Could it have been from her girls' library?

In an earlier post I quoted Flaubert's sentence which provides the key to Emma Bovary's narrative - "Et Emma cherchait à savoir ce que l’on entendait au juste dans la vie par les mots de félicité, de passion et d’ivresse, qui lui avaient paru si beaux dans les livres" - and mentioned how, like Dante before him with the "quando leggemmo" of Paolo and Francesca, the blame for all the trouble is attributed to books.

Dostoevsky plays the same theme. In Part I, Section IV of The Idiot, we learn of how Totsky set up Nastasya Filippovna, in the village of Отрадное ("pleasing" or "comforting", Pevear and Volokhonsky translate it as "Delight") ... В доме нашлись музыкальные инструменты, изящная девичья библиотека, картины, эстампы, карандаши, кисти, краски, удивительная левретка, ... "There were musical instruments in the house, an elegant library for girls, paintings, prints, pencils, brushes, paints, a wonderful greyhound ... " (Pevear and Volokhonsky use "astonishing greyhound" ... "amazing greyhound" would also be good).

And then when Nastasya Filippovna takes it upon herself to go to St Petersburg and cause trouble for Totsky we read:

Эта новая женщина, оказалось, во-первых, необыкновенно много знала и понимала, -- так много, что надо было глубоко удивляться, откуда могла она приобрести такие сведения, выработать в себе такие точные понятия. (Неужели из своей девичьей библиотеки?).

This new woman, it turned out, first of all knew and understood an extraordinary amount - so much that it was a cause of profound wonder where she could have acquired such information, could have developed such precise notions in herself. (Could it have been from her girls' library?)

But it is not only Nastasya Filippovna that has learned too much from books.

When the Epanchin girls are introduced, we read "С ужасом говорилось о том, сколько книг они прочитали" ... "with horror it was told how many books they had read".

A little later, in section VII, Mrs Epanchin, the "generalsha", lashes out at her "learned" (ученых) daughters: with their "умом и многословием" .. "brains and verbosity" ...

Во-первых, от ученых дочек -- отрезала генеральша -- а так как этого и одного довольно, то об остальном нечего и распространяться. Довольно многословия было. Посмотрим, как-то вы обе (я Аглаю не считаю) с вашим умом и многословием вывернетесь, и будете ли вы, многоуважаемая Александра Ивановна, счастливы с вашим почтенным господином?

"First of all, about my learned daughters," Mrs Epanchin snapped, "and since that is enough in itself, there's no point in expatiating on the rest. There's been enough verbosity. We'll see how the two of you (I don't count Aglaya) with your brains and verbosity are going to find your way, and whether you, my much esteemed Alexandra Ivanovna, will be happy with your honourable gentleman."

Typo brides and unacceptable downtown

Peter Porter's poem 'Brides come to the poet's window' presents the serendipitous typo; the first lines are:

Birds it should have been, but pleasure quickens
As the white and peregrine performers land -

Glancing at a recent paper called 'FISMA Compliance and Cloud Computing' I came across the following sentence ...

If the cloud goes down then organizations will have unacceptable downtown that their IT departments can not control causing a stop to the critical services that the organization uses to conduct its daily operations.

'Downtown' instead of 'downtime' suggests the malign influence of spellcheck. Nevertheless there is something poetic, in a sort of robotic or aleatoric way, in this language with its talk of clouds going down and downtowns that IT departments are unable to control.

Time's pupils

One of Berlioz's most famous quotes comes from a letter: "Le temps est un grand maître, dit-on; le malheur est qu'il soit un maître inhumain qui tue ses élèves." - Time is a great teacher, they say, the misfortune is that it is an inhuman teacher who kills his pupils.

I remember seeing a note from Berlioz in the Chopin museum, Warsaw, which began with the playful and punning "Chopinetto, mio".

Chopinetto mio, si fa una villégiatura da noi, à Montmartre rue St. Denis No 10; spero che Hiller, Liszt e Devigny seront accompagnés de Chopin. Enorme Bêtise Tant pis. H.B.

"Choupinette" is a term of endearment, like "sweetie", I guess it's a form of "choupette" which is also used as a pet-name for loved ones, and refers - I think - to a ribbon tied in a girl's hair to make a tuft of hair? - but it is also reminiscent of the pet-name "chou" - which literlally is not one presumes the cabbage, but rather the delicious knobbly sweet bun that is cut in half and stuffed with cream - the chou à la crème; with food like that no wonder there are terms of endearment such as "mon petit chou" and "mon gros"! Perhaps "honeybun" is a good translation of "choupinette".

It seems that the Chopin Museum has been relaunched as an up-to-date museum - which will no doubt attract many more visitors - but I remember fondly the very old-world style of the place - very cheap entry, a few rooms of exhibits under glass cases, watched over by elderly attendants. Although I see that some things in Poland don't change so quickly ... the "regulamin" or "rules" of the museum are posted on its new website, in that splendid Polish-for-contracts with the standard notariusz-approved translation into weird English. Hopefully Warsaw's Muzeum Marii Skłodowskiej-Curie still retains its dull old-world charm.

