David Lynch Draws a Map of Twin Peaks (to Help Pitch the Show to ABC)

in Maps, Television | October 23rd, 2015

Twin Peaks Map

“How did this even get on the air?” Both the die-hard fans and bewil­dered haters asked that ques­tion about Twin Peaks, David Lynch and Mark Frost’s sur­re­al tele­vi­sion dra­ma that famous­ly aired on ABC prime­time in 1990 and 1991. That such an uncon­ven­tion­al vision — and one real­ized, at least through­out the first sea­son, with such thor­ough com­mit­ment — ever made it to the main­stream air­waves now seems like a his­tor­i­cal achieve­ment in and of itself. So how, giv­en the stul­ti­fy­ing rig­ors of the enter­tain­ment indus­try, did Lynch and Frost actu­al­ly sell this pack­age of cryp­tic dreams, back­ward speech, small-town sav­agery, a mur­dered home­com­ing queen, and damn fine cher­ry pie?

First, Lynch drew a map. Know­ing that no TV exec­u­tive would under­stand Twin Peaks with­out under­stand­ing Twin Peaks, the fic­tion­al Wash­ing­ton town which gives the sto­ry its set­ting and title, he drew what you see above. Nigel Holmes includ­ed it in his out-of-print Pic­to­r­i­al Maps, com­ment­ing that “the peaks of the title, and the town they name, are clear­ly vis­i­ble as white-topped moun­tains ris­ing out of the mod­eled land­scape.

By cre­at­ing a sense of place, Lynch made the town all the more believ­able. A straight­for­ward map would have been dull by com­par­i­son and might have sug­gest­ed that there was some­thing intrin­si­cal­ly inter­est­ing about the geog­ra­phy of the place. What was much more impor­tant to con­vey was the mood of the sto­ry, and it’s nice­ly cap­tured in Lynch’s quirky draw­ing.”

The book also includes a quote from Lynch him­self, on the util­i­ty of the map: “We knew where every­thing was, and it helped us decide what mood each place had, and what could hap­pen there. Then the char­ac­ters just intro­duced them­selves to us and walked into the sto­ry.” As any Twin Peaks fan will notice, the map iden­ti­fies a host of loca­tions ref­er­enced in the show, such as White Tail and Blue Pine moun­tains (the peaks them­selves), Ghost­wood Nation­al For­est, and Lucky High­way 21. But “can you locate Spark­wood and 21, One-Eyed Jack’s and The Great North­ern?” asks fan site Wel­come to Twin Peaks. And if the much-dis­cussed 21st-cen­tu­ry Twin Peaks revival comes to fruition, will it dust off this trusty ref­er­ence doc­u­ment and revive the askew but deep sense of place we (or at least some us) savored the first time around?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Title Sequence, Recre­at­ed in an Adorable Paper Ani­ma­tion

Play the Twin Peaks Video Game: Retro Fun for David Lynch Fans

Ele­men­tary School Stu­dents Per­form in a Play Inspired by David Lynch’s Twin Peaks

Col­in Mar­shall writes else­where on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Stream 61 Hours of Orson Welles’ Classic 1930s Radio Plays: War of the Worlds, Heart of Darkness & More

in Film | October 23rd, 2015

oson welles spotify

There has rarely ever been an artist more ful­ly in com­mand of as many dif­fer­ent art forms as Orson Welles dur­ing his height — the late 1930s and ear­ly 40s. He rev­o­lu­tion­ized the stage, radio and cin­e­ma before the age of 26 and became a house­hold name in the process.

Welles’s first brush with nation­al fame came at the age of 20 when he staged an all-black pro­duc­tion of Mac­beth in Harlem. The 1936 play was ground­break­ing both for its strik­ing sets and its dar­ling inter­pre­ta­tion that set Shakespeare’s bloody trag­ic in Haiti. But per­haps the most remark­able aspect of this pro­duc­tion was that it was done entire­ly with non-actors. Through sheer charis­ma and force of will, Welles coaxed and cajoled ter­rif­ic per­for­mances out of day labor­ers and fac­to­ry work­ers.

Two years lat­er, in 1938, Welles end­ed up on the cov­er of TIME Mag­a­zine for his stag­ing of Julius Cae­sar. He set the play in con­tem­po­rary fas­cist Italy. It was a bold choice that turned a 340 year-old play into a work of great polit­i­cal urgency.

That same year, Welles also man­aged to freak out the nation with his bril­liant, wild­ly irre­spon­si­ble adap­ta­tion of War of the Worlds. Welles staged the beloved sci-fi nov­el as if it were a news report. The broad­cast cap­tured the dra­ma and ter­ror of an emerg­ing calami­ty all too well; it caused a pub­lic pan­ic.

Now you can lis­ten to that infa­mous radio play along with 61 hours of oth­er radio plays, all cre­at­ed by Welles for his 1930s radio show, The Mer­cury The­atre on the Air. The Spo­ti­fy playlist, embed­ded below, includes A Christ­mas Car­ol, Heart of Dark­ness and even a rehearsal for Julius Cae­sar. Check it out. And if you need Spo­ti­fy’s free soft­ware, down­load it here.

