Theoretical Bases of Indo-European Linguistics - The set of numerals

Notes from the book

Theoretical Bases of Indo-European Linguistics

Winfred P. Lehmann

Publish by Ruthledge, 1993

Notes on the numerals 1 to 10 in Indo-European languages

The set of numerals

P253

Numeral systems in general are constructed around some selected standard, often that of the digits of one hand or both. The Sumerian system is constructed on the set of fingers for one hand; 6 is 5 + 1, 7 is 5 + 2, and so on to ten, which is an independent lexical item, as are the numbers 1-5. The Indo-European system is also based on the digits of one hand (Greek pénte ”five” – Hittite pankus “the whole”), but differs from Sumerian in having independent lexical items for 6, 7, 9, and probably 8 as well, although the suggestion has been made that the word for eight is a dual of the etymon of Avestan ašti- “four fingers” that was selected to represent the numeral (Henning 1948: 699).

After 10, differences are found from dialext group to dialect group. Gernaic and Baltic represent 11 and 12 as “one left over” and “two left over”, Latin and Greek as 1-10, 2-10, but from 13 the Greek form is “three and ten”, etc.; moreover, Latin represents 18 and 19 as “two from twenty, one from twentty”. More such forms that are restricted to one dialect or one dialect ggroup could be cited.

The numerals from 20 to 100 show further differences. For our purposes those numerals may be adequately represented by giving side by side representations for 20, 40, 60, 80, 100.

Numbers	Sanskrit	Greek	Latin	Gothic
20	viṃśatí	eikosi	vīgintī	twai tigjus
40	catvāriṁśát	tetterákonta	quadrāgintā	fidwor tigjus
60	ṣaṣtí	heksékonta	sexāgintā	saihs tigjus
80	aśītí	ogdoékonta	octōgintā	ahtautehund
100	śatá	hekatón	centum	hunda

P254

Treatment of the system of the lower numerals has yielded explanations for those to 5. Proto-Indo-European *oinos has long been explained as based on the root ^?ey- “this one”. I have proposed that the word for two is based on the root *dew- “further”, as in Hittite tuwa “distant”. Moreover, that the word for three is based on the root *ter- “even further”, as in Sanskrit tiráh (1990a: 40). We may recall that Greek énē “the third day” is in origin “that (day)” (Specht 1944: 16). And if the Hittite meywes is a reflex of the Proto-Indo-European word, an additional numeral has been explained (Neu 1987: 176-7); based on the root *mey- “lessen”, the word for 4 would represent the lesser hand of four fingers, in contrast with 5 for the whole hand. The initial system would then have been based on pointing to objects – first as closest at hand, second as farther from the speaker, the third even farther, while the words for 4 and 5 represent symbolizations with four and five fingers.

The most convincing explanation for the words for 6 to 9 is by means of borrowing or calques, although the word for 9 may be related to the root *new- as in Latin novus “new”.

German technical terminology

Stopfbuchsbrille (German) gland follower, follower, gland flange

Latin quotes

Res nolunt diu male administrari
Things refuse to be mismanaged long

Latin proverb:
Crimen quos inquinat, aequat
You can speak to your accomplice on even terms

Primi in omnibus proeliis oculi vincuntur
The eyes are the first to be conquered in every battle

Essay on Friendship by Ralph Waldo Emerson, published 1904

Page 214

Emerson writes what a friend is:

A friend is Janus-faced; he looks to the past and the future. He is the child of all my foregoing hours, the prophet of those to come, and the harbinger of a greater friend.

Glossaries - a Lemma

A proposal of my own (would you call it a Lemma?):

If you remove all verbs from a glossary about a particular theme there will be no loss of knowledge in the glossary about that theme.

Amphisbaena

Amphisbaena a mythological, ant-eating serpent with a head at each end, spawned from the blood that dripped from the Gorgon Medusa’s head in Greek mythology.

Victor Hugo, Les Contemplations (L'Hydre)

"Car, au-dessous du globe où vit l'homme banni,
Hommes, plus bas que vous, dans le nadir livide,
Dans cette plénitude horrible qu'on croit vide,
Le mal, qui par la chair, hélas ! vous asservit,
Dégorge une vapeur monstrueuse qui vit !
Là, sombre et s'engloutit, dans des flots de désastres,
L'hydre Univers tordant son corps écaillé d'astres ;
Là, tout flotte et s'en va dans un naufrage obscur ;
Dans ce gouffre sans bord, sans soupirail, sans mur,
De tout ce qui vécut pleut sans cesse la cendre ;
Et l'on voit tout au fond, quand l'½il ose y descendre,
Au delà de la vie, et du souffle et du bruit,
Un affreux soleil noir d'où rayonne la nuit !"
- Victor Hugo, Les Contemplations, VI.26 Ce que dit la bouche d'Ombre

La légende des siècles

L'hydre Univers tordant son corps écaillé d'astres ;

The Hydra-shaped universe twists its body covered in scales of stars ;

Old Norse

Hann tekr sverthit Gram ok leggr i methal theira bert. (He takes the sword Gram and puts it in the middle of their bed.) - Nordic mythology, Völsunga Saga

Urdu - Gaelic similarities

Kinara (= at the water's edge in Urdu); Cinn Mhara (= head of the sea in Gaelic); Kinvara (English) – amazing similarities!

