OK......best books ever....

[johnny]

Asterix anyone ?

[Melusine]

Originally posted by Attalus: LOL, Melusine, why am I not surprised to see Die Leiden des jungen Werther and Sylvia Plath?

I don't know why that doesn't surprise you.
They're not really representative of my taste. [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Attalus]

I don't know, I suppose it's because they are so...Romantic.(Capital R, capital R). Glad that you don't like Rousseau. I've always wanted to say something really nasty to him. Do you like Faust better than Werther? Sorry about mistaking your taste. People are always assuming that I like classical music, for some reason, though I can take it or leave it alone, and it annoys me for some reason. [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Madriver]

Originally posted by johnny: Asterix anyone ?

I have all of them (up until 1990 anyway) and I'm not even European!!!

Great books!!

[Melusine]

Originally posted by Attalus: I don't know, I suppose it's because they are so...Romantic.(Capital R, capital R). Glad that you don't like Rousseau. I've always wanted to say something really nasty to him. Do you like Faust better than Werther? Sorry about mistaking your taste. People are always assuming that I like classical music, for some reason, though I can take it or leave it alone, and it annoys me for some reason. [img]smile.gif[/img]

Hmmmm... well, I do like the romantic period, but it's not my favourite. Actually, when it comes to poetry, I do enjoy Shelley, Keats, Coleridge etc. but my real preference lies either farther back in time (Donne, Herbert, Jonson, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Spenser, Milton) or later on the timescale (Eliot, Yeats, Geoffrey Hill, Stevie Smith, Dorothy Parker etc). Gothic-romantic has its merits too
About Werther - I read some parts with a little amused half-sardonic smile, and others parts I let get to me, try to go with the flow of pathos and drama. Very enjoyable and it's a good read to get a taste of the Zeitgeist of the period. But of course I consider Faust the superior work. Wrote an essay comparing it to Marlowe's Faustus once, wish I could pick up where I left off with that some time. [img]smile.gif[/img]
Oh, and talking favourite historic/literary periods, there is something about the Victorian/fin de siècle era that just REALLY fascinates me... I can never get enough of reading about it. Wilde, Yeats, Aubrey Beardsley, William Morris, the decadence, the brilliance, the politics, the characters... whoooo! Much preferred to Romanticism [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Attalus]

Originally posted by Melusine: Hmmmm... well, I do like the romantic period, but it's not my favourite. Actually, when it comes to poetry, I do enjoy Shelley, Keats, Coleridge etc. but my real preference lies either farther back in time (Donne, Herbert, Jonson, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Spenser, Milton) or later on the timescale (Eliot, Yeats, Geoffrey Hill, Stevie Smith, Dorothy Parker etc). Gothic-romantic has its merits too About Werther - I read some parts with a little amused half-sardonic smile, and others parts I let get to me, try to go with the flow of pathos and drama. Very enjoyable and it's a good read to get a taste of the Zeitgeist of the period. But of course I consider Faust the superior work. Wrote an essay comparing it to Marlowe's Faustus once, wish I could pick up where I left off with that some time. [img]smile.gif[/img] Oh, and talking favourite historic/literary periods, there is something about the Victorian/fin de siècle era that just REALLY fascinates me... I can never get enough of reading about it. Wilde, Yeats, Aubrey Beardsley, William Morris, the decadence, the brilliance, the politics, the characters... whoooo! Much preferred to Romanticism [img]smile.gif[/img]

I have a lovely copy of Wilde's Salome with the Aubrey Beardsley engravings, done all in shades of yellow and, yes, mauve.
Do you like Burne-Jones' paintings? I love them. (Sigh) Have never found any of the Kelmscott Press editions of anything at prices that I like. My university (Tulane) had an exhibition where the Chaucer was part of it, and I fell in love with it.
I have to say that Keats and Byron are my favorite poets after Elliot and Wallace Stevens. I still cannot read "And So We'll Go No More A-Roving" without getting goosebumps.
Which part of Faust did you like better, I or II? I am a weirdo, I liked I better, though all the critics say Book II is the superior work.