Or if Spo­ti­fy isn’t your thing, you can lis­ten to anoth­er big col­lec­tion of Welles’s radio dra­mas below at archive.org. Start stream­ing that col­lec­tion here:

The noto­ri­ety of Welles’ radio work land­ed him one of the most gen­er­ous movie con­tracts in Hol­ly­wood stu­dio his­to­ry. This is dou­bly impres­sive because, at this stage in his life, Welles had no idea how to actu­al­ly make a film. The result­ing movie was a barbed, thin­ly veiled film à clef of one of the most pow­er­ful men in Amer­i­ca – William Ran­dolph Hearst. This proved to be a ter­ri­ble career move; Hearst’s wrath derailed Welles’s career for years but it did pro­duce a pret­ty good movie – Cit­i­zen Kane.

Via Cri­te­ri­on

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Young Orson Welles Directs “Voodoo Mac­beth,” the First Shake­speare Pro­duc­tion With An All-Black Cast: Footage from 1936

Orson Welles’ Icon­ic War of the Worlds­Broad­cast (1938)

Lis­ten to Eight Inter­views of Orson Welles by Film­mak­er Peter Bog­danovich (1969–1972)

Watch Orson Welles’ The Stranger Free Online, Where 1940s Film Noir Meets Real Hor­rors of WWII

The Hearts of Age: Orson Welles’ Sur­re­al­ist First Film (1934)

Orson Welles Explains Why Igno­rance Was His Major “Gift” to Cit­i­zen Kane

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Hear the World’s Oldest Surviving Written Song (200 BC), Originally Composed by Euripides, the Ancient Greek Playwright

in History, Music | October 22nd, 2015

Imag­ine if you will that it is the year 4515, and future peo­ple slow­ly begin exca­vat­ing the musi­cal remains of mil­len­nia past. Now add the fol­low­ing wrin­kle to this sce­nario, cour­tesy of clas­sics schol­ar Armand D’Angour: “all that sur­vived of the Bea­t­les songs were a few of the lyrics, and all that remained of Mozart and Verdi’s operas were the words and not the music.” Would it be pos­si­ble to recov­er the rhythms and melodies from these scraps? Wouldn’t this music be for­ev­er lost to his­to­ry?

Not nec­es­sar­i­ly, D’Angour tells us; we could “recon­struct the music, redis­cov­er the instru­ments that played them, and hear the words once again in their prop­er set­ting.” Giv­en the inex­act, spec­u­la­tive nature of much ancient his­to­ry, I imag­ine the recon­struct­ed Bea­t­les might end up sound­ing noth­ing like them­selves, but then again, now that schol­ars have begun to recov­er the music of ancient Greek tragedy from a few frag­ments of text, sure­ly those future his­to­ri­ans could remake “Love Me Do”

Recon­struct­ing Don Gio­vani might be a lit­tle trick­i­er, and that’s often the scale aca­d­e­mics like D’Angour are work­ing with, since not only the love-poems of Sap­pho, but also “the epics of Homer” and “the tragedies of Sopho­cles and Euripides—were all, orig­i­nal­ly, music. Dat­ing from around 750 to 400 BC, they were com­posed to be sung in whole or part to the accom­pa­ni­ment of the lyre, reed-pipes, and per­cus­sion instru­ments.” This much we all like­ly know to some extent.

D’Angour goes on to describe in detail how schol­ars like him­self use “pat­terns of long and short syl­la­bles” in the sur­viv­ing verse to deter­mine musi­cal rhythm, and new rev­e­la­tions about ancient Greek vocal nota­tion and tun­ing to recon­struct ancient melody.

Orestes

The ear­li­est sur­viv­ing musi­cal doc­u­ment “pre­serves a few bars of sung music” from fifth-cen­tu­ry trage­di­an Euripi­des’ play Orestes. A “noto­ri­ous­ly avant-garde com­pos­er,” Euripides—scholars presume—“violated the long-held norms of Greek folk-singing by neglect­ing word-pitch.” You can see the papyrus frag­ment above, writ­ten around 200 BC in Egypt and called “Katolo­phy­ro­mai” after the first word in the “stasi­mon,” or choral song. Above the words, notice the vocal and instru­men­tal nota­tion schol­ars have used to recon­struct the music. The lines describe Orestes’ guilt after mur­der­ing his moth­er:

I cry, I cry, your mother’s blood that dri­ves you mad, great hap­pi­ness in mor­tals nev­er last­ing, but like a sail of swift ship, which a god shook up and plunged it with ter­ri­ble trou­bles into the greedy and dead­ly waves of the sea.

This trans­la­tion comes from “Greek Recon­struc­tion­ist Pagan­ism” site Bar­ing the Aegis, who also describe the song’s rhythm, Dochmius, and mode, Lydi­an, with a help­ful expla­na­tion for non-spe­cial­ists of what these terms mean. They also fea­ture the live per­for­mance of the stasi­mon at the top of the post, just one inter­pre­ta­tion by Spy­ros Giasafakis and Evi Ster­giou of neo­folk band Dae­mo­nia Nymphe. Below it, hear anoth­er inter­pre­ta­tion by Pet­ros Tabouris and Nikos Kon­stan­tinopou­los. And just below and at the bot­tom of the post are two more ver­sions of the ancient song.

