=abcsa402 sa's abc of culture, Feb '04 A BRIEF GUIDE TO CULTURE: BOOKS: R.H. Blyth: Zen in English Literature and Oreintal Classics, by R.H. Blyth: D57, A Dutton Everyman Paperback $2.15 (1960 price); New York, E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc. 1960; reprinted by special arrangement with The Hokuseido Press R.H. Blythe: Haiku, in 4 Volumes, Hokuseido, 1952 (12 printing 1970), PUblished by The Hokuseido Press, 8-12 Kanda-Nishkicho, Chiyoda- ku, Tokyo Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy, Meridian Books, The World Publish Company, Cleveland and New York ; published by jThe World Publishing Company 2321 West 110th St., Cleveland 2, Ohio. First Meridian pritning August 1962. Copyright 1944, 1945, Aldous Huxley. Library of Congress Card Number: 62-18675 [I've been intending to read this book for the past 40 years.] Twenty Jataka Tales, retold by Noor Inayat Khan; illustrated by H. Willebeek Le Mair; East-West Publications b.v., The Hague; First published 1939 by George G. Harrap + Co. Ltd., London; repritned 1975 by East-West Publications Fonds b.v., PO Box 76i17, The Hague; ISBN 90.70104-237; manufactued in the Netherlands. [ Very appropriate for children. ] Presumably available from Omega Press, The Abode, New Lebanon, NY USA. (With the decline of the oral tradition et al., Omega Press took to calling itself 'wisdom'schild' on Internet etc.) Huntington Cairns, ed. , Bollingen Series: The Limits of Art The Limits of Art: Poetry and Prose chosen by ancient and modern critics; Collected and Edited by Huntington Cairns; Bollingen Series XII, Panthon Books; Copyright 1948 by Bollingen Foundation, Washinton, D.C.; Published for Bollingen Foundation, Inc. by Pantheon Books, Inc; Manufactuared in the U.S.S. by H. Wolff Book Mfg. Co. (no place given); hardback; pp xliv + 1473. (I picked up my present copy ("used") for NIS 20 from Sefer v' Sefel (Jerusalem); a Burger King Fishburger (nonkosher, tho not treif) presently costs NIS 16. Byron, Don Juan, excerpts J.V. Cunningham, some of same. maybe some Chaucer; he's nice; like a spring day. Yeats for the sound and clean lines. Auden for the solid stance of declamation. Pound, especially his 'Imitations'; but almost anything but the rants. The Confucian Anthology; and also his Confucian Analects. e.e. cummings is nice. Richard Wilbur has a lovely sense of rhythm; I learned that from a lecture by Simpson, at UCB. Whitman is unreadable, & Ginsburg's worse. So's Wagner Mahler & all those sloopy's, like Wordsworth trailing clouds of glory. They should tidy up after themselves. Salinger is great for Upper West Side consciousness, ca '50's I suppose. Catcher in the Rye ends on a note of whimsical nostalgia, otherwise I forget it. Truman Capote wrote beautifully once. (Other Voices, other Rooms.) Only Ray Bradbury, that I know of, seems to evoke such a sense of nostalgia. And Ben Shahn. Delmore Schwartz, of course; what magnificence of line. Pity he later cracked up and took to booze; but that's life for you. #l2 The collected works of Saul Bellow should be gathered together & put on a compost heap. #l3 Classic Comix Philosophy. #l1 Carl Shorske (UCB etc.) was a fine chronicler of intellectual history. Cavell can write astoundingly well. I still don't know what he's said. Shakespeare has a good reputation, but seems rather ecentric. Someone said, he didn't write in English, he re-invented it. Impractically. ------------------- There are few real artists. Klee (watercolours; I can't understand the sense of humour in his lines); and Bach. (Ed Brewer, who later made the harpsichord for Lincoln Center, once remarked to me that his class assignment was to write like Bach. I said, that must be easy. He said back: Only superficially.) Klee recalls the natural harmonies of colours. You look at a red painting of his for maybe 5 minutes, and then you say, that's where it's at; a harmony of reds and oranges; who needs that blue or green stuff. Then you look at a blue painting for 5 minutes or so, and you say, that's where it's at; who needs those etc. The "magic squares" paintings are one instance. Or one of his incredible hot Mediterranean days. Bach too -- recalling the natural harmony of sounds. And such long lines; consider the length of the theme of the Goldberg variations. I'm barely beginning to comprehend Bach. (Beethoven's Diabelli variations are of course just one more of his rude jokes. He starts with a very stupid