2007年12月30日 星期日

Rudyard Kipling

除了小學讀過改寫的"叢林奇談"
還沒完整讀過他的作品原文
記下當提醒


Daily Highlights Sunday, December 30, 2007

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Author of short stories, poems and novels Rudyard Kipling was born on this date in 1865. Kipling's very poor vision kept him out of the navy, but it didn't keep him from sailing the seas from India to England, Africa and the Americas many times over. Kipling turned down the offer of a knighthood and the post of England's Poet Laureate. He did, however, accept the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907. In 1995, Kipling's poem "If —" was voted Britain's most popular poem in a BBC poll. Kipling said that he had the traits of Leander Starr Jameson in mind when he wrote of what it takes to be a man.

Quote

"Between us, we cover all knowledge; he knows all that can be known and I know the rest." — Mark Twain, of Rudyard Kipling

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
‘ Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And - which is more - you’ll be a Man, my son!

如果在众人六神无主时,你能镇定自若而不人云亦云;
如果在被众人猜忌怀疑之日,你能自信如常而不枉加辩驳;
如果你有梦想,而又不会迷失自我;
如果你有神思,又不至于走火入魔;
如果你在成功之中,不望形于色;
而在灾难之后也勇于咀嚼苦果;
如果你听到自己说出的奥妙,
被无赖歪曲成面目全非的垃圾不生艾怨;
如果看到自己追求的美好,
受天灾成为一堆瓦砾也不说放弃;

如果你是辛苦劳作已是功成名就,
还是冒险一搏,哪怕是功名化为乌有,
即使你惨遭失败,也仍要从头开始;
如果你和村夫交谈而不失谦恭之态,
和侯王散步而不露诌媚之颜;
如果他人的爱憎左右不了你的正气;

如果你与任何人为伍都能卓然独立;
如果昏惑的骚扰动摇不了你的意志;
你能等心平气和再作答时——
那么你的修养就如天地般地博大,
而你,就是一个真正的心智成熟的人。

Sri Aurobind (部分)

我2007年12月27日才知道Sri Aurobind 在明目書屋
Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Auroville 出版他一系列的書
年底才查資料 發現英文相當多



瑜伽箴言/六点译丛 (印)室利·阿罗频多(Sri Aurobindo). 华东师范大学出版社.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sri_Aurobindo

維基百科,自由的百科全書

奧羅賓多(Sri Aurobindo,孟加拉語:শ্রী অরবিন্দ ,1872年8月15日1950年12月5日),生於印度加爾各答,北印度地區的政治人物,哲學家,教育家。

早年留學英國倫敦的奧羅賓多,於1893年後回到北印度,並於1905年1912年帶領北印度地區從事爭取殖民自治的運動。之後,轉而研究哲學神秘主義瑜珈,他所創建改進的新瑜珈,也成為今瑜珈研習主流之一。

2007年12月29日 星期六

Camille Claudel. La Correspondance 卡米耶·克洛代尔书信

Camille Claudel au Musée Marmottan


卡米耶·克洛代尔书信
译者:吴雅凌 译 編者: (法)安娜·里維埃等: 華東師範大學出版社:


【內容提要】
克洛代爾是羅丹的學生和情人,是保爾·克洛代爾的姐姐。她因與羅丹決裂而陷入瘋狂,在精神病療養院度過殘生。據專家的考訂,有一些署名羅丹的雕塑 作品其實都出自她之手。長期以來,卡米耶·克洛代爾因其與羅丹的愛情悲劇而為人所知,她的藝術纔華和成就,即便在法國也是到了上個世紀80年代開始纔漸漸 為人所注意。
  本書收集了迄今所發現的卡米耶·克洛代爾的全部書信,是這位女藝術家留存人世的唯一手稿。
  本書收集了迄今發現的所有卡米耶·克洛代爾的書信。每一封信均經過專家的分析和研究,得到嚴格的編排和整理。這些珍貴的書信,堪稱為卡米耶·克洛代爾研究的最重要亦是最根本的文獻。

【目錄】
中譯本前言
法文本前言:生命之路
書信
 生平
主要參考文獻
後記:卡米耶·克洛代爾的悲劇

圖像
簡介集 (英文)
http://www.answers.com/topic/camille-claudel


Wikipedia article "Camille Claudel".部份:

Creative period

Fascinated with stone and soil as a child, as a young woman she studied at the Académie Colarossi with sculptor Alfred Boucher. (At the time, the École des Beaux-Arts barred women from enrolling to study.) In 1882, Claudel rented a workshop with other young women, mostly English, including Jessie Lipscomb. In 1883, she met Auguste Rodin, who taught sculpture to Claudel and her friends.

Around 1884, she started working in Rodin's workshop. Claudel became his source of inspiration, his model, his confidante and lover. She never lived with Rodin, who was reluctant to end his 20-year relationship with Rose Beuret. Although pregnant, Claudel never had children with Rodin; she lost the child in an accident[1], which sent her into a deep depression. Knowledge of the affair agitated her family, especially her mother, who never completely agreed with Claudel's involvement in the arts. As a consequence, she left the family house. In 1892, perhaps after an unwanted abortion, Claudel ended the intimate aspect of her relationship with Rodin, although they saw one another regularly until 1898.

A gilded version of the Bronze Waltz.
A gilded version of the Bronze Waltz.

Beginning in 1903, she exhibited her works at the Salon des Artistes français or at the Salon d'Automne. It would be a mistake to assume that Claudel's reputation has survived simply because of her notorious association with Rodin. She was in fact a brilliant sculptor in her own right, and the famous art critic Octave Mirbeau wrote she was "A revolt against nature: a woman genius". Her early work is similar to Rodin's in spirit, but shows an imagination and lyricism quite her own, particularly in the famous Bronze Waltz (1893). The Age of Maturity (1900) has been interpreted by his brother as a powerful allegory of her break with Rodin, with one figure The Implorer that was produced as an edition of its own. Her onyx and bronze small-scale Wave (1897) was a conscious break in style with her Rodin period, with a decorative quality quite different from the "heroic" feeling of her earlier work. In the early years of the 20th Century, Claudel had patrons, dealers, and commercial success - she had no need to bask in the reflected light of another.