Giv­en Euripi­des’ exper­i­men­tal­ism, we can’t expect that this recon­struct­ed song would be rep­re­sen­ta­tive of most ancient Greek music. “How­ev­er, we can rec­og­nize that Euripi­des adopt­ed anoth­er prin­ci­ple,” set­ting words to falling and ris­ing cadences accord­ing to their emo­tion­al import. As D’Angour puts it, “this was ancient Greek sound­track music,” and it was appar­ent­ly so well-received that his­to­ri­an Plutarch tells a sto­ry about “thou­sands of Athen­ian sol­diers held pris­on­er” in Syra­cuse: “those few who were able to sing Euripi­des’ lat­est songs were able to earn some food and drink.”

As for “the great­est of ancient poet-singers,” Homer, it seems accord­ing to recon­struc­tions by the late Pro­fes­sor Mar­tin West of Oxford that Home­r­ic tunes were “fair­ly monot­o­nous,” explain­ing per­haps why “the tra­di­tion of Home­r­ic recita­tion with­out melody emerged from what was orig­i­nal­ly a sung com­po­si­tion.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the “Seik­i­los Epi­taph,” the Old­est Com­plete Song in the World: An Inspir­ing Tune from 100 BC

Lis­ten to the Old­est Song in the World: A Sumer­ian Hymn Writ­ten 3,400 Years Ago

Hear the World’s Old­est Instru­ment, the “Nean­derthal Flute,” Dat­ing Back Over 43,000 Years

Free Cours­es in Ancient His­to­ry, Lit­er­a­ture & Phi­los­o­phy

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

A Fittingly Strange Animation of What’s Going On Inside Charles Manson’s Mind

in Animation, Random | October 22nd, 2015

In 1968, Charles Man­son lis­tened to The Bea­t­les’ White Album and came away think­ing that Amer­i­ca was on the verge of an apoc­a­lyp­tic race war between whites and blacks. As Man­son imag­ined it, the race war would be trig­gered by a shock­ing, chaot­ic event called “Hel­ter Skel­ter” — a named bor­rowed from a song on the White Album. And, like most mega­lo­ma­ni­acs, Man­son put him­self at the cen­ter of the dra­ma. In the sum­mer of 1969, Man­son had mem­bers of his cult com­mit a series of infa­mous mur­ders in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, hop­ing that African-Amer­i­cans would be blamed and the race war would begin. Instead, a lengthy police inves­ti­ga­tion led to Man­son’s arrest on Decem­ber 2, 1969 and his con­vic­tion soon there­after, mak­ing him then, and now, one of Amer­i­ca’s noto­ri­ous inmates.

Through the 1980s, Man­son, even though behind bars, remained a very pub­lic fig­ure, giv­ing high pro­file inter­views to Tom Sny­der, Char­lie Rose, and Ger­al­do Rivera. But then, he began to fade from view, for what­ev­er rea­sons. For the past 20 years, we haven’t heard much from him. Until this came along. Above, you can watch Leah Shore’s ani­ma­tion of nev­er-before-heard phone con­ver­sa­tions between Charles Man­son and Mar­lin Maryn­ick (who lat­er pub­lished a best-sell­ing biog­ra­phy called Charles Man­son Now). Fit­ting­ly strange, the ani­ma­tion reminds us of the very odd things going on inside Man­son’s mind. Off kil­ter as ever, he goes in all kinds of unex­pect­ed direc­tions.

via Vice

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Time Neil Young Met Charles Man­son, Liked His Music, and Tried to Score Him a Record Deal

Tim­o­thy Leary’s Wild Ride and the Fol­som Prison Inter­view

Aleis­ter Crow­ley: The Wickedest Man in the World Doc­u­ments the Life of the Bizarre Occultist, Poet & Moun­taineer

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Watch Vincent Price Turn Into Edgar Allan Poe & Read Four Classic Poe Stories (1970)

in Film, Television | October 22nd, 2015

Can you have a Hal­loween with­out Edgar Allan Poe? Sure you can — but here at Open Cul­ture, we don’t rec­om­mend it. So that you need not go Poe-less on this, or any, Hal­loween night, we’ve fea­tured not just his com­plete works free to down­load, but oth­er mate­r­i­al like the ani­mat­ed adap­ta­tion of “The Tell-Tale Heart” as well as ani­ma­tions of his oth­er sto­ries; Poe read­ings by the likes of Christo­pher Lee, James Earl Jones, and Iggy Pop; and Orson Welles’ inter­pre­ta­tion of his work on an Alan Par­sons Project album.

We also believe that you should­n’t have to endure a Price­less Hal­loween — that is to say, a Hal­loween with­out Vin­cent Price. Though he proved his ver­sa­til­i­ty in a wide vari­ety of gen­res through­out his long act­ing career, his­to­ry has remem­bered Price first and fore­most for his work in hor­ror, no doubt thanks in large part to his pos­ses­sion of a voice per­fect­ly suit­ed to the ele­gant­ly sin­is­ter. It also made him an ide­al teller of Poe’s inge­nious­ly macabre tales, which you can expe­ri­ence for your­self in the record­ings we’ve post­ed of Price read­ing Poe, a playlist which also includes read­ings by Price’s equal­ly ver­sa­tile Basil Rath­bone.

