subiécte

Un sunet prelung şi jalnic de aramă sunătoare, lovită în răstimpuri deopotrivă de depărtate, înfioră şi făcu să tremure umbrele singuratice ale văzduhului; şi valea largă se umplu, până la marginile de deasupra ale munţilor săi, de glasul sfânt al rugăciunii şi al păcii… Era clopotul schitului, care vestea închinătorilor pustiului ceasul slujbei de seară…

Metafriending

'But we tend to forget about the link between friendship and virtue which forms the basis of Aristotle’s entire discussion. He begins by stating that “friendship is a virtue, or involves virtue.” The first formulation—”friendship is a virtue”—points to the social virtue of amicability (a generalized friendliness without special attachment that avoids the opposing vices of fawning and cantankerousness). The second formulation—that friendship involves virtue—is more interesting (and Aristotle spends the next 26 chapters elaborating its meaning). Since the Greek preposition is meta, a more literal translation would read: “friendship is with virtue.” Aristotle’s curious definition implies that friendship and virtue are themselves friends, for like friends, they are with one another. So, if you want to find friendship, look for virtue, and vice versa. Because friendship is linked to virtue, not every relation commonly called friendship is, in truth, friendship. Aristotle engages in a philosophic version of “unfriending”: gently, he sets out to correct his readers—a correction necessary in every era, but especially ours. Friendships premised on mutual utility, an exceedingly prevalent form of human connection, turn out to be seriously deficient—limited both in scope and duration.'

Expúnere

• 'Nu numai, sînt marotele unei întregi clase de intelectuali români consideraţi elită. Numai asta auzim de 40 de ani. În unele tematici momentul 1989 nici nu pare să fi existat – recuperarea unei anumite părţi a interbelicului, cea naţionalistă sau chiar extremistă a funcţionat neabătut, fiind cam singura linie pe care liderii de opinie par să deţină idei şi inspiraţie.

Judecarea istoriei printr-un anticomunsim extremist, dus la limitele absurdului uneori, poate duce la filtre aberante ale istoriei. '

certain circumstances

'The old gentleman at the tea-table, who had come from America thirty years before, had brought with him, at the top of his baggage, his American physiognomy; and he had not only brought it with him, but he had kept it in the best order, so that, if necessary, he might have taken it back to his own country with perfect confidence. At present, obviously, nevertheless, he was not likely to displace himself; his journeys were over and he was taking the rest that precedes the great rest. He had a narrow, clean-shaven face, with features evenly distributed and an expression of placid acuteness. It was evidently a face in which the range of representation was not large, so that the air of contented shrewdness was all the more of a merit. It seemed to tell that he had been successful in life, yet it seemed to tell also that his success had not been exclusive and invidious, but had had much of the inoffensiveness of failure. He had certainly had a great experience of men, but there was an almost rustic simplicity in the faint smile that played upon his lean, spacious cheek and lighted up his humorous eye as he at last slowly and carefully deposited his big tea-cup upon the table. He was neatly dressed, in well-brushed black; but a shawl was folded upon his knees, and his feet were encased in thick, embroidered slippers. A beautiful collie dog lay upon the grass near his chair, watching the master’s face almost as tenderly as the master took in the still more magisterial physiognomy of the house; and a little bristling, bustling terrier bestowed a desultory attendance upon the other gentlemen.'

oxymoron

'Gradually, the phone came to lose its terrors, but one day toward the end of October it rang, and Carlos Argentino was on the line. He was deeply disturbed, so much so that at the outset I did not recognise his voice. Sadly but angrily he stammered that the now unrestrainable Zunino and Zungri, under the pretext of enlarging their already outsized "salon-bar," were about to take over and tear down this house. "My home, my ancestral home, my old and inveterate Garay Street home!" he kept repeating, seeming to forget his woe in the music of his words. It was not hard for me to share his distress.

After the age of fifty, all change becomes a hateful symbol of the passing of time.'

Beaucoup

But in Paris, it is being openly said that Strauss-Kahn was the victim of some kind of setup. Much hypocrisy is, of course, involved in both reactions. But of the two, the display of the Gallic "shocked—shocked" reflex is by far the least "adult."

tweedledum

Just then flew down a monstrous crow,
As black as a tar-barrel;
Which frightened both the heroes so,
They quite forgot their quarrel.'

`I know what you're thinking about,' said Tweedledum: `but it isn't so, nohow.'

`Contrariwise,' continued Tweedledee, `if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.'

`I was thinking,' Alice said very politely, `which is the best way out of this wood: it's getting so dark. Would you tell me, please?'

Specialized knowledge

Few people realize how many books are now translated by more than one translator (often this is not made clear on the credits), nor how quickly translators are expected to work. But the success of translation very largely depends on the levels of complexity in the original text. It might be argued that the literary world is merely following the cinema with its international distribution circuits. But books are not films. While most films can survive subtitling or dubbing, the success of translation very largely depends on the levels of complexity in the original text. Above all there is a problem with a kind of writing that is, as it were, inward turning, about the language itself, about what it means to live under the spell of this or that vernacular. Of course one can translate Joyce’s Ulysses, but one loses the book’s reveling in its own linguistic medium, its tireless exploration of the possibilities of English. The same is true of a lot of the experimental writing of the 1960s and 1970s.