钟文音《巴黎情人:寻访杜拉斯、卡米耶、西蒙·波伏瓦》

寻找卡米耶(1864~1943年)/148
卡米耶的故居与活动场域/148
巴黎圣路易岛(Saint—Louis)塞纳河畔
——波旁河滨路19号(Qiai de Bourbon)1 898~1913年/148
艾芙哈村(Ville—Evrard)精神病院 1913年5月~1914年8月/165
亚维依附近的蒙德费格(Montfavet)精神病院
1914年8月~1945年10月9日/172





有版權的照片
'The Ages of Life' the Camille Claudel


'The Ages of Life' the Camille Claudel

Niobids

尼俄伯因驕傲受懲罰(奧維德『變形記』楊周翰譯,北京:人民文學出版社,1984/2000,pp. 122-30)


圖像:http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=Niobids&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi


In Greek mythology the Niobids were the children of Amphion and Niobe, slain by Apollo and Artemis because their mother had unfavourably compared the number of her own offspring with those of Leto, who had only borne two.

The number of Niobids mentioned varies greatly. Most usually they numbered as twelve or fourteen, but other sources mention twenty, ten, or even five children (two sons and three daughters). Generally half these children were considered sons, the other half daughters. The names of same of the children are mentioned; these lists vary by author:


Apollo and Artemis slew them all with their arrows, Apollo shooting the sons, Artemis the daughters. They were buried by the gods at Thebes.

Another version of the myth states that two of the Niobids were spared, Chloris and Amyclas.

Variant Myth

In another version of the myth, the Niobids are the children of Philottus and Niobe, daughter of Assaon. Assaon made advances to her which she refused. He then invited her children to a banquet and burnt them all to death. Philottus had perished whilst hunting. As a result of these calamities, she flung herself from high rock. Assaon, reflecting over his crimes, also killed himself. [1]

高山辰雄

2007/12/30 清晨,在NHK看到先生的紀念片「接觸宇宙之畫家」。略記其萬一:

高山辰雄たかやま たつお1912626 - 2007914)東京美術學校日本畫專業畢業,師從松岡映丘他曾獲日本政府的文化勳章。

1946 讀高更傳(ポール・ゴーギャンEugène Henri Paul Gauguin, 184867 - 190359))受到極大影響。

可以從其作品中感悟到作者「人究竟是什麼」的稍帶傷感的疑問,從而觸及他內在的「物之哀」式審美情懷。

代表作品



近・現代日本画の巨匠
掲載日:2007年12月26日

物故日本画家-高山辰雄(1912-2007)

 


高山辰雄最新情報

・新刊『存在追憶限りなき時の中に』角川書店より刊行

■略歴:高山辰雄(1912-2007)たかやま・たつお
1912年 大分県出身
1936年 東京美術学校(現東京芸大)日本画科卒業 松岡映丘に師事
1946年 第2回日展特選
1949年 第5回日展特選
1959年 日本芸術院賞
1964年 芸術選奨文部大臣賞
1972年 日本芸術院会員
1979年 文化功労者
1982年 文化勲章
2007年 9月14日逝去、95歳
   
■高山辰雄関連書籍

存在追憶限りなき時の中に
角川書店(2007/12)
<新刊>
アッシジへ行く-高山辰雄墨画集
角川書店(2002/03)
高山辰雄
芸術新聞社(1996/03)

存在追憶限りなき時の中に』角川書店(2007/12)
アッシジへ行く-高山辰雄墨画集』角川書店(2002/03)
高山辰雄の世界-素描と本画』思文閣出版(2000/03)
高山辰雄』芸術新聞社(1996/03)
アートポストカードブック高山辰雄』ビジョン企画出版社(1995/06)
聖家族1993-高山辰雄画集』講談社(1993/05)
高山辰雄/日経ポケット・ギャラリー』日本経済新聞社(1992/07)
現代日本素描全集(7)高山辰雄』ぎょうせい(1992/03)
現代の日本画(9)高山辰雄』学習研究社(1991/04)
大地を行く-高山辰雄中国墨画集』講談社(1987/06)
TATSUOTAKAYAMA』講談社インターナショナル(1987/01)

画家別画集一覧/近・現代日本画の巨匠編(2)
画家別画集一覧・目次



Comte de Buffon

畢豐(comte de Buffon, 1707-1788)出生於蒙巴城堡,是《自然史》的作者,也是風格家。他相信,形式才是作品之不朽之保證,因為理念和事實會變為公有財產。他的名言是,風格就是人。

他的《自然史》中,最受歡迎的是描畫,因為結合了文學美和科學之精確。他如此描寫蜂鳥:

翡翠、紅寶、黃寶在牠衣服上發光,

牠不讓地上的灰塵沾污自己。在

牠全然空靈的生活裡,我們很少




請問:究竟那一種寫法是對的?

comte 小寫

Buffon, Georges Louis Leclerc, comte de

畢豐comte de Buffon, 1707-1788 出生於蒙巴城堡 是《自然史》的作者 也是風格家。他相信,形式才是作品之不朽之保證,因為理念和事實會變為公有財產。他的名言是,風格就是人。

----

Comte 大寫

He was created Comte de Buffon in 1773. He died in Paris 1788.