[Melusine]

Nah, actually I liked 'I' as well - critics schmitics [img]tongue.gif[/img]
It's faster-paced, wittier.
LOL, I love to read literary criticism but they're just as often completely off the mark (IMHO of course ) as they're spot on. [img]smile.gif[/img]

I admire Beardsley's work so much! I really ADORE his style! How wonderful that you have that copy of Salome, there's some of his best work in there (the Peacock dress!) I've a great edition of Pope's The Rape Of The Lock with illustrations by him - so beautiful!
I'd really recommend the biography by Matthew Sturgis - lots of illustrations and extremely fascinating! I'm also a big fan of Morris, have several big books with plates of his artwork. [img]smile.gif[/img] I'm a bit of a calligrapher myself, so that makes him all the more interesting. I can stare at the intricacies of a Kelmscott printed frontispiece forever
Yes, I like Burne-Jones too, incidentally he's a key figure in Beardsley's decision as a young man to continue drawing [img]smile.gif[/img] ... One of my other favourites has got to be John William Waterhouse: La Belle Dame Sans Merci, Ophelia, Miranda, The Lady Of Shalott... Here's a great site of his work: http://www.jwwaterhouse.com/

I'm trying to start a small collection of books on this period - apart from the aforementioned Morris and Beardsley books I'm collecting books on the Pre-Raphaelites and original works of the writers from that period. I also love reading about Oscar Wilde, have collected about 6 biographies on him, and his letters. The best biography without a doubt is Richard Ellman's - great read! Also have a big book with the correspondences between Yeats and Maud Gonne, the new biography of Yeats that came out some years ago, and Richard Ellman's biography on him. [img]smile.gif[/img]

Edit: oh, on the topic of exhibitions... I've been to the British Library twice to look at the Lindisfarne Gospels, have you heard of them? I think they're even more beautiful and more accomplished than the better-known Books of Kells.
http://www.durham.anglican.org/refer...sfarne/#Images
http://www.bl.uk/collections/treasures/lindis.html
I may sound like an idiot but I spent about an hour bent over the glass case it was in, nose pressed to the glass, tears in my eyes.... LOL

[ 06-20-2002, 05:22 AM: Message edited by: Melusine ]

[Attalus]

Yes, I know of the Lindisfarne Gospels. For my money, the so-called "Carpet Page," with its intricate, almost-alive pattern, is superior to even the celebrated "Chi-Rho Page" of the Book of Kells. I wonder how long that it took those long-dead monks to plot out all of those intricacies? Calligraphy is a great wonder to me, though I know little of the subtleties of Japanese and Chinese calligraphy. t I do own a Ming-era scholar's inkpot, which is made of something that I thought was jade but turns out not to be. I like to imagine the man who comissioned it laying out his brushes, screen, and paper, just so, and what sort of things he created.

[Melusine]

Yes, I prefer the Lindisfarne carpet pages to almost all other calligraphic works of that time, too. Actually being able to see it for real is indescribable! [img]smile.gif[/img]
Since I fell ill and temporarily quit my study, I'm secretly starting to think more and more of making a professional career out of calligraphy (yes, it *is* possible , though supplemented by working as a teacher of English maybe to make ends meet [img]smile.gif[/img] ).

[Attalus]

I know that you can make a living doing calligraphy. I've met people who do. Mostly boring things, like writing people's names on diplomas, etc., but also fun things like book illustrations and fancy invitations. A woman I knew that did this got a job working for a greeting card company and is quite well-fixed, now. I suspect that if you went into English teaching, the school's enrollment would double.
I don't know if you would consider Holman Hunt one of the Pre-Raphaelites. I don't. His "Awakening Conscience" always makes me laugh, derisively.