leads to happiness.
While other cultures and languages have similar iconic literary classics with similar tales of human failing and/or enlightenment, the ones cited in modern English use have demonstrated universality and staying power. Despite the factual contexts presented being rather odd or just crazy.
I am no great student of classic literature. But like viewing classical artwork in museums (mainly) we can pick up on many useful insights and even clues for the future.
Some great Greek writer (who? I can't name at the moment) once wrote there are only what, about five basic literary plot types. That needs to be observed and taught.
I can't help but think that Moby Dick has relevant value in judging contemporary Wokism. Irrationally blaming others for all of your problems and attempting to hurt the "others" is just a road to self inflicted personal death, one way or another.
The "Great White Whale" indeed...Replies: @Bardon Kaldian
You’re right about tropes, motifs etc.
But, these works are not fresh now, as they had been before. In many cases, they remind me of philosophy.
Great philosophical ideas, from Aristotle to Hegel and Wittgenstein, are best digested & absorbed in scholars’ specialist works that present those ideas in accessible form. It is simply a waste of time to read Aristotle, Locke or Hegel (never mind the difference between them). Readers’ digest will more than suffice. Only a small number of philosophers are actually readable (Plato, Epicurus, Nietzsche,..).
But literature should be different. One should read those works, although most of them are in translation. Just, when you read them, you’ll see they are only of historical interest & have not retained much of aesthetic power & artistic charisma.
Fossils.
Wotan desires to use his power responsibly (note the almost touching and distinctly pre-modern ring to that idea - forgive the pun).
So he carves on the spear the laws that bind him to his people. And those laws sustain his power.
If he transgresses those laws he loses his power. In other words, Wotan symbolizes social power. From that social power he creates social order, freedom and love. At least that’s the idea, or the hope.
But there’s another kind of power – economic power.
Alberich, the gnome (think Paul Krugman, or some such person) who is mocked and humiliated by the Rhine daughters, grabs the gold in compensation for his sexual frustrations. In other words, the desire for economic power over society takes its origin in the will’s frustration as it expresses itself in love. Freud was to say no more on the subject (but at least we know where he got the idea from). And now we’re back to Wotan’s Paradox. To be morally responsible his power must be self-limiting. But limited power is a contradiction, a paradox.Conclusion: Power can not be made morally responsible. This is the beating heart of the human paradox.
This is why so many do not like Wagner. It's also why so many cling to the Right and Left even though they're both so obviously intellectually and morally bankrupt. Ideologues can’t accept an unpleasant fact that Wagner had the genius to see and the courage to face 140+ years ago. But of course their response is as dishonest as their rejection of reality is cowardly. By the way, ever do any research on what he went through to bring The Ring to the stage? Holy Wotan Batman! Let's just put it this way, he was no quitter or cry baby (two other reasons for many today to despise him, instead of themselves).But the key point is The Ring is, ultimately, not pessimistic or even tragic, it’s triumphant! Before Wagner and other thinkers and artists of the 19th and 20th century, the point of Tragedy was to reconcile us to life by submitting to society. It continued to be what it was in its origins, a religious ritual. But Wagner, and not just Wagner, represented the end of ancient thinking. Man’s real tragedy is not his failure to conform to society. It’s his failure to accept his inadequacy. Obviously it’s society’s failure too. No individual or group is perfectly adequate to the world they live in and must respond to. Darwin made the same point, albeit from a different perspective. This is why their work is still capable of being very disturbing to some people (namely those committed to a final answer to all of our problems). Mankind isn’t bad and stupid because it’s sinful and ignorant. Mankind is simply imperfect. And that imperfection is the source of mankind’s need not just for stability, but for innovation as well. It’s also why stability and innovation are irreconcilable. As is idea and reality, theory and data, individual and group, etc. The funny thing is we don't seem to have a problem accepting that in regard to theory and data, but not with the rest. But the point still stands. When it comes to our social and economic problems there are no final answers. Again, for some this is a discouraging state of affairs. But for more courageous spirits it’s an opportunity. The person who can accept the irresolvable tension between us and the world are the truly tough-minded. The weak regress to a primitve need for final answers. That's why the tough-minded don't need to hide their weaknesses. Whereas the weak often don the mask of toughness.This is why the weak-minded (the Right or Left, ie; the Polarized) no matter how intelligent they otherwise might be, are so easily shocked by the tough-minded, and why correspondingly the tough-minded are always irritated by the weak-minded. The fact is, to put it bluntly, Wagner was tough-minded and Deogolwulf, et al. are not.Replies: @Deogolwulf, @Deogolwulf
That’s easy! But Tolkien and many others (ancient and even modern) go much further than merely accepting that there is an irresolvable tension between mankind and the physical world. They accept that inevitably, in this world, there is alienation and a sense of exile — at least to those who are not sunk in too-worldly and weak-minded indulgences! By your measure, wouldn’t that make them more tough-minded than these worldly creatures whom you have self-indigently called “tough-minded”? Or is the sense of otherworldliness too flighty and “weak-minded” for you?
What is disappointing especially about such a genius as Wagner is that his emotional incontinence and weak-mindedness mars his work. He goes from the sublime to the sickly. But my original point wasn’t about his music (some of which, as I say, is sublime); it was about his abomination of myth.
Wotan desires to use his power responsibly (note the almost touching and distinctly pre-modern ring to that idea - forgive the pun).
So he carves on the spear the laws that bind him to his people. And those laws sustain his power.
If he transgresses those laws he loses his power. In other words, Wotan symbolizes social power. From that social power he creates social order, freedom and love. At least that’s the idea, or the hope.
But there’s another kind of power – economic power.
Alberich, the gnome (think Paul Krugman, or some such person) who is mocked and humiliated by the Rhine daughters, grabs the gold in compensation for his sexual frustrations. In other words, the desire for economic power over society takes its origin in the will’s frustration as it expresses itself in love. Freud was to say no more on the subject (but at least we know where he got the idea from). And now we’re back to Wotan’s Paradox. To be morally responsible his power must be self-limiting. But limited power is a contradiction, a paradox.Conclusion: Power can not be made morally responsible. This is the beating heart of the human paradox.
This is why so many do not like Wagner. It's also why so many cling to the Right and Left even though they're both so obviously intellectually and morally bankrupt. Ideologues can’t accept an unpleasant fact that Wagner had the genius to see and the courage to face 140+ years ago. But of course their response is as dishonest as their rejection of reality is cowardly. By the way, ever do any research on what he went through to bring The Ring to the stage? Holy Wotan Batman! Let's just put it this way, he was no quitter or cry baby (two other reasons for many today to despise him, instead of themselves).But the key point is The Ring is, ultimately, not pessimistic or even tragic, it’s triumphant! Before Wagner and other thinkers and artists of the 19th and 20th century, the point of Tragedy was to reconcile us to life by submitting to society. It continued to be what it was in its origins, a religious ritual. But Wagner, and not just Wagner, represented the end of ancient thinking. Man’s real tragedy is not his failure to conform to society. It’s his failure to accept his inadequacy. Obviously it’s society’s failure too. No individual or group is perfectly adequate to the world they live in and must respond to. Darwin made the same point, albeit from a different perspective. This is why their work is still capable of being very disturbing to some people (namely those committed to a final answer to all of our problems). Mankind isn’t bad and stupid because it’s sinful and ignorant. Mankind is simply imperfect. And that imperfection is the source of mankind’s need not just for stability, but for innovation as well. It’s also why stability and innovation are irreconcilable. As is idea and reality, theory and data, individual and group, etc. The funny thing is we don't seem to have a problem accepting that in regard to theory and data, but not with the rest. But the point still stands. When it comes to our social and economic problems there are no final answers. Again, for some this is a discouraging state of affairs. But for more courageous spirits it’s an opportunity. The person who can accept the irresolvable tension between us and the world are the truly tough-minded. The weak regress to a primitve need for final answers. That's why the tough-minded don't need to hide their weaknesses. Whereas the weak often don the mask of toughness.This is why the weak-minded (the Right or Left, ie; the Polarized) no matter how intelligent they otherwise might be, are so easily shocked by the tough-minded, and why correspondingly the tough-minded are always irritated by the weak-minded. The fact is, to put it bluntly, Wagner was tough-minded and Deogolwulf, et al. are not.Replies: @Deogolwulf, @Deogolwulf
That’s easy, and a very low bar to be accepted into the golden ranks of your “tough-minded ones”! But Tolkien and many others (ancient and even modern) go much further than merely accepting that there is an irresolvable tension between mankind and the physical world. They accept that inevitably, in this world, there is alienation and a sense of exile — at least to those who are not sunk in too-worldly and weak-minded indulgences! By your measure, wouldn’t that make them more tough-minded than these worldly creatures whom you have self-indigently called “tough-minded”? Or is the sense of otherworldliness too flighty and “weak-minded” for you?
What is disappointing especially about such a genius as Wagner is that his emotional incontinence and weak-mindedness mars his work. His music goes from the sublime to the sickly. But my original point wasn’t about his music (some of which, as I say, is sublime); it was about his abomination of myth.
Hmmm, “self-indulgently”.
In other news, shades of Lambeth, 1930:
Church Endorses Transitions for Transgender Children 'at All Ages'
And from Cristina Kirchner's Rock Concert:
Cristina Fernández de Kirchner: Gun jams during bid to kill Argentina vice-president
From President to Vice President? She's their John Quincy Adams! Their William Howard Taft!
In the past 10 or so years I haven’t read anything belonging to imaginative literature (I’m not interested anymore). When I was reading, my fave authors (including readable philosophers) were:
Tier 1- Plato, Confucius, Shakespeare, Montaigne, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Proust, …
Tier 1-2- Tacitus, Villon, La Rochefoucauld, Whitman, Herzen, Conrad, Faulkner, Nietzsche, Mann, Broch, Lawrence (both of them),…
Tier 2- Cellini, Gibbon, Blake, Chekhov, Flaubert, Kafka, ..