瑞麟曰: "通常在獨立情況下用小寫
配合地名或人名變成一種頭銜或稱謂時用大寫,
我想最著名的大概要推基督山恩仇記吧?
今天為大家介紹 le style, c'est l'homme ,這是英文字典收錄的,但法文字典裡找到的卻是 le style est l'homme même ,後者語出布豐( Buffon )的一篇《 論風格 》演講,前者我沒查到出處。英文字典是依第一個字母編排,所以在字首 L- 的詞條裡;法文則是出現在其關鍵字 style 之詞條裡。 今日字彙的其他相關資料請參考《 我的英漢辭典》和《 我的法漢辭典》。

——
※文摘譯例※

Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon ( September 7, 1707April 16 , 1788 ) was a French naturalist , mathematician , biologist , cosmologist and author . Buffon's views influenced the next two generations of naturalists, including Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Charles Darwin.

Buffon's legacy is as direct and powerful as that of his monarch, Louis XVI. Buffon is best remembered for his great work Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière (1749-1788: in 36 volumes, 8 additional volumes published after his death by Lacépède). It included everything known about the natural world up until that date. In it Buffon considered the similarities between humans and apes, and the possibility of a common ancestry. Those who assisted him in the production of this great work included Louis-Jean-Marie Daubenton . Buffon's work is considered to have greatly influenced modern ecology (see history of ecology). His Histoire was translated into many different languages, making him the most widely read scientific author of the day, equalling Rousseau or Voltaire. 1

The problem of Buffon's needle in probability theory is named in his honor.

In Les époques de la nature (1778) Buffon discussed the origins of the solar system, speculating that the planets had been created by comets colliding with the sun. He also suggested that the age of the earth was much greater than the 6,000 years proclaimed by the church. Based on the cooling rate of iron, he calculated that the age of the earth was 75,000 years. For this he was condemned by the Catholic Church in France and his books were burned. Buffon also denied that Noah's flood ever occurred and observed that some animals retain parts that are vestigial and no longer useful, suggesting that they have evolved rather than having been spontaneously generated. 2 Despite this, Buffon insisted that he was not an atheist. 3

Besides his many brilliant insights he is also known for expounding the theory that nature in the New World was inferior to that of Eurasia. He argued that the Americas were lacking in large and powerful creatures, and that even the people were far less virile than their European counter parts. He ascribed this to the marsh odours and dense forests of the continent.

He was born at Montbard , Côte d'Or . His father, Benjamin Leclerc, was the Lord of Dijon and Montbard. He attended Jesuit College from the age of ten, and then Angers University. He began studying law, but soon began to concentrate on his twin interests of mathematics and science.

He was forced to leave university after becoming involved in a duel, and set off on a grand tour of Europe, returning when his father's remarriage threatened his inheritance.

He first made his mark in the field of mathematics and in Sur le jeu de franc-carreau introduced differential and integral calculus into probability theory. During this period he corresponded with the Swiss mathematician, Gabriel Cramer.

His translations of works by Isaac Newton and Stephen Hales' Vegetable staticks into French heightened his interest in biology.

He moved to Paris , making the acquaintance of Voltaire and other intellectuals. He joined the French Academy of Sciences at the age of 27. He was Keeper of the Jardin du Roi (later Jardin des Plantes) in Paris from 1739. During his period in charge he converted it from the King's garden to a research centre and museum, and the park was considerably enlarged, with the addition of many trees and plants from around the world.

Buffon was very skilled with words, earning him the nickname from mathematician Jean le Rond d' Alembert of "the great phrasemonger." Speaking of his many detractors, he said, "I shall keep absolute silence . . . and let their attacks fall upon themselves." He said that the horse was "man's most noble conquest." When delivering his Discours sur le style ("Discourse on Style "), he said, "Writing well consists of thinking, feeling and expressing well, of clarity of mind, soul and taste . . . The style is the man himself" ( "Le style c'est l'homme même"). 4 He lent his affinity of words to the world of science and, among others, is credited with coining the term prehensile (from Latin prehensus).

He was created Comte de Buffon in 1773. He died in Paris 1788 .





"


Forgotten, Yes. But Happy Birthday Anyway

Ed Alcock for The New York Times

The Jardin des Plantes, once known as the Jardin du Roi, in Paris.


Published: December 30, 2007

I SUPPOSE I already knew that it was a little perverse to be setting off in search of one of history’s losers. But even the French seemed to think it was odd. Georges-Louis Leclerc? The Comte de Buffon? I e-mailed well in advance to the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, the natural history museum in Paris that Buffon largely founded. But the press office there seemed barely to have heard of the man. Like everybody else in the biological world, they were perhaps too busy celebrating the tercentennial of the great Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus, who was Buffon’s archenemy.

And yet this was Buffon’s tercentennial, too. He was born in September 1707, and made his name as one of the best-selling authors of the 18th-century. His 44-volume Histoire Naturelle (36 of them written by him), an encyclopedic account of the natural world, remained one of the pillars of French literature well into the 20th century. He was also one of the most powerful figures in the court of King Louis XV, and as both author and administrator he was in many ways as influential as Linnaeus in shaping our knowledge of the natural world.

Buffon intrigued me — enough that I wanted to travel in his footsteps — because he was also a surprisingly modern scientific mind. Linnaeus and almost all his contemporaries rooted their understanding of nature in the Bible, with species surviving unchanged from what God had created in the Garden of Eden. Buffon, by contrast, thought it was absurd to imagine God being “very busy with the way a beetle’s wing should fold.” He thought species were simply groups of animals breeding together — and changing — over time.

Happily for me (even if no one else much cared), Buffon left behind a considerable physical heritage, where a curious traveler could sample his ideas and his style of living. The first place to visit is the Jardin des Plantes, the botanical garden south of the Seine in Paris, including the buildings of the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle. Buffon was the grand panjandrum here for much of his life, when it was known as the Jardin du Roi, and he vastly expanded the gardens to the present 64 acres. By the remarkable appeal of his writing, and his talents as an administrator, he also made this place one of the great centers for gathering in new species from distant regions.