little theme, and does all sorts of stuff with it. The CP-USA was the last domain of USA-romantics. Woody Guthrie and all that. Such honest naievete. The private eye as knight-errant, down "mean streets". Bogart's persona; the cynic with a heart of gold; but tough (or self-toughened) enough to fight for The Good. Hammet, or his alter-ego anyhow, drank like a gentleman ("The Thin Man"). He died, from cigarettes maybe. Someone said, Lillien, can I do anything for you. She said, can you bring him back to life? He shtumbled no. She said: Then I'll have a ham sandwich. With mustard. That was the age of rationality and realism; with a fine sense of irony. Anglophilia was its quintessence. Anglophilia means: good manners & good diction; all the rest is Basil Bunting. The Brits speak organic English, retains its own etymology. We learned all about England in Cambridge (Massachusetts, of course), watching Masterpiece Theatre. A lovely production of 'The Golden Bowl', everything in nuance and understatement. And likewise Dorothy Sayers' Peter Whimsey. "Dirk Gently's Wholistic Detective Agency" (Adams' one good line; the book's unreadable.) ----------------------- There are some folks who can bring out the universality, the virtu, in whatever they present. ( Each college, however rated, is apt to have a few, and not much more; the rest are scholars and/or hustlers. At Oberlin, I recall Clyde Holbrook, who taught religion; he seemed to have such a matter-of-fact surety that it was true, that I switched from atheism or agnosticism or whatever it was I didn't have. C.D. Rollins was very good at Wittgenstein, from a sort of Ryle/Malcolm standpoint; but that's just workmanship. He said something like: Wittgenstein gives you a tool box. But maybe you want some other tools as well. I once asked him, after class, to explain Wittgenstein ("I was very young then" (Shrager).) He replied: 'Ever try to divide an egg?' ( Danto, at Columbia, was a magnificent craftsman; he also did etchings. Morgenbesser had a brilliance that can encompass and interrelate a whole field; recordings of his lectures should be dazzling; he thought too fast to write. ) At UCB there was Cavell, until Harvard bought him. At UCSB there was Paul Wienpahl on Spinoza's Ethics.) But I was starting to speak of artists who bring out the universality in whatever they perform. Landowska. Svatislav Richter (his Melodia recording of the Bach piano concerto is very strong; better than a Chicago recording. ). Casals, I'm told. ( Jacqueline du Pres, z'lb, is wonderful. I saw a wonderful video of her playing the Elgar with Barrenboim conducting. Her recording of the Bach solo pieces -- the bit I heard seemed very joyous.) Anna-Marie Sarazin, a premiere ballerina with the Boston Ballet in the 1970's. (Classical, and neo-classical ballet (eg Firebird -- Chagall's backdrops are wonderful) is high drama, to the point of being archetypal, at least in Jung's sense.) Schnabel is said to be definitive for the middle-to-late Beethoven piano sonatas. Marilyn Strauss (Lidov) once hummed a run as played by Schnabel -- (ascending, 2 slow, 6 rising with a ralentado), and said: If I could play like that just once, I'd retire. And the Budapest String Quartet for the late Quartets (where Beethoven finally gets a sense of humour, I guess.) Marilyn Strauss said of late Beethoven, 'You can't WRITE like that.' (in a tone of awe -- Cf. Yeats: Did ever man so ride? Not 'till man rode.) Hayden seems surprisingly underrated; much more modern. Ravel is always fun, except for that Bolero. Tchaikovsky is great fun; defintely the right guy to have hired to score a classical ballet. I remember Eliot Carter as quite good. I'm just starting to dig Stravinsky a bit. Almost got to Petrouchska. Colorful like later Kandinsky, I'd say. Of course earlier Kandinsky is nice. Franz Klein offers a harmony of black I-beams. Henry Moore (as I said of Klee and of Bach) works with universal harmonies. Klee with colour, Bach with sound, Moore with shape. Chagall conveys the joyousness of Judaism. Before I bumped into his work, my paradigm for Judaism had been the elegaic hazzanut of pre-Shoah--tradition Eastern Europe. Some of our friends like us better when we mourn than when we're happy. Natural reaction. Like looking for a woman one can protect; someone who keeps her place. ============================================================= Everyone should learn how to sail. Teaches you to