"He dared to think and believe what other brave men would have shrunk from contemplating. He He was an adventurer in the intellectual and the spiritua"He dared to think and believe what other brave men would have shrunk from contemplating. He He was an adventurer in the intellectual and the spiritual as well as the physical world and it was this combination of interests, actively followed, which made him unique, one of the rarest personalities ever seen on earth." - Byron Farwell, Burton: A Biography of Sir Richard Francis Burton
While not an academic, it is hard not to think of him as a professional historian. Over a 40 year period he published 14 books, mostly focused on the Victorian period of exploration and war, mostly published by Norton and Viking.
The book isn't a hagiography. Burton had many faults, many short-comings, many quirks and Farwell highlights those as well as his brilliance and bravery. I can't give it my highest ratings for biographies simply because while I adore both Burton and Farwell, this isn't up to the level of Robert A Caro, Edmund Morris, or say David W. Blight. It was really good, just not great. The narrative drive of the book is sidetracked by Burton himself who jumps from place to place, ship to ship, idea to idea.
That said, it is a fantastic start to exploring Burton's character and to gain insight into England during its Victorian period in Africa, South America, and the Middle East. Points should also be given to not ignoring Burton's wife and her role in Burton's life....more
"A gnostic says little, but inside he is full of mysteries." - Rumi
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God I love Rumi. Obviously, I'm not the only one. But beyond just poetry, I "A gnostic says little, but inside he is full of mysteries." - Rumi
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God I love Rumi. Obviously, I'm not the only one. But beyond just poetry, I have always loved the mystical side of the major religions. Sufism, Zen, the Kabbalists, and gnostic anything. I think there is a truth that floats in the dance and patter of thy mystics that the dogmatic and the bureaucratic impulses of religion miss. Still, it isn't just Rumi's take on God (although I could make an argument that ALL his poems thread back to God), but his take on friendship, love, sex, wine, nature, etc., that all stand out. Rumi feels like a silk strand that connects the earth to the divine. It twists and flutters, but never breaks. His words just dance and remind us that the divine exists and the divine is closer than we imagine.
I read this book right as the Coronavirus hit, but previous to this recent apocalypse, I took my wife and kids to Istanbul and one of the highlights was watching the dervishes in Galata twirl as the poetry of Rumi was chanted in a small, beautiful space, men spinning to God while the world seemed ready to veer into chaos.
* I should also note that I went back and forth on whether to give this translation 4 or 5 stars. It is very approachable, but it also seems (again, I'm not a translator so I'm relying on those who know and comparing poems to other translations) to have muted a bit of the Islamic nature of the poetry. At once, he makes the poems more approachable, but also misses some of the point. So, Rumi I give 5 stars, but the translation drops it to 4 stars. At least on this spin....more
"If we interpret philosophy not as metaphysics but as any large perspective of human affairs, as a generalized view not only of the cosmos and the min"If we interpret philosophy not as metaphysics but as any large perspective of human affairs, as a generalized view not only of the cosmos and the mind but as well of morals, politics, history, and faith, Shakespeare is a philosopher, profounder than Bacon, as Montaigne is deeper than Descartes; it is not form that makes philosophy." -- Will Durant, The Age of Reason Begins
A great survey of the start of the Age of Reason (1559 to 1648). Will Durant (with Ariel Durant) continues to amaze me. Some parts drag just a bit, but for a survey this large, I'm constantly impressed that I'm rarely bored. His passion for people, history, philosophy and art jumps off every page. Volume VII starts with Queen Elizabeth and Shakespeare and ends with Descartes.
"(Only) the writer knows what his book contains." - Saadi, The Manner of the Drvishes
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Charles David Kimbrell has collected about 49 stories of Sa"(Only) the writer knows what his book contains." - Saadi, The Manner of the Drvishes
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Charles David Kimbrell has collected about 49 stories of Saadi from 'The Tales of the Gulestan'. I'm limited by my exposure to Islamic poetry and Sufi literature. I'm also limited because I haven't read the complete Tales of the Gulestan. I did like the sentiment and have always been attracted to the mystical components of the major faiths (whether they are the Christian ascetics, Jewish Kabbalists, or Muslim Sufi). This collection feels both known and unknown, apart and part, of a tradition I am familiar with. Certainly, some of Saadi of Shiraz's best works: Gulestan (aka Rose Garden) and Bustan (The Orchard) have probably influence many Western writers.