The house where Buffon lived and died still stands in one corner of the garden. But it’s used for offices now. Visit instead the Grande Galerie de l’Évolution, a 19th-century building with a translucent glass ceiling and galleries supported by handsome iron columns. The specimens on display convey some of the excitement and appeal of early natural history. In 2000, shortly after a major reconstruction, the American paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould described it as “the world’s finest modern exhibit on evolution.”

But don’t expect to see much reference to Buffon by name. Though Charles Darwin later praised him as the first modern author to treat evolutionary ideas “in a scientific spirit,” Buffon’s main contribution was a close attention to the importance of habitat in shaping species. He had no clear idea of evolution itself. His work merely held open the door to evolutionary thinking for later scientists. And then the door swung shut, leaving him forgotten on the other side. Or not quite. A bronze statue of Buffon stands just outside, still presiding over his gardens, with a lion at his feet and a bird perched on one arm.

A better place to get a sense of Buffon’s life is at his country home, in the village of Montbard, a little over an hour from Paris on the TGV, the high-speed train line. Buffon typically spent half the year in the city (“Paris is hell,” he declared) and the other half in Montbard, writing the Histoire Naturelle for which he became famous. It was originally intended as a mere catalog of the king’s collections, but Buffon took up the work with such enthusiasm — at one point employing 80 people to hand-color the illustrations — that it became an account of life on earth.

The mansion he built stands in the middle of the old part of town, close to the Brenne River. Montbard is not otherwise particularly picturesque, and this is Burgundy wine country. So visitors often stay in one of the chateaus outside of town. But the Hôtel de l’Écu is just a few steps across the river and I found it comfortable and homey, with the proprietor’s English setter loping through the reception area.

Buffon was relentlessly devoted to his work here. But he also liked to tell a story about his penchant for sleeping in. He had to order an elderly servant named Joseph to wake him at dawn, promising payment if he succeeded in rousting him out of bed. One morning, other measures having failed, Joseph dumped a bowl of cold water in Buffon’s face and duly collected his fee. “I owe 10 to 12 volumes of my works to poor Joseph,” Buffon wrote.

BEHIND his home, Buffon created a private park atop a ridge by tearing down a castle that had formerly belonged to the dukes of Burgundy. (Those were the happy days for a nouveau riche, when a teardown meant obliterating something truly substantial.) Twice a day, even into his 70s, Buffon climbed the hill, up 118 steps and across 418 paces of generally sloping terrain, to get from his house to his cabinet de travail, or study. This modest one-room building still looks out from the far side of the ridge to the hills and valleys of Burgundy. It’s open to visitors, as are remnants of the old castle.

Linnaeus and Buffon were the towering figures of the scientific world in their day. The Swedish botanist largely invented the modern system of classification, in which all plants and animals are known by a genus and species name, like Homo sapiens, and fit into a neat hierarchy by species, genus, family, order, class, phylum and kingdom. His French rival was more interested in nuances of habitat and behavior, anticipating sciences, like ecology and ethology, which were still 200 years in the future. Their respective reputations as the “Newton and Galileo” of Sweden and “the Pliny and the Aristotle of France,” combined with proportionately grand egos, made conflict inevitable.

Buffon attacked Linnaeus for imposing an artificial order on the disorderly natural world. He took delight in pointing out absurdities in the groups Linnaeus had proposed, like putting humans and two-toed sloths in the same order, Anthropomorpha. Linnaeus countered that his antagonist was a master of “beautiful ornate French,” and not much else. He also named a weed genus Buffonia.

Buffon was undoubtedly correct in pointing out flaws in the Linnaean system. But that system quickly proved essential to other biologists as a way to make sense of the incredible abundance of species suddenly being discovered by 18th-century explorers. Among scientists in England in particular, the cult of Linnaeus bordered on religion. So the rivalry mainly hurt Buffon. Until recently, all English translations of Buffon’s Histoire Naturelle simply omitted the introductory section that includes the attack on Linnaeus.

From Montbard, it’s a short drive to the village from which Buffon took his name. In good weather, it’s also a pleasant 90-minute walk each way on a quiet path along the canal. The forge Buffon built there still survives, and the water wheels, bellows and other machines squeal and creak for the amusement of paying visitors. Here, late in life, Buffon undertook an improbable series of experiments, having molten balls of iron of different sizes carefully measured to see how long it took them to cool down. He theorized that the earth originated as a fireball, gradually solidifying as it cooled. By scaling up from iron balls to the size of the planet, he hoped to estimate the age of the earth.

The numbers he came up with ranged from 10 million years down to as little as 75,000 years, the estimate he ultimately published in 1778. It opened the eyes of educated readers to the vast span of geologic time, and was the beginning of the end for the belief that all creation dated back just 6,000 years to the Garden of Eden. Earlier in his career, angry religious authorities had presented Buffon with a list of 14 “reprehensible statements,” and Buffon had shrewdly signed a declaration of his faith in Scripture. (“It is better to be humble than hung,” he commented.) But he never altered his previous “reprehensible statements,” or stopped delivering new ones where science seemed to demand them.

Oddly, the exhibits at the forge make no reference whatsoever to the experiments Buffon conducted there. But this seems to be Buffon’s fate in history. His ideas were essential in their day for the advancement of science, but consigned thereafter to oblivion. He died in 1788, a year before the French Revolution, which predictably had little regard for such a close ally of the king. Buffon’s son, known by the unfortunate diminutive Buffonet, eventually went to the guillotine. (One story says he was sent there by former neighbors Buffon had displaced in the course of expanding the Jardin du Roi. Another story says Buffonet’s hapless last words were “My name is Buffon.”)

The revolutionaries established the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle on the collection Buffon père had largely created. But in the course of turning natural history into a scientific discipline, the rising class of professionals scorned Buffon and the sorts of amateur naturalists he had inspired.

