Log24

Sunday, September 26, 2021

Let Noon Be Flack

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:07 pm

 

Update of 12:50 PM ET the same day —

"There is no o'clock in a cantina."

William H. Gass on Malcolm Lowry.

Except when there is.

Sunday, September 24, 2017

Figures

Filed under: General — m759 @ 8:30 pm

"On April 23, 2009 ….

'I’m reminded of the character in "The Silence of the Lambs," 
Hannibal Lecter, a very brilliant man,' the prosecutor said,
recognizing 'his ability to intelligently and articulately discuss
things occurring in society.'

'But at his core, as with Mr. Lecter at his core, he is a sociopath,' 
the prosecutor said."

— David Stout in an obituary from this evening's online
New York Times

See also this  journal on April 23, 2009, and
a figure from this morning's link Cantina —

 .

Sermon

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:00 am

Cantina .

Sunday, May 4, 2014

Seven Year Ache

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:00 pm

Link to song and lyrics.

“There’s plenty of dives to be someone you’re not
Just say you’re looking for something you might have forgot”

— Rosanne Cash, 1981

See also Cantina  in this journal.

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Wednesday June 25, 2008

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:02 am
Born 100 years ago today:

Willard Van Orman Quine, picture from cover of his autobiography

From A Logical Point of View,  Harvard U. Press, 1980, p. 72
From A Logical Point of View,  Harvard U. Press, 1980, p. 73
Other approaches to the
eight-ray star figure

Figure by Quine for an argument against univesals in 'From a Logical Point of View'

have been sketched in
various Log24 entries.

See, for instance, the
June 21 entries on
the Kyoto Prize for
arts and philosophy.
Quine won this prize
 in 1996.

Quine’s figure, cited in an
argument against universals,
is also a classic symbol for
the morning or evening star.

This year’s winner http://www.log24.com/images/asterisk8.gif
of the Kyoto Prize has
a more poetic approach
to philosophy:

“… the object sets up
 a kind of frame or space or field
   within which there can be epiphany.”

For one such frame or space,
a Mexican cantina, see
Shining Forth.

See also Damnation Morning and
The Devil and Wallace Stevens.

http://www.log24.com/images/asterisk8.gif Charles Taylor.  See
“Epiphanies of Modernism,”
Chapter 24 of Sources of the Self
  (Cambridge U. Press, 1989, p. 477)

Monday, August 6, 2007

Monday August 6, 2007

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 8:00 am
The Divine Universals

"The tigers of wrath          
 are wiser than                
 the horses of instruction."

— William Blake,
Proverbs of Hell

From Shining Forth:

  The Place of the Lion, by Charles Williams, 1931, Chapter Eight:

"Besides, if this fellow were right, what harm would the Divine Universals do us? I mean, aren't the angels supposed to be rather gentle and helpful and all that?"

"You're doing what Marcellus warned you against… judging them by English pictures. All nightgowns and body and a kind of flacculent sweetness. As in cemeteries, with broken bits of marble. These are Angels– not a bit the same thing. These are the principles of the tiger and the volcano and the flaming suns of space."

 Under the Volcano, Chapter Two:

"But if you look at that sunlight there, then perhaps you'll get the answer, see, look at the way it falls through the window: what beauty can compare to that of a cantina in the early morning? Your volcanoes outside? Your stars– Ras Algethi? Antares raging south southeast? Forgive me, no." 

 A Spanish-English dictionary:

lucero m.
morning or evening star:
any bright star….
hole in a window panel
     for the admission of light….

Look at the way it
falls through the window….

— Malcolm Lowry

How art thou fallen from heaven,
O Lucifer, son of the morning!
— Isaiah 14:12

For more on Spanish
and the evening star,
see Plato, Pegasus, and
the Evening Star.

 Symmetry axes
of the square:

Symmetry axes of the square

(See Damnation Morning.)