Tier 3- Orwell, Goncharov, Zola, Hemingway, Camus, …
Good/great only in parts: Dante, Melville, some Upanishads, Bible, Goethe, Joyce …
Waste of time: Homer, Virgil, Rabelais, Schiller, Cervantes, ….
If you spend yourself broke, you’re self-indigent. If you do so to go native, you’re self-indigenous.
In other news, shades of Lambeth, 1930:
Church Endorses Transitions for Transgender Children ‘at All Ages’
And from Cristina Kirchner’s Rock Concert:
Cristina Fernández de Kirchner: Gun jams during bid to kill Argentina vice-president
From President to Vice President? She’s their John Quincy Adams! Their William Howard Taft!
Gordo,
Tolkien’s works are hugely popular in Germany, and I have no reason to think that the same wouldn’t be true for Austria and Switzerland.
OT: Filter this through Sailer’s law.
Ten dead, 15 injured in mass stabbing in Saskatchewan. The two perps are named: Damien Sanderson and Myles Sanderson…..but don’t jump to conclusions. Click the link and view the image of the perps, and the stabbings took place on the James Smit Cree nation.
https://www.gbnews.uk/news/canadian-police-on-hunt-for-two-suspects-after-ten-left-dead-and-at-least-15-hurt-in-saskatchewan-stabbings/361575
I don’t know about now, but Tolkien was popular in Germany in previous decades (70s, 80s).
I repeat- non-specialist.
Of course one should use footnotes & other works clarifying details, historical context etc. It helps.
So, without going into boring details, I'll just enumerate a few I find very alive: Confucius, Heraclitus, Plato, Tacitus, Plutarch, Marcus Aurelius, Sophocles, Herodotus, ...
Just, Homer isn't one of them. I guess his morality is so alien to me, or I would say to most modern men, that he is either boring or repulsive. Let's be frank: Achilles & Odysseus are scoundrels. Achilles, being given all his magical armor, weapons etc. has nothing "heroic" around him (I use the term "heroic" in ordinary, modern sense). He's just a bully who (mis)uses his superhuman strength to beat others. There is nothing like fair play with him. And, mentally-emotionally, he's no better than Shitavious from da hood. He does not possess a code of honor that would move us.
In other words- Achilles is a glorified punk, a scoundrel. He may have inspired generations & generations, but that says something unflattering about those generations, not about Homer, who was - unlike Confucius - an extreme case of pre-modern mind.
Cervantes is ... Â the novel's beginning. One can see his historical significance, but, after reading the best 19th -20th novels, Cervantes doesn't appeal too much (at least to me). He is absorbed into vastly richer & more nuanced contemporary works, from the 1860s to the 1930s.
As far as Goethe goes, even his masterwork is lacking. What, on earth, is Faust doing that is, actually, "Faustian"? He spends most of his time banging Gretchen & Helen (he'd better have signed a pact with signor Casanova than with Mephistopheles). There is nothing "heroic", let alone "tragic" about him. Worst of all- nothing "Faustian".
I'm just repeating myself: many canonical literary works don't age well, including classics. Morality, sensibility, world-views, perception & striving of individuals ... in many cases have so changed over time that these, once highly hailed works, now look like interesting fossils & not much more.Replies: @Bardon Kaldian, @Muggles, @kaganovitch, @Not Dale Clevenger, @nebulafox, @BB753, @Esso
As far as Goethe goes, even his masterwork is lacking. What, on earth, is Faust doing that is, actually, “Faustian”? He spends most of his time banging Gretchen & Helen (he’d better have signed a pact with signor Casanova than with Mephistopheles). There is nothing “heroic”, let alone “tragic” about him. Worst of all- nothing “Faustian”.
” Die Leiden des Jungen Werthers” seems much more ‘modern’ to me, though.
I think rap owes more to this crap…
" Die Leiden des Jungen Werthers" seems much more 'modern' to me, though.Replies: @Bardon Kaldian
Meh… a simp …his Weltschmertz, although authentic, made me, when I was reading it, repeat: Dammit, grow a pair, don’t be such a whiner.
If Jesus is about truth, then holding back knowledge for a price would be wrong. There could only be one reason to stop the truth…It’s not the truth some people would hope it to be.
It’s like the lands before time, It’s known that the surface that we walk on now once constituted a single surface that for some cataclysmic reason broke apart. The date and time of it of course we don’t know or do we. We’re always so afraid to research the “myths”.
I know one thing, the chimera, tell the origin or the mix of the king ie..dragon, lion what bird. Whether or not they come from the ancient God tree or from the dust of the earth, mortal man. They mixed (Nephilim), but over time through successive generations and mix they became mortal, which the very mortal Jewish people hope to avoid spoiling their closeness to God by not mixing.
To share that knowledge is to spread God, the existence of God and the word of God. To say that things existed and exist.
On the other hand, CS Lewis really was a great imbiber of Wagner in his youth, and in his autobiographical Surprised by Joy he talked about how his appreciation of myth helped prepare the way for his adult conversion to Christianity. In addition to Wagnerian music he was a voracious reader of sagas in various languages and a lover of walks in the countryside.
That particular combination has a very relatable and predictable affect on a youth in the first bloom of manhood. The bourgeoning familiarity with fine art and great tragic themes, which parallels one's own entry into the world of adult responsibility (rather dramatically so, in Lewis' case, in the form of combat service in WWI), along with the aesthetics of nature and its secret poetry of hidden trails, cozy copses of trees, and heavy grey skies portending doom, always seems to fill one's head with a world of tantalizing possibilities just out of reach. Lewis became a connoisseur and an addict of mythic experiences.
But this is not exactly what propelled him into Christianity. He wasn't fully prepared for that until it all slammed shut. When his inner experience dimmed and the world grew flat again, he tried to force the woods and the words and the music to speak to him as they once had, and ended up failing in despair. His sincere conversion began not because Christianity offered easy answers, but because Christianity makes it quite clear that the Platonic world he longed for could not be possessed in the here and now.
We are lucky indeed if we get to experience that Platonic world, but we are not truly blessed until it slams shut on us. If it doesn't, then we go through life being intoxicated by myth and we never get to see it turning to dust in our hands until it is too late.Replies: @Chrisnonymous
I have the sense that Lewis was somewhat full of himself and affected as a young man. The failed attempt at being A Poet is the clearest tell. I get none of that from anything in Tolkien’s youth. Thus, I would not be surprised at all to learn that while Lewis was interested in Wagner, Tolkien was not. I don’t know that, and I don’t recollect hearing anything about the music that interested Tolkien. Music is essentially absent from his Middle-Earth stories, so I suspect he was not much interested in it.
Noted.
What’s the best way to experience the Wagner version? Is there a good translation or any good plays/movies of it?Replies: @That Would Be Telling, @Polistra, @Ralph L, @TelfoedJohn, @Kylie
Graphic novel version here: https://getcomics.info/other-comics/the-ring-of-the-nibelung-tpb-2014/
No lovers around? Screw your brother or sister. Brother goes back to killing. Have a baby that’s even crazier than you and sibling. Kill some more. Ignore sensible advice Kill some more. Brunhild was killed by tying to a horse and dragged through the streets of Paris till she was in shreds. She deserved it. I believe she killed most of her men relatives. Paris 600 AD under the Burgundian tribe who wrote the Song of the Nieblings. A lovely civilized town.
History of World Civilization was the college course. And wait, there’s more. 3 brothers a true story about a civil war between 3 Han princes after their Dad the Emperor died. Kill kill kill all your relatives. Lie cheat and steal. There’s many movie and TV versions of 3 brothers. Excellent ! Colorful costumes prettify the killing. There’s a Japanese genre I call Blood and Snow. Samurai stories. Nice color schemes. Battles in fields covered with white snow pale blue skies black trunks of bright green ever green trees. One army wears light blue uniforms the opposition gray. And the white blue and gray is splashed with red blood like a Jackson Pollock painting, A theater in Chinatown showed them all the time very popular.
Some Indian Indian conquest sagas too. By that time in the course all I wanted to do was endure to exam week. So I don’t remember much.
Lots of books have the Odyssey structure. Cold Mountain Mansfield Park most stories where the man leaves for a war or journey and the woman has her own adventures at home.
The ancient Sagas weren’t my favorite reading. Brunhild and her shield and sword each so heavy 20 men couldn’t lift them.
So Biden going Full Riefenstahl could be the start of a trend.
We all saw this.
Now this.
Don’t forget:
A lot of unsupported assumptions here.
If you think Cervates is unreadable I pity you.
With so much twaddle on this site about what women want, and with so many "Men" of Unz having no romantic partners other than Mrs. Palm and her five daughters, I thought it's time to offer up some friendly advice about having better luck with women. Now, I claim no expertise, this is strictly what I've noticed and read over the years.1. Don't be fat. If you are fat, lose weight, and don't bother whining about how it's so difficult. While men might accept overweight women, to a point, the feeling is most assuredly not reciprocated. Women hate fatties. Okay, a fat yet muscular type might be acceptable, think of a football lineman, but a blob who can't walk up a flight of stairs without getting winded is totally unacceptable.2. Develop some typically male interests. Tinkering with cars, woodworking, fishing, home repairs, things like that. Even though women may not be into such activities themselves, they respect men who are. Video gaming is okay, if not taken to an extreme.3. On similar note, don't go overboard with nerdy things: sci-fi, D&D, Star Trek, Magic the Gathering, comic books, you can think of more. Do not assume that just because some women enjoy those activities they have any interest in men who do. That purple-haired tattooed girl at the comic book convention wants to drop her panties for the captain of the football team, just like 99% of other women.4. Have some male friends. Women are extremely suspicious of friendless men. If you don't have any male friends, find some. It's a lot easier than finding women.5. Do NOT infantilize women, no matter what that moron Another Dad says, and do not put them on pedestals. Women hate that.6. If you think you might have some autistic traits, get psychiatric help immediately.Replies: @Alden, @Anon, @nebulafox, @Brutusale, @Barbarossa, @Paul Mendez
Great post thank you. It’s very obvious the MEN OF UNZ don’t have children. Or relationships with women other than co workers they have to be around mother maybe sisters. And their high beauty standards for women date them to being teen age boys back when Playboy magazine was still around.
