"George Perle, a composer, author, theorist and teacher who won the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1986 and was widely considered the poetic voice of atonal composition, died on Friday [Jan. 23, 2009] at his home in Manhattan. He was 93."
-- The New York Times this morning
| From this journal on June 15, 2004:
Kierkegaard on death:
For more on "the thought of the eternal," see the discussion of the number 373 in Directions Out and Outside the World, both of 4/26/04. |
Mathematics:
Happy Hilbert's Birthday.
Today is the birthday
of mathematician
David Hilbert (1862-1943).
Narrative:
See a different Hilbert-- namely Jules, a fictional professor of literary theory at the University of Illinois at Chicago played by Dustin Hoffman in "Stranger than Fiction" (cf. yesterday's entry). See also, in today's previous entry, Stanley Fish-- a non-fictional literary theorist and former dean at the same institution.
Related material:
"The Gift in 'Stranger than Fiction'," by Eric Austin Lee (June 1, 2007).
Lee's essay might please another mathematician whose name appears in the film. The clever but heartless Professor Hilbert is opposed, indirectly, in "Stranger than Fiction" by a Harvard Law dropout, Ana, who dispenses eucharistic blessings, in the form of cookies, at her Chicago bakery/café-- filmed at a real Chicago location, Catedral Café. Her last name is Pascal.
Archbishop Jadot,
former papal envoy
to the United States,
died at 99 on
St. Agnes's Day,
January 21, 2009.
Stanley Fish in today's
New York Times --
Barack Obama's Prose Style:
"... he carries us
from meditative bead
to meditative bead...."
| "Numb were the Beadsman's fingers, while he told |
|
| His rosary, and while his frosted breath, |
|
| Like pious incense from a censer old, |
|
| Seem'd taking flight for heaven, without a death...." -- John Keats |
"The word not only brings the things out of silence; it also produces the silence in which they can disappear again."
-- Max Picard, The World of Silence,
quoted here on January 15
"Let the word go forth...."
-- John Fitzgerald Kennedy, quoted here
on January 20 -- The Eve of St. Agnes
Related material:
Fish contrasts President Obama's prose style with one that "asks the reader or hearer to hold in suspension the components of an argument that will not fully emerge until the final word."
See also the final word of this journal's entry on January 21, which was "Keats."
|
 Willa Cather in 1936 |
Emma Thompson in
"Stranger than Fiction"
See also
Halloween Meditations
and yesterday's entry.
"... while some are elected,
others not elect are
passed by...."
-- A commentary on the
Calvinist doctrine of preterition
| Gravity's Rainbow, Penguin Classics, 1995, page 742:
"... knowing his Tarot, we would expect to look among the Humility, among the gray and preterite souls, to look for him adrift in the hostile light of the sky, the darkness of the sea.... Now there's only a long cat's-eye of bleak sunset left over the plain tonight, bright gray against a purple ceiling of clouds, with an iris of 742" |
"God is the original
conspiracy theory."
"We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things."
-- President Obama yesterday
It is not entirely clear what these "childish things" are. Perhaps the young nation's "childish things" that the new President refers to are part of what Robert Stone memorably called "our secret culture." Stone was referring to Puritanism, which some advocates of the new religion of Scientism might call "childish." I do not. Lunatic, perhaps, but not childish.
Related meditations:
A year ago yesterday, on Sunday, Jan. 20, 2008, the mid-day lottery for New York State was 605.
A midrash in the Judeo-Christian tradition of paranoia a year ago today suggested that 605 might be a veiled reference to "God, the Devil, and a Bridge," a weblog entry on mathematician André Weil.
Continuing in this vein a year later, we are confronted with the mid-day New York lottery for yesterday:
Taking a hint from another
entry on Weil, this may be
regarded as a reference to
The Oxford Book of
English Verse (1919 edition):
Selection 742 in that book
comports well with this
jounal's recent meditations
on death and Brooklyn:
| "Let me glide noiselessly forth; | |
| With the key of softness unlock the locks...." -- Walt Whitman |
Applying this method of
exegesis to last year's
lottery, we have
| "And all that did then attend and follow, |
|
| Were silent with love, as you now, Apollo, |
|
| With envy of my sweet pipings." |
-- Pan: God of Shepherds, Flocks, and Fornication
Hymn 605 thus supplies a reference to the devil mentioned by Weil in the entry of 6/05.
"... thus far, I have not heard any priests of Apollo, nor of any other God, issuing any auguries."
Neither have I, but hearing is only one of the senses.
"Heard melodies are sweet,
but those unheard
Are sweeter."-- John Keats
"The letter acts like a signifier precisely to the extent that its function in the story does not require that its meaning be revealed."
-- Barbara Johnson, "The Frame of Reference," an essay on a story by Poe
As for Johnson's title,
"The Frame of Reference,"
see the window above,
Epiphany 2007, and
Church of the
Forbidden Planet.
Happy birthday,
Edgar Allan Poe.
Part I: The Pagan View
From The Fire, Katherine Neville's sequel to her novel The Eight:
"'Cat.... realized that we all need some kind of a chariot driver to pull our forces together, like those horses of Socrates, one pulling toward heaven, one toward the earth....'
... I asked, 'Is that why you said my mother's and my birthdays are important? Because April 4 and October 4 are opposite in the calendar?'
Rodo beamed a smile.... He said, 'That's how the process takes place....'"
Part II: The Christian View
"The Calendar of saints is a traditional Christian method of organizing a liturgical year by associating each day with one or more saints and referring to the day as that saint's feast day. The system arose from the very early Christian custom of annual commemoration of martyrs on the dates of their deaths, or birth into heaven, and is thus referred to in Latin as dies natalis ('day of birth')." --Wikipedia
The October 4 date above, the birthday of Cat's daughter, Xie, in The Fire, is also the liturgical Feast of St. Francis of Assisi (said by some to be also the date of his death).
The April 4 date above is Neville's birthday and that of her alter ego Cat in The Eight and The Fire. Neville states that this is also the birth date of Charlemagne. It is, as well, the dies natalis (in the "birth into heaven" sense), of Dr. Martin Luther King.
For more about April 4, see Art Wars and 4/4/07.
For more about October 4, see "Revelation Game Continued: Short Story."
"et lux in tenebris lucet
et tenebrae eam
non comprehenderunt"
"Oftentimes people will like a picture I paint because it’s maybe the sun hitting on the side of a window and they can enjoy it purely for itself," Wyeth once said. "It reminds them of some afternoon. But for me, behind that picture could be a night of moonlight when I’ve been in some house in Maine, a night of some terrible tension, or I had this strange mood. Maybe it was Halloween. It’s all there, hiding behind the realistic side."
-- Andrew Wyeth, who died today
Related material:
"In the pictures of the old masters, Max Picard wrote in The World of Silence, people seem as though they had just come out of the opening in a wall... "
-- Annie Dillard in For the Time Being
-- Susanna Kaysen in Girl, Interrupted
"Philosophers ponder the idea of identity: what it is to give something a name on Monday and have it respond to that name on Friday."
"I feel very happy to be a part of Mind Champions Academy."
-- A winner at a chess awards ceremony in India on Monday
John Mortimer, who wrote the TV version of Brideshead Revisited, died today. In his memory:
-- Rubén Darío
King's Moves,
adapted from
a figure by
F. Lanier Graham
Related material:
"Will this be
on the test?"
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