respond to crises politely, without wasted words. To be alone in the snow, on snowshoes or x-country ski's. Monhegan Island, off Port Clyde, Maine, is quite special. I once stayed alone one night in a hut half-way up a small mountain in southern New Hampshire I think. The wind sighed in the pine trees, far below. I'm still trying to get back there. I like the White Mountains. Could maybe recognize most of them. Dogs are good. One should not tie them up. I suppose only the Indians of the Southwest have retained their culture intact. Lama Foundation, in St. Cristobal, New Mexico, should be a good starting point; or ok anyhow. Helps to learn to live in a sleeping bag, so you can when you want to. ================================================================ A FEW NOTES ON JUDAISM: One must learn the Hebrew alphabet, including the basic vowel markings. Most important is the Metsudah Siddur (or the Sephardi interlinear Orot Siddur ). Metsudah Siddur, distribued by Ziontalis book division, 48 Eldridge St., New York NY 10002; Tel: 212---925-8558 Or from: Israel Book Shop, 501 Prospect St. #97, Lakewood, New Jersy 08701; Tel: 732--901-3009 Typography & Design by: Simcha Graphic Associates, 4311 15th Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11219; Tel: 718--854-4830 Next most important is an Interlinear Chumash. Feldheim publishes a perfectly adequate learner's edition, in 5 volumes paperback: Feldheim, POB 35002 Jerusalem; Tel: 02--651- 3947. Best hardcover edition is the Rashi Interlinear, the 1950 edition SS&R Publishing Co., Inc., Brooklyn, NY (Press of the Jewish Publication Society). Then comes Kitov, The Book of our Heritage. Much deeper than may first appear. (I first saw it in Saphira Linden's front Parlour). No doubt worth learning Hebrew to read it in the original. Several Tractates of 'The Talmud , with English translation and Commentary' were published by El-'AM -- Hoza'a Leor Israel, Jerusalem--Tel Aviv, 1965. Translated into English with Commentary by Rabbi Dr. A. Ehrman (et al.) National Academy for Adult Jewish Studies of One should no doubt learn to read Yiddish to read Sholom Aleichem in the original. And such mastery of form. Pliskin's books are good solid Musar (ethical advice). Especially Love your Neighbor, Aish HaTorah Publications, Yeshivat Aish sHaTo rah, Old City, Jerusalem. Rabbi Simon Jacobson's edit of teachings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Toward a Meaningful Life, is very good. So is his booklet on teh Counting of the Omer, available from: Meaingful LIfe Center, Vaad Hanachos Hatmimim, 788 Eastern Parkway, Suite 303, Brooklyn, NY 11213-3409; www.meanigfullife.com [with 2 l's ] Pomeranz Booksellers, http://www.pomeranzbooks.com (Shmuel HaNagid 4, Jerusalem 94592) are the Israel agents for Jason Aronson Publishing; and are maybe the best source for English orthodox Judaica. Non-orthodox texts are much harder to find in Israel. Important writings include: R. Zalman Schachter's writings. Most would seem to be unpublished. 'Paradigm Shift' includes some dazzling essays. Larry Kushner has written some lovely books; he's the Rabbi in Sudbury Massachusetts (last I knew). Art Waskow's Seasons of our Joy is a good book , with beautiful pictures of papercuts by the Farins. The first Whole Jewish Catalog (with the red cover) has much lovely material. The Ba'al Tchuva movement has yet to catch up with it. Joel Rosenberg has written some lovely midrashic poetry. Last I know he was teaching at Tufts College, in Somerville, Massachusetts. ================================================================ Well, it's a cold night, and I'm getting sleepy. Maybe that's enough for now. Steve Amdur Mevo Modi'in 24 Feb '04 -- 2 Adar ================================================================ SUPPLEMENT, 13 Adar: Best erotic art: Pierre Louis, Aphrodite (only in French, of course). Worst erotic art: Picasso, cubist period. 2nd-best erotic art: Picasso, line-drawings. 2nd-worst erotic art: deKoonig, anything. 