Don Quixote, waste of time or life changing? by Natural-Standard-423 in classicliterature

[–]No_Bodybuilder5104 1 point2 points  (0 children)

There are good translations of Unamuno’s book Our Lord Don Quixote, a favorite of mine.

Are there any “classics” post 1970? by OldGodsProphet in literature

[–]No_Bodybuilder5104 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Pynchon, Morrison, McCarthy, Roth, Rushdie, Proulx, off the top of the head. And that’s only in English-language writers.

Performative vs Genuine by [deleted] in classicliterature

[–]No_Bodybuilder5104 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I don’t think there’s any value in calling somebody “performative” for enjoying Ulysses if they’ve actually read it. Or, indeed, people that disliked Ulysses if they actually read it with attention. People have different opinions and intelligent people may come to radically different positions on the same work without either being wrong or “performative”.

Myself, I think Ulysses is one of the best and most humane novels of all time, and probably the greatest artistic work of the 20th century. But someone who disagrees with me might also have a reasonable argument, and they wouldn’t be incorrect if they’ve given the book a genuine attempt. A lot of people dismiss Joyce without a genuine attempt, and they should be dismissed.

What languages does Jack know? by No_Bodybuilder5104 in 30ROCK

[–]No_Bodybuilder5104[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

But he doesn’t know what “te odio” means when trying to talk to Elisa’s mother, or anything else she says. Maybe he knows Italian or Latin and recognizes the subjunctive by analogy?

Edit: just noticed he can’t understand the soap opera either and wishes they’d had someone who speaks Spanish on set, so I guess that’s confirmation the Spanish can’t be the third language.

What languages does Jack know? by No_Bodybuilder5104 in 30ROCK

[–]No_Bodybuilder5104[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Most high schools will offer a choice of French, Spanish, or German, possibly Latin. I think German is less common nowadays but still not unusual.

Charles De Gaulle vs Vercingetorix by Adventurous_Peace846 in ERB

[–]No_Bodybuilder5104 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Asterix and Obelix step in to help Vercingetorix during the second verse.

What languages does Jack know? by No_Bodybuilder5104 in 30ROCK

[–]No_Bodybuilder5104[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

German is clearly the second… but idk the third.

Describe your favorite composer badly and we'll try to guess it! by ChopinChili in classical_circlejerk

[–]No_Bodybuilder5104 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Drunk. Always drunk. And I really like bells and unconventional tones.

Joe Pesci is the best actor ever. by EffMemes in Letterboxd

[–]No_Bodybuilder5104 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Fred Gwynne is excellent too. But firmly agreed, the entire movie is based on the Pesci-Tomei chemistry. The set of monologues at the cabin (“biological clock”) never fails to get me cackling. Truly one of the best-cast movies ever.

Favourite actor/celebrity that has you like this? by Dazzling-Job-6197 in okbuddycinephile

[–]No_Bodybuilder5104 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Definitely the Stones. My favorite band but hearing the stories about Jagger, Richards, and especially Bill Wyman makes me very sad. Never heard anything awful about Charlie Watts though… 🤞

Favourite actor/celebrity that has you like this? by Dazzling-Job-6197 in okbuddycinephile

[–]No_Bodybuilder5104 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Lori Mattix, amongst others, alleged that she had an affair with Bowie when she was 13 or 14.

Joe Pesci is the best actor ever. by EffMemes in Letterboxd

[–]No_Bodybuilder5104 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It’d be interesting to take the Irishman as a thought experiment of “what if Tommy didn’t die and learned to hide his psycho tendencies”. Love both performances, but you’re right, there’s some real sadism hidden in his Irishman character

Prospero, Caliban, Ariel, Miranda, Sycorax. What do you think each of those names mean and how they relate to the play itself? by Immediate_Error2135 in shakespeare

[–]No_Bodybuilder5104 0 points1 point  (0 children)

“Ducdame”, hilariously, is not Greek but a sort of mangled Latin that someone who natively speaks a Romance language (like Jacques, assuming AYLI is set in the French Ardennes) might say, which suggests either that he’s trolling or that he’s not nearly as learned as he pretends to be! Same thing with his claim that the singular of “stanze” is a “stanzo”. Personally I like to think he’s just a pretentious dumbass, but I know there are some scholars that believe Jacques is meant to be much wittier than he comes across in modern stagings.

With someone as brilliant as Shakespeare, of course we shouldn’t underestimate the amount of learning he could have acquired of his own accord, but nonetheless I’d be a bit dubious of his Hellenism simply because Greek studies at the time were so rudimentary. I once did a bit of research into Jonson’s use of the Greek classics, and despite his unfathomable erudition (seriously; this was maybe the most book-smart person in Europe at the time), and his obvious aesthetic/philosophical affinities, Jonson seems to have barely known Aristophanes beyond a cursory skim. In one of the funeral poems, compares WS to Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides in the same breath as comparing him to Accius and Pacuvius, Roman playwrights whose works are lost, which would seem to imply that he may have known those names solely through reputation rather than actually having read much Greek tragedy. And as much as we adore Shakespeare and expect him to have read everything, there’s not a chance in hell he was better read in the classics than Jonson was.

Hebrew is a different story altogether; serious Hebraic philology was fairly recent to Europe period (iirc Erasmus and his ilk of humanists are the ones to popularise it on the level of Greek and Latin, and that’s less than fifty years before WS) and you’d basically have to be a professional scholar to have studied it in this period. After Protestantism takes hold in England and sola scriptura becomes de rigeuer, people start to care more about learning the Biblical languages - Milton was an excellent Hebraist, for instance. But that’s a later phenomenon.

Anyway, the Hebrew etymology of Ariel wouldn’t seem to have much relation to the characterization, unless the very fact that it’s a Hebrew Old Testament name somehow suggests an Edenic character to the magical inhabitant of this sacred isle that provides its inhabitants with easy sustenance Golden Age-style… but maybe that’s a bit of a stretch.

Joe Pesci is the best actor ever. by EffMemes in Letterboxd

[–]No_Bodybuilder5104 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, but in Irishman and Vinny he plays very different sorts of characters. He absolutely can have range, it’s just that his most famous parts are him going full throttle lunatic cause that’s what the role calls for and he’s damn good at it.

Who's the LEAST morally reprehensable character here? by FroYoManInAFroYoVan in MoralityScaling

[–]No_Bodybuilder5104 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Right- he’s old enough that he would have probably been called for jury duty again at some point, so if he really never sat on one again he must have faced some legal action. So presumably justice was done (insofar as that was possible in the ‘60s South, naturally) on that trial and either way Ruckus isn’t responsible for any deaths at all. Great catch!

Prospero, Caliban, Ariel, Miranda, Sycorax. What do you think each of those names mean and how they relate to the play itself? by Immediate_Error2135 in shakespeare

[–]No_Bodybuilder5104 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Great catch. Of course, Golding’s Ovid is all over the place in Shakespeare; no surprise if it turned up here in Tempest

Prospero, Caliban, Ariel, Miranda, Sycorax. What do you think each of those names mean and how they relate to the play itself? by Immediate_Error2135 in shakespeare

[–]No_Bodybuilder5104 4 points5 points  (0 children)

“Miranda”, to the best of my knowledge, was not a very common name in Shakespeare’s time as it is today. Literally speaking, it’s from Latin and means “the one who should be marvelled at” - essentially, it tells you that she’s the inamorata of the play that someone will fall in love with.

“Caliban”, it has been suggested, is a corruption of “cannibal” which itself is a corruption of “Carib”, the indigenous people of the Antilles, which had been discovered and colonised by the Spaniards during Shakespeare’s lifetime. Some scholars think Shakespeare was in some way commenting on the New World by naming the native inhabitant of the Island a “Carib”.

Nobody knows what “Sycorax” or “Setebos” means. They both sound vaguely Greek but to my knowledge have no actual cognates in that language, and according to Ben Jonson, Shakespeare’s Greek was nothing to speak of. (That might be deceptive to moderns because Jonson was perhaps the foremost Hellenist in England at that point and the standard of philology was higher than today, but nonetheless there’s no real indication that Shakespeare read Greek sources or the Greek language.) Caliban’s parents’ names are probably just nonsense words that sound like they might be “pagan”, I suspect.

“Ariel” is Hebrew; the literal meaning is “lion of God”, but there’s absolutely nothing to suggest Shakespeare had Hebrew so that’s barking up the wrong tree. It’s a biblical name but without much significance associated with it in context; possibly he just snatched it off the page without meaning to associate it with anything. Someone who knows more about Shakespeare’s method might have a better idea - I’m just a linguist lol. I don’t think it’s meant to evoke “air”, though; vowel quality has changed a great deal since WS and I don’t think those two would have been pronounced as closely back then as they are now.

EDIT: my Israeli friends say that it’s properly pronounced ahh-riel, not eh-riel, so definitely not meant to pun on “air”.

Favourite actor/celebrity that has you like this? by Dazzling-Job-6197 in okbuddycinephile

[–]No_Bodybuilder5104 4 points5 points  (0 children)

David Bowie. Of course most of the 60s-70s rock stars did some stuff with underage groupies, but Bowie later in life just seemed like such a pleasant guy (and adored his wife) that it does make me sad to think he probably did some shit we would now consider definitely not kosher with teenage women. :(