Rath­bone may also have got to read Poe, the work, but despite his huge num­ber of roles on stage and screen, he nev­er actu­al­ly played Poe, the man. But Price did, in the spe­cial An Evening of Edgar Allan Poe, the clos­est any of us will get to an audi­ence with the trou­bled, bril­liant, and ter­ri­fy­ing­ly inven­tive writer him­self. In it, Price-as-Poe takes the stage and, over the course of an hour, weaves into his per­for­mance four of his most endur­ing sto­ries: “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Sphinx,” “The Cask of Amon­til­la­do,” and “The Pit and the Pen­du­lum.” Go on, join Edgar Allan Poe in his draw­ing room this Hal­loween by hav­ing Price bring him to life on your screen — it will guar­an­tee you a mem­o­rable hol­i­day evening.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load The Com­plete Works of Edgar Allan Poe on His Birth­day

Watch the 1953 Ani­ma­tion of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” Nar­rat­ed by James Mason

Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” Read by Christo­pher Walken, Vin­cent Price, and Christo­pher Lee

Christo­pher Lee (R.I.P.) Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” and From “The Fall of the House of Ush­er”

Iggy Pop Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s Clas­sic Hor­ror Sto­ry, “The Tell-Tale Heart”

5 Hours of Edgar Allan Poe Sto­ries Read by Vin­cent Price & Basil Rath­bone

James Earl Jones Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” and Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”

Hear Orson Welles Read Edgar Allan Poe on a Cult Clas­sic Album by The Alan Par­sons Project

Edgar Allan Poe Ani­mat­ed: Watch Four Ani­ma­tions of Clas­sic Poe Sto­ries

The Fall of the House of Ush­er: Poe’s Clas­sic Tale Turned Into 1928 Avant Garde Film, Script­ed by e.e. cum­mings

Col­in Mar­shall writes else­where on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Charles Darwin’s Kids Draw on Surviving Manuscript Pages of On the Origin of Species

in Art, Science | October 22nd, 2015

darwin kid 2

Charles Dar­win not only cre­at­ed the the­o­ry of evo­lu­tion, but he appar­ent­ly dab­bled often in human biol­o­gy and sex­u­al­i­ty. To wit: he fathered 10 chil­dren with his cousin Emma Wedg­wood, six boys and four girls. It was this bois­ter­ous brood that filled the Darwin’s house in rur­al Kent, Eng­land, while Charles worked in his study on the first draft of On the Ori­gin of Species by Means of Nat­ur­al Selec­tion, or the Preser­va­tion of Favoured Races in the Strug­gle for Life, his ground­break­ing, world-chang­ing work.

darwin kid 1

Last year we report­ed on the huge effort to dig­i­tize 30,000 pages of the scientist’s writ­ing at the Dar­win Man­u­scripts Project at the Amer­i­can Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry. Among Dar­win’s many papers, one thing the dig­i­tiz­ers have found, curi­ous­ly enough, is art­work drawn by his chil­dren, often on pages of Dar­win’s man­u­scripts.

Dar­win had no real use for the orig­i­nal man­u­script once gal­ley proofs came back from the pub­lish­er. So one can imag­ine father Charles giv­ing his kids the only worth­while paper in the house to draw on. It seems flip­pant now, but at the time, it was per­fect­ly nor­mal.

darwin kid 3

Accord­ing to the New York­er, they’ve found 57 draw­ings in total, nine of them on the back of pages from Ori­gin of Species. Only 45 man­u­script pages out of 600 from that book sur­vive, and those nine are because of his kids. You can find a whole sec­tion at the Dar­win Man­u­scripts project web­site ded­i­cat­ed to the draw­ings of the Dar­win kids.

Researchers sur­mise that the major­i­ty of the art comes from three of the 10 chil­dren, Fran­cis, George, and Horace, all of whom went into the sci­ences as adults. The illus­tra­tions are col­or­ful and wit­ty, drawn in pen­cil and some­times col­ored in water­col­or. Birds and but­ter­flies are drawn and col­ored with atten­tion to detail. Some crea­tures are imag­i­nary, like the green fish with legs car­ry­ing an umbrel­la, and there are short sto­ries about fairies and bat­tles too.

Over­all, the draw­ings show a Dar­win who was a fam­i­ly man and not a reclu­sive sci­en­tist. We’re just glad that the kids let dad do his work in rel­a­tive silence.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The British Library Puts Online 1,200 Lit­er­ary Trea­sures From Great Roman­tic & Vic­to­ri­an Writ­ers
What Did Charles Dar­win Read? See His Hand­writ­ten Read­ing List & Read Books from His Library Online

19th Cen­tu­ry Car­i­ca­tures of Charles Dar­win, Mark Twain, H.M. Stan­ley & Oth­er Famous Vic­to­ri­ans (1873)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Franz Kafka Says the Insect in The Metamorphosis Should Never Be Drawn; Vladimir Nabokov Draws It Anyway

in Literature | October 21st, 2015

Metamorphosis

If you’ve read Franz Kafka’s The Meta­mor­pho­sis in Eng­lish, it’s like­ly that your trans­la­tion referred to the trans­formed Gre­gor Sam­sa as a “cock­roach,” “bee­tle,” or, more gen­er­al­ly, a “gigan­tic insect.” These ren­der­ings of the author’s orig­i­nal Ger­man don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly miss the mark—Gregor scut­tles, waves mul­ti­ple legs about, and has some kind of an exoskele­ton. His char­woman calls him a “dung bee­tle”… the evi­dence abounds. But the Ger­man words used in the first sen­tence of the sto­ry to describe Gregor’s new incar­na­tion are much more mys­te­ri­ous, and per­haps strange­ly laden with meta­phys­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance.