I spent my sophomore and junior years in HS in Izmir, Turkey. Since then I've loved the Dervishes and Sufi mystics. They feel, for me, like I'm spiritually at home. The further I stray from fundamentalist edges of religion, the more comfortable I am in the gnostic, mystical mountains of those same traditions.
As Saadi would say: "The vision of the righteous is between absoute clarity and obscurity."...more
"But a nation, like an individual, can be too sensible, too prosaically sane and unbearably right." - Will Durant, Our Oriental Heritage
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I jumped"But a nation, like an individual, can be too sensible, too prosaically sane and unbearably right." - Will Durant, Our Oriental Heritage
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I jumped into this series with not a small amount of skepticsm. How can you not be skeptical of a project that is basically 10,000 pages, in 11 volumes, totalling about 4 million words? But I was curious. This series is ubiquitous in used bookstores. I was more than curious. It almost seemed stupidly large. That was a selling point. It also seemed nearly (11/12) designed for a year-long big book quest. My worries increased when a friend of mine suggested I abandon my copy back to a "little free library or used bookstore". But I figured I'd give Vol 1 a shot. I was apprehensive because a History of Civilization written in 1935 is going to come from a completely different perspective than the one I'm used to from contemporary historians (academic or otherwise). But that same worry also made me curious. The fact that this series was published over forty years (Vol 1 = 1935; Vol 11 = 1975) made me interested to see if/how the Durant's approach to history changed from pre-WWII to post-Vietnam.
Vol 1: "Our Oriental Heritage" is 938 pages that span:
I. The Establishment of Civilization - pages 1 to 110 II. The Near East (Sumeria, Babylon, Egypt, Assyria, Judea, Persia, etc) - 111 to 386 III. India and Her Neighbors - 387 t0 634 IV. The Far East - 635 to 824 V. Japan - 825 to 944
The introduction almost turned me off. Durant's almost causal use of "savage" and "primative" to discuss early man and civilization irritated me, and there were brief periods where I was worried Durant was going to emerge as a fangirl of eugenics. But I also had to remember this was written by an American, white male intellectual in the middle of the 30s, almost 80 years ago. It is also a book aimed at the general reader not the academic. I kept on reader, because once engaged I'm an indulgent reader. And... it got better. Actually, it became quite good. I enjoyed his style. I felt Durant was (as much as an outsider can be) fair to most of his subjects. I enjoyed his horde of historical truisms/maxims/aphorisms that he sprinkled willy-nilly throughout the volume. I felt, after reading Vol I, like I learned a lot. It was just ambitous enough, broad enough, and interesting enough to warrent me continuing to Vol II next month. There was plenty of fluff, and I'm sure academics in any of the areas he covered could shake up his views considerably, but like Durant said: "most of history is guessing, and the rest is predjudice"
Some of my other favorite of Durant's historical aphorisms in Vol I, Section 1 The Establishment of Civilization:
"Societies are ruled by two powers: in peace by the word, in crisis by the sword" (22). "Time sanctifies everything" (24). "Liberty is a luxury of security; the free individual is a product and a mark of civilization" (29). "To transmute greed into thrift, violence into argument, murder into litigation, and suicide into philosophy has been part of the task of civilization" (53). "men are more easily ruled by imagination than by science" (56). "It is the tendency of gods to begin as ogres and to end as loving fathers" (63). "In the end a society and its religion tend to fall together, like a body and soul, in a harmonious death" (71). "Possibly every discovery is a rediscovery" (107)....more
"We recognize ourselves in the true image of other believers, in the Qur'an or Torah. We believers encourage each other over the barriers raised by pe"We recognize ourselves in the true image of other believers, in the Qur'an or Torah. We believers encourage each other over the barriers raised by people who do not wish any of us well." - Garry Wills, What the Qur'an Meant
It is one of the first books (I've read) that uses heavily The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary. As other have noted, the title is a bit misleading. Part I of the book actually looks at Why It Matters; Part II looks at What the Qur'an means.
