Untergang des Abendlandes
I was half-way through a post that started out bitching about this huge fucking appellate brief assignment that's due on Monday, and devolved into introspective reminiscence about literary history and criticism in general and my thesis in particular, but it got kind of out of hand and pulling it together is frankly the last thing I should be spending my time on right now.
Suffice it to say that in German, at least if you're speaking old-fashioned German with its disdain for imported Latin derivations, the word for the West as in the Western Canon is Abendland. Which, being interpreted, means Evening Land. Awesome.
So someday when I have time and inclination, two things that rarely coincide for me, I'll tell you all about Erich Auerbach and his book Mimesis, which is the best book-about-other-books that I've ever encountered.
*Subject line: Decline of the West. See? So much cooler in German. Oswald Spengler knew what he was about.
Suffice it to say that in German, at least if you're speaking old-fashioned German with its disdain for imported Latin derivations, the word for the West as in the Western Canon is Abendland. Which, being interpreted, means Evening Land. Awesome.
So someday when I have time and inclination, two things that rarely coincide for me, I'll tell you all about Erich Auerbach and his book Mimesis, which is the best book-about-other-books that I've ever encountered.
*Subject line: Decline of the West. See? So much cooler in German. Oswald Spengler knew what he was about.
posted by ridley at 2/21/2006 02:27:00 PM
1 Comments:
The speaking of German aside, I'd always been led to believe Spengler-old-boy hadn't the slightest clue what he was about. But then, I haven't read anything of his, so I could be very wrong.
--Catherine
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