Even the church seems to have taken special satisfaction in diminishing Buffon’s legacy. Buffon was buried, as he intended, beside the altar in the Église-St.-Urse, up the hill behind his mansion in Montbard. But for the inscription over the altar, some clever priest has gotten in the last word, pointedly choosing the ultimate statement of the scriptural view of Creation: “And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.”

'PARIS IS HELL'

While in Paris, make sure you visit the Grande Galerie de l’Évolution at the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle (Jardin des Plantes; 36, rue Geoffroy-St.-Hilaire; 33-1-4079-5479; www.mnhn.fr). It is open daily 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Closed Tuesdays.

BUFFON IN THE COUNTRY

Take an overnight excursion to Buffon’s country home in Montbard, about an hour from Paris (Musée-Site-Buffon, Rue du Parc Buffon, Montbard; 33-3-8092-5042; www.musees-bourgogne.org). Open year-round, Wednesday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 12 p.m., and 2 to 5 p.m.

While in Montbard, be sure to tour the Grande Forge de Buffon (33-3-8092-1035; www.grandeforgedebuffon.monsite.orange.fr). Open April 1 through Sept. 30, 10 a.m. to noon, and 2 to 6 p.m., and the rest of the year by reservation.

If you are looking for a comfortable hotel close to Buffon’s home, try the Hôtel de l’Écu; 7, rue Auguste Carré, Montbard; 33-3-8092-1166; www.hotel-de-l-ecu.fr. Doubles from 72 euros ($108 at $1.50 to the euro). There is a good bistro in the hotel that is reasonably priced.






2007年12月28日 星期五

Denis Diderot


TENTATIVE

人生是海洋,希望是舵手的羅盤,使人們在暴風雨中不致迷失方向。

這是長榮集團總裁張榮發創辦的海事博物館牆面上,
引用法國思想家狄德羅(Diderot)的一段詩句


德尼·狄德羅

維基百科,自由的百科全書

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德尼·狄德罗
德尼·狄德羅

德尼·狄德羅Denis Diderot1713年10月5日1784年7月31日),法國啟蒙思想家、哲學家和作家,百科全書派的代表。他的最大成就是主編《百科全書》(Encyclopédie)(1751年—1772年)。此書概括了18世紀啟蒙運動的精神。其它著作包括《對自然的解釋》(1754年)和《生理學基礎》(1774年—1780年)以及一些小說、劇本、評論論文集以及寫給很多朋友和同事的才華橫溢的書信。

他繼承並發展了笛卡爾洛克拉·美特利唯物主義,反對貝克萊休謨唯心主義不可知論。他認為沒有超物質或離開肉體的精神和心理,他把人比喻為一架具有感覺和記憶能力的鋼琴,嘲笑貝克萊「以為自己是世界上存在的唯一的鋼琴,宇宙的全部和諧都發生在它身上」,這真是一架「發瘋的鋼琴」。

他把個體心理的發展和心理的過程都看作物質因素相互作用所致。他說:「這些物質因素逐步產生的結果,便是一個遲鈍的生物,一個有感覺的生物,一個有思想的生物。」

狄德羅堅持感覺是一切知識的唯一源泉,觀念和思維能力都是由感覺發展而來的,這是典型的感覺主義心理學思想。

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維基語錄上的相關摘錄:
4個分類: 法國作家 |


孫 道臨氏

孫道臨氏死去 中国の俳優・監督

2007年12月28日 20時45分

 孫 道臨氏(そん・どうりん=中国の著名な俳優、監督)28日付の上海紙、新民晩報などによると、同日、病気のため上海市内の病院で死去。86歳。 北京生まれ。燕京大(北京大の前身)卒業後、上海映画製作所入りし、「渡江偵察記」「家」などの国内作品のほか、日中合作映画「未完の対局」(82年公開)にも出演。中国映画家協会理事や顧問も務めた。(上海、共同)


孙道临电影艺术馆位于著名电影艺术表演家孙道临先生的家乡嘉善,是嘉善县文化艺 术中心的一部分,它是是我国第一个以电影艺术家名字命名的综合性电影艺术馆,建筑面积为7500平方米。艺术馆除了系统地介绍孙道临的艺术生涯外,还展示 了一百年来中国电影发展的历史。孙道临所在的上影集团对艺术馆的建设给予了大力支持,不仅全程参与了艺术馆的内部设置,还提供了诸多珍贵的剧照原件





图片点击可在新窗口打开查看
孙道临和夫人及梁波罗孙渝峰在馆碑前合影

孙 道临先生原籍嘉善,是中国电影艺术界的著名代表人物。孙道临先生在长达半个多世纪的艺术生涯中,在《雷雨》、《日出》、《家》、《茶花女》、《乌鸦与麻 雀》、《渡江侦察记》、《不夜城》、《永不消逝的电波》、《早春二月》、《李四光》等一百多部舞台剧和影视剧中,塑造了“觉新”、“李侠”、“肖涧秋”、 “江梅清”、“李四光”等一系列光彩夺目、为国内外观众所熟悉的艺术形象,为中国电影走向世界做出了杰出的贡献。孙道临先生人品高洁,有口皆碑。***同志曾为孙道临先生题词:“孜孜不倦、光彩照人。”孙道临先生永远是嘉善人民的骄傲。

Benazir Bhutto

2007/12/27 傍晚-晚上很忙,在我的小世界中。當時完全不知道巴基斯坦前總理貝﹒布托(Benazir Bhutto) 在傍晚遭遇明顯的自殺式爆炸襲擊,不幸6:16去世。
2007/12/28 早上8點看bbc評論節目才知道她已過世。然而看cnn 月前的影像,都顯示她是位相當胖的女人。
這首次意識到這國家,是我在英國(1977)的Essex 大學之Tawney Tower 某層樓有該國公民,讓我見識用手抓飯的功夫。可是我這30年來還只是霧裡看花。


Obituary

Benazir Bhutto, 54, Weathered Political Storm


Douglas E. Curran/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images
Benazir Bhutto in front of a poster of her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, after she won first parliamentary elections in 1988. More Photos >


Published: December 28, 2007

Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated at age 54 on Thursday in the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi, spent three decades navigating the turbulent and often violent world of Pakistani politics, becoming in 1988 the first woman to be democratically elected to lead a modern Muslim country.
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John F. Burns discusses Benazir Bhutto's life and legacy and what her death will mean to the future of Pakistan.