Trans­la­tor Susan Bernof­sky writes, “both the adjec­tive unge­heuer (mean­ing “mon­strous” or “huge”) and the noun Ungeziefer are negations—virtual nonentities—prefixed by un.” Ungeziefer, a term from Mid­dle High Ger­man, describes some­thing like “an unclean ani­mal unfit for sac­ri­fice,” belong­ing to “the class of nasty creepy-crawly things.” It sug­gests many types of vermin—insects, yes, but also rodents. “Kaf­ka,” writes Bernof­sky, “want­ed us to see Gregor’s new body and con­di­tion with the same hazy focus with which Gre­gor him­self dis­cov­ers them.”

It’s like­ly for that very rea­son that Kaf­ka pro­hib­it­ed images of Gre­gor. In a 1915 let­ter to his pub­lish­er, he stip­u­lat­ed, “the insect is not to be drawn. It is not even to be seen from a dis­tance.” The slim book’s orig­i­nal cov­er, above, instead fea­tures a per­fect­ly nor­mal-look­ing man, dis­traught as though he might be imag­in­ing a ter­ri­ble trans­for­ma­tion, but not actu­al­ly phys­i­cal­ly expe­ri­enc­ing one.

Yet it seems obvi­ous that Kaf­ka meant Gre­gor to have become some kind of insect. Kafka’s let­ter uses the Ger­man Insekt, and when casu­al­ly refer­ring to the sto­ry-in-progress, Kaf­ka used the word Wanze, or “bug.” Mak­ing this too clear in the prose dilutes the grotesque body hor­ror Gre­gor suf­fers, and the sto­ry is told from his point of view—one that “mutates as the sto­ry pro­ceeds.” So writes Dutch read­er Fred­die Oomkins, who fur­ther observes, “at the phys­i­cal lev­el Gre­gor, at dif­fer­ent points in the sto­ry, starts to talk with a squeak­ing, ani­mal-like voice, los­es con­trol of his legs, hangs from the ceil­ing, starts to lose his eye­sight, and wants to bite his sister—not real­ly help­ful in deter­min­ing his tax­on­o­my.”

nabokov_on_kafka

Dif­fi­cul­ties of trans­la­tion and clas­si­fi­ca­tion aside, Russ­ian lit­er­ary mas­ter­mind and lep­i­dopter­ist Vladimir Nabokov decid­ed that he knew exact­ly what Gre­gor Sam­sa had turned into. And, against the author’s wish­es, Nabokov even drew a pic­ture in his teach­ing copy of the novel­la. Nabokov also heav­i­ly edit­ed his edi­tion, as you can see in the many cor­rec­tions and revi­sions above. In a lec­ture on The Meta­mor­pho­sis, he con­cludes that Gre­gor is “mere­ly a big bee­tle” (notice he strikes the word “gigan­tic” from the text above and writes at the top “just over 3 feet long”), and fur­ther­more one who is capa­ble of flight, which would explain how he ends up on the ceil­ing.

All of this may seem high­ly dis­re­spect­ful of The Meta­mor­pho­sis’ author. Cer­tain­ly Nabokov has nev­er been a respecter of lit­er­ary per­sons, refer­ring to Faulkner’s work, for exam­ple, as “corn­cob­by chron­i­cles,” and Joyce’s Finnegans Wake as a “pet­ri­fied super­pun.” Yet in his lec­ture Nabokov calls Kaf­ka “the great­est Ger­man writer of our time. Such poets as Rilke or such nov­el­ists as Thomas Mann are dwarfs or plas­tic saints in com­par­i­son with him.” Though a saint he may be, Kaf­ka is “first of all an artist,” and Nabokov does not believe that “any reli­gious impli­ca­tions can be read into Kafka’s genius.” (“I am inter­est­ed here in bugs, not hum­bugs,” he says dis­mis­sive­ly.)

Reject­ing Kafka’s ten­den­cies toward mys­ti­cism runs against most inter­pre­ta­tions of his fic­tion. One might sus­pect Nabokov of see­ing too much of him­self in the author when he com­pares Kaf­ka to Flaubert and asserts, “Kaf­ka liked to draw his terms from the lan­guage of law and sci­ence, giv­ing them a kind of iron­ic pre­ci­sion, with no intru­sion of the author’s pri­vate sen­ti­ments.” Unge­heueres Ungeziefer, how­ev­er, is not a sci­en­tif­ic term, and its Mid­dle Ger­man lit­er­ary origins—which Kaf­ka would have been famil­iar with from his stud­ies—clear­ly con­note reli­gious ideas of impu­ri­ty and sac­ri­fice.

With due respect to Nabokov’s for­mi­da­ble eru­di­tion, it seems in this instance at least that Kaf­ka ful­ly intend­ed impre­ci­sion, what Bernof­sky calls “blurred per­cep­tions of bewil­der­ment,” in lan­guage “care­ful­ly cho­sen to avoid speci­fici­ty.” Kafka’s art con­sists of this abil­i­ty to exploit the ancient strat­i­fi­ca­tions of lan­guage. His almost Kab­bal­is­tic treat­ment of signs and his aver­sion to graven images may con­ster­nate and bedev­il trans­la­tors and cer­tain nov­el­ists, but it is also the great source of his uncan­ny genius.