Pré-textes

Finalement, qu’est-ce qui est le propre de l’homme : le langage ? Le rire ?
C’est tout ça à la fois, à un autre degré. Tous ces traits, on les partage un petit peu avec un certain nombre d’animaux supérieurs – les singes, les baleines, les éléphants peuvent communiquer. On n’a plus beaucoup de caractères qui nous soient propres. Mais à ceux qui disent que la conscience est partagée avec certains animaux, je réponds qu’on n’a jamais vu des chimpanzés se réunir en forêt pour discuter de leurs origines ! Notre geste fondamental, c’est d’avoir eu le culot de changer la forme des objets à notre profit.
Pourquoi Neandertal a-t-il traîné pendant longtemps une aussi mauvaise réputation ?
Les premiers paléontologues ne doutaient pas de trouver des ancêtres beaux. Et ils sont tombés sur Neandertal, qu’ils ont trouvé abominable, avec ses grosses arcades, son menton qui fuit… Ils ont essayé de l’écarter. Or Neandertal est un homme comme les autres, il est né des mêmes grands-parents que l’homme moderne. Il y a eu même, pendant un temps court, interfécondité avec Sapiens. Mais Neandertal a souffert de sa croissance plus rapide que la nôtre et donc de son temps d’apprentissage plus court. Disons que le premier allait au collège et le second au lycée !

Luarea obiceiului

"În ceea ce mă priveşte, eu mi-am luat obiceiurile după o ghindă, pe care am încercat să o muşc şi am rămas fără doi dinţi din această pricină.
-Obiceiuri ca obiceiuri, mi-a zis mătuşa mea ursoaica, dar tu nu crezi că ar trebui să faci şi un pic de omor pe la albine ca să te înfrupţi din fagurele de miere?
Pe mine mă dureau încă dinţii rupţi în ghindă, aşa că puţin îmi păsa de fagurele de miere, aşa că gemând, ridicându-mi botul în sus, am zărit un stejar, şi pe o ramură a lui, o pasăre cu şapte capete, cu cinci aripi, cu un singur picior, şi pe deasupra, am zărit şi pe cer o cometă al cărei cap semăna întocmai cu chipul verişoarei mele Safta şi care avea o coadă atât de lungă, încât de multă vreme s-a terminat această poveste, iar coada ei, încă este, încă este, încă este."

Consequentialisms

'If no objection reveals any need for anything beyond consequences, then consequences alone seem to determine what is morally right or wrong, just as consequentialists claim. This line of reasoning will not convince opponents who remain unsatisfied by consequentialist responses to objections. Moreover, even if consequentialists do respond adequately to every proposed objection, that would not show that consequentialism is correct or even defensible. It might face new problems that nobody has yet recognized. Even if every possible objection is refuted, we might have no reason to reject consequentialism but still no reason to accept it. In case a positive reason is needed, consequentialists present a wide variety of arguments. One common move attacks opponents. If the only plausible options in moral theory lie on a certain list (say, Kantianism, contractarianism, virtue theory, pluralistic intuitionism, and consequentialism), then consequentialists can argue for their own theory by criticizing the others. This disjunctive syllogism or process of elimination will be only as strong as the objections to the alternatives, and the argument fails if even one competitor survives. Moreover, the argument assumes that the original list is complete. It is hard to see how that assumption could be justified. Consequentialism also might be supported by an inference to the best explanation of our moral intuitions. This argument might surprise those who think of consequentialism as counterintuitive, but in fact consequentialists can explain many moral intutions that trouble deontological theories.'

Orwell's 1984

In a startling u-turn from the habits of our ancestors, we’ve somehow lost the guts, the stamina, and above all the will to persist in the defense of such rights, those irreplaceable building blocks of individual autonomy.

Sartre's No Exit

Brave New World

'Mass production demanded the shift. Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning; truth and beauty can't. And, of course, whenever the masses seized political power, then it was happiness rather than truth and beauty that mattered. Still, in spite of everytung, unrestricted scientific research was still permitted. People still went on talking about truth and beauty as though they were the sovereign goods. Right up to the time of the Nine Years' War. That made them change their tune all right. What's the point of truth or beauty or knowledge when the anthrax bombs are popping all around you? That was when science first began to be controlled–after the Nine Years' War. People were ready to have even their appetites controlled then. Anything for a quiet life. We've gone on controlling ever since. It hasn't been very good for truth, of course. But it's been very good for happiness. One can't have something for nothing. Happiness has got to be paid for. You're paying for it, Mr. Watson–paying because you happen to be too much interested in beauty. I was too much interested in truth; I paid too."'