Then there’s the age factor. Yes college was cheap when I was in college too. And I could buy 4 textbooks a ream of typing paper 5 notebooks white out 4 typewriter ribbons and packs of pens for about 2/3 of a week’s minimum wage work.. nowadays many books are in the $300-$400 range. So it would take about 6 weeks minimum wage work to buy a semesters worth of college books and supplies.
But I’m aware of what college tuition from Southwest State U to Harvard to dorm fees lab fees books off campus apartments and other costs are.
Sometimes the comments on this site seem to come from a nursing home of 80 year olds whose only connection to the world is their laptops.
Wholly wrong.
I’m an admirer of Tolkein and not particularly a fan of Wagner, but Wagner stands alone at the pinnacle of classical music in a way that Tolkien never could. Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Faulkner, Joyce, Dickens, Austen…where does Tolkein stand in that Pantheon? Nowhere.
Charles Murray in his survey of excellence, “Human Accomplishment”, assessed the greats in various disciplines based on references to the greats in reference works. Of course, Wagner was the most significant composer based on that method. When he tested his methodology by asking musicians who they thought the top three classical composers were, their typical response was something like “OK, who are second and third after Wagner?”
Sailer’s Law of Mass Stabbings?
25 people stabbed, 10 of them dead in … Saskatchewan? Of all places.
Most seem to be what the Canadians call First Nations.
https://cdn.bushwickdaily.com/post_image-image/v4fT1tXlCF4hJDS8_gSHig.jpgReplies: @The Alarmist, @Meretricious, @Hypnotoad666, @Escher, @prosa123, @XBardon Kaldlan
But neither man featured blacketty blacks and strong women.
Inconceivable!!
What’s the best way to experience the Wagner version? Is there a good translation or any good plays/movies of it?Replies: @That Would Be Telling, @Polistra, @Ralph L, @TelfoedJohn, @Kylie
“What’s the best way to experience the Wagner version? ”
Make sure you listen to a version that features Hans Hotter as Wotan. His was one of the greatest voices–in any genre, in any range–of the last century.
No, it was Beethoven and Mozart tied for #1, then Bach, with Wagner right behind him. In general, it gets harder to get high in Murray’s rankings the later you come, so Wagner being narrowly behind Bach from 125+ years earlier is most impressive.
“Tolkien’s masterpiece The Lord of the Rings is obviously inspired by Wagner’s hyper-masterpiece The Ring.” — Steve
“It obviously isn’t, at least not positively so. [I don’t think that’s obvious at all. It’s undoubtedly true that Tolkien wanted to do something different from Wagner and perhaps contra Wagner. He did say the two rings were “both round and the resemblance ends there.” But Wagner pioneered the idea of using Nordic folklore to present a message to a modern audience, and it’s hard to believe that Tolkien wasn’t positively inspired by that however much he may have disliked Wagner’s message. (I’ve never been clear how much direct exposure to Wagner’s operas Tolkien had. I would think he must have seen them, but I’m not sure.]
“Both took from the same ancient and medieval sources, which Tolkien understood well, and which Wagner didn’t. [What “ancient” sources? And I don’t think it’s clear at all that Wagner didn’t understand medieval sources. He was not an expert like Tolkien, but that does not signify incomprehension. Wagner had a project in mind and wanted to use Germany’s folkloric base to help sell those ideas. He was doing the same thing as the Brothers Grimm but in a different way. He took what he wanted and reconstructed them to suit his purposes. But not of that suggests a misunderstanding.]
“Tolkien loves the old myths, and sees truth and goodness woven into them as in a beautiful tapestry; Wagner sees them as bonds, seeks to unravel them, and to set man free to spin new myths as he wishes, beyond good and evil, truth and falsehood. [Well, Tolkien is a Christian and Wagner is a modernist. But what suggests that Wagner sees the Nibelungenlied and the Volsunga Saga as something to unravel? Both T. and W. write/compose about a world in decline from past greatness to an uncertain present and future. They draw on the past to draft a cultural blueprint for the way ahead. Yes, W. perceives an end to old ways which requires something new to replace them, and he is probably closer to the mark–if we look at where we have come since the two generated their magna opera–than Tolkien, even if most will prefer Tolkien’s vision.]
“Tolkien mourns the passing of the old world, slowly fading, slipping or hiding away, overtaken by a lesser new world; Wagner has the old world go up in flames or crash down in tumult, overtaken by a new world in which, free of gods and hidebound myths, society is to be built anew beyond good and evil, without authority, hierarchy, law, or property of any kind. Tolkien is a laudator temporis acti, a reactionary; Wagner a revolutionary iconoclast. They are very different indeed.” [Yes, but Tolkien ends with the old world slowly dying and the “age of man” arriving. How different is the Twilight of the Gods from the Twilight of the Elves and of Westernesse? There is considerable commonality, although I agree with the revolutionary vs reactionary distinction. In the end, the two are similar in that neither of their projects has been realized, and, sadly or not, it’s very unlikely that either of them ever will be.]
The Hobbit, the precursor of the Lord of the Rings, was a bedtime story to his children made up as he went along. Instead of Wagner we could say Tolkien's audience were his inspiration
I’d think the Scouring of the Shire is more Tolkien contra proles. As a linguist he knew Cockney accents were also 19th century aristo accents. And he was more against vulgarity and orc-talk than against proles.
The Silmarillion has some pretty complex characters and themes. It’s too bad Tolkien never had time to flesh out some of the better stories from it and turn them into proper epic novels.
I’ve always thought Beowulf, Song of the Nieblings and Connor the Irish Cattle Rustler and raider sagas were more like extended comic book stories. Kill kill kill have a baby kill it someone else has a baby steal it. Kill kill kill again Take a short rest. Go back to killing and roaming about like bandits. Ships stuck in port because there’s no wind? Sacrifice your daughter to the Wind God. Never ever work at raising food construction of buildings ships bridges roads tools furniture and useful machinery. That’s for slaves. Kill kill kill for a living. Women plot scheme and kill in more subtle ways.
No lovers around? Screw your brother or sister. Brother goes back to killing. Have a baby that’s even crazier than you and sibling. Kill some more. Ignore sensible advice Kill some more. Brunhild was killed by tying to a horse and dragged through the streets of Paris till she was in shreds. She deserved it. I believe she killed most of her men relatives. Paris 600 AD under the Burgundian tribe who wrote the Song of the Nieblings. A lovely civilized town.
History of World Civilization was the college course. And wait, there’s more. 3 brothers a true story about a civil war between 3 Han princes after their Dad the Emperor died. Kill kill kill all your relatives. Lie cheat and steal. There’s many movie and TV versions of 3 brothers. Excellent ! Colorful costumes prettify the killing. There’s a Japanese genre I call Blood and Snow. Samurai stories. Nice color schemes. Battles in fields covered with white snow pale blue skies black trunks of bright green ever green trees. One army wears light blue uniforms the opposition gray. And the white blue and gray is splashed with red blood like a Jackson Pollock painting, A theater in Chinatown showed them all the time very popular.
Some Indian Indian conquest sagas too. By that time in the course all I wanted to do was endure to exam week. So I don’t remember much.
Lots of books have the Odyssey structure. Cold Mountain Mansfield Park most stories where the man leaves for a war or journey and the woman has her own adventures at home.
The ancient Sagas weren’t my favorite reading. Brunhild and her shield and sword each so heavy 20 men couldn’t lift them.
Yes, quite so. Tolkien “cleans up” the Lay of the Nibelungs, removes the women and the power of sexual allure, substitutes plucky little Hobbits. Instead of a complex narrative of humans competing for earthly dominance and prestige in the context of perfidious fate and a supernatural Godhead, we get one-dimensional Evil in the form of Sauron and his predictably repulsive minions. There’s a word for this: “bowdlerization”.
Because Sauron and his Orcs were moving west into Elf land. Attila moved west into the Burgundian Niebling. kingdom. Their kingdom was destroyed and they moved to eastern France. The war and migration were similar.
But the Niebling Song was just killing. No philosophy about good and evil. No happy interludes of rest on the long journey. Just fight and kill. The Nieblings like the Turks King Arthur and Mongols and everybody else worshipped weapons. The Hobbits used weapons but didn’t worship them. And a major theme of The Hobbits was disapproval of Sauron and his orcs manufacturing all those weapons and war machines.
I’ve read both and I don’t see many similarities at all. Other than a basic epic story. And everything that has survived is a basic epic story.Replies: @Wokechoke
I repeat- non-specialist.
Of course one should use footnotes & other works clarifying details, historical context etc. It helps.
So, without going into boring details, I'll just enumerate a few I find very alive: Confucius, Heraclitus, Plato, Tacitus, Plutarch, Marcus Aurelius, Sophocles, Herodotus, ...
Just, Homer isn't one of them. I guess his morality is so alien to me, or I would say to most modern men, that he is either boring or repulsive. Let's be frank: Achilles & Odysseus are scoundrels. Achilles, being given all his magical armor, weapons etc. has nothing "heroic" around him (I use the term "heroic" in ordinary, modern sense). He's just a bully who (mis)uses his superhuman strength to beat others. There is nothing like fair play with him. And, mentally-emotionally, he's no better than Shitavious from da hood. He does not possess a code of honor that would move us.
