heisst das. Gibt es mir ein wenig zu schaffen. Ich frage mich, ob Humor ueberhaupt schwierig ist fuer nicht-Einheimische, ob es nicht verlangt Wissen, das man weniger aus Buechern als vor Ort kriegt. Frage mich auch, ob es allerlei Erklaerungen gibt in Band 14 Suhrkamps Kraus-Ausgabe. (Der Untergang ist Band 4.) Spezifischer, zu Beginn der Lektuer dieses Buch von Kraus frage ich mich ob der Mann wirklich etwas gegen Luftschiffe hatte, oder aber tat nur so auf lustiger satirischer Weise. Waren Luftschiffe denn so um 1907-1908, als Kraus das in Wien schrieb, den Wienern besonders lustig? Kraus sagt auch dass der Fackel bald geschlossen sein wurde, was eigentlich gar nicht bald geschah. Was hatte der gute Mann bloss? Gab es vielleicht einen grossen Liftschift-Fest, konnte man zu der Zeit in Wien vor lauter wimmelden Luftschiffe den Himmel kaum sehen? Hatte vielleicht eine laermende Luftschiff-Fabrik nahe des Bueros des Fackels aufgemacht? (Kraus klagt viel von Laerm und von Technik, die der Mensch erfunden hatte ohne etwas Gescheites damit machen zu wissen.)
Nu. Bin mystifiziert.
zuerst in 1981 veroeffentlicht, Nummer 7742 in der Reclam Universal-Bibliothek, heisst Die Wiener Moderne, ein weit ehrlicherer Titel aber waere Hermann Bahr und die Wiener Moderne gewesen. 61 Stueck Schreiben enthaelt der Band, einschliesslich einiger einleitenden vom Herausgeber und unverkennbarar Hermann-Bahr-Liebhaber Gotthart Wunberg, einiger von Vorbildern der Wiener Moderne wie Nietzsche, und des Restes, wie man wahrscheinlich erwarten wuerde von einem Bande der sich als eine Sammlung von Schriften aus Wien von ungefaehr 1890 bis 1910 ausgibt, tatsaechlich Prosa, Lyrik und Drama von Wien von ungefaehr 1890 bis ungefaehr 1910. Also, von Hoffmannsthal, Schnitzler, Freud, Herzl, Mahler und so Kram. Auch Kraus. 5 Stueck von Kraus, 4 gekuerzt. Und von den 61 20 von Bahr. Ist schier zum Himmelschreien: wo man das bloede Ding auch aufschlaegt, steht da noch ein Schreiben von diesem unmoeglichen Esel namens Bahr. Im fruehen Roemerreich Seneca, im viktorianischen England Carlyle, in San Francisco in 1960's Ferlinghetti, und in Literatur, Musik und Kunst in Wien um 1900, offenbar, und gewiss in diesem Band darueber und davon, an jeder Ecke, lauernd, langweilig, wichtigtuend, deklamierend, tyrannisch, selbstverliebt, immernichtaufhoerenwollend, dieser Hermann Bahr. 
so often that I'm sure I must sound like a broken record to some of my readers. It's just that it has proven itself over and over again to be true, and I haven't been able to improve upon it, and I'm not going to pretend that I and not Nietzsche came up with it: "'Glaube' heißt Nicht-wissen-wollen, was wahr ist." ("Having religious faith means not wanting to know what is true.")
or so I gather. I've never watched the movie, but from what I hear, the hero, Bill Murray, repeats the same day over and over and it becomes nightmarish. Seeing an otherwise-intelligent person's brain switch off when the topic of conversation turns to religion is nightmarish.) is the reaction of "progressive" Christians (They may well be both progressive and Christian -- just not at the same time, imho.) to the fooferah over the Duck Dynasty doofus and his homophobic comments. 
but ouch: it's at #147,305.