The Meta­mor­pho­sis was pub­lished 100 years ago this month. You can find copies of the text in our col­lec­tions of Free eBooks and Free Audio Books.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art of Franz Kaf­ka: Draw­ings from 1907–1917

The Meta­mor­pho­sis of Mr. Sam­sa: A Won­der­ful Sand Ani­ma­tion of the Clas­sic Kaf­ka Sto­ry (1977)

Vladimir Nabokov (Chan­nelled by Christo­pher Plum­mer) Teach­es Kaf­ka at Cor­nell

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 15 ) |

The History of Modern Art Visualized in a Massive 130-Foot Timeline

in Art | October 21st, 2015

If you vis­it­ed The Tate Mod­ern in recent years, per­haps you saw the large, 130-foot art instal­la­tion cov­er­ing a con­course wall. Cre­at­ed by illus­tra­tor Sara Fanel­li, the “Tate Artist Time­line” pro­vid­ed muse­um­go­ers with a sprawl­ing roadmap show­ing the major artis­tic move­ments and impor­tant artists of the 20th cen­tu­ry, mov­ing from Art Nou­veau to more con­tem­po­rary Graf­fi­ti Art.

artist timeline

Nowa­days, you can revis­it Fanel­li’s edu­ca­tion­al time­line by pur­chas­ing a copy in a hand­some book for­mat. You can also watch the time­line play out in the video above.

Or, hap­pi­ly we’ve been informed by the Tate, there’s now an updat­ed, inter­ac­tive ver­sion installed in the muse­um. The video below gives you a pre­view:

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy, from 600 B.C.E. to 1935, Visu­al­ized in Two Mas­sive, 44-Foot High Dia­grams

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy Visu­al­ized

6,000 Years of His­to­ry Visu­al­ized in a 23-Foot-Long Time­line of World His­to­ry, Cre­at­ed in 1871

5‑Minute Ani­ma­tion Maps 2,600 Years of West­ern Cul­tur­al His­to­ry

10 Mil­lion Years of Evo­lu­tion Visu­al­ized in an Ele­gant, 5‑Foot Long Info­graph­ic from 1931

4000 Years of His­to­ry Dis­played in a 5‑Foot-Long “His­tom­ap” (Ear­ly Info­graph­ic) From 1931

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

The Maligned Impressionist Painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir Illustrates Emile Zola’s Gritty Novel L’Assommoir (1878)

in Art, Books | October 21st, 2015

renoir 6

We’ve all been to a muse­um with that friend or fam­i­ly mem­ber who just doesn’t “get” mod­ern art and sug­gests it’s all a con. Con­cep­tu­al art? Abstract expres­sion­ism? What is that?! Impres­sion­ism? Who wants blur­ry, poor­ly drawn paint­ings?! Arrgh!

Hey, maybe some of us are that friend or fam­i­ly mem­ber. Maybe our com­plaints are even more specific—maybe some of us are mem­bers of a “cul­tur­al jus­tice” move­ment called “Renoir Sucks at Paint­ing.” Maybe we show up at the Boston Muse­um of Fine Arts with signs par­o­dy­ing the car­toon­ish­ly ter­ri­ble West­boro Bap­tist Church (“God Hates Renoir”) and demand­ing, with as much force as one can with a par­o­dy sign, that the Renoirs be removed from the com­pa­ny of wor­thi­er objets d’art.

A - Renoir 4

One crit­i­cal dif­fer­ence between the typ­i­cal art hater and the Renoir Sucks crew: the lat­ter do not object to Pierre-Auguste Renoir because his work is too hard to “get,” but because it’s too easy. Renoir, they say, paint­ed “trea­cle” and “deformed pink fuzzy women.” As art crit­ic Peter Schjel­dahl writes in The New York­er, “Renoir’s win­some sub­jects and efful­gent hues jump in your lap like a friend­ly pup­py.” Renoir is so far from avant-garde that Schjel­dahl can peg his “exag­ger­at­ed blush and sweet­ness” as an exam­ple of the “pop­u­lar appeal” that “advanced the bour­geois cul­tur­al rev­o­lu­tion that was Impres­sion­ism.” Ouch.

This kind of assess­ment gets no help from the painter’s great-great grand­daugh­ter, Genevieve, who responds to crit­ics by quot­ing sales fig­ures: “It is safe to say,” she writes, “that the free mar­ket has spo­ken and Renoir did NOT suck at paint­ing.” By this mea­sure, Thomas Kinkade and Sis­ter Maria Inno­cen­tia Hum­mel were also artis­tic genius­es. The charges of “aes­thet­ic ter­ror­ism” against Renoir come right out of the icon­o­clasm that func­tions in the art world as both mean­ing­ful dis­sent and suc­cess­ful gim­mick (cf. Mar­cel Duchamp, or Ai Weiwei’s con­tro­ver­sial, gallery-fill­ing attacks on revered cul­tur­al arti­facts.) But per­haps the hon­est ques­tion remains: does Renoir Suck at Paint­ing?

Let us reserve judg­ment and take a look at anoth­er side of Renoir, a rarely seen excur­sion into book illustration—specifically the four illus­tra­tions he made for an 1878 edi­tion of Emile Zola’s nov­el L’Assommoir (“The Dram Shop”). Described by the Art Insti­tute of Chica­go as “grit­ti­ly real­is­tic,” Zola’s nat­u­ral­ist depic­tion of what he called “the inevitable down­fall of a work­ing-class fam­i­ly in the pol­lut­ed atmos­phere of our urban areas” pro­voked many of its read­ers, who regard­ed the book as “an unfor­giv­able lapse of taste on the part of its author.” It showed Parisians “an aspect of cur­rent life that most found fright­en­ing and repul­sive.” Nonethe­less, the nov­el became a pop­u­lar suc­cess.