In other words- Achilles is a glorified punk, a scoundrel. He may have inspired generations & generations, but that says something unflattering about those generations, not about Homer, who was - unlike Confucius - an extreme case of pre-modern mind.
Cervantes is ... Â the novel's beginning. One can see his historical significance, but, after reading the best 19th -20th novels, Cervantes doesn't appeal too much (at least to me). He is absorbed into vastly richer & more nuanced contemporary works, from the 1860s to the 1930s.
As far as Goethe goes, even his masterwork is lacking. What, on earth, is Faust doing that is, actually, "Faustian"? He spends most of his time banging Gretchen & Helen (he'd better have signed a pact with signor Casanova than with Mephistopheles). There is nothing "heroic", let alone "tragic" about him. Worst of all- nothing "Faustian".
I'm just repeating myself: many canonical literary works don't age well, including classics. Morality, sensibility, world-views, perception & striving of individuals ... in many cases have so changed over time that these, once highly hailed works, now look like interesting fossils & not much more.Replies: @Bardon Kaldian, @Muggles, @kaganovitch, @Not Dale Clevenger, @nebulafox, @BB753, @Esso
How can someone have read the The Iliad and come away thinking that Achilles is meant to be a sympathetic figure and an exemplar of the heroic?
It reminds me of when I read Crime and Punishment in high school and thought, “you know, that Raskolnikov has some compelling ideas.”
I’ll give you a hint. What kind of wood doesn’t float?
Mozart was a truly miraculous talent but next to Wagner he’s a piker.
"It obviously isn’t, at least not positively so. [I don't think that's obvious at all. It's undoubtedly true that Tolkien wanted to do something different from Wagner and perhaps contra Wagner. He did say the two rings were "both round and the resemblance ends there." But Wagner pioneered the idea of using Nordic folklore to present a message to a modern audience, and it's hard to believe that Tolkien wasn't positively inspired by that however much he may have disliked Wagner's message. (I've never been clear how much direct exposure to Wagner's operas Tolkien had. I would think he must have seen them, but I'm not sure.]
"Both took from the same ancient and medieval sources, which Tolkien understood well, and which Wagner didn’t. [What "ancient" sources? And I don't think it's clear at all that Wagner didn't understand medieval sources. He was not an expert like Tolkien, but that does not signify incomprehension. Wagner had a project in mind and wanted to use Germany's folkloric base to help sell those ideas. He was doing the same thing as the Brothers Grimm but in a different way. He took what he wanted and reconstructed them to suit his purposes. But not of that suggests a misunderstanding.]
"Tolkien loves the old myths, and sees truth and goodness woven into them as in a beautiful tapestry; Wagner sees them as bonds, seeks to unravel them, and to set man free to spin new myths as he wishes, beyond good and evil, truth and falsehood. [Well, Tolkien is a Christian and Wagner is a modernist. But what suggests that Wagner sees the Nibelungenlied and the Volsunga Saga as something to unravel? Both T. and W. write/compose about a world in decline from past greatness to an uncertain present and future. They draw on the past to draft a cultural blueprint for the way ahead. Yes, W. perceives an end to old ways which requires something new to replace them, and he is probably closer to the mark--if we look at where we have come since the two generated their magna opera--than Tolkien, even if most will prefer Tolkien's vision.]
"Tolkien mourns the passing of the old world, slowly fading, slipping or hiding away, overtaken by a lesser new world; Wagner has the old world go up in flames or crash down in tumult, overtaken by a new world in which, free of gods and hidebound myths, society is to be built anew beyond good and evil, without authority, hierarchy, law, or property of any kind. Tolkien is a laudator temporis acti, a reactionary; Wagner a revolutionary iconoclast. They are very different indeed." [Yes, but Tolkien ends with the old world slowly dying and the "age of man" arriving. How different is the Twilight of the Gods from the Twilight of the Elves and of Westernesse? There is considerable commonality, although I agree with the revolutionary vs reactionary distinction. In the end, the two are similar in that neither of their projects has been realized, and, sadly or not, it's very unlikely that either of them ever will be.] Replies: @Renard, @mc23
When jazz legends are holding forth at length about the ontological implications of Wagner’s Ring Cycle it’s time to put the thread to bed.
Just kidding…. Good post 🙂
It’s been claimed that Gollum’s name was inspired by a cave in an area of Western Ireland visted by Tolkien. A cave known as Poll na gColm
http://blog.discoveringireland.com/tolkiens-middle-earth-comes-to-county-clare/
I
Tolkien repeatedly said his work of course reflected something of his views but his story is an adventure story, nothing more. Not allegory or commentary just something he wrote as an exercise of his imagination just an earlier version of the Harry Potter stories.
It’s claim to fame aside from a stirring tale is that the reader can sense the backdrop of the hidden imaginary world that Tolkien constructed as a frmework for his story.
Tolkien was a man of middling birth, an orphan raised by a Catholic priest. He fell in love with a fellow orphan a teenager. a few years old who he pursued and married for the rest of his life. His two distinguishing characteristics are that he was an extremely devout catholic and a devoted family man.
His wife had no interest in his academic and intellectual circles and when he retired with fame and wealth he let his wife pick out where they would live, somewhere far different. When friends asked him why he was living like this Tolkien said his was his wife’s turn. Tolkien is Sam of LOTR.
"It obviously isn’t, at least not positively so. [I don't think that's obvious at all. It's undoubtedly true that Tolkien wanted to do something different from Wagner and perhaps contra Wagner. He did say the two rings were "both round and the resemblance ends there." But Wagner pioneered the idea of using Nordic folklore to present a message to a modern audience, and it's hard to believe that Tolkien wasn't positively inspired by that however much he may have disliked Wagner's message. (I've never been clear how much direct exposure to Wagner's operas Tolkien had. I would think he must have seen them, but I'm not sure.]
"Both took from the same ancient and medieval sources, which Tolkien understood well, and which Wagner didn’t. [What "ancient" sources? And I don't think it's clear at all that Wagner didn't understand medieval sources. He was not an expert like Tolkien, but that does not signify incomprehension. Wagner had a project in mind and wanted to use Germany's folkloric base to help sell those ideas. He was doing the same thing as the Brothers Grimm but in a different way. He took what he wanted and reconstructed them to suit his purposes. But not of that suggests a misunderstanding.]
"Tolkien loves the old myths, and sees truth and goodness woven into them as in a beautiful tapestry; Wagner sees them as bonds, seeks to unravel them, and to set man free to spin new myths as he wishes, beyond good and evil, truth and falsehood. [Well, Tolkien is a Christian and Wagner is a modernist. But what suggests that Wagner sees the Nibelungenlied and the Volsunga Saga as something to unravel? Both T. and W. write/compose about a world in decline from past greatness to an uncertain present and future. They draw on the past to draft a cultural blueprint for the way ahead. Yes, W. perceives an end to old ways which requires something new to replace them, and he is probably closer to the mark--if we look at where we have come since the two generated their magna opera--than Tolkien, even if most will prefer Tolkien's vision.]
"Tolkien mourns the passing of the old world, slowly fading, slipping or hiding away, overtaken by a lesser new world; Wagner has the old world go up in flames or crash down in tumult, overtaken by a new world in which, free of gods and hidebound myths, society is to be built anew beyond good and evil, without authority, hierarchy, law, or property of any kind. Tolkien is a laudator temporis acti, a reactionary; Wagner a revolutionary iconoclast. They are very different indeed." [Yes, but Tolkien ends with the old world slowly dying and the "age of man" arriving. How different is the Twilight of the Gods from the Twilight of the Elves and of Westernesse? There is considerable commonality, although I agree with the revolutionary vs reactionary distinction. In the end, the two are similar in that neither of their projects has been realized, and, sadly or not, it's very unlikely that either of them ever will be.] Replies: @Renard, @mc23
Tolkien and Wagner both mined the same myths and stories. The prominence of Wagner’s story may have inspired a tale based on a dragon instead of a Beowulf type monster but that’s far from sure.
The Hobbit, the precursor of the Lord of the Rings, was a bedtime story to his children made up as he went along. Instead of Wagner we could say Tolkien’s audience were his inspiration
Tolkien has no important women’s roles in The Hobbit. Tom Bombadil chapter really didn’t need Goldenberry. And they didn’t have mothers. But the Hobbits were peaceful and only fought when they had too. Gandalf wanted to do good and avoid evil. It seemed as though he was forced into fighting.
Because Sauron and his Orcs were moving west into Elf land. Attila moved west into the Burgundian Niebling. kingdom. Their kingdom was destroyed and they moved to eastern France. The war and migration were similar.
But the Niebling Song was just killing. No philosophy about good and evil. No happy interludes of rest on the long journey. Just fight and kill. The Nieblings like the Turks King Arthur and Mongols and everybody else worshipped weapons. The Hobbits used weapons but didn’t worship them. And a major theme of The Hobbits was disapproval of Sauron and his orcs manufacturing all those weapons and war machines.
I’ve read both and I don’t see many similarities at all. Other than a basic epic story. And everything that has survived is a basic epic story.
Murray was close, but there are more reliable rankings in Hans Eysenck’s “Genius”. Numerous musicologists and conductors were polled in a few representative surveys: ranking among 100 and 250 classical composers, they’ve chosen the trio at the top: Bach, Beethoven and Mozart, Bach being preferred by musicologists & Beethoven by conductors. From 4 to 6, almost invariably 4 names pop up, two of them being stable: Handel and Wagner, while Haydn and Brahms fluctuate as candidates for no. 6.