T. Mughal/European Pressphoto Agency
Benazir Bhutto at a press conference in Islamabad in November. More Photos »

A deeply polarizing figure, the self-styled “daughter of Pakistan” was twice elected prime minister and twice expelled from office amid a swirl of corruption charges that ultimately propelled her into self-imposed exile in London, New York and Dubai for much of the past decade. She returned home only two months ago, defying threats to her life as she embarked on a bid for election to a third term in office, billing herself as a bulwark against Islamic extremism and a tribune of democracy.
The combined bombing and shooting attack that killed her as she left a political rally, standing through the open roof of her car to greet milling crowds of supporters, came as Ms. Bhutto staged a series of mass meetings across Pakistan. She did that despite her aides’ appeals for caution in the wake of a double suicide bombing that narrowly failed to kill her on the night of her return from exile in October. That attack, which killed more than 130 people, came as she drove from the airport in Karachi to her home on the city’s seafront, and provoked a characteristic response.
“We will continue to meet the public,” she said as she visited survivors of the bombings at a Karachi hospital. “We will not be deterred.”
When asked to explain the courage — or stubbornness, as some of her critics saw it — that she displayed at critical junctures in her political career, Ms. Bhutto often referred to the example she said had been set by her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. He was a charismatic and often demagogic politician who was president and prime minister from 1971 to 1977, before being hanged in April 1979 on charges of having ordered the murder of a minor political opponent.
Mr. Bhutto was the founder in 1967 of the Pakistan Peoples Party, the political vehicle that he, and later his daughter, rode to power. Like his daughter, Mr. Bhutto battled for years with Pakistan’s powerful generals. He was ousted from office, and ultimately executed, on the orders of Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, one of the long succession of military rulers who have dominated Pakistan for nearly 40 of the 60 years since it emerged as an independent state from the partition of British India.
Under house arrest at the time, Ms. Bhutto was allowed to visit her father before his execution at Rawalpindi’s central prison, only a short distance from the site of the rally where she was killed nearly three decades later. In a BBC interview in the 1990s, she said seeing her father preparing to die steeled her for her own political career, which some biographers have suggested was driven, in part, by a determination to avenge him by outmaneuvering the generals.
A History of Violence
Violence ran like a thread through her family life, to an extent that caused her admirers to compare the Bhuttos, in the contribution they made to Pakistan’s political life, and in the price they paid for it, to the Kennedys — and her enemies, pointing to the Bhuttos’ bitter family feuds, to compare them to the Borgias. The younger of Ms. Bhutto’s two brothers, Shahnawaz, died mysteriously of poisoning in 1995, in an apartment owned by the Bhuttos in Cannes, France. French investigators said they suspected that a family feud over a multimillion-dollar inheritance from Zulfikar Bhutto was involved, but no charges were filed.
Ms. Bhutto’s other brother, Murtaza, who along with Shahnawaz founded a terrorist group that sought to topple General Zia, spent years in exile in Syria beginning in the 1980s. When Murtaza finally returned to Pakistan, in 1994, he quickly fell into a bitter dispute with Ms. Bhutto over the family’s political legacy — and, he told a reporter at the time, over the money he said his father had placed in a Swiss bank when he was prime minister. In 1996, Murtaza was gunned down outside his home in Karachi, and his widow, Ghinva, blamed Asif Ali Zardari, Ms. Bhutto’s husband. Ms. Bhutto’s Iranian-born mother, Nusrat, sided in the dispute with Murtaza, and was dismissed by Ms. Bhutto as the Peoples Party chairman. “I had no idea I had nourished a viper in my breast,” she said of her daughter at the time.
Born on June 21, 1953, Ms. Bhutto, the first child in her family, reveled in telling friends that she was her father’s favorite. One of her most cherished anecdotes about her childhood involved her father’s encouraging her to set aside traditional Muslim views of a woman’s role and to have ambitions beyond the home, a message she said he conveyed with stories about Joan of Arc and Indira Gandhi.
After attending a private Christian-run school in Karachi, where the family maintained a luxurious mansion, Ms. Bhutto studied at Radcliffe College, earning a Harvard B.A. in 1973, and later at Oxford, where she gained a second B.A. in 1976. At Oxford, she was the first woman to become president of the Oxford Union, the prestigious debating society that nurtured several British prime ministers.
In her memoir, she described what life as a young woman at Harvard felt like. “I was amongst a sea of women who felt as unimpeded by their gender as I did,” she wrote. At Oxford, she adopted a Westernized way of life, spending winters at the Swiss ski resort of Gstaad. She said later that her passions at the time included reading royal biographies and “slushy” romances, and browsing at the London department store Harrods — a habit she maintained throughout the rest of her life.
From Oxford, Ms. Bhutto was thrust abruptly into the heart of Pakistani politics by General Zia’s arrest of her father in 1977, and by his execution 18 months later. Ms. Bhutto wrote in her memoir of her last meeting with her father, through a metal grille at the Rawalpindi Prison. “But I did not cry. Daddy told me not to,” she recalled.
From that moment on, Ms. Bhutto said in later years, she resolved to oust General Zia from power. But in August 1988, the general and the American ambassador, Arnold L. Raphel, were killed when their military plane exploded and crashed in southern Pakistan. Three months later, when she was 35, Ms. Bhutto won a general election and formed her first government, only to be ousted by Pakistan’s president in 1990, having served less than half her term. In 1993, she won a second election, but was again dismissed in 1996.