Auguste-Renoir-Zola-Assommoir-Gervaise-et-Lantier-au-cafe-1024x721

The four black-and-white engrav­ings here—made from Renoir’s orig­i­nal drawings—are the impres­sion­ist’s con­tri­bu­tion to Zola’s ill­lus­trat­ed nov­el. The choice of Renoir as one of sev­er­al artists for this edi­tion seems an odd one. (Zola, a friend of the painter’s, approached him per­son­al­ly.) Then, as now, Renoir had a rep­u­ta­tion for sun­ny opti­mism: “he always looks on the bright side,” remarked one con­tem­po­rary. Renoir’s “pref­er­ence for cre­at­ing images of beau­ty,” writes The Art Insti­tute of Chica­go, “made the illus­tra­tion of the par­tic­u­lar­ly seedy pas­sages of the nov­el prob­lem­at­ic, and some of the result­ing draw­ings lack con­vic­tion.”

Instead of suc­cumb­ing to the novel’s grim tone, Renoir’s orig­i­nal ren­der­ings, like the “loose wash draw­ing” in “warm, brown ink” at the top of the post, “gen­tly sub­vert­ed the dark under­tones of Zola’s text.” Below the orig­i­nal draw­ing, see the engrav­ing that appeared in the book. Book blog Adven­tures in the Print Trade con­cedes the plates “are of vary­ing qual­i­ty” and sin­gles out the illus­tra­tion just above as the most suc­cess­ful one, since “the sub­ject-mat­ter is per­fect for Renoir, and the whole scene is brim­ming with life.”

Renoir 1

As you can see from the two images at the top of the post, the trans­la­tion from Renoir’s draw­ings to the final book engrav­ings left many of his fig­ures blurred and obscured, and intro­duce a dark heav­i­ness to work under­tak­en with a much soft­er, lighter touch. Do these illus­tra­tions add any­thing to our under­stand­ing of whether Renoir Sucks at Paint­ing? Who can say. It’s true that here, as in many of his well-known paint­ings, “the com­po­si­tions tend to be slack,” as Schjel­dahl writes. Nonethe­less, the Art Insti­tute of Chica­go auda­cious­ly judges the brown ink wash draw­ing at the top of the post “one of the most impor­tant draw­ings the artist pro­duced dur­ing the years of high Impres­sion­ism.”

A - Renoir 2

They only add to my appre­ci­a­tion of Renoir, who does not, I think, suck. Even if his work can be, as Schjel­dahl says, “high glu­cose,” I would argue that his sweet­ness and light pro­vide just the right approach to Zola, whose nov­els, like those of oth­er nat­u­ral­ists such as Theodore Dreis­er or Thomas Hardy, con­tain much more than a hint of sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Aston­ish­ing Film of Arthrit­ic Impres­sion­ist Painter, Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1915)

Hen­ri Matisse Illus­trates 1935 Edi­tion of James Joyce’s Ulysses

The Post­cards That Picas­so Illus­trat­ed and Sent to Jean Cocteau, Apol­li­naire & Gertrude Stein

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Free Today: Watch Online the Pioneering Films of the Late Chantal Akerman

in Film | October 21st, 2015

Those who watch and dis­like Chan­tal Aker­man’s best-known film, Jeanne Diel­man, 23 quai du Com­merce, 1080 Brux­elles, often com­plain that “noth­ing hap­pens” in it. But in my expe­ri­ence of intro­duc­ing it — nay, evan­ge­liz­ing for it — to friends, it usu­al­ly only takes a sol­id view­ing or two of that 1975 three-hour-and-twen­ty-minute tale of a Bel­gian sin­gle moth­er’s days and nights spent cook­ing (a short clip of which you can see above), clean­ing, and pos­si­bly engag­ing in pros­ti­tu­tion to feel — or at least in the imme­di­ate after­math of view­ing, feel — that in no movie but Jeanne Diel­man, 23 quai du Com­merce, 1080 Brux­elles does any­thing tru­ly hap­pen. Every oth­er movie plays, by com­par­i­son, as if on fast-for­ward, or like a set of filmed Clif­f’s Notes.

Clear­ly, Aker­man saw, and real­ized, a wider sto­ry­telling poten­tial in cin­e­ma than do most film­mak­ers. So much worse the loss, then, when she died ear­li­er this month, leav­ing behind a fil­mog­ra­phy con­sist­ing of not just her ear­ly mas­ter­piece Jeanne Diel­man, which she direct­ed at just 25 years of age, but a vari­ety of fea­ture films and shorts made between 1968 and this year. As a trib­ute, the cinephile-beloved home video com­pa­ny The Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion has, for a very lim­it­ed time, made all of their Aker­man films free to view on Hulu (unfor­tu­nate­ly, for view­ers in cer­tain ter­ri­to­ries only), includ­ing 1978’s Les ren­dezvous d’An­na, embed­ded just above, 1972’s Hotel Mon­terey and La cham­bre, 1975’s Je tu il elle, 1976’s News from Home…