Top 20 always include Tchaikovsky, Schubert, Chopin, Verdi, Liszt, Stravinsky, Palestrina, ….
It also seems that most people just can’t stand Beethoven’s Wellington’s Sieg.
Thus Tolkien expressed a sneering contempt for those vulgar "nazzies." He's getting what he deserves from Amazon.
Also, his books are boring.Replies: @René Fries
Catholicism, which eliminates the need for either thought or action
Hans Blumenberg’s Die Legitimität der Neuzeit has been translated in English; as to Höhlenausgänge I do not know.
I would have counseled you to read those books before making the above quoted assertion.
If you didn’t read Claudius The God then you shouldn’t be doing anything else, he explains it in the first bit. The reason we have artists is they have stuff we don’t have. You of course quite correctly recognized the stuff you already had. But there’s more.
25 people stabbed, 10 of them dead in ... Saskatchewan? Of all places.
Most seem to be what the Canadians call First Nations.Replies: @J.Ross
WE NEED TO BAN HIGH CAPACITY ASSAULT — oh …
With so much twaddle on this site about what women want, and with so many "Men" of Unz having no romantic partners other than Mrs. Palm and her five daughters, I thought it's time to offer up some friendly advice about having better luck with women. Now, I claim no expertise, this is strictly what I've noticed and read over the years.1. Don't be fat. If you are fat, lose weight, and don't bother whining about how it's so difficult. While men might accept overweight women, to a point, the feeling is most assuredly not reciprocated. Women hate fatties. Okay, a fat yet muscular type might be acceptable, think of a football lineman, but a blob who can't walk up a flight of stairs without getting winded is totally unacceptable.2. Develop some typically male interests. Tinkering with cars, woodworking, fishing, home repairs, things like that. Even though women may not be into such activities themselves, they respect men who are. Video gaming is okay, if not taken to an extreme.3. On similar note, don't go overboard with nerdy things: sci-fi, D&D, Star Trek, Magic the Gathering, comic books, you can think of more. Do not assume that just because some women enjoy those activities they have any interest in men who do. That purple-haired tattooed girl at the comic book convention wants to drop her panties for the captain of the football team, just like 99% of other women.4. Have some male friends. Women are extremely suspicious of friendless men. If you don't have any male friends, find some. It's a lot easier than finding women.5. Do NOT infantilize women, no matter what that moron Another Dad says, and do not put them on pedestals. Women hate that.6. If you think you might have some autistic traits, get psychiatric help immediately.Replies: @Alden, @Anon, @nebulafox, @Brutusale, @Barbarossa, @Paul Mendez
What, no height requirements? Or that goes without saying.
As I recall from Catherine Millets shtupping memoir “La Vie sexuelle de Catherine M., ” a good rule of thumb is that the man should be less fat than the woman. Then again, scrawniness might be bad too.
From the requirements list, a tip for you men out there: it seems like an interest in guns and gun clubs would be a compromise made in heaven. Strong hobby to get involved with, easy to make male friends, etc. Hunting should be fine too, presumably.
I agree that a too strong interest in consuming product is not great. Watching Netflix with no chill every night is much the same as having an all-consuming interest in games (but will also turn you gay, which at least solves your woman problems).
The annoying superfluous parts are things like Siegfried forging his hammer and singing "I'm forging my hammer" for 10 minutes.
Then there is the orchestra part. There are few things like a 90 piece orchestra playing The Ride of the Valkyies.Replies: @Prester John
“The annoying superfluous parts are things like Siegfried forging his hammer and singing “I’m forging my hammer” for 10 minutes.”
Not when Lauritz Melchior or Max Lorenz sang it!
“Wagner is all about sex & death & deification through Eros”
Well, hardly “all.” There is no question that Eros informs all of Wagner’s mature works (including even “Meistersinger”). The degree of emphasis, however, changes from one opera to the other. The above comment seems more appropriate to “Tristan”—the Act II duet amounts to a 40-minute orgasm—than to “The Ring”, where Eros is rather more tangential.
It should be noted that Wagner himself acknowledged his indebtedness to Beethoven.
Unlike authors.Replies: @Polistra
I repeat- non-specialist.
Of course one should use footnotes & other works clarifying details, historical context etc. It helps.
So, without going into boring details, I'll just enumerate a few I find very alive: Confucius, Heraclitus, Plato, Tacitus, Plutarch, Marcus Aurelius, Sophocles, Herodotus, ...
Just, Homer isn't one of them. I guess his morality is so alien to me, or I would say to most modern men, that he is either boring or repulsive. Let's be frank: Achilles & Odysseus are scoundrels. Achilles, being given all his magical armor, weapons etc. has nothing "heroic" around him (I use the term "heroic" in ordinary, modern sense). He's just a bully who (mis)uses his superhuman strength to beat others. There is nothing like fair play with him. And, mentally-emotionally, he's no better than Shitavious from da hood. He does not possess a code of honor that would move us.
In other words- Achilles is a glorified punk, a scoundrel. He may have inspired generations & generations, but that says something unflattering about those generations, not about Homer, who was - unlike Confucius - an extreme case of pre-modern mind.
Cervantes is ... Â the novel's beginning. One can see his historical significance, but, after reading the best 19th -20th novels, Cervantes doesn't appeal too much (at least to me). He is absorbed into vastly richer & more nuanced contemporary works, from the 1860s to the 1930s.
As far as Goethe goes, even his masterwork is lacking. What, on earth, is Faust doing that is, actually, "Faustian"? He spends most of his time banging Gretchen & Helen (he'd better have signed a pact with signor Casanova than with Mephistopheles). There is nothing "heroic", let alone "tragic" about him. Worst of all- nothing "Faustian".
I'm just repeating myself: many canonical literary works don't age well, including classics. Morality, sensibility, world-views, perception & striving of individuals ... in many cases have so changed over time that these, once highly hailed works, now look like interesting fossils & not much more.Replies: @Bardon Kaldian, @Muggles, @kaganovitch, @Not Dale Clevenger, @nebulafox, @BB753, @Esso
There are many lessons from Homer that I consider eternal. Some that come to mind off the top of my head:
1) Men will display suicidal courage in war. This often isn’t in the service of their cause. It is for the other men who they have forged unusually deep ties with, that have few analogues in peace.
2) Higher levels of civilization can’t always offset brute force.
3) It is the flaws and limits in man that make their abilities all the more meaningful.
4) Choosing to embrace life-even with all the suffering and eventual death involved-is preferable to being stuck in a static dreamworld, no matter how pleasant. Once you stop living, actively participating in the life that is yours and only yours, you might as well be dead.
I repeat- non-specialist.
Of course one should use footnotes & other works clarifying details, historical context etc. It helps.
So, without going into boring details, I'll just enumerate a few I find very alive: Confucius, Heraclitus, Plato, Tacitus, Plutarch, Marcus Aurelius, Sophocles, Herodotus, ...
Just, Homer isn't one of them. I guess his morality is so alien to me, or I would say to most modern men, that he is either boring or repulsive. Let's be frank: Achilles & Odysseus are scoundrels. Achilles, being given all his magical armor, weapons etc. has nothing "heroic" around him (I use the term "heroic" in ordinary, modern sense). He's just a bully who (mis)uses his superhuman strength to beat others. There is nothing like fair play with him. And, mentally-emotionally, he's no better than Shitavious from da hood. He does not possess a code of honor that would move us.
In other words- Achilles is a glorified punk, a scoundrel. He may have inspired generations & generations, but that says something unflattering about those generations, not about Homer, who was - unlike Confucius - an extreme case of pre-modern mind.
Cervantes is ... Â the novel's beginning. One can see his historical significance, but, after reading the best 19th -20th novels, Cervantes doesn't appeal too much (at least to me). He is absorbed into vastly richer & more nuanced contemporary works, from the 1860s to the 1930s.
As far as Goethe goes, even his masterwork is lacking. What, on earth, is Faust doing that is, actually, "Faustian"? He spends most of his time banging Gretchen & Helen (he'd better have signed a pact with signor Casanova than with Mephistopheles). There is nothing "heroic", let alone "tragic" about him. Worst of all- nothing "Faustian".
I'm just repeating myself: many canonical literary works don't age well, including classics. Morality, sensibility, world-views, perception & striving of individuals ... in many cases have so changed over time that these, once highly hailed works, now look like interesting fossils & not much more.Replies: @Bardon Kaldian, @Muggles, @kaganovitch, @Not Dale Clevenger, @nebulafox, @BB753, @Esso
Just because you lack the ability to understand high-calibre literary works doesn’t mean mean they’re worthless. Have you ever considered that the problem is the reader, i.e. yourself, and not the books? You seem unable to understand the past, for instance.
1) Men will display suicidal courage in war. This often isn't in the service of their cause. It is for the other men who they have forged unusually deep ties with, that have few analogues in peace.
2) Higher levels of civilization can't always offset brute force.
3) It is the flaws and limits in man that make their abilities all the more meaningful.
4) Choosing to embrace life-even with all the suffering and eventual death involved-is preferable to being stuck in a static dreamworld, no matter how pleasant. Once you stop living, actively participating in the life that is yours and only yours, you might as well be dead.Replies: @BB753, @Polistra
I was going to hit “agree” until I read your point #4. Are you sure it’s the Iliad you’re referring to or the Bhagavad Gita?
