Quotations on language as a city

Ralph Waldo Emerson:

Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone. ('Quotation & Originality' in Letters and Social Aims [Cambridge, MA: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1884], pp. 189-90; essay was composed c. 1840)

Fritz Mauthner:

Language came about like a big city. Room upon room, window upon window, flat upon flat, house upon house, street upon street, quarter upon quarter, and all that packaged into one