@klausprinz.bsky.social
Retired software engineer German by birth, European by conviction Loves books on the history and literature of Europe and the USA
"Basil Ransom wondered who they all were; he had a general idea they were mediums, communists, vegetarians."
Henry James: The Bistonians, 1886
Goethes Faust begeistert eine Menge treuer Leserinnen und Leser. Etwas weniger im Fokus steht die gleichnamige Oper von Charles Gounod. Eine rundum gelungene Inszenierung fand im September 2025 in Lille statt: tolle Stimmen und eine herausragende Regie. Chapeau!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KuN...
Gestern Abend beendete ich die Lektüre meiner laut Buchliste 377. Biografie: Henry James. Das Ende der Protagonisten ist meist sehr ähnlich: respice finem zum Anfassen. Man gewöhnt sich nicht daran, aber ich mache weiter. Viele weitere Biografien harren meiner...
29.10.2025 09:43 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0If one has separate bookcases for american and english literature it may be difficult to find the right place for Henry James' books.
26.10.2025 09:18 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0"Begin at the beginning," the King said, very gravely, "and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”
Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland.
"A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged, it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and the time in which it is used."
Oliver Wendell Holmes, judge at SCOTUS
Stephen Budiansky, Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Our government may at some time be in the hands of a bad man. When in the hands of a good man it is well enough... We ought to have our government so shaped that even in the hands of a bad man we shall be save."
Frederick Douglass, 1867, with Andrew Johnson in mind
Die herrliche Doppelbödigkeit der bürgerlichen Moral.
08.08.2025 07:02 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0Flieh, auf, hinaus ins weite Land...
02.08.2025 05:13 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0"Genius is the result of thinking 'till - 'till - 'till Genius 'till you turn a corner and find yourself in another world. Genius is above reasoning."
Charles Sanders Peirce
"The principles supported by Mr. [Charles Sanders] Peirce bear a close affinity with those of Hegel; perhaps are what Hegel's might have been had he been educated in a physical laboratory instead of in a theological seminary ..."
Publisher's Weekly, 1894
"[Charles Sanders Peirce] was one of the most original minds of the later nineteenth century and certainly the greatest American thinker ever".
Bertrand Russell, 1959
"In philosophy he was one of the most original thinkers and system builders of any time, and certainly the greatest philosopher the United States has ever seen."
Joseph Brent:
Charles Sanders Peirce. A Life
"Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit."
Henry Adams
The Education of Henry Adams
"The English mind was one-sided, eccentric, systematically unsystematic and logically illogical. The less one knew of it the better."
Henry Adams
The Education of Henry Adams
"All state education is a sort of dynamo machine for polarising the popular mind; for turning and holding its lines of force in the direction supposed to be most effective for state-purposes. The German machine was terribly efficient."
Henry Adams 1904 in
The Education of Henry Adams
"The chief wonder of education is that it does not ruin everybody concerned in it, teachers and taught."
Henry Adams in
The Education of Henry Adams
"Dictes moy, [...] mais où sont les neiges d’antan?"
François Villon
"[...] old people, who alone, as a class, have the time to be young."
Henry Adams (1838-1918): Mont Saint Michel and Chartres
A young couple loves each other. But he is a priest and she a not religious at all. It's about missing tolerance - guess by whom.
That's what an exquisite novel is about, written by Henry Adams - yes, a member of the famous Adams family from Boston (Quincy), MA.
People who ban books tend to be narrow-minded. Sometimes a book ban can turn into a book recommendation for open-minded readers. See Jodi Picoult's 'Nineteen Minutes'. This book should be read in schools, not banned.
pen.org/banned-books...
"History has always been [...] the most aristocratic of all literary pursuits because it obliges the historian to be rich as well as educated."
Henry Adams, found in David S. Brown: The Last American Aristocrat (i.e. Henry Adams)
Zitat aus:
Was Europa den Griechen verdankt
Von den Grundlagen unserer Kultur in der griechischen Antike
Thomas A. Szlezák
Die europäische Identität sei [...] verstanden als die Mentalität, die geprägt ist durch
- Pluralismus und Liberalismus,
- Demokratie und Toleranz (insbesondere religiöse Toleranz),
- Propagierung der Menschenrechte und
- Offenheit für fremde Kulturen und Menschen.
Thomas A. Szlezák
Auch in einer philanthropisch-paradiesischen Gesellschaft würde irgendwann die Literatur aus erzählerischen Gründen das Böse formulieren. Damit wäre es in der Welt. Philanthropie wäre dann nur noch ein rein akademisches Konstrukt.
So wie heute.
Es wäre interessant zu erfahren, wo das unsterbliche Pferd Xanthos aus der Ilias gerade grast. Homer verschwieg uns dieses Detail.
22.06.2025 12:19 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0Wenn in einem Buch alle paar Seiten "Eos mit rosigen Fingern emporsteigt", handelt es sich bei dem Werk vermutlich um...
... richtig, die Odyssee in der Vossschen Übertragung.
"The ravished Helen, Menelaus' queen,
With wanton Paris sleeps; and that's the quarrel."
Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, Prologue
"How now, Thersites? What, lost in the labyrinth of thy fury?"
Thersites to himself in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida
"Things won are done, joy's soul lies in the doing."
Cressida in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida.
