Category Archives: Literature
Invention and the Arts
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 25th June 2024Art, in all its guises, is of course an invention. Its evolution was governed by the internal manipulation common to any human endeavor. But it was also greatly altered and influenced by inventions not initially intended to relate to art. Consider the discovery of electricity, most famously by Benjamin Franklin but by others as well,…
› Read the full entry
Plagiarize
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 30th December 2023Plagiarism has become a hot button. The topic’s recent history is well-known to most people. I got the idea for this post from a source I will not acknowledge to remain constant with the subject’s tone. Tom Lehrer was a satirist who was popular a half-century or so back. One of his songs “Lobachevsky” was…
› Read the full entry
Dickens on Elections
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 5th September 2022In chapter 13 of The Pickwick Papers Dickens describes an election for the House of Commons in the borough of Eatanswill. There are two parties – the Buffs and the Blues. The two candidates, Slumkey (Blue) and Fizkin (Buff), have only one concern – getting elected. They and their supporters will resort to any chicanery…
› Read the full entry
Chirp
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 13th August 2022If you listen to audiobooks, your choice has been mostly limited to Audible.Com. The book purveyor is owned by Amazon which seems in a race with China to possess the world. My money is on Amazon. Audible’s selection is very good and it’s not hard to find a good listen. The main problem is that…
› Read the full entry
On First Looking Into James’s Lady
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 12th May 2022This is not an imaging result or any sort of diagnostic report. Rather it’s an account of an American novel more than 140 years old – Henry James’ Portrait of a Lady. Having reached an age approaching that of an Old Testament prophet I realized that I had never read a word of one of…
› Read the full entry
Llanto Por La Muerte De Ignacio Sánchez Mejías
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 30th March 2019Federico Garcia Lorca (1898-1936) was the jewel of the Generation of ’27; a group of poets and other artists which included – in its broadest sense – Luis Buñuel, Salvador Dali, and the torero Ignacio Sánchez Mejías. It was the death of this literary bull fighter that inspired Garcia Lorca to write one of the…
› Read the full entry
The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 1st September 2018Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89) was the most original English poet of the 19th century. He was also, perhaps, the oddest. Some have speculated that he suffered from bipolar disorder. Virtually none of his coevals knew anything about his work. His father, Manley, was a minor poet who raised his son in the Anglican faith. He…
› Read the full entry
Word Salad
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 29th December 2016Another damned thick book! Always scribble, scribble, scribble! Eh, Mr. Gibbon? Prince William Henry, Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh I got a package from Amazon that was gift wrapped and had a note attached to it. The note read: “I can tell from reading your work that you are running out of words. So give these…
› Read the full entry
Dumas and Rossini: The Count Goes to the Opera
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 8th April 2013Chapter 88 of Dumas great novel of revenge and adventure, The Count of Monte Cristo, is called ‘The Insult’. Here are a few excerpts pertinent to this brief note: Albert went to his room, and dressed with unusual care. At ten minutes to eight Beauchamp arrived; he had seen Chateau-Renaud, who had promised to…
› Read the full entry
A Nap at Opera – II
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 29th March 2013“Sleep – the opera was invented for no other purpose.” The opera being performed at the time the remark was made was Meyerbeer’s Robert le Diable. Alexandre Dumas – The Count of Monte Cristo (It’s 1838 at this point in the novel) Interestingly the opera was recently revived at London’s Royal Opera House apparently without much success.
› Read the full entry
