night swimming
Last night I stayed awake to enjoy the silence and read from War and Peace. I took a break from reading, around 1:30am, and listented to some old records on the shelf. I put on Aki Tsuyuko's album "Ongakushitsu", and was reminded what a beautifully sparce and simple album it is. Recorded in Kyoto, Japan in 1998-1999, Tsyuko is a student of sorts of Nobukazu Takemura, who came to fame through the Thrill Jockey label. Tsuyuko's music is much more playful than Nobukazu's, and draws from distinct musical genres, such as circus music (cranking monkey machines: the kind that makes you think of Ray Bradbury's "Something Wicked This Way Comes" and the dream sequences reminiscent of Bakhtin's carnival or Walter Benjamin's Paris arcades); ambient pipe organs, and cryptic, jagged echoes--all remain mostly atmospheric and gentle. There is, however, a bit of warning and caution involved: As if underneath the lull there is an evil beauty. A great companion at 2am.
War and Peace is a slow meditation. I am also reading, as a sort of accompaniment, Harold Bloom's "Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundered Exemplarary Creative Minds" (Time Warner Books, 2002). Regardless of your opinions of Bloom, his book is marginally interesting, if only for the sheer scope of his endeavor: his disclaimer is that these people are not the greatest writers, but rather, these are the writers Bloom wanted to write about. He does offer a a chronology, and the list is based on importance in terms of contributions. So the justification is sound. Bloom offers this insight: "The question we must put to any writer must be: does she or he augment our consciousness, and how is it done? I find this a rough but effectual test: however I have been entertained, has my awareness been intensified, my consciousness widened and clarified? If not, then I have encountered talent, not genius. What is best and oldest in myself has not been activated" (12). I am encouraged by these words as I read through Tolstoy's War and Peace.
Tolstoy was a writer with a profound sense of himself, not only as a human, orthodox, and a russian, but as a solitary figure. A spirit. Bloom quotes from Maxim Gorky,"With God he has very suspicious relations; they sometimes remind me of the realtion of 'two bears in one den.'" Bloom adds: "God could not have been comfortable with Count Leo Tolstoy."
I will not attempt an analysis of War and Peace here. What I will do is offer a tasty quotation, regarding the arrival of the Tsar, for the review of the Austrian and Russian troops. Here Tolstoy is at his finest, working as he does, to secure a sense of the human condition. Tolstoy writes,
In the deathlike silence only the sound of hoofbeats was heard. This was the emperors' suites...Standing in the foremost ranks of Kutuzov's army, which was the first the Tsar approached, Rostov experienced the same feeling as every other man in the army: a feeling of self-oblivion, a proud consciousness of might, and a passionate devotion to him who was the cause of that triumphant occasion. One word from that man, he felt, and his huge mass (including the insignificant grain that was himself) would go through fire and water, commit crimes, die, or perform deeds of the greatest heroism, and he could not but tremble, and his heart stood still, at the imminency of that word" (Trans. Ann Dunnigan).
War and Peace is a slow meditation. I am also reading, as a sort of accompaniment, Harold Bloom's "Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundered Exemplarary Creative Minds" (Time Warner Books, 2002). Regardless of your opinions of Bloom, his book is marginally interesting, if only for the sheer scope of his endeavor: his disclaimer is that these people are not the greatest writers, but rather, these are the writers Bloom wanted to write about. He does offer a a chronology, and the list is based on importance in terms of contributions. So the justification is sound. Bloom offers this insight: "The question we must put to any writer must be: does she or he augment our consciousness, and how is it done? I find this a rough but effectual test: however I have been entertained, has my awareness been intensified, my consciousness widened and clarified? If not, then I have encountered talent, not genius. What is best and oldest in myself has not been activated" (12). I am encouraged by these words as I read through Tolstoy's War and Peace.
Tolstoy was a writer with a profound sense of himself, not only as a human, orthodox, and a russian, but as a solitary figure. A spirit. Bloom quotes from Maxim Gorky,"With God he has very suspicious relations; they sometimes remind me of the realtion of 'two bears in one den.'" Bloom adds: "God could not have been comfortable with Count Leo Tolstoy."
I will not attempt an analysis of War and Peace here. What I will do is offer a tasty quotation, regarding the arrival of the Tsar, for the review of the Austrian and Russian troops. Here Tolstoy is at his finest, working as he does, to secure a sense of the human condition. Tolstoy writes,
In the deathlike silence only the sound of hoofbeats was heard. This was the emperors' suites...Standing in the foremost ranks of Kutuzov's army, which was the first the Tsar approached, Rostov experienced the same feeling as every other man in the army: a feeling of self-oblivion, a proud consciousness of might, and a passionate devotion to him who was the cause of that triumphant occasion. One word from that man, he felt, and his huge mass (including the insignificant grain that was himself) would go through fire and water, commit crimes, die, or perform deeds of the greatest heroism, and he could not but tremble, and his heart stood still, at the imminency of that word" (Trans. Ann Dunnigan).
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