Noam Chomsky's book "New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind"

An interesting passage from Noam Chomsky's book "New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind," published in 2000

Pp 120, 121

He talks about the computational procedure in language having no counters:

"The computational procedure has properties that may be unique to it, in substantial part. It is also "austere", with no access to many of the properties of other cognitive systems. For example, it seems to have no "counters". It registers adjacency; thus every other syllable could have some property (say, stress). But it cannot use the notion three. There are no known phonological systems in which something happens every third syllable, for example; and syntax seems to observe a property of "structure dependence", unable to make use of linear and arithmetical properties that are much simpler to implement outside the language faculty."

Page 161

"It has very recently been discovered that while insects seem marvelously adapted to particular kinds of flowering plants, in fact insects achieved virtually their present diversity and structure millions of years before flowering plants existed. When they appeared, 'there was already waiting for them an encyclopedia of solutions waiting for the problems to be solved,' Richard Lewontin (1990) points out intending to stress the meaninglessness of these intuitive categories for biology."

Page 163

"Darwin firmly denied that he attributed 'the modification of species exclusively to natural selection', emphasizing in the last edition of Origin of Species that 'in the first edition of this work, and subsequently, I placed in a most conspicuous position – namely, at the close of the Introduction – the following words: 'I am convinced that natural selection has been the main but not the exclusive means of modification.' This has been of no avail. Great is the power of steady misrepresentation' (cited in Gould 1982). Darwin took explicit note of a range of possibilities including nonadaptive modification and unselected functions determined from structure." 

The book "After Babel" by George Steiner - excerpts

From the wonderful book "After Babel" by George Steiner, 1992 on page 97:

Seeing a dripping spring, an Apache will describe it as 'whiteness moving downward'.

Page 137:

It is commonplace to insist that much of the distinctive Western apprehension of time as linear sequence and vectorial motion is set out in and organized by the Indo-European verb system. That system with, as Émile Beneviste emphasizes, its referral only to the subject and not to the object, and its supple classifications of conditions of state, makes up the locale, the 'time-space' of our cultural identity.

Page 165:

It has long been established that the Indo-European frameworkof of threefold temporality - past, present, future - has no counterpart in Semitic conventions of tense. The Hebrew verb views action as incomplete or perfected. Even archaic Greek has definite and subtly discriminatory verb forms with which to express the linear flow of time from past to future. No such modes developed in Hebrew. In Indo-European tongues 'the future is preponderantly thought to lie before us, while in Hebrew future events are always expressed as coming after us'.

Page 166:

I would want to argue strongly that man alone has developed a grammar of futurity. Primates use rudimentary tools but, so far as has been observed, they do not store tools for future usage.

P234:

There is experimental evidence, derived from the measurement of fossil fuels, that Neanderthal man, like the newborn child, did not have a vocal apparatus capable of emitting complex speech sounds.

P236:

Talleyrand's maxim: 'La parole a été donneé à l'homme pour déguiser sa pensée'.

P243:

According to Nietzsche in his paper 'Über Wahrheit und Lüge im aussermoralischen Sinne': 'A comparison between different languages shows that the point about words is never their truth or adequacy: for otherwise there would not be so many languages.'

P244:

A poem is maximal speech. 'Au contraire d'une fonction de numéraire facile et représentatif comme le traite d'abord la foule,' writes Mallarmé in the preface to René Ghil, 'le dire, avant tout rëve et chant, retrouve chez le poete, par nécessité constitutive d'un art consacré aux fictions, sa virtualité.' (a Saying - un Dire)

P249:

He talks about Cicero's famous precept not to translate verbum pro verbo, in his Libellus de optimo genere oratorum of 46 B.C. and Horace's reiteration of this formula in the Ars poetica some twenty years later.

P250:

The adage, familiar to Novalis and Humboldt, that all communication is translation, took on a more technical, philosophically grounded force in the twentieth century.

P261

...Giordano Bruno's assertion, reported by Florio, that 'from translation all Science had its offspring'....

P261

Goethe wrote to Carlyle in July 1827: 'Say what one will of the inadequacy of translation, it remains one of the most important and valuable concerns in the whole of world affairs.'

P269

The true road for the translator lies neither through metaphrase nor imitation. It is that of paraphrase 'or translation with latitude, where the author is kept in view by the translator, so as never to be lost, but his words are not so strictly followed as his sense, and that too is admitted to be amplified, but not altered'.