3rd-best erotic art: Wallace Stevens, anything. Eg, "Susanah and the Elders" 3rd-worst erotic art: T.S. Eliot, passim. sa, 13 Adar ================================================================= Best explanation of the Hologram: (Recommended by Eliahu Gal-Or:) Yitzhak Bentov, Stalking the Wild Pendulum. ================================================================ Best Travel Book: Lawrence Durrell, Reflections on a Marine Venus (about Rodos, ca. 1946). Best read in a courtyard in the Old City of Rodos, on a hot day, sitting in the shade. ================================================================= Best Movies: lst Place: Truffaut, Jules and Jim. A perfectly paced tale. 2nd Place: Beatlles et al: Yellow Submarine. A fine fable. Runner-ups: Eisenstein: Alexander Nevsky; Walker-ups: Ivan the Terrible Part II. 2nd place in the Ivan the Terrible category: El Greco. ================================================================= Best Archetypal Art, any category: Swan Lake (Ballet; Tchaikovsky) Runner-up: Firebird, with Chagall's backdrops. Most over-rated Choreographer: Ballanchine. 2nd Place, High Art: Shakespeare in the Park (Central Park, NY; early 1960's. A fine noble backdrop for that counterpoint. Best opera singer. Beverly Sills. She did a TV production of a Queen Elizabeth opera that showed the tragedy of an older woman's love for younger man. Lends an archetypeal dimension to whatever she sang, as far as I could tell. ================================================================= Best dog, Moshav Meor Modi'in: Harry-dog (AvrahamHai Family). Without affectation; co-exists comfortably with the Hai's cats and chickens (with whom too the cats co-exist comfortably); he should only not bark so repetitiously at groundouts. ================================================================= Best chickens, Moshav Meor Modi'in: AvrahamHai's. Elegant roosters, and the hens are lovely with their chicks, scratching for bugs around the yard in the early morning. ================================================================ Best Israeli red wine: None that I've noticed. There was one good one I got for a Witt Seder, Baron maybe. Best Israeli white win: The concept barely exists. Yarden's Mt. Hermon White is a good try. Adequate Israeli wines: Carmel had an ok Hock in the mid-'80's. [ Further listings will be added, maybe. ] ================================================================ Best inexpensive steak-house. Non-kosher: There was an adequate one in Harvard Square in the mid-70's; about $1.99 more or less including a baked potatoe with sour cream, mixed salad with Roquefort, a tap beer, and a piece of apple pie. Kosher: Eliahu Gal-Or recommends Shemesh, on the Jerusalem Midrahov. And for street-side lamb skewers, he directed me to an excellent place in Jaffo, by the clock-tower. [so OK, this is the evening after Taanit Esther (rabbinic redate of, 14 Adar falling this year on Shabat. Somehow felt like merly a rabbinic mitzva this time; but I cheated a bit. I once made kiddish at the Bet Zayit campground with a sherry I got in East Jerusalem, made at a monastary. Gal-Or told me: Ain't precisely kosher. I said, yup, didn't quite seem to fit into place that evening. ] But if you are making kiddish with non-kosher wines: Harvey's Bristol Cream. Dry Sack. Best sherry's: Cave Atlantique in Harvard Square had a very nice range from Spain; from very dry through medium, to brown (said to be richer than Bristol Cream, and excellent with Stillton cheese). I drank some of the drier ones from time to time with Nancy Neyhard. Best wine bar: Above Cave Atlantique (mid '70's). Best French salad and onion soup: Patisserie, Harvard Square (mid-70's). Excellent atmosphere, as long as you could pretend that the cigarette smoke was Camus and that gazing up at passing traffic was romantic. Greatest contrast between high hexure and food quality: Almost anything Badatz, especially basari. =============================================================== Well, I seem to be losing my long-refined edge. A hot still chamsin night, completely out-of-place in late winter. Blame the Bushie's. (Mevo Modi'in 13 Adar). ================================================================== Best singers: Donovan, Frank Sinatra, Joan Baez. All quite different. Donovan is a wonderful poet, playing with the sounds of words to music. Sinatra (Alev, http://www.worldmusic2002.de agrees with me; she too is a fine singer, in a Muslim tradition, Bedouin maybe) developed his breath control swimming under water, so he was never driven by time; he could take a phrase and hold it, making time wait on him. Joan Baez, as my mother noted, had the most wonderfully clear voice, pure as spring-water. Of course the brought a great political innocence to bear with it. A Quaker, and anti-war activist. ===============================================================