Hey, Martin. a dear brilliant well read male friend and I were discussing
Stoppard, and one of our conclusions was that appreciating him is a 'man
thing', [sort of like appreciating The Three Stooges ;-)].
My view of 'man things' [is that they're wonderful, but that's a nother
topic]....is that menfolk challenge one a nother, whereas femalefolk try to
get everybody to understand everybody else ['make nice', in other words].
Hence, males will drop obtuse refs like dandruff to see if anyone's bright
enuff to 'get' them and give some back. I do see the value in that process;
it guarantees that folk are on their toes, at the top of their game, ready
to do battle, win the fair maiden, and so on. And, quite frankly, no, quite
judily, I think it's a damned effective mechanism.
I saw SIL in Pest, the subtitles in English, and it was followed by The
Godfather. I was so demoralised at being in my 'mother country' and seeing
its devastated economy and ground-under magnificent culture, that I wanted
to vomit. Hence, I may've missed some of the subtleties of that damned
Stoppard. I also saw [can't recall title] his play that begins with a
not-told-to-audience play within a play and unfolds with an adulterer who
doesn't understand why his wives keep cuckolding him. Stoppard, reasonably,
declines to explain his plays to the adoring audiences; he's been accused by
some critics who say he blatantly 'borrows' ideas for plays [we're not
talking about clever subtle hidden 'refs' that are made to challenge our
brainfiles]. Fundamentally, I think he's a fake, or at best an
under-mediocre playwright. But, then, he's not trying, apparently, to give
us profound plays.
Mary Sidney was, tho, a writer of profound plays [that is, the works often
attributed to Shaksper].
Who are Schlegel and Tieck? Re German: One summer before going on one of
those really cheap Around The World in a year flights and being allowed to
stop ANYWHERE you wanted as long as you didn't backtrack, I decided to learn
German and Hungarian, and renew my Chinese and French. I ended up
understanding how to read and pronounce Hungarian, as well as being
fascinated with the differences between French and German socio-culture as
evidenced in what they most preferred talking about. Ended up being a bit
like a friend auto mechanic [native Hungarian living in the USA] said: "If
your car breaks down in France, have it towed to Germany."
j balizs prince
2009/4/4 Martin Walker <[log in to unmask]>
> Ms. Judy Prince >>Besides you and Droo
>
>> and MW, tho, who on petc has a weird-enough mindset for >>it?
>>>
>> Nymph, in thy orisons be all my sins remembered. I *know I should order a
> new one, it makes all kinds of rude noises and dribbles some strange
> greenish lube over the settee.
> PS I liked the Steinian bit at the beginning of SIL: some guy is haranguing
> listeners in a populous thoroughfare about abolishing the theatres: "A Rose
> is a Rose is a..." (it's very faint, I think the guy is attacking the
> corrupting effect of plays, it disappeared altogether in the German dubbing
> according to those I've asked. Germans, my mountaineering Hausarzt
> fr'instance, tend to love SIL, it sort of defuses the oppressive weight of
> Schlegel & Tieck). That was Stoppard's contribution, rather UTT (under the
> threshold, since you asked) than OTT...
> Goo'night, sweet Prince...
> _______________________________________
> But I am but a nameless sort of person
> (A broken Dandy lately on my travels)
> And take for rhyme, to hook my rambling verse on,
> The first that Walker's Lexicon unravels
>
> - George Gordon, Lord Byron
>
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