which caused such a fooferah in the headlines? It's at #661. Holy moly, pardon my French, Holy Father. Wouldn't something by John Paul II have been at #1 by now? And in Amazon's top 20 for books there are items by Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck. It's all horribly disappointing and surprising for me, except for the success of O'Reilly and Beck, which is merely horribly disappointing for me.
the European Old Master painters, as early as the mid-15th century, as early as the secretive Gutenberg's lifetime, had invented cameras or devices very similar to cameras, and kept the knowledge of those gadgets secret for a good 400 years, until the public learned that photographs could be made by means of the camera obscura. Perhaps Hockney is right. He certainly knows much more about both painting and photography than I ever will. I would just like to observe that his theory does nothing to explain the realism of sculpture, which greatly increased during the Renaissance right along with the realism of painting, nor does it explain the realism of some painting of ancient Rome. I still tend toward the pre-Hockney theory, that artists of certain eras tend to produce less realistic representations simply because they are less interested in realistic representation, not because they lacked the means to produce it.
a collaborative work of 14 Classical scholars which describes the most important known manuscripts of the texts of 134 ancient Latin authors and the ways in which the printed versions of those texts came to be made from those manuscripts, and learning that Livy is absolutely typical of ancient Latin authors in this regard: many of their texts disappeared around that time. The 7th century represents the darkest of the Dark Ages when it comes to the transmission, the passing down, of ancient Latin texts. As Reynolds puts it on p xv, referring to nothing else but the transmission of ancient Latin: "By the time the sixth century had reached its mid-course the Dark Ages had come, and they seem to have come with a vengeance." On p xvi he illustrates his point with some striking figures: we possess only 264 7th-century Latin manuscripts, even defining the 7th century very generously to include manuscripts which may have been made either in the late 6th or early 7th century, or in the late 7th or early 8th century. 264 is a tiny number compared to the number of manuscripts from later centuries. For example, there are 330 15th-century manuscripts just of the work of the author Sallust. Of those 264, only 26 are secular, that is, something other than books of the Bible or Christian prayers or theology or things which otherwise have to do with Christianity. Of those 26, 8 manuscripts have to do with law, 8 with medicine, 6 with grammar and 1 with surveying, 1 contains excerpts from Vegetius' book on military matter, 1 was made in Spain and is a miscellany of mostly Spanish authors, and 1 contains a fragment of Lucan's poem about the Civil War in late republican Rome. 
exists." "Manhattan is real, but that doesn't mean that 
is." "There's no more evidence for the existence of Moses or Jesus or Nazareth than there is for 
or Bedrock."
really caught a glimpse of Pirate Prentice" or "The existence of Paris doesn't mean that 
spent a night with Olivier." It seems that they're grown-ups reading novels written for children and comic books -- if, that is, I'm not giving them entirely too much credit as readers, and they actually only know Harry and Spidey from the movies. You're not going to catch these guys quoting 
in Latin or 
in either Italian or Latin, or even 
in English, cause they've kinda got their heads up their asses. 
or 
because they've never read them, although they will often drop Finkelstein's name, because they've heard, contrary to the truth, that Finkelstein is in sympathy with their positions concerning history and the Bible, and is as bitterly opposed to Biblical archaeology as they are. That's right: they go on and on about how horrible and reactionary and superstitious Biblical archaeology is, and they claim that Finkelstein is on their side in this matter, and they don't have a blessed clue that Israel Finkelstein is actually The. Most. Prominent. Biblical. Archaeologist. In. The. World.
and that's a great record and Dion most surely sounds great on it, but I don't hear any hints of 50's Dion on it, and I don't know if I'm meant to, I don't know if Lou heard anything related to 50's music when he listened to it, and I'll never be able to ask him. I never met him, and maybe it's incredibly presumptuous to write like this, as if I mean to imply that I might possibly have had a chance to ask him things like that, and maybe that earlier blog post about him also had nothing at all to do with who he really was. I never knew him, and I have no right to act as if I ever did. But his music affected me deeply, and hearing that he died felt like something vital was being ripped out of me, leaving blood all over the place, leaving me helpless. I never knew him but I miss him.