2/25/2023 0 Comments Photo sense and non sense![]() A line I never tire of in War and Peace: “The transparent sounds of hooves rang out on the planks of the bridge.”Ĭolors are regularly described as “muted” or “loud,” but sounds that are transparent make a reader pause. He simply presented the world, and the world, looked at closely, is often extraordinary. One imagines that Tolstoy did not seek to write about uncommon sense. (Uncommon nonsense makes exhilarating literature, too, in Lewis Carroll’s case, but uncommon nonsense does better to stay uncommon: in less skillful hands, it becomes caprice or parody.) Yet greedy readers-I count myself as one-crave more than a confirmation of experience: we want writers to articulate that for which we haven’t yet found our own words, we want our senses to be made uncommon.īooks that I feel drawn to and reread, War and Peace among them, are full of uncommon sense and common nonsense. If a book were full of details never seen, heard, smelled, tasted, or felt by us, we might be more mystified than a goose or a cockapoo would feel when confronted with our literature, which to them must be outlandishly vague. Our literary litmus paper is made, at least partially, by the impressions and memories of our senses. Fortunately, a majestic tree has no need for a defender. Roses and nightingales are worthy subjects of my attention, and I consider it an insult to my talent to be asked to look at a tree.”Īnytime one talks about War and Peace, one is reminded of the tree’s critics. The fifth one said: “I am not a tree person. A tree like this does little to solve the political, socioeconomic, and environmental issues of today.” The fourth one said: “The world is still wrong in many ways. Why should we care about something growing out of that history?” Its life began when the world was wrong in many ways: patriarchal, despotic, undemocratic. The third one said: “This tree is much too old to be relevant. ![]() ![]() Anywhere I direct my attention, I can see ten or twenty imperfect leaves.” The second one said: “It’s not the architecture of the tree that bothers me but the parts that make up the whole. At first glance, I can say this tree is too big for its own good. The first one said: “I’m a big-picture person. Once upon a time, five people with strong opinions were invited to view an old tree and offer their thoughts. It is the official link between American archaeologists and classicists and the Archaeological Service of the Greek Ministry of Culture and, as such, is dedicated to the wise management of cultural resources and the dissemination of knowledge of the classical world.Aleksey Kivshenko, watercolor illustration of Alexander I and Napoleon meeting in Tilsit in Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, 1893. ![]() As part of its mission, the School directs ongoing excavations in the Athenian Agora and at Corinth and sponsors all other American-led excavations and surveys on Greek soil. The main buildings of the School and its library are located in Athens, with administrative and publications offices in Princeton, New Jersey. Established in 1881 by a consortium of nine American universities, the School now serves graduate students and scholars from more than 190 affiliated colleges and universities, acting as a base for research and study in Greece. The American School of Classical Studies at Athens is a research and teaching institution dedicated to advanced study of the archaeology, art, history, philosophy, language, and literature of Greece and the Greek world. ![]()
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