P274

Translation is the perpetual, inescapable condition of signification.

”Silence is not the contrary of the Word but its guardian.”

George Steiner

The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H.

Notes on Sanskrit

Some notes on Sanskrit. I'm very much a beginner, but I see a lot of similarities with European languages.

"Iskrtir nāma vo mātātho yūyam stha Niskrtīh"

"Your mother (her) name (is) Healer, hence you too are Removers (of illness)."

nāma = name

vo mātā = your mother

yūyam = you

stha (estis) = are (to be)

The letter "n" is present in Greek (poimên, termôn, etc.), and absent in Sanskrit (ātma, rājā, etc.) and in Latin (sermo, homo, etc.).

poimên = shepherd

termôn = place of sanctuary

(Irish: An Tearmann)

ātma = self

rājā = king

sermo = speech

homo = man

"Chariot" in Sanskrit is "ratha", in Latin "rota", Lithuanian "rātas". The German for "wheel" is "rad". And we have "rothar" in Irish (Gaelic) for "bicycle". "roth" is "wheel" in Irish (Gaelic). All related! The connections are there, over such long distances and back many centuries.

Rigveda 8.24.15: nahy àngá purá caná jajñé vīrátaras tvát "a hero stronger than you has not been born."

vīrátara = more manly

Sentence in Sanskrit from the Rigveda 7.71:

ápa svásur uşáso nág jihīte

away sister dawn night departs

"Night departs from her sister dawn."

Notes on Chateaubriand's work "Mémoires d'outre-tombe."

Volume I, Book 21, Chapter 13, ff 862 – 865

Entrées des Alliés dans Paris.

I was very surpised to read in this Chapter about the Allies (Russia and Prussia) entry into Paris in 1814 after Napolen's retreat from Russia. This is something I never heard about in school or read about anywhere else!

This is how Chateaubriand describes the scene:

… Toutefais cette première invasion des alliés est demeurée sans example dans les annales du monde: l'ordre, la paix et la modération régnèrent partout; les boutiques se rouvrirent; des soldats russes de la garde, hauts de six pieds, étaient pilotés à travers les rues par de petits polissons français qui se moquaient d'eux, comme des pantins et des masques de carnaval. Lex vaincus pouvaient être pris pour les vainquers; ceux-ci, tremblant de leur succès, avaient l'air d'en demander excuse. La garde nationale occupait seule l'intérieur de Paris, á l'exception des hôtels oú logeiaent les rois et les princes étrangers. Le 31 mars 1814, des armées innombrables occupaient la France; quelques mois après, toutes ces troupes repassèrent nos frontières, sans tirer un coup de fusil, sans verser une goutte de sang, depuis la rentrée des Bourbons. L'ancienne France se trouve agrandie sur quelques-unes des ces frontières; on partage avec elle les vaisseaux et les magasins d'Anvers; on lui rend trois cent mille prisonniers dispersés dans les pays où les avait laissés la défaite ou la victoire. Après vinght-cent années de combats, le bruit des armes cesse d'un bout de L'Europe à l'autre …

…On proposait á Alexandre de changer le nom du pont d'Austerlitz:« Non,» dit-il, « il suffit que j'aie passé sur ce pont » avec mon armée. » …

… Alexandre Après avait quelque chose de calme et de triste : il se promenait dans Paris, à cheval ou à pied, sans suite et sans affectation. Il avait l'air étonné de son triomphe; ses regards presque attendris erraient sur une population qu'il sembleait considérer comme supérieure à lui : on êut dit qu'il se trouvait un barbare au milieu de nous, comme un Romain se sentait honteux dans Athènes. Peut-être aussi pensait-il que que ses même Français avaient paru dans se capitale incendiée; qu'à leur tour ses soldats étaient maîtres de ce Paris où il aurait pu retrouver quelques-unes des torches éteintes par qui fut Moscou affranchie et consumée, Cette destinée, cette fortune changeante, cette misére commune des peuples et des rois, devaient profondément frapper un esprit aussi religieux que le sien.

demeurée = has remained

goutte = drop

vaisseau = flow

attendri = tender

éteintes = extinguished

The Russian word shum from the Noise of Time by OSIP Mandelstam

These notes are about the difficulties encountered by the translator with the Russian word shum in the
the book, The Noise of Time, by OSIP Mandelstam

Book: The Noise of Time by OSIP Mandelstam

Translated by Clarence Brown

The translator had difficulties translating the title of the book.

