Murphy

cat malogen

wtf, ta duck

I just read that if you secretly increase the dose of a drug on trial, but leave the placebo dose as it was, the placebo nonetheless becomes proportionately more effective in kind.

did they gargle?

 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
Flowers of Evil
Paris Spleen
Let us know how you get on. I got what seems like a pretty good spanish translation of flowers of evil a while back but I've only just dipped into parts of it so far. That first one that's quoted in the wasteland is great.

Started David Copperfield today.
 

versh

Well-known member
Let us know how you get on. I got what seems like a pretty good spanish translation of flowers of evil a while back but I've only just dipped into parts of it so far. That first one that's quoted in the wasteland is great.

Started David Copperfield today.

Flowers of Evil didn't quite land, perhaps down to the translation. I've a New Directions edition from the 1950s with a selection rather than the full thing. Apparently they're the poems the editors felt had been most successfully translated into English. There's a great one called Parisian Dream.

128480.jpg


I've had a flip through the Oxford World's Classics edition and that one seems to resonate a bit more, so I'll read that too. That's the complete text and the translation has a bit more life to it. The ND one above felt a bit old and stuffy and was spread across multiple translators.

Paris Spleen's decent thus far. Still feel something's lost in translation, but I prefer the poetic prose approach and not having to focus on a rhyme scheme. It's easier to get into and the imagery and feeling behind it's much more penetrating. I felt I was skimming the surface of Flowers.
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
I get the impression french verse translates much better into Spanish than it does into English, much less forced.
I'd imagine Paris spleen will be better a read in English than flowers cos it's prose isn't it?
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
My reading this year, went long spans without reading anything and some intensive (for me at least) spans of reading often. Just finished On the Nature of Things at a biergarten yesterday, over a liter of Reissdorf kolsch.


Progress and Poverty (George)

The Prince (Machiavelli)

The Art of War (Machiavelli)

The Crying of Lot 49 (Pynchon)

The Odyssey (Homer)

Six Easy Pieces (Feynman)

The Road to Serfdom (Hayek)

On The Nature of Things (Lucretius)


And I'm probably gonna start Machiavelli's Discourses during the next week or so. Any other readers of Machiavelli here?
 

line b

Well-known member
My reading this year, went long spans without reading anything and some intensive (for me at least) spans of reading often:


Progress and Poverty (George)

The Prince (Machiavelli)

The Art of War (Machiavelli)

The Crying of Lot 49 (Pynchon)

The Odyssey (Homer)

Six Easy Pieces (Feynman)

The Road to Serfdom (Hayek)

On The Nature of Things (Lucretius)


And I'm probably gonna start Machiavelli's Discourses during the next week or so. Any other readers of Machiavelli here?
Prison bookshelf
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
also very masochistic
I don't disagree with this. Reading is rarely something I enjoy, its more just a means of acquiring or refining knowledge, but some of this list, particularly George, Machiavelli, and Hayek, I found enjoyable. Odyssey was mostly just willing myself through it, Lucretius had patches of really fascinating stuff but also the bulk of it I had to will myself through.

Feynman's was probably the most readable for me because its just transcriptions of his very charismatic lectures. And I generally enjoyed Lot 49.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
I don't disagree with this. Reading is rarely something I enjoy, its more just a means of acquiring or refining knowledge, but some of this list, particularly George, Machiavelli, and Hayek, I found enjoyable. Odyssey was mostly just willing myself through it, Lucretius had patches of really fascinating stuff but also the bulk of it I had to will myself through.

Feynman's was probably the most readable for me because its just transcriptions of his very charismatic lectures. And I generally enjoyed Lot 49.

 

woops

is not like other people
I don't disagree with this. Reading is rarely something I enjoy, its more just a means of acquiring or refining knowledge, but some of this list, particularly George, Machiavelli, and Hayek, I found enjoyable. Odyssey was mostly just willing myself through it, Lucretius had patches of really fascinating stuff but also the bulk of it I had to will myself through.

Feynman's was probably the most readable for me because its just transcriptions of his very charismatic lectures. And I generally enjoyed Lot 49.
hm i thought you lot just watched you tube lectures while playing video games
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
On the Nature of Things is perhaps the conceptual origin of clinamen:

"The atoms, as their own weight bears them down Plumb through the void, at scarce determined times, In scarce determined places, from their course Decline a little- call it, so to speak, Mere changed trend
[i.e. clinamen]. For were it not their wont Thuswise to swerve, down would they fall, each one, Like drops of rain, through the unbottomed void; And then collisions ne'er could be nor blows Among the primal elements; and thus Nature would never have created aught."
 

woops

is not like other people
On the Nature of Things is perhaps the conceptual origin of clinamen:

"The atoms, as their own weight bears them down Plumb through the void, at scarce determined times, In scarce determined places, from their course Decline a little- call it, so to speak, Mere changed trend
[i.e. clinamen]. For were it not their wont Thuswise to swerve, down would they fall, each one, Like drops of rain, through the unbottomed void; And then collisions ne'er could be nor blows Among the primal elements; and thus Nature would never have created aught."
well it sounds like you're reading a good translation at least.
 
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