It has been a long time since I've read it, but I recall that the Gita has a more Aeneid-esque emphasis on the duties you owe to your society and your class. Dharma, right?Replies: @BB753
With so much twaddle on this site about what women want, and with so many "Men" of Unz having no romantic partners other than Mrs. Palm and her five daughters, I thought it's time to offer up some friendly advice about having better luck with women. Now, I claim no expertise, this is strictly what I've noticed and read over the years.1. Don't be fat. If you are fat, lose weight, and don't bother whining about how it's so difficult. While men might accept overweight women, to a point, the feeling is most assuredly not reciprocated. Women hate fatties. Okay, a fat yet muscular type might be acceptable, think of a football lineman, but a blob who can't walk up a flight of stairs without getting winded is totally unacceptable.2. Develop some typically male interests. Tinkering with cars, woodworking, fishing, home repairs, things like that. Even though women may not be into such activities themselves, they respect men who are. Video gaming is okay, if not taken to an extreme.3. On similar note, don't go overboard with nerdy things: sci-fi, D&D, Star Trek, Magic the Gathering, comic books, you can think of more. Do not assume that just because some women enjoy those activities they have any interest in men who do. That purple-haired tattooed girl at the comic book convention wants to drop her panties for the captain of the football team, just like 99% of other women.4. Have some male friends. Women are extremely suspicious of friendless men. If you don't have any male friends, find some. It's a lot easier than finding women.5. Do NOT infantilize women, no matter what that moron Another Dad says, and do not put them on pedestals. Women hate that.6. If you think you might have some autistic traits, get psychiatric help immediately.Replies: @Alden, @Anon, @nebulafox, @Brutusale, @Barbarossa, @Paul Mendez
The spread of TikTok culture has gotten an increasing amount of Zoomers interested in self-betterment, physical, mental, material, or otherwise. Better yet, it is helping to destroy the myth that physical and mental skill are mutually incompatible. Nerds doing deadlifts or MMA, muscleheads reading Thucydides: win-win. It doesn’t hurt that it is a subculture that doesn’t treat them as defective young women who need more therapists and word games.
Real issue is whether they decide marrying and starting families under the terms they are given by 21st Century America. I’m already seeing mainstream sources trying to tap into the whole “man up” thing now that young Gen-Y women are entering their 30s, but that’s just going to backfire. Not only because this is coming from the same people who have viewed their basic nature with unvarnished contempt all their lives and are plainly not to be trusted, but on a deeper level. Men are hardwired to sacrifice themselves biologically… but only with things they don’t deem beneath their dignity. The latter, they’ll avoid if they can, and go out of their way to half-ass-or sabotage if they are particularly resentful-if they can’t.
(Non-broken men also tend to be very, very good at detecting when something is the latter, in the same way that non-broken women tend to be very, very good at detecting when someone is lying to them.)
http://blog.discoveringireland.com/tolkiens-middle-earth-comes-to-county-clare/Replies: @Wokechoke, @bruce
Not Golem?
With so much twaddle on this site about what women want, and with so many "Men" of Unz having no romantic partners other than Mrs. Palm and her five daughters, I thought it's time to offer up some friendly advice about having better luck with women. Now, I claim no expertise, this is strictly what I've noticed and read over the years.1. Don't be fat. If you are fat, lose weight, and don't bother whining about how it's so difficult. While men might accept overweight women, to a point, the feeling is most assuredly not reciprocated. Women hate fatties. Okay, a fat yet muscular type might be acceptable, think of a football lineman, but a blob who can't walk up a flight of stairs without getting winded is totally unacceptable.2. Develop some typically male interests. Tinkering with cars, woodworking, fishing, home repairs, things like that. Even though women may not be into such activities themselves, they respect men who are. Video gaming is okay, if not taken to an extreme.3. On similar note, don't go overboard with nerdy things: sci-fi, D&D, Star Trek, Magic the Gathering, comic books, you can think of more. Do not assume that just because some women enjoy those activities they have any interest in men who do. That purple-haired tattooed girl at the comic book convention wants to drop her panties for the captain of the football team, just like 99% of other women.4. Have some male friends. Women are extremely suspicious of friendless men. If you don't have any male friends, find some. It's a lot easier than finding women.5. Do NOT infantilize women, no matter what that moron Another Dad says, and do not put them on pedestals. Women hate that.6. If you think you might have some autistic traits, get psychiatric help immediately.Replies: @Alden, @Anon, @nebulafox, @Brutusale, @Barbarossa, @Paul Mendez
Why are you so angry? The purple hair not working out like you hoped?
Hmm, this can’t work out, 20 years together to the contrary.
Because Sauron and his Orcs were moving west into Elf land. Attila moved west into the Burgundian Niebling. kingdom. Their kingdom was destroyed and they moved to eastern France. The war and migration were similar.
But the Niebling Song was just killing. No philosophy about good and evil. No happy interludes of rest on the long journey. Just fight and kill. The Nieblings like the Turks King Arthur and Mongols and everybody else worshipped weapons. The Hobbits used weapons but didn’t worship them. And a major theme of The Hobbits was disapproval of Sauron and his orcs manufacturing all those weapons and war machines.
I’ve read both and I don’t see many similarities at all. Other than a basic epic story. And everything that has survived is a basic epic story.Replies: @Wokechoke
Arguably Arwen and Galadriel have the main male protagonists wrapped around their little fingers. But hey ho.
I read a biography of a woman who starred in many of those 1930s 40s 50s historical war movies and westerns . She often did 5 or 6 movies a year. When she wasn’t the heroine she was the heroines friends maids sisters etc. She said the reason she was able to make so many movies in such a short time was that the heroines didn’t actually have many scenes. So she could do two or even 3 movies at once. Just a little kissing, maybe being kidnapped but most of the scenes were of the hero finding her.
The LOTR women’s parts were like that. Few scenes not much to do. Except when Arwen helped the men escape the Black Riders. And it was the river stopped the riders. Weird I always thought horses didn’t mind water waded and swam.
Arwen made the sacrifice for Aragorn. They would marry. She would be eternally 25. He would grow old and gray and die. He had her wrapped around his finger to make that sacrifice.Replies: @Brutusale
It reminds me of when I read Crime and Punishment in high school and thought, "you know, that Raskolnikov has some compelling ideas."Replies: @Wokechoke
Hector is the hero in it all.
Would you agree that there is at least a smidgeon of truth to the idea that the most dynamic nations of Northern Europe have tended to excel most at particular arts? Eg the French have the admittedly wonderful Rameau, Debussy, Saint-Saens and so on, but really no one to measure up to Bach, Handel, Mozart or Beethoven. The English have their Gainesborough, their Turner and so on, but no one to measure up to Delacroix, Degas etc.
Because if one does agree with that, then clearly the English excel at literature. And I challenge anyone to really get to know Beowulf, learning some minimum of Old English in the process, and not see how that particularly English excellence was already present circa 900.
It all seems so old, so awkward and so foreign if one does not work at it. But if one perseveres, there suddenly comes a crystalline moment when one realizes that the Beowulf poet was truly a progenitor of Chaucer and Shakespeare, of the ability to transform a range of human experience from the everyday to the noble into beguiling words. For me, as with many of us, it came in the flyting in the 8th fitt. But I’m a slow learner: I had to learn enough Old English to do my own translation, because I could not find one of the hundreds out there, and dozens I looked at, that I truly liked. Then and only then did the moment come to me. But I trust it comes much faster to most, though they persevere less.
Turner is in a class of his own.Replies: @anon
Isn’t that what I said? 🙂
As I recall from Catherine Millets shtupping memoir "La Vie sexuelle de Catherine M., " a good rule of thumb is that the man should be less fat than the woman. Then again, scrawniness might be bad too.
From the requirements list, a tip for you men out there: it seems like an interest in guns and gun clubs would be a compromise made in heaven. Strong hobby to get involved with, easy to make male friends, etc. Hunting should be fine too, presumably.
I agree that a too strong interest in consuming product is not great. Watching Netflix with no chill every night is much the same as having an all-consuming interest in games (but will also turn you gay, which at least solves your woman problems).Replies: @prosa123
What, no height requirements? Or that goes without saying.
Not much point in mentioning height because it can’t be controlled. Fat men can lose weight but short men can’t become taller. In any event, most of the shorter men I’ve known have done okay with women.
From the requirements list, a tip for you men out there: it seems like an interest in guns and gun clubs would be a compromise made in heaven. Strong hobby to get involved with, easy to make male friends, etc. Hunting should be fine too, presumably.
Very true. My one caution is that some women might be bothered by a man who is into guns, though I don’t think it happens much. And guns are hardly an all-male thing anymore.
I think too many celibate MEN OF UNZ get discouraged if a woman doesn’t respond to Hi, I’m lecher, wanna fuck? Because they live in the internet world where all women are promiscuous skanks looking to have instant sex with anyone who asks.
Gun clubs. Many women believe a way to meet learn to shoot join a gun club because it’s a thing men do.
Short men go after the average American women who is 5’4. Plenty of short women to go around.
Well……yes.
I repeat- non-specialist.
Of course one should use footnotes & other works clarifying details, historical context etc. It helps.
So, without going into boring details, I'll just enumerate a few I find very alive: Confucius, Heraclitus, Plato, Tacitus, Plutarch, Marcus Aurelius, Sophocles, Herodotus, ...
Just, Homer isn't one of them. I guess his morality is so alien to me, or I would say to most modern men, that he is either boring or repulsive. Let's be frank: Achilles & Odysseus are scoundrels. Achilles, being given all his magical armor, weapons etc. has nothing "heroic" around him (I use the term "heroic" in ordinary, modern sense). He's just a bully who (mis)uses his superhuman strength to beat others. There is nothing like fair play with him. And, mentally-emotionally, he's no better than Shitavious from da hood. He does not possess a code of honor that would move us.
In other words- Achilles is a glorified punk, a scoundrel. He may have inspired generations & generations, but that says something unflattering about those generations, not about Homer, who was - unlike Confucius - an extreme case of pre-modern mind.
Cervantes is ... Â the novel's beginning. One can see his historical significance, but, after reading the best 19th -20th novels, Cervantes doesn't appeal too much (at least to me). He is absorbed into vastly richer & more nuanced contemporary works, from the 1860s to the 1930s.