… and of course, Jeanne Diel­man. If you plan to enjoy a free Aker­man marathon on Hulu thanks to Criteron, you’d bet­ter do it soon, since they’ll only remain free to view through the next day. And do invite all your most cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly adven­tur­ous friends to join your side, as with most auteur films, the inter­est that does­n’t lie in watch­ing them lies in argu­ing about their mer­its after­ward. You can hear one such fun con­ver­sa­tion on a 2011 episode of The Cri­te­ri­on­cast, a pod­cast ded­i­cat­ed to films released by the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion, just above. It actu­al­ly fea­tures yours tru­ly as the spe­cial guest, dis­cussing Jeanne Diel­man with the reg­u­lar pan­elists. Do you side with the likes of an Aker­man par­ti­san like me, or does your opin­ion most close­ly resem­ble one of the oth­ers who does­n’t take quite such a rich expe­ri­ence from their every view­ing? Today, you can find out where you stand on this and oth­er of Aker­man’s fas­ci­nat­ing works for free. And you can always find many more free films in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Ambi­tious List of 1400 Films Made by Female Film­mak­ers

120 Artists Pick Their Top 10 Films in the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion

Slavoj Žižek Names His Favorite Films from The Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion

What Films Should Get Into The Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion? Video Series “Three Rea­sons” Makes the Case

Col­in Mar­shall writes else­where on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

105 Animated Philosophy Videos from Wireless Philosophy: A Project Sponsored by Yale, MIT, Duke & More

in Education, Philosophy | October 20th, 2015

You may remem­ber that we fea­tured Wire­less Phi­los­o­phy, an open access phi­los­o­phy project cre­at­ed by Yale and MIT, back in 2013 when it first got start­ed. Wi-Phi, for short, has kept on keep­ing in with its mis­sion of pro­duc­ing free, infor­ma­tive and enter­tain­ing ani­mat­ed videos meant to intro­duce a host of philo­soph­i­cal issues. Our own Josh Jones called it “a nec­es­sary ser­vice to those just begin­ning to wade out into the sea of The Big Ques­tions” in 2013, and now, in 2015, you can wade in from a wider expanse of the Big Ques­tion coast­line than ever before. There are cur­rent­ly 105 Wiphi videos in total.

At the top of the post, you can watch a whole playlist of Wi-Phi’s videos on cog­ni­tive bias­es, which add up to a sur­pris­ing­ly thor­ough half-hour primer on the forces that knock our think­ing askew, from the “alief” (an auto­mat­ic or habit­u­al men­tal atti­tude, as opposed to a delib­er­ate belief) to ref­er­ence depen­dence and loss aver­sion to what we might per­haps describe as a meta-bias amus­ing­ly called the GI Joe fal­la­cy (the ten­den­cy for our bias­es to stick around even when we should know bet­ter). Just above, we have Wi-Phi’s three-part guide to the good life, as exam­ined by Pla­to, Aris­to­tle, and Kant.

Both of those playlists do come with a cer­tain prac­ti­cal­i­ty, at least by philo­soph­i­cal stan­dards: who, after all does­n’t want to think more cor­rect­ly (or at least less incor­rect­ly), and who does­n’t want to live the good life (or at least a bet­ter life than they live now)? But the hard­er core of casu­al phi­los­o­phy enthu­si­asts — always a demand­ing group — should rest assured that Wiphi also offers video series on more abstract or his­tor­i­cal philo­soph­i­cal top­ics, such as the sev­en-part playlist on clas­si­cal the­ism above. Dig deep­er into their Youtube chan­nel and you’ll find more sim­ple but not sim­plis­tic lessons on the phi­los­o­phy of math­e­mat­ics, lan­guage, ancient Chi­na, and much more.

The list of uni­ver­si­ty stake­hold­ers in Wire­less Phi­los­o­phy nowa­days includes, we should note, Duke, Uni­ver­si­ty of Mass­a­chu­setts at Amherst, and U. Toron­to, in addi­tion to Yale and MIT. Plus, you’ll find that profs from oth­er uni­ver­si­ties have con­tributed to the video col­lec­tion. For exam­ple, Chris Sur­prenant (Uni­ver­si­ty of New Orleans) cre­at­ed the videos on Pla­to, Aris­to­tle, and Kant. Also find com­plete cours­es taught by Sur­prenant on our list of Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es, a sub­set of our list, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Intro­duc­ing Wire­less Phi­los­o­phy: An Open Access Phi­los­o­phy Project Cre­at­ed by Yale and MIT

The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life: A Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast

Phi­los­o­phy Bites: Pod­cast­ing Ideas From Pla­to to Sin­gu­lar­i­ty Since 2007

Phi­los­o­phize This!: The Pop­u­lar, Enter­tain­ing Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast from an Uncon­ven­tion­al Teacher

Down­load 90 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es and Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life

Take First-Class Phi­los­o­phy Lec­tures Any­where with Free Oxford Pod­casts

Col­in Mar­shall writes else­where on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |


« Newer Entries | Older Entries »

  • Great Lectures

  • About Us

    Open Culture scours the web for the best educational media. We find the free courses and audio books you need, the language lessons & educational videos you want, and plenty of enlightenment in between.


    Advertise With Us

  • Great Recordings

  • Book Lists By

  • Syllabi

  • Favorite Movies

  • Archives

  • Search

    • Quantcast
    Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.