Her accomplishments in office were few. She claimed in later years that she had clamped down on Islamic militants, established a strong basis for democracy by paring away many of the restrictions on civil liberties imposed by the generals, and provided a boost to the economy, especially in her second term, by attracting a flow of foreign investment. But on both occasions, she was dismissed, under pressure from the military on charges of corruption and incompetent governance. Her ouster, on both occasions, sparked only sporadic protests across Pakistan.
Complexity and Contradictions
A woman of complex and often contradictory instincts, Ms. Bhutto was a politician who presented herself on public platforms as the standard-bearer for Pakistan’s impoverished masses, for civil liberties and for an unfettered democracy. But she made enemies with her imperious and impulsive manner as prime minister in dealing with government officials, diplomats and reporters, and by what her critics described as an instinct for political vindictiveness. She recalled how her father taught her the importance of deceit in politics, lessons she said she had rejected in favor of openness. But American officials were troubled by her account of her role in Pakistan’s secret nuclear weapons program. She maintained in recent years that the Pakistani military had kept her in the dark about the weapons program, and that the first she knew of it was in a CIA briefing in Washington in 1989.
In an interview two years ago for a documentary produced by The New York Times and the Canadian Broadcasting Company, she said she also did not know, when in office, that A. Q. Khan, the head of the Pakistani nuclear program, was selling nuclear technology to other states, including Libya and North Korea. But according to accounts given by Dr. Khan’s associates, Ms. Bhutto, after visits to North Korea in the 1990s, returned to Islamabad with North Korean missile designs intended to be mated to the Pakistani bomb.
In “Daughter of Destiny,” her 1989 memoir, she rebuked reporters for calling attention to her dress, almost always the traditional loose-fitting robe favored by Pakistani women, saying she did not care about matters like dress. But among her aides and Pakistani diplomats, who often accompanied her on shopping trips abroad, she gained a reputation for buying expensive jewelry and shoes and at elite stores in Beverly Hills, London and Paris.
Her critics often attributed her flushes of haughtiness and her expensive tastes to a sense of entitlement, as Zulfikar Bhutto’s daughter and as the pre-eminent member of a wealthy land-owning family from the cotton-growing southern province of Sindh. The egalitarian credo Ms. Bhutto preached as a politician found little echo in the lives of the impoverished men and women, many of them indentured workers, who worked the family’s ancestral lands.
After her second dismissal from office in 1996, a friend said Ms. Bhutto’s sense of herself as inseparable from the fate of Pakistan contributed to actions that led Pakistani investigators to accuse her and Mr. Zardari of embezzling as much $1.5 billion from government accounts.
British and American private investigators working for the government of her political rival Nawaz Sharif, produced a thick volume of documents tracing what they said were multimillion-dollar kickbacks paid to the couple in return for the award of government contracts, and a web of bank accounts across the world that were used to hide the money. Ms. Bhutto and Mr. Zardari vehemently rejected the allegations, saying their accusers wanted to drive her from power.
Criminal probes of the couple’s financial dealings were opened in Britain, Spain and Switzerland, among other places. But the cases against the couple in Pakistan languished for years in the courts, and the cases against Ms. Bhutto were ultimately quashed by an amnesty granted by Pakistan’s president, Pervez Musharraf, as part of an American-brokered deal that cleared the way for Ms. Bhutto to return to Pakistan in the fall to participate in elections that Mr. Musharraf set for January.
The American bid to restore her to power in Islamabad reflected her tireless efforts to maintain a network of the powerful among the political media elite in Washington and in London.
Among her friends, Ms. Bhutto’s marriage to Mr. Zardari, who was in Dubai when she was killed, was seen as central to understanding much that went awry in her life in the years after her father was hanged. The marriage in 1987 was an arranged one, in the Muslim tradition; her mother acted as marriage broker. Mr. Zardari came from a modest business family that owned a cinema.
Ms. Bhutto herself spoke soberly of what an arranged marriage entailed, saying that her five years under house arrest — and, briefly, in prison — under General Zia, had left her with little opportunity for courtship. But friends watched with fascination as her relationship with Mr. Zardari developed. Handsome, with a macho style that Ms. Bhutto told friends she thought at first was ridiculous, he became an important figure in her two governments, serving in her cabinet in her second term in a role that gave him a major role in approving foreign investment.
Mr. Zardari’s nickname among Pakistanis, Mr. 10 Percent, spoke for the widespread sense that he had led Ms. Bhutto into the financial irregularities that played an important role in her decision to go into exile. Mr. Zardari, arrested before she left, spent eight years in jail but never faced trial and was freed by Mr. Musharraf and eventually allowed to leave Pakistan. Ms. Bhutto never wavered in defense of her husband. “Time will tell he is the Mandela of Pakistan,” she said. The couple had two sons, Bilawal and Bakhtwar, and a daughter, Aseefa. Bilawal, 19, began studies in the fall at Oxford. The two younger children remained with their father in Dubai.

Reporting was contributed by David E. Sanger, Jane Perlez, David Rohde and Helene Cooper.

2007年12月26日 星期三

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

Connections

A Rabbi of His Time, With a Charisma That Transcends It

Courtesy of Susannah Heschel

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, bearded at center, and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in a 1968 antiwar protest.


Published: December 24, 2007

In 1965, after walking in the Selma-to-Montgomery civil-rights march with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel was at the Montgomery, Ala., airport, trying to find something to eat. A surly woman behind the snack-bar counter glared at Heschel — his yarmulke and white beard making him look like an ancient Hebrew prophet — and mockingly proclaimed: “Well, I’ll be damned. My mother always told me there was a Santa Claus, and I didn’t believe her, until now.” She told Heschel that there was no food to be had.