This is not a complete exegesis of the Qur'an and isn't meant to be. It is a look at a book that is viewed as scipture by about 1/4 of the world, by a believer from another faith tradition (Catholic). Wills is trying to be fair and generous. He looks at the Qur'an using the same skills he uses with the Bible. He looks at what others have written, academic resources, and the text. He tries to distill the text from both how the faith is practiced in History and how it is practiced by extremists now and puts into context some of the most tortured verses, showing parallels from the Torah and the New Testament.
I liked his approach, his tone, and his agenda. While I'm skeptical of most faiths (often even of my own) I am drawn often to writers who can talk about religion without condesencion or without being too hot (zealous, biased) or cold (abstract, clinical). Faith and belief are powerful aspects of our humanity. We need to view others (both belivers and nonbelivers) with respect. Often, we need to use care to insure that we aren't spreading rumors and false narratives about other traditions or people. We need to follow the Golden Rule in how we define others. Define them with the same charity we would like to be defined by. I don't want my faith tradition defined by polygamists who marry underage children, and I'm certain 95 percent of Muslims would prefer to no have their traditions defined by their most extreme elements. I'm certain many Christians would prefer that their faith wasn't defined by the Duggers or Westboro baptists either....more
1. Sindbad the Sailor [the frame] - ★★ 2. The Valley of Diamonds [2nd voyage] - ★★★★ 3. The Black Giant [3rd voyage] - ★★★ 4. The Cannibal King [4th voyage] - ★★★★
The editors of this edition did a fine job of keeping the feeling of the frame story, linking the last three through the beginning. I loved "Thousand and One Nights" as a kid (and Richard Burton's translation as a teenager). Returning to Sindbad as an adult, I enjoyed the style and absurd BIGNESS of the stories of Sindbad (I will never question James Bond's luck again). I even enjoyed how each of the stories was built on the same framework. It reminded me of certain popular television series and cartoons. We love to be entertained, and sometimes we even want a bit of predictability in our entertainments. You know what you are going to get when reading a tale of Sindbad the Sailor:
1. Sindbad leaves Baghdad (by-way-of Basra) in search of fortune on a ship. 2. Something happens on the journey 3. He loses everything 4. He finds himself in a strage land, among strange beasts/people 5. His friends are killed 6. Through his wiles he escapes 7. He finds himself among other people. 8. He ends up, through a combination of fortune and his wits, making a fortune 9. He returns to Baghdad, gives money to his family and the poor...more
"He tried not to think of his position, and to find oblivion not only in the poetry of warfare, but also in wine." - Leo Tolstoy, Hadji Murad
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Yea"He tried not to think of his position, and to find oblivion not only in the poetry of warfare, but also in wine." - Leo Tolstoy, Hadji Murad
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Years ago I read Tolstoy's semi-autobiographical The Cossacks. It is an excellent account of his time in the Caucasus during the last stages of the Caucasian War. It was a fascinating novel, published in 1862, and considered by Turgenev to be one of his favorite works by Tolstoy. Hadji Murad, conversely, comes later in Tolstoy's life but covers the same period. Hadji Murad was published in 1917. It was one of Tolstoy's last works and the character of Hadji Murad is drawn beautifully. It isn't a complicated novella. It is simple. It is beautiful. Like a flower in the road. Like a song sung alone at night.
Some of what I love about this novel is the contrasts between Madji Murad and his comrades and the Russian military and aristocracy. Tolstoy doesn't mince words. He's too old and too well regarded to care. My recommendation would always be to read both. Read Cossacks first, but follow it up with Hadji Murad.
I've now read all of his novels. And most of his novellas. I've still got to get to The Devil, The Forged Coupon, and Family Happiness (and a ton of his short stories, fables, plays, and philosophical works). Don't take me yet 2020. ...more