As far as Goethe goes, even his masterwork is lacking. What, on earth, is Faust doing that is, actually, "Faustian"? He spends most of his time banging Gretchen & Helen (he'd better have signed a pact with signor Casanova than with Mephistopheles). There is nothing "heroic", let alone "tragic" about him. Worst of all- nothing "Faustian".
I'm just repeating myself: many canonical literary works don't age well, including classics. Morality, sensibility, world-views, perception & striving of individuals ... in many cases have so changed over time that these, once highly hailed works, now look like interesting fossils & not much more.Replies: @Bardon Kaldian, @Muggles, @kaganovitch, @Not Dale Clevenger, @nebulafox, @BB753, @Esso
Yes, he is very modern. Indistinguishable from the 5am productivity aphorist school on twitter.
Because if one does agree with that, then clearly the English excel at literature. And I challenge anyone to really get to know Beowulf, learning some minimum of Old English in the process, and not see how that particularly English excellence was already present circa 900.
It all seems so old, so awkward and so foreign if one does not work at it. But if one perseveres, there suddenly comes a crystalline moment when one realizes that the Beowulf poet was truly a progenitor of Chaucer and Shakespeare, of the ability to transform a range of human experience from the everyday to the noble into beguiling words. For me, as with many of us, it came in the flyting in the 8th fitt. But I'm a slow learner: I had to learn enough Old English to do my own translation, because I could not find one of the hundreds out there, and dozens I looked at, that I truly liked. Then and only then did the moment come to me. But I trust it comes much faster to most, though they persevere less.Replies: @Wokechoke
Turner is a much better painter than these French you mention although I like Degas. Indeed he appears to be about as good as anyone. Have you seen his work on an extensive scale?
Turner is in a class of his own.
In selecting a few examples, I'm really just trying to simplify something like this: 'the judgement of history is that, when it comes to Romanticism in painting, the British school as a whole did not surpass the French or Spanish schools, and none of these national schools individually accomplished the degree of revolution in painting that was French Impressionism, of which Degas was a founding pioneer.'
In any case, my main concern here is of course with the place of Beowulf.Replies: @Polistra
Sure. It should be noted that great composers, with very few exceptions, are almost always generous in praise of their predecessors & colleagues.
Unlike authors.
With so much twaddle on this site about what women want, and with so many "Men" of Unz having no romantic partners other than Mrs. Palm and her five daughters, I thought it's time to offer up some friendly advice about having better luck with women. Now, I claim no expertise, this is strictly what I've noticed and read over the years.1. Don't be fat. If you are fat, lose weight, and don't bother whining about how it's so difficult. While men might accept overweight women, to a point, the feeling is most assuredly not reciprocated. Women hate fatties. Okay, a fat yet muscular type might be acceptable, think of a football lineman, but a blob who can't walk up a flight of stairs without getting winded is totally unacceptable.2. Develop some typically male interests. Tinkering with cars, woodworking, fishing, home repairs, things like that. Even though women may not be into such activities themselves, they respect men who are. Video gaming is okay, if not taken to an extreme.3. On similar note, don't go overboard with nerdy things: sci-fi, D&D, Star Trek, Magic the Gathering, comic books, you can think of more. Do not assume that just because some women enjoy those activities they have any interest in men who do. That purple-haired tattooed girl at the comic book convention wants to drop her panties for the captain of the football team, just like 99% of other women.4. Have some male friends. Women are extremely suspicious of friendless men. If you don't have any male friends, find some. It's a lot easier than finding women.5. Do NOT infantilize women, no matter what that moron Another Dad says, and do not put them on pedestals. Women hate that.6. If you think you might have some autistic traits, get psychiatric help immediately.Replies: @Alden, @Anon, @nebulafox, @Brutusale, @Barbarossa, @Paul Mendez
All fair enough points…
When push comes to shove, if you are not having kids and raising them in a counter-cultural way you ain’t doing squat to fix our current state of society.
I’m glad in many ways that I’m not in the market for a wife these days, but there really are good prospects out there.
Then there’s the age factor. Yes college was cheap when I was in college too. And I could buy 4 textbooks a ream of typing paper 5 notebooks white out 4 typewriter ribbons and packs of pens for about 2/3 of a week’s minimum wage work.. nowadays many books are in the $300-$400 range. So it would take about 6 weeks minimum wage work to buy a semesters worth of college books and supplies.
But I’m aware of what college tuition from Southwest State U to Harvard to dorm fees lab fees books off campus apartments and other costs are.
Sometimes the comments on this site seem to come from a nursing home of 80 year olds whose only connection to the world is their laptops.Replies: @Barbarossa
Fortunately there is a huge vacuum in the trades and good money to be made. I wouldn’t recommend college as a default for anyone at this point.
My thanks to everyone who’s contributed to this thread. It’s been fascinating.
MEANWHILE:
Amazon is getting tons of pushback for their new desecration of Tolkien.
The title at Zerohenge says it all:
Amazon Blocks Negative Reviews Of Its Woke Lord Of The Rings Series
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/amazon-blocks-negative-reviews-its-woke-lord-rings-series
ZH has been surprising lucid on this subject lately. Good for them.
Some things should never drop away.
Yes, but only for us. For the archaic mind, no.
Auto and home repairs are a sure fire come on for women. It’s a nice way to get to know a woman in a non sex come on way. Think of all the married women who left their husbands for a contractor, repairman.
I think too many celibate MEN OF UNZ get discouraged if a woman doesn’t respond to Hi, I’m lecher, wanna fuck? Because they live in the internet world where all women are promiscuous skanks looking to have instant sex with anyone who asks.
Gun clubs. Many women believe a way to meet learn to shoot join a gun club because it’s a thing men do.
Short men go after the average American women who is 5’4. Plenty of short women to go around.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/k62MJtTko1TW/Replies: @Richard B
Excellent points from EMJ. Though he’s repeating what many of us are already familiar with, it’s still great to hear it put so succinctly.
But I don’t think it could be said to be Wagner’s primary concern. His primary concern was art in general and his in particular. If we were to put it in question form it might look something like this:
If art is the source of human value, how is the value of which the artist is the bearer to made socially valid? Or, to put it another way, How is the gap between artist and society to be closed in a way that is considered by both to be morally responsible?
All of Wagner’s career, his creative and practial career, as a man of the public and of the theater, was devoted to this one problem. That’s why his ten major works, from The Flying Dutchman to Parsifal are like one gigantic work in ten acts.
That’s why The Ring is more than a matter of exposing the evils of what EMJ identifies as capitalism. Rather, since as Steve has said, race is extended family, it’s more a battle between the Wagners and the Rothchilds (Europa and Judea).
Or, High Culture vs The Dark Triad.
By High Culture is simply meant high level problem-solving and significant innovation. In fact, this is why The Dark Triad has “succeeded”, ie; by eliminating High Culture from Higher Education. Hence Cancel Culture. The results are entirely predictable and we’re living with them now: Cultural Impoverishment and Societal Collapse.
Tolkien and Lewis went to see Wagner’s Ring in London whenever it was performed.
Maybe. They also fill the passive girl friend and wife role. Just short scenes before and after the hero goes off to fight.
I read a biography of a woman who starred in many of those 1930s 40s 50s historical war movies and westerns . She often did 5 or 6 movies a year. When she wasn’t the heroine she was the heroines friends maids sisters etc. She said the reason she was able to make so many movies in such a short time was that the heroines didn’t actually have many scenes. So she could do two or even 3 movies at once. Just a little kissing, maybe being kidnapped but most of the scenes were of the hero finding her.
The LOTR women’s parts were like that. Few scenes not much to do. Except when Arwen helped the men escape the Black Riders. And it was the river stopped the riders. Weird I always thought horses didn’t mind water waded and swam.
Arwen made the sacrifice for Aragorn. They would marry. She would be eternally 25. He would grow old and gray and die. He had her wrapped around his finger to make that sacrifice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89owyn
Odyssey #5. Odysseus chooses his life with all the troubles it brings again, and regains his heroic status in doing so.
It has been a long time since I’ve read it, but I recall that the Gita has a more Aeneid-esque emphasis on the duties you owe to your society and your class. Dharma, right?
When push comes to shove, if you are not having kids and raising them in a counter-cultural way you ain't doing squat to fix our current state of society.
I'm glad in many ways that I'm not in the market for a wife these days, but there really are good prospects out there.Replies: @nebulafox
I think things are not harder, but more novel. Natalism as countercultural, something that can’t be taken for granted as part of a free life process, is something very new.
http://blog.discoveringireland.com/tolkiens-middle-earth-comes-to-county-clare/Replies: @Wokechoke, @bruce
Seems very likely.
It's claim to fame aside from a stirring tale is that the reader can sense the backdrop of the hidden imaginary world that Tolkien constructed as a frmework for his story.
Tolkien was a man of middling birth, an orphan raised by a Catholic priest. He fell in love with a fellow orphan a teenager. a few years old who he pursued and married for the rest of his life. His two distinguishing characteristics are that he was an extremely devout catholic and a devoted family man.
His wife had no interest in his academic and intellectual circles and when he retired with fame and wealth he let his wife pick out where they would live, somewhere far different. When friends asked him why he was living like this Tolkien said his was his wife’s turn. Tolkien is Sam of LOTR.Replies: @bruce
Sam is the moral center of LoTR and the most attractive character.
If it’s so easy why is the world still filled with people addicted to salvation systems (utopĂas) political or religious, enough to kill each other over them?
The physical world? That’s not what I said. I said the world, meaning everything in it.
The point is that the meaning of anything is the response to it. It is not possible to look at or talk about the world by eliminating the interests of the responder. We can not know the world apart from our interests. In short, the meaning of anything is the response to it.