Happy in a different way

At the end of Chapter 5 of the first part of The Idiot, the Prince says in response to being quizzed as to whether he had in Switzerland been in love: "я... был счастлив иначе" ... "I ... was happy in a different way".

Prince Myshkin embodies certain spiritual values, and the divide that Dostoevsky explored with his juxtaposition of the Prince with the hectic and dysfunctional world of St Petersburg society is a divide with which we still are confronted. Friedrich Torberg, talking of the decline suffered by European culture through the course of two world wars, states at the outset of the first Tante Jolesch book: "Ich denke vielmehr an ein Untergangssymptom, welches sich darin äußert, daß in unsrer technokratischen Welt, in unsrer materialistischen Kommerz- und Konsumgesellschaft die Käuze und Originale aussterben müssen." ... Kauz is a wonderful word, it refers to a certain awkward and reclusive species of owl - it is this bird that is an omen of death, whereas the more elegant Eule is an emblem of wisdom; here Käuze means eccentrics or oddballs: "I concentrate rather on one symptom of decline, namely that in our technocratic world, in our materialistic consumer society, eccentrics and originals are bound for extinction."

In The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, Oliver Sacks describes two twins who had been diagnosed as autistic and retarted but communicated with each other sharing very large prime numbers which they appeared to savour for their beauty and delight, primes in fact so large that at the time Dr Sacks was unable to verify that the longest of them were indeed primes. Sacks goes on to describe how the twins were separated "for their own good" but questions the outcome: "Deprived of their numberical 'communion' with each other, and of time and opportunity for any 'contemplation' or 'communion' at all - they are always being hurried and jostled from one job to another - they seem to have lost their strange numerical power, and with this the chief joy and sense of their lives."

Sacks goes on to mention an autistic girl with a phenomenal gift for drawing, who was "subjected to a therapeutic regime 'to find ways in which her potentialities in other directions could be maximized'. The net effect was that she started talking - and stopped drawing." Sacks quotes Nigel Dennis: "We are left with a genius who has had her genius removed, leaving nothing behind but a general defectiveness. What are we supposed to think about such a curious cure?".

I underline books

Joseph Campbell in the 'Dialogues' section at the end of the lecture material collected in Pathways to Bliss, says "Alan Watts once asked me what spiritual practice I followed, I told him, 'I underline books.'"

Tante Jolesch

"Die Tante Jolesch ober Der Untergang des Abendlandes in Anekdoten" ... what a superb title! ... "Tante Jolesch or The Decline of the West in Anecdotes" Tante Jolesch, Torberg assures us, did in fact exist, but "war, um mit Christian Morgenstern zu sprechen, keine 'Person im konventionellen Eigen-Sinn'" - "was not, to quote Christian Morgenstern, 'a person per se, in the conventional sense'".

Envying all the world

Charles Bovary's father had no grasp of the financial realities that constrain success: "[il] buvait son cidre en bouteilles au lieu de le vendre en barriques" ... "he drunk his cider by the bottle instead of selling it by the barrel".

And then sequestered himself from the world ... "chagrin, rongé de regrets, accusant le ciel, jaloux contre tout le monde, il s’enferma dès l’âge de quarante-cinq ans, dégoûté des hommes, disait-il, et décidé à vivre en paix." (variously translated "morose, gnawed by regrets, railing at heaven, envying all the world, he shut himself away at the age of forty-five, disgusted with men, he said, and determined to live in peace." (Davis) & "chagrined, remorseful, cursing his fate, jealous of everybody, he shut himself away at the age of forty-five, disgusted with the world, he said, and determined to live in peace" (Wall)

168 hours

Ron Graham - a U.S. mathematician who put himself through college working as a circus acrobat and is famous for a very big number - past president of the International Jugglers' Association, an accomplished trampolinist and tenpin bowler, speaks Chinese and plays the piano, is quoted in Paul Hoffman's book on Erdős: "It's easy ... there are 168 hours in every week".

Self deception

A nice observation by Robert Trivers from the latest New Scientist: "If you ask high school students are they in the top half of their class for leadership ability, 80 per cent will say yes; 70 per cent say they're in the top half for good looks. It ain't possible! And you cannot beat academics for self-deception. If you ask professors whether they're in the top half of their profession, 94 per cent say they are."

Just try going to the ballet

Rogozhin, when he is informed that he would be able to see Nastasya Filippovna at the ballet, conveys clearly the despotic environment of his home life with his father: "У нас, у родителя, попробуй-ка в балет сходить, - одна расправа, убьет!" ... "With our parent, just try going to the ballet - it'll end only one way - he'll kill you!"