From the cover of the
 Martin Cruz Smith novel
Stallion Gate:

Atom on cover of Stallion

"That old Jew
gave me this here."

Dialogue from the
Robert Stone novel
A Flag for Sunrise.

Related material:

A Mass for Lucero,

Log24, Sept. 13, 2006

Mathematics, Religion, Art

— and this morning's online
New York Times obituaries:

Cardinal Lustiger of Paris and jazz pianist Sal Mosca, New York Times obituaries on August 6, 2007

The above image contains summary obituaries for Cardinal Lustiger, Archbishop of Paris, 1981-2005, and for Sal Mosca, jazz pianist and teacher. In memory of the former, see all of the remarks preceding the image above. In memory of the latter, the remarks of a character in Martin Cruz Smith's Stallion Gate on jazz piano may have some relevance:

"I hate arguments. I'm a coward. Arguments are full of words, and each person is sure he's the only one who knows what the words mean. Each word is a basket of eels, as far as I'm concerned. Everybody gets to grab just one eel and that's his interpretation and he'll fight to the death for it…. Which is why I love music. You hit a C and it's a C and that's all it is. Like speaking clearly for the first time. Like being intelligent. Like understanding. A Mozart or an Art Tatum sits at the piano and picks out the undeniable truth."

Sunday, November 2, 2003

Sunday November 2, 2003

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 11:11 am

All Souls' Day
at the Still Point

From remarks on Denis Donoghue's Speaking of Beauty in the New York Review of Books, issue dated Nov. 20, 2003, page 48:

"The Russian theorist Bakhtin lends his august authority to what Donoghue's lively conversation has been saying, or implying, all along.  'Beauty does not know itself; it cannot found and validate itself — it simply is.' "

From The Bakhtin Circle:

"Goethe's imagination was fundamentally chronotopic, he visualised time in space:

Time and space merge … into an inseparable unity … a definite and absolutely concrete locality serves at the starting point for the creative imagination… this is a piece of human history, historical time condensed into space….

Dostoevskii… sought to present the voices of his era in a 'pure simultaneity' unrivalled since Dante. In contradistinction to that of Goethe this chronotope was one of visualising relations in terms of space not time and this leads to a philosophical bent that is distinctly messianic:

Only such things as can conceivably be linked at a single point in time are essential and are incorporated into Dostoevskii's world; such things can be carried over into eternity, for in eternity, according to Dostoevskii, all is simultaneous, everything coexists…. "

Bakhtin's notion of a "chronotope" was rather poorly defined.  For a geometric structure that might well be called by this name, see Poetry's Bones and Time Fold.  For a similar, but somewhat simpler, structure, see Balanchine's Birthday.

From Four Quartets:

"At the still point, there the dance is."

From an essay by William H. Gass on Malcolm Lowry's classic novel Under the Volcano:

"There is no o'clock in a cantina."
 

Wednesday, January 8, 2003

Wednesday January 8, 2003

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 12:00 am

Into the Woods

From the Words on Film site:

"The proximal literary antecedents for Under the Volcano are Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, especially The Inferno, on the one hand, and on the other, the Faust legend as embodied in the dramatic poem Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and the play Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe."

"In the opening page of the novel, we find the words "The Hotel Casino de la Selva stands on a slightly higher hill …" (Lowry, Volcano p. 3). "Selva" is one of the Spanish words for "woods." One of the cantinas in the novel is named El Bosque, and bosque is another Spanish word for "woods." The theme of being in a darkling woods is reiterated throughout the novel."

Literary Florence

Tonight's site music is "Children Will Listen,"
by Stephen Sondheim, from "Into the Woods."

Stephen Hawking is 61 today. 
An appropriate gift might be a cassette version of
The Screwtape Letters, by C. S. Lewis,
narrated by John Cleese. 

See also this review of Lewis's That Hideous Strength
and my entries of Dec. 31, 2002, and Jan. 4, 2003.   

Powered by WordPress