Ezra Pound e Joseph Brodsky

To be buried here is a signal honor, and no one can deny Pound’s influence on twentieth-century poetry. But this is a case in which the very condition of the two gravestones indicates a moral and artistic hierarchy. Pound, with his obsession with the strong man of action and manly virtù, now represents the authoritarian vision, lately manifested by Russia’s Vladimir Putin, whose political and economic shadow continues its ascent over Europe. Contrarily, Brodsky, the dissident Russian, concerned with universalism and the personal life of the individual, represents a Europe of sovereign, mutually respectful nations, and the rule of law over arbitrary fiat. Here in this Venetian cemetery, two iconic forces stand a few feet apart from each other. Here are the two paths that Europe can tread. May it choose the right one. Robert D. Kaplan, New Criterion

Robert D. Kaplan is the author of Adriatic: A Concert of Civilizations at the End of the Modern Age, to be published in April by Random House. He holds the Robert Strausz-Hupé Chair in Geopolitics at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

Mi sembrava doveroso, questa settimana, partecipare in qualche modo al dramma dell'invasione dell'Ucraina da parte della Russia. Ho scelto questo bell'articolo che contrappone due poeti sepolti accanto a Venezia, due visioni del mondo opposte.

Blurbs

Blurbs. Few parts of the publishing process cause more anxiety for writers. As a blurb requester, it’s stressful and a bit pathetic to beg for praise from writers you may have never met. As a potential blurber, the number of requests can be overwhelming and blurbing is always time consuming. Hell writers have been complaining about blurbs since the dawn of, well, blurbs. Lincoln Michel, Counter Craft

Segue una disamina sui blurbs (a proposito, come si traduce in italiano?)

E una bella recensione di un libro che sembra interessante. Chi l'avrebbe mai detto che Stalin fosse un lettore vorace? Il libro è, Geoffrey Roberts, Stalin's Library (Yale UP).

Stalin was a voracious reader, who set himself a daily quota of between 300 and 500 pages. When he died of a stroke in his library in 1953, the desk and tables that surrounded him were piled high with books, many of them heavily marked with his handwriting in the margins. [...] During his life he amassed a personal library estimated at about 20,000 books ... Amelia Gentleman, The Guardian

 

The Order of Things

La difficoltà a essere fedeli alla sintassi, nella traduzione:

Let’s think about syntax, why it’s hard to translate (why there are mixed opinions in translation studies about how to handle it), why it matters and possible ways to move forward.

The word “syntax” comes from the Ancient Greek “σύνταξις,” meaning “coordination”: “syn,” or “together,” and “táxis,” or “ordering.” Today, in English, it designates the “set of rules and principles in a language according to which words, phrases, and clauses are arranged to create well-formed sentences,” or “the ways in which a particular word or part of speech can be arranged with other words or parts of speech.” These are, respectively, the ethical and intersubjective aspects of the word. Jennifer Croft, Literary Hub

ancora sulla lingua, questa volta su come l'inglese sia diventato la lingua franca. Una bella recensione a Rosemary Salomone, The Rise of English (OUP):

An American law professor and linguist addresses the babel of controversy over the predominance of the English language as the world’s lingua franca. Kirkus

 

How Four Women Brought Philosophy Back to Life

The​ appearance within a few months of each other of two books about the same four women is a bit startling, but on reflection the topic is so natural and interesting that one might even wonder why it hasn’t been treated before. Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot (née Bosanquet), Mary Midgley (née Scrutton) and Iris Murdoch all matriculated at Oxford in the late 1930s. When most of the men went off to war, they found themselves, as women philosophy students, in a very unusual situation – not in the minority and on the periphery, but central and predominant. (The rule in normal times had been that no more than a fifth of the undergraduates at Oxford could be women.) Midgley later wrote that the enhanced attention and absence of the usual competitive male atmosphere made it possible for her to find her voice as a philosopher. Distinctive and talented though each of them was, it seems no accident that such a stellar group emerged from this atypical moment. Thomas Nagel, London Review of Books

Interessante recensione di due libri usciti recentemente e che ci illuminano sullo spirito oxfordiano: The Women Are up to Something: How Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley and Iris Murdoch Revolutionised Ethics,by Benjamin J.B. Lipscomb (Oxford), e, Metaphysical Animals: How Four Women Brought Philosophy Back to Life by Clare Mac Cumhaill and Rachael Wiseman (Chatto). 

Infine una scrittrice da scoprire, la britannica Elizabeth Taylor (1912-75),

In the words of one critic, Taylor is “best known for not being better known.” Burdened by her famous name, she has never achieved the level of mainstream appreciation that she is due. Yet a small band of critics and writers ranks her among the most psychologically penetrating English novelists of the twentieth century. Charlie Tyson, The New Yorker