proximoception: (Default)
proximoception ([personal profile] proximoception) wrote2013-04-24 07:25 am

(no subject)

Among them Hazlitt Shelley and Byron sure have me wishing I had time to read Rousseau. Several of his books defeated me back when I was reading around. But it feels like I could see him through their eyes now - and remembering that amazing moment late in Carpentier's novel.

[identity profile] nightspore.livejournal.com 2013-04-24 12:21 pm (UTC)(link)
I have to read Carpentier. Okay, soon.

Julie is amazing (I refer to the novel, but no doubt that's not the only amazing one). But I love it where Byron says in a note to Don Juan that the Jura mountains have done for Rousseau what he could not do for them. (Lent sublimity to the work.)

Rousseau says in the Confessions: L'épée use le fourreau, dit-on quelquefois. Voilà mon histoire. Mes passions m'ont fait vivre, et mes passions m'ont tué.

That is: "The sword outwears its sheath."

[identity profile] proximoception.livejournal.com 2013-04-24 02:07 pm (UTC)(link)
That's in the CH3 notes, which I know cause I read those tonight too.

Yeah you gotta. Explosion/Century is magnificent.

Turns out Shelley figures crucially in The Lost Steps, looks like, including Revolt of Islam, confirming my suspicions re. Carpentier. Another book I've no time to finish during the Obama administration.

[identity profile] nightspore.livejournal.com 2013-04-24 04:16 pm (UTC)(link)
D'oh! Should have known....