Case in point:
This is what Wagner’s music means to you. It’s hardly the final word on Wagner and what he means to other people. In fact, you haven’t really said very much. It’s just an opinion. It doesn’t give one the impression that you’re very knowledgeable about music, or Wagner. And to help conve his meaning artistically he used myth, brilliantly.
Oh, and by the way, by interests I don’t mean motive or intention. I mean whatever contributes to the individual’s adaptational processes.
That’s why, as I said in my comment, stability and innovation are irreconcilable, as are individual and group. Because you’re never going to be able to align everyone’s interests (though it’s the desire of the weak-minded, which is why they’re so dangerous whenever they get into positions of power, like they are now).
This is why the ultimate function of social power is force, and why Wagner was so concered about the responsible use of it in all of his work, not just The Ring.
In other words, his using myth in ways you don’t approve of.
Again, that’s just an opinion. And giving one’s opinion, well, as you said yourself, That’s easy.
Correction: The above was supposed to go here.
C.S. Lewis’s memoir has a sizable section about how big an impact Wagner had on him.
Remember theres also the book ‘The Worm Ouroboros’ by E. R. Eddison. a friend of Tolkeins.
Theres much classic and grandios music out there, Wagner is at the better end of the spectrum.
With so much twaddle on this site about what women want, and with so many "Men" of Unz having no romantic partners other than Mrs. Palm and her five daughters, I thought it's time to offer up some friendly advice about having better luck with women. Now, I claim no expertise, this is strictly what I've noticed and read over the years.1. Don't be fat. If you are fat, lose weight, and don't bother whining about how it's so difficult. While men might accept overweight women, to a point, the feeling is most assuredly not reciprocated. Women hate fatties. Okay, a fat yet muscular type might be acceptable, think of a football lineman, but a blob who can't walk up a flight of stairs without getting winded is totally unacceptable.2. Develop some typically male interests. Tinkering with cars, woodworking, fishing, home repairs, things like that. Even though women may not be into such activities themselves, they respect men who are. Video gaming is okay, if not taken to an extreme.3. On similar note, don't go overboard with nerdy things: sci-fi, D&D, Star Trek, Magic the Gathering, comic books, you can think of more. Do not assume that just because some women enjoy those activities they have any interest in men who do. That purple-haired tattooed girl at the comic book convention wants to drop her panties for the captain of the football team, just like 99% of other women.4. Have some male friends. Women are extremely suspicious of friendless men. If you don't have any male friends, find some. It's a lot easier than finding women.5. Do NOT infantilize women, no matter what that moron Another Dad says, and do not put them on pedestals. Women hate that.6. If you think you might have some autistic traits, get psychiatric help immediately.Replies: @Alden, @Anon, @nebulafox, @Brutusale, @Barbarossa, @Paul Mendez
Your very, very OT post reminds me of the 9 year old who interrupts an adult conversation with some non-sequitor about getting a gold star on her spelling test.
I read a biography of a woman who starred in many of those 1930s 40s 50s historical war movies and westerns . She often did 5 or 6 movies a year. When she wasn’t the heroine she was the heroines friends maids sisters etc. She said the reason she was able to make so many movies in such a short time was that the heroines didn’t actually have many scenes. So she could do two or even 3 movies at once. Just a little kissing, maybe being kidnapped but most of the scenes were of the hero finding her.
The LOTR women’s parts were like that. Few scenes not much to do. Except when Arwen helped the men escape the Black Riders. And it was the river stopped the riders. Weird I always thought horses didn’t mind water waded and swam.
Arwen made the sacrifice for Aragorn. They would marry. She would be eternally 25. He would grow old and gray and die. He had her wrapped around his finger to make that sacrifice.Replies: @Brutusale
Arguably the biggest kill in LOTR was by a woman.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89owyn
It has been a long time since I've read it, but I recall that the Gita has a more Aeneid-esque emphasis on the duties you owe to your society and your class. Dharma, right?Replies: @BB753
Your wording was too modern for me to understand. Immortality in Greek terms for a formerly mortal man means giving up fame for your deeds, which is the ultimate goal for a Greek warrior. You die a hero and your name lives on. Becoming Calypso’s immortal toy-boy is a shameful destiny.
Anyway, this can be found, among other works, in these books:
https://www.amazon.com/History-Greek-Philosophy-W-Guthrie/dp/0521294207
https://www.amazon.com/Rites-Symbols-Initiation-Mysteries-Rebirth/dp/0882140612/ref=sr_1_1?crid=5IFIAXAOV4WA&keywords=eliade+initiation&qid=1662483545&s=books&sprefix=eliade+initiation%2Cstripbooks-intl-ship%2C228&sr=1-1Replies: @BB753
Turner is in a class of his own.Replies: @anon
I don’t doubt it; of the three arts I mentioned, I’m most comfortable passing judgement on literature, a little less on music and considerably less on painting.
In selecting a few examples, I’m really just trying to simplify something like this: ‘the judgement of history is that, when it comes to Romanticism in painting, the British school as a whole did not surpass the French or Spanish schools, and none of these national schools individually accomplished the degree of revolution in painting that was French Impressionism, of which Degas was a founding pioneer.’
In any case, my main concern here is of course with the place of Beowulf.
I wouldn’t put Eddison near the top of the list. The Worm Oroborous is a flawed gem. I had to force myself to finish it. The best parts of it were the medieval poems he stole for the book- at least he had good taste.
No, that’s a limited, almost-materialist interpretation. For Western Greeks, and especially Orphic tradition Plato was indebted to, immortality is assimilation to God, or becoming godlike, as Socrates had formulated.
Anyway, this can be found, among other works, in these books:
https://www.amazon.com/Rites-Symbols-Initiation-Mysteries-Rebirth/dp/0882140612/ref=sr_1_1?crid=5IFIAXAOV4WA&keywords=eliade+initiation&qid=1662483545&s=books&sprefix=eliade+initiation%2Cstripbooks-intl-ship%2C228&sr=1-1
Anyway, this can be found, among other works, in these books:
https://www.amazon.com/History-Greek-Philosophy-W-Guthrie/dp/0521294207
https://www.amazon.com/Rites-Symbols-Initiation-Mysteries-Rebirth/dp/0882140612/ref=sr_1_1?crid=5IFIAXAOV4WA&keywords=eliade+initiation&qid=1662483545&s=books&sprefix=eliade+initiation%2Cstripbooks-intl-ship%2C228&sr=1-1Replies: @BB753
The Iliad and the Odyssey were written many centuries before Plato. And the orphic tradition was not a warrior ethos.
In selecting a few examples, I'm really just trying to simplify something like this: 'the judgement of history is that, when it comes to Romanticism in painting, the British school as a whole did not surpass the French or Spanish schools, and none of these national schools individually accomplished the degree of revolution in painting that was French Impressionism, of which Degas was a founding pioneer.'
In any case, my main concern here is of course with the place of Beowulf.Replies: @Polistra
I think you’re right, though. German composers stand well above German painters and writers, Italian painters stand above Italian writers and composers; the French? well, everyone knows the french are weird. Seriously, the French have–at different times–stood above almost everyone in each respective category.
Russian composers and writers have been first rank, but I can’t even think of a Russian painter. Germany and Russia have produced very few notable architects, while England, France, and especially Italy have produced dozens. Of course, if we ever toward science it becomes England and Germany. And America.
This is true. But:
1. one could (wrongly) assume that Greek concepts of life & ethics were as described in Homer’s epics. Or, at least, that they remained dominant for Greeks in Antiquity. This, of course, isn’t true. Although Homer remained the teacher of all Hellas, his world-view was discarded- or, better, ignored- by virtually all thinking Greeks that came after him. Or they re-worked his tropes to the point of unrecognizability.
2. Homer was a product of Ionian, mostly “common sense” commercial mental culture & society. It is questionable how these epics had been preserved & transformed. As far as other Greeks go, especially those in Sicily and other Western areas (Empedocles, Pythagoras,..) & who had been writing perhaps one or two centuries after Homer, they had a completely different world-view & ethics. Even when we consider warrior ethos, these things are not easy to disentangle: Ionians were mostly a commercial society & didn’t care much about any type of warfare perhaps a century after Homeric epics were first written down; Western Greek were much more warlike, but didn’t care to articulate any kind of warrior ethos.
1) Men will display suicidal courage in war. This often isn't in the service of their cause. It is for the other men who they have forged unusually deep ties with, that have few analogues in peace.
2) Higher levels of civilization can't always offset brute force.
3) It is the flaws and limits in man that make their abilities all the more meaningful.
4) Choosing to embrace life-even with all the suffering and eventual death involved-is preferable to being stuck in a static dreamworld, no matter how pleasant. Once you stop living, actively participating in the life that is yours and only yours, you might as well be dead.Replies: @BB753, @Polistra
Funny you should mention, because (thanks to this thread) I was reading further last night and stumbled upon the story of the Sacred Band of Thebes, about whom I heretofore knew nothing.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Sacred-Band
Unlike authors.Replies: @Polistra
Imho the greatest homage from one composer to another is from Stravinsky to Tchaikovsky in La Baiser de la FĂ©e. If not the greatest, certainly the most explicit!
Russian painters were really good from the late 19th into the early 20th centuries. Kandinsky and Chagall are famous, but guys like Repin and Levitan were terrific.
Capitalism depends on usury to survive, which is the connection between Capitalism and the war of Europa vs. Judea.
Huh? Germans are renown for their building acumen.
That's being renowned for craftsmanship.
The Swiss did produce Le Corbusier, sort of.
What of Durer?
Building, yes. Same as the Swiss.
That’s being renowned for craftsmanship.
The Swiss did produce Le Corbusier, sort of.
That’s one more than I thought of.