He wrote:

The Russian title of The Noise of Time is Shum vremeni. The translation of shum is difficult out of all proportion to the miniature size of the word. My first choice was “noise,” and it found favor with some but there was impressive insistence that shum is best rendered by “sound.” On the point of yielding, I was stopped by that dean of scholiasts, Vladimir Nabokov, whose four-volume translation of and commentary on Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin (New York, 1964) arrived in the nick of time. In his annotation of line 9 out of One: xxxv – Prosnulsja utra shum prijatnyj, rendered by him as “Morn’s pleasant hubbub has awoken” – Nabokov provides us with a characteristic little essay on the various nuances of shum. The transliteration in what follows is his:

“An analogous line occurs in Poltava (1828), pt. 11, 1. 318: razdálsya útra shúm igrívïy, `morn’s frisky hubbub has resounded.` Compare these epithets with those used by English poets, e.g., Milton’s ‘the busy hum of men’ and John Dyer’s ‘the Noise of busy Man.’

“Generally speaking, the sense of shum implies a more sustained and uniform auditory effect than the English ‘noise.’ It is also a shade more remote and confused. It is at heart more of a swoosh than a racket. All its forms – shum (n.), shumnïy (adj.), shumyashchiy (part.), shumet’ (v.) – are beautifully onomatopoeic, which ‘noisy’ and ‘to noise’ are not. Shum acquires a number of nuances in connection with various subjects: shum goroda, ‘the hum of the city,’ ‘the tumult of the town’; shum lesov, ‘the murmur of woods’; shumyashchiy les, ‘the sough of forests’; shumnïy ruchey, ‘the dinning stream’; shumyashchee more, ‘the sounding sea,’ the rote, the thud, and the roar of the surf on the shore – ‘the surgy murmurs of the lonely sea,’ as Keats has it in Endymion 1. 121. Shum may also mean ‘commotion,’ ‘clamor,’ and so forth. The verb shumet’ is poorly rendered by ‘to be noisy,’ ‘to clatter.’” (Vol. 2, 143f.)

The solace which I find in this is not, of course, what Nabokov has to say about “noise,” since he specifically rejects it in favor of “hubbub.” It is the evidence of his uneasiness with the latter, which produces the delightful change-ringing on the various shades of shum. As in all such cases, the final choice is a matter of taste.

The relevance of these deliberations to Mandelstam’s work is central. The insipid word “sound,” which is virtually without overtones, cannot serve to describe the disjointed, elliptical style of these memoirs. If the faint but deliberate cacophony that arises from this mumbled juxtaposition of Finnish sleigh-bells, strolling brass bands, the alpine chill of concerts by Hofmann and Kubelik, the wheezing of Julij Matveich, and Vladimir Gippius’s bellowing summons to the hack seems to the reader, as it does to me, inadequately reflected in “noise,” let him contemplate in Nabokov’s note some of the things to which Mandelstam’s inner ear was attuned when he named his work Shum vremeni.

G connais une fille qui 'sappel Disha
Qui venais ici de Maurisha
Elle veut reste ici elle me dit
Mais c'est possible g dit
Et alors Il faut le croire

Et moi g vien de Dublin
et naturellement g m’appel Martin!

David Grossman, The Writer

I’m reading David Grossman’s book, Lovers and Strangers. I like it. This is the first piece of work by Grossman that I’ve read, after hearing that he was a very good writer. It’s written in a very concentrated and condensed style. You really need to concentrate when reading it so that you don’t miss what he is describing or you don’t miss his nuances.

The book: Lovers and Strangers

Published by Bloomsbury

Copyright 2002

Grossman

is a very impressive writer. I’ve only read this book, Lovers and Strangers, by him so far, and am very impressed. He is very modern and uses all the latest writing techniques. He is acquainted with recent advances in genetics. I look forward to reading more by him. He mentions another writer who he liked Sholem Aleichem (Solomon Naumovich Rabinovich). It would be worth reading him as well.

The Myths series by the Publisher Canongate brings together some of the world’s finest writers, each of whom has retold a myth in a contemporary and memorable way. Authors in the series include Chinua Achebe, Margaret Atwood, Karen Atmstrong, AS Byatt, David Grossman (who I’ve read), Milton Haroum, Natsuo Kirino, Alexander McCall Smith, Tomás Eloy Martínez, Victor Pelevin, Ali Smith, Donna Tartt, Su Tong, Dubravka Ugresic, Salley Vickers and Jeannette Winterson.

A great selection of World Music is available at the moment at:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/worldmusic/

Real Presences by George Steiner, Published 1989

Page 146

Translation comprises complex exercises of salutation, of reticence, of commerce between cultures, between tongues and modes of saying. A master translator can be defined as a perfect host.

Page 221

No period since the early Renaissance has been more concerned with, has addressed itself more insistently to, the nature of the mythical than our own. Remythologization in a time which has found agnostic secularism more or less unendurable ma, in future, be seen as defining the spirit of the age.

nostromo – the book by joseph conrad

On page 471 he has a good description of a man:

“What he lacked was the polished callousness of men of the world, the callousness from which springs an easy tolerance for oneself and others; the tolerance wide as poles asunder from true sympathy and human compassion. This want of callousness accounted for his sardonic turn of mind and his biting speeches."

Some words in the Hindi language.

basmati = queen of fragrance
garam = temperature hot
thikhat = spicy hot
rasa = taste
Rani = queen
Chhana = cheese
amrit = nectar of the Gods
shakti and buddhi = strength and wisdom
“Jyacha haat modla to tyachaach galyaat padla.” A Marathii saying meaning: One who brakes his arm must carry it in a sling.

raat ki rani = queen of the night
mohalla = neighbourhood
guli-danda = cricket
Namaste = Hello for Hindus
Walaikum as-salaam = Peace be with you.
firangi = a Westerner
As a Punjabi saying goes, Wakt noon hath naen phar-da. There is no hand to catch time.
“Aadar aye, dilather jaye!” May honour come and poverty vanish.
“Aaye basant, paala udant.” Warm weather comes, cold weather flies away.
Lahori festivals: Basant, Holi, Diwali, Eid and Christmas.

Tumare nām kya hai? = What’s your name?
Mera nām Ram hai = My name is Ram
Bahout acha = perfect
Phir milenge = ? bye
Mandir = temple - I wonder is mandir sanskrit. It is very like Munster and and monastery in English and German and mainistir in Gaelic (Irish), which means monastery - all religious places.

Tum kahein ho? = Where were you?
kahein = where
Tum ka nahin dekha. = I did’nt see you.
ka = you
nahin = didn’t
dekha = see
Subh Raatri = Good night
Subh = good
Raatri = night

Shubh Diwali = Happy Diwali, Happy Deepavali
Dee = light
pavali = row
row of lights

Krishna is an incarnation of the God Vishnu, preserver of the Universe. Krishna summed up the essence of Hinduism in the Bhagavadgita (The Song of God), a section of the Hindu sacred epic poem known as the Mahabharata.



Hindu festivals: Diwali, the five-day Festival of Lights, Durga Puja, Ganpati, Lohri (loot)

There is a new translation of the Mahabharata by John Smith, Penguin 978 0 140 44681 4

The Mahabharata is an ancient epic poem in Sanskrit and is central to Hindu culture.

Brahma, the creator God; Vishnu, the preserver God; Shiva, the destroyer God.

Three chief Gods, manifestations of Brahman, the underlying essence of the universe.

Fourth major deity Devi, combined attributes of all three in her varied forms.

Dooliya le aō
re morē babul ke kaharwa.
Chali hoon sajan ba ke des.

(O my father’s servants, bring my palanquin.
I am going to the land of my husband)

(A morning raga.)
Translation by Dipali Nag

If you ever go to the Kingdom of Kerry
You’ll see the lakes in Killarney,
The roses in Tralee,
And the Puck Fair in Killorglin.

Could anyone tell me did they ever go to a beautiful spot called Sneem,
And if you climb the Coonacille mountain and see the Leprechaun.
Then you’ll never see a poor day.

Moneyflugh

This was written by Kathleen O’Sullivan. Her father came from Moneyflugh, Sneem Co. Kerry, Ireland.

I just read the two Asher Lev books by Chaim Potok, they offer a great insight into art and especially abstract art.

Educational notes from the book “The gift of Asher Lev by Chaim Potok.

Page 135

He talks here about art:

“… Art begins when someone interprets, when someone sees the world through his own eyes. Art happens when what is seen becomes mixed with the inside of the person who is seeing it. If an exciting new way of seeing an old object results, well, that’s interesting, isn’t it? That’s the beginning of serious art. Here, let me show you what I mean.”

I erased the rams. I looked carefully for a moment at Miss Sullivan: high cheekbones, thin straight nose, oval features, dark eyes, dark hair combed back flat into a French twist. “Here are the different ways three great modern artists would have seen and drawn the same person. The first one is an artist named Matisse.”

I wrote his name on the blackboard. Over the name I drew in a single continuous line with blue chalk the face of Miss Sullivan. It leaped, instantly recognizable, from the chalk onto the blackboard. There was a stirring throughout the room, and murmurs of surprise and recognition.

“The second is by an artist named Modigliani.”

I spelled out his name on the blackboard and in red chalk drew Miss Sullivan, high-necked and with exaggeratedly high cheekbones and almond-shaped eyes, emphasizing through the cylindricality of her neck the charm and refinement I sensed in her bearing.

“The third artist is Picasso. How many of you have heard of Picasso?” Hands went up. “Good. Almost as many as have heard of Asher Lev.” Rev Greenspan joined in the general laughter.

I wrote the Spaniard’s name on the blackboard, and I drew Miss Sullivan in ochre as he had once painted Gertrude Stein: solid, sculpted, Iberian, a creature more stone than flesh bur with eyes that penetrated into the farthest future. I looked over my shoulder and saw Miss Sullivan staring open-mouthed at the drawing. You thought of inviting me here, Miss Sullivan. The power of art, Miss Sullivan. On your young and lovely flesh.

“Three different ways of seeing the same person,” I said. “It makes life richer to be able to see different and exciting ways.

On pages 211 & 212 he discusses the technical language of art. I found this very educational, as someone who does not know very much about the theory of abstract painting:

“… Max and I talk for some while in the technical language of art – linear accents, surface patterns, passage, movement patterns, multiple centers of interest, distribution of space, bridging tension points, space and surface control, techniques of texturing, color movement, graphic balance. Max puts on his goggles, strikes a match, and touches the flame to the blowtorch. The torch spurts into life with a hard popping sound. I talk to him quietly as he works the carborundum over the surface of the plate, softening it with the flame, then spreading, smoothing, leveling, gouging, pitting, raising, lowering, streaking – so the thick paper will be alive with a textured surface that is a unity with its colors and forms…”

There is a reference to a book on page 296:

“Letters to His Son Lucien by Camille Pissaro”

... amach anseo = in future, or as they also say nowadays, "going forward".

gnáthduine = ordinary person

A book called “My Name is Asher Lev” by Chaim Potok published by Penguin Books Copyright 1972

This was a very interesting book about a Jewish artist from Brooklyn, New York

It contained some interesting thoughts on Art.

For example on Page 197

The sculptor Jacob Kahn is talking to Asher Lev:

“… Asher Lev, there are two ways of painting the world. In the whole history of art, there are only these two ways. One is the way of Greece and Africa, which sees the world as a geometric design. The other is the way of Persia and India and China, which sees the world as a flower. Ingres, Cézanne, Picasso paint the world as geometry. Van Gogh, Renoir, Kandinsky, Chagall paint the world as a flower. I am a geometrician. I sculpt cylinders, cubes, triangles, and cones. The world is structure, and structure to me is geometry. I sculpt geometry. I see the world as hard-edged, filled with lines and angles. And I see it as wild and raging and hideous, and only occasionally beautiful. The world fills me with disgust more often than it fills me with joy. Are you listening to me, Asher Lev? The world is a terrible place. I do not sculpt and paint to make the world sacred. I sculpt and paint to give permanence to my feelings about how terrible this world truly is. Nothing is real to me except my own feelings; nothing is true except my own feelings as I see them all around me in my sculptures and paintings. I know these feelings are true, because if they were not true they would make art that is as terrible as the world….”

Page 220

Again here Jacob Kahn is teaching Asher Lev about art:

“… After breakfast, Jacob Kahn and I would set up our easels at the edge of the dunes and paint. He thought me how the Impressionists had painted light and what Cézanne had done with color and form. Once a sailboat came close to the shore and was circled by the gulls. Using washes of oils, he showed me how John Marin might have painted that. I had seen Marin’s watercolors in museums. Now I begun to understand their lines of tension, their fluidity and power.

I began to understand, too, though only with difficulty, why and how he painted as he did. The canvas was a two-dimensional field, he said. Any attempt to convert it to an object of three dimensions was an illusion and a falsehood. The only honest way to paint today was either to represent objects that were recognizable, and at the same time integral to the two-dimensional nature of the canvas, or to do away with objects entirely and create paintings of color and texture and form, paint the volumes and voids in nature into fields of color, paintings in which the solids were flattened and the voids were filled and the planes were organized into what Hans Hofmann called ‘complexes’. I watched him paint and began to understand what he meant. But I could not paint that way myself. I needed hands and faces and eyes, though for a while now I had not needed them to be three-dimensional.

‘You are too religious to be an Abstract Expressionist,’ he said to me one morning. ‘We are ill at ease in the universe. We are rebellious and individualistic. We welcome accidents in painting. You are emotional and sensual but you are also rational. That is your Ladover background. It is not in my nature to urge a person to give up his background and culture in order to become a painter. That is because it is not in my nature to be a fool. A man’s painting either reflects his culture or is a comment upon it, or it is merely decoration or photography. You do not have to be an Abstract Expressionist in order to be a great painter. In any event, by the time you reach your twenties Abstract Expressionism may be gone as a n important movement in American painting. Thought I do not think so. I think people will paint this way for a thousand years.’…”

On page 164 he gives some insight into the Jewish religion:

“… We studied about three kinds of Jews in the world: the rosho, the one who sins and has evil thoughts, whose efforts to live a good life are an endless struggle – most of us are in that category, the mashpia said sadly; the benoni, the one whose acts are without fault but who cannot control his thinking – very few achieve that high level, the mashpia said; and the tzaddik – a tzaddik can only be born, the mashpia said. It is the greatest gift of the Ribbono Shel Olom; yes, a tzaddik can only be born. Only tzaddikim have control over their hearts; the mashpia said, quoting the Midrash.

We studied the meaning of the verse in Deuteronomy, ‘But the thing is very near to you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it.’ What does the word very come to teach us? That the person whose understanding in the knowledge of the Master of the Universe is limited, who cannot comprehend the greatness of the blessed Being Without End, who cannot produce awe and love of God in his mind and understanding – such a person can nevertheless come to fear and love God through the observance of all the commandments of the Torah, for the commandments are very near to all Jews.

We studied the meaning of the verse of Proverbs ‘The candle of God is the soul of man.’ The souls of Jews are like the flame of a candle, the masphia said. The flame burns upwards; it seeks to be parted from the wick in order to unit with its source above, in the universal element of fire. Similarly, the soul of the Jew yearns to separate itself and depart from the body in order to unite with the Master of the Universe, even though this means that nothing will remain of its former nature as a distinct and separate entity. It is in the nature of the Jewish soul to desire this union with the Being Without End, unlike the souls of the Gentles, which are derived from the Other Side and which strive to remain independent beings and entities.

We studied about the sitar achra, the Other Side, the realm of darkness and evil given life by God not out of His true desire but in the manner of one who reluctantly throws something over his shoulder to an enemy, thereby making it possible for God to punish the wicked who help the sitra achra, and rewards the righteous who subjugate it….”

Some notes on Chateaubriand's work "Mémoires d'outre-tombe."

Volume I

It was interesting to read in page 424 where he says that the famous lines from Gray's Elegy are taken from Dante:

"The curfew tolls the knell of parting day."

And in Dante:

"Squilla di lontano

Che paja'l giorno pianger che si muore."

He translates both into French as:

Le vers de Gray:

<< La cloche du couvre-feu tinte le glas du jour qui nous quitte >>

imite Dante :

<< La cloche qui dans le lointain semble pleurer le jour qui se meurt. >>

Divine Comédie, Purgatoire, VIII, 1-6.

"A l'ombre des jeunes filles, en fleurs" (published around 1918).

by the famous French author Marcel Proust (1871-1922)

This is a nice excerpt from Proust's book where he talks about the difference between using one's native language and another language.

Page 172:

"Dans une langue que nous savons, nous avons substitué a l'opacité des sons la transparences des idées. Mais une langue que nous ne savons pas est un palais clos dans lequel celle que nous aimons peut nous tromper, sans que, restés au-dehors et désespérément crispés dans notre impuissance, nous parvenions á rien voir, à rien empêcher."

Glossary of terms:

tromper = deceive
désespérément = despairingly
crispés = exasperated
empêcher = stop, hinder

Page 200:

This is his description of how love effects us:

"Quand on aime, l'amour est trop grand pour pouvoir être contenu tout entier en nous ; il irradie vers la personne aimée, rencontre en elle une surface qui l'arrête, le force á revenir vers son point de départ et c'est ce choc en retour de notre propre tendresse que nous appelons les sentiments de l'autre et qui nous charme plus qu'à l'aller, parce que nous ne reconnaissons pas qu'elle vient de nous."

Books on Australian Aboriginals

The Songlines by Bruce Chatham

Picador ©1987

This was a great read.

P40 refers to two good books about aboriginals:

Theodore Strehlow's Aranda Traditions and Songs of Central Australia

Extract from a book I read recently. The extract has some interesting information on neuroscience. The book is called "The Echo Maker" by Richard Powers. Published in 2006 by Vintage.

Page 449:

"… A few years back, Giacomo Rizzolati's group in Parma had been testing motor-control neurons in a macaque's premotor cortex. Every time the monkey moved its arm, the neurons fired. One day, between measurements, the monkey's arm-muscle neurons began firing like crazy, even though the monkey was perfectly still. More testing produced the mind-boggling conclusion: the motor neurons fired when one of the lab experimenters moved his arm. Neurons used to move a limb fired away simply because the monkey saw another creature moving, and moved its own imaginary arm in symbol-space sympathy.

A part of the brain that did the physical things was being cannibalized for making imaginary representations. Science had at last laid bare the neurological basis of empathy: brain maps, mapping other mapping brains. One human wit quickly labeled the find the monkey-see monkey-do neurons, and all others followed suit. Imaging and EEG soon revealed that humans too, were crawling with mirror neurons. Images of moving muscles made symbolic muscles move, and muscles in symbol moved muscle tissue.

Researchers rushed to flesh out the staggering find. The mirror-neuron system extended beyond this surveillance and performance of movement. It grew tendrils, snaking into all sorts of higher cognitive processes. It played roles in speech and learning, facial decoding, threat analysis, the understanding of intention, the perception of and response to emotions, social intelligence, and theory of mind. …"

Notes on the book “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy, Copyright 2006

Pages 297-299

Before the father dies, he talks to his son. There are some interesting thoughts here on the imagination and prayer.

"The boy thought he smelled wert ash on the wind. He went up the road and came dragging back a piece of plywood from the roadside trash and he drove sticks into the ground with a rock and made of the plywood a rightly leanto but in the end it didn’t rain. He left the flare pistol and took the revolver with him and he scoured the countryside for anything to eat but he came back empty handed. The man took his hand, wheezing. You must go on, he said. I cant go with you. You need to keep going. You dont know what might be down the road. You were always lucky. You'll be lucky again. You'll see. Just go. It's all right.

I cant.

It's all right. This has been a long time coming. Now it's here. Keep going south. Do everything the way we did it.

You're going to be okay, Papa. You have to. No I'm not. Keep the gun with you at all times. You need to find the good guys. But you cant take any chances. No chances. Do you hear?

I want to be with you.

You cant.

Please.

You cant. You have to carry the fire.

I don’t know how to.

Yes you do.

Is it real? The fire?

Yes it is.

Where is it? I don’t know where it is.

Yes you do. Its inside you. It was always there. I can see it.

Just take me with you. Pease.

I cant.

Please, Papa.

I cant. I cant hold my son dead in my arms.

I thought I could but I cant.

You said you wouldnt ever leave me.

I know. I'm sorry. You have my whole heart. You always did. You're the best guy. You always were. If I'm not here you can still talk to me. You can talk to me and I'll talk to you. You'll see.

Will I hear you?

Yes. You will. You have to make it like talk that you imagine. And you'll hear me. You have to practice. Just don’t give up. Okay?

Okay.

Okay.

I'm really scared Papa.

I know. But you'll be okay. You're going to be lucky. I know you are. I've got to stop talking. I'm going to start coughing again.

It's okay. You don't have to talk. It's okay."

I just started to read a bit about the Italian writer Italo Svevo. His real name was Ettore Schmitz, and he wrote some famous books like "La coscienza di Zeno" and "Senilitá."

As an introduction to him I'm reading a book in Italian on him by Giuseppe Antonio Camerino simply called "Svevo." I more or less understand what's going on in the book, and it gets easier the more I read.

Here is a nice quote by Italo Svevo in this book on the intellectual and critical mind on pages 219 and 220:

La vita stessa era come divisa in tanti periodi ben regolati e la sua prevedibilità era una delle probabili cause del mancato rimpianto del passato. Tuttavia la moglie borghese viveva con la capacità di stupirsi di ogni novità presunta: tipico atteggiamento di chi osserva la realtà in modo estremamente semplificato e conformistico, al contrario dello spirito intellettuale e critico, caratterizzato dal dubbio e dall'inquietudine.

<<>– commenta, ad esempio, ancora Ettore – Per quelli non c'è posto. La preghiera a tempo debito è ascoltata lassù, molto spesso non è esaudita ma allora l'uomo ha la coscienza d'aver fatto tutto quello che doveva e può stare tranquillo. E più avanti: Io creato per la ribellione, per l'indifferenza, per la corruzione, sempre ammirato di quello che potrebbe essere e mai ossequiente a quello che è, mi sposai con la convinzione che si stava facendo un nuovissimo esperimenti di sociologia, l'unione di due uguali legati da un'inclinazione che potrebbe essere stata anche momentanea, un'unione da cui la gelosia doveva essere bandita dalla scienza… >>

Glos

prevedibilità being predictable, being foretold

mancato lack of

rimpianto sorrow, regret

passato past

tuttavia however

stupirsi marvel

atteggiamento behavior, attitude

chi who

dubbio doubt, question

inquietudine unease

preghiera prayer

tempo time

a tempo debito all in good time

ascoltata listen

lassù up there

molto spesso very often

esaudita fulfill, answered

ammirato admired

potrebbe able (to)

ossequiente subservient

stava remained, was

legati tie, fasten

bandita ban

* * *

In the Appendix he talks about the "lieu d'aisance," which is <<>> in Italian.

* * *

There is also a nice use of "sui generis" in the Appendix:

on page 418

Che forse questa Storia dello sviluppo della civiltà a Trieste nel secolo presente sia nata come un ampliamento sui generis di quelle prime note sulla vecchia linea tramviaria, in un contesto che riguarda non più soltanto il tramway di Servola, ma anche altri mezzi di comunicazione (si veda nella seconda parte la divertente satira della sorgente civiltà del motore a scoppio) e, più in generale, la stessa concezione del progresso nella Trieste del dopo-guerra?

Glos

sviluppo development, progress

secolo century

ampliamento expansion, enlargement

sui generis (latin) adj, of its own kind; unique

soltanto only

mezzo means

divertente amusing, funny

sorgente source

scoppio explosion

stessa same