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Tommy Weber

Abraham Joshua Heschel, before his rabbinical heyday.

In response, according to a new biography, “Spiritual Radical: Abraham Joshua Heschel in America, 1940-1972” by Edward K. Kaplan (Yale), Heschel simply smiled. He gently asked, “Is it possible that in the kitchen there might be some water?” Yes, she acknowledged. “Is it possible that in the refrigerator you might find a couple of eggs?” Perhaps, she admitted. Well, then, Heschel said, if you boiled the eggs in the water, “that would be just fine.”

She shot back, “And why should I?”

“Why should you?” Heschel said. “Well, after all, I did you a favor.”

“What favor did you ever do me?”

“I proved,” he said, “there was a Santa Claus.”

And after the woman’s burst of laughter, food was quickly served. 這軼事末段用到

Of course Heschel, with his rabbinic features, could not have looked too much like the jolly gentleman expected to visit homes late Christmas Eve. But the spirit evident in this anecdote must have served him well over the years as he taught aspiring rabbis, met with Pope Paul VI and became a leader in the civil-rights, anti-Vietnam War and interfaith movements. At his death in 1972 he was one of this country’s best-known Jewish figures.

This year’s centennial of Heschel’s birth, commemorated by the new biography and a conference this month at the Center for Jewish History in Manhattan, takes place in a very different world. Surely no one today could write, as he did in his landmark 1955 book, “God in Search of Man,” that there is an “eclipse of religion in modern society.” If anything, there is no escape from talk about faith. Nor is the relationship between religious convictions and political activism as simple as it might have once seemed.

But in turning again to Heschel’s writings, which had such an impact in the 1950s and ’60s, I was startled by how much vitality they still possess. The Heschel biography shows how many people were touched by his charismatic persona; the potential for such contact is evident in his own books as well.

Admittedly there are times when Heschel can seem sentimental or, as in his early book “The Earth Is the Lord’s,” can romanticize the past. He turns the lost world of his fathers — the communities of Eastern European Hasidim and their rabbis — into an almost utopian realm. The scholarly skepticism of his colleagues at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, where close textual analysis was more eagerly embraced than Heschel’s inspirational philosophy, does not always seem unmerited.

But no modern Jewish thinker has had as profound an effect on other faiths as Heschel has; the Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr said he was “an authoritative voice not only in the Jewish community but in the religious life of America.” Nor has any Jewish theologian since Heschel succeeded in speaking to such a wide range of readers while rigorously attending to the nuances of Judaism.

Some of this uniqueness can be felt in the way Heschel approached the woman in the airport. Her mockery is defused, the interaction shifted to the mundane. It is as if Heschel were saying: “I understand I’m not what you’re used to. But I’m prepared to meet you casually, accepting your comparison to a make-believe figure. But surely you can see that your anger is not justified?”

The confrontation dissolves into a conversation, the hostility into humor. The temptation would have been to do the opposite — to chide or stiffen with resentment — particularly given Heschel’s own personal trials. A yeshiva student in Poland, he rebelled not by becoming a secular Jew but by getting a doctorate in theology and philosophy from the University of Berlin. He fled the Nazis (who murdered one of his sisters and caused the death of his mother) but never found a comfortable intellectual home in the United States — neither during his early years at the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati nor during his long career at the Jewish Theological Seminary.

Perhaps that history of trauma and dislocation made him more alert to disruptions in others. But in the airport conversation, Heschel gently found a way to dispose of opposing social roles — the protesting rabbi scorning racism, the put-upon woman threatened by difference — and establish the beginnings of an understanding.

The quest for common ground seemed to inspire his theological explorations as well. Heschel, influenced by German phenomenology, was preoccupied with experience rather than fact, with poetic evocation rather than explication. At the seminary he was a professor of Jewish ethics and mysticism. He was intent on communicating the incommunicable, exploring the ineffable.

In a book about the Sabbath he describes Judaism’s focus on the sanctification of time. In referring to God he does not imagine an Aristotelian prime mover but a transcendent being who needed humanity to fulfill himself. In thinking about humanity Heschel asked, “What way of living is compatible with the grandeur and mystery of life?” Such speculations crossed doctrinal boundaries and helped make him an important ecumenical force. “No religion is an island,” he wrote.

But amid this fervor Heschel was also a follower of Jewish laws, putting an emphasis on ritual and actions, not just on devotion and belief. This was also the source of Heschel’s ethical perspective: Every deed poses a problem with moral and religious implications.

“Judaism,” he wrote, “is not a science of nature but a science of what man ought to do with nature.” No act is permitted to escape scrutiny.

These poles of devotion and deed combined in Heschel’s activist politics in the 1960s, resulting in positions that still tend to determine his reputation. At the recent conference one speaker wondered where a contemporary Heschel might be found, someone prepared to take a stand against the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq the way Heschel did against the Vietnam War.

But those political positions are Heschel’s least compelling. In the civil-rights movement his moral stance was clear, but in discussing the Vietnam War, in which the issues were more complex, his statements, affected by the temper of the time, became less revealing, replacing evocation with hortatory proclamations modeled on the biblical prophets. “There is nothing so vile as the arrogance of the military mind,” he wrote. He used the word “evil” to allude to the “insane asylum” around him.

The result was a kind of theological politics. The prophets claim such declarations to be divine revelations, but in the earthly realm acts and consequences must be assessed, their complications untangled. No doubt political issues are sometimes so urgent they demand theological treatment. But there are risks in such a confusion of realms.

Theological politics tends to eliminate distinctions and is impatient with differences, empathy and argument. Had those kinds of views shaped Heschel’s perspective at the airport, instead of accepting the eggs from the offending woman, he might have thrown them in her face.

Connections is a critic’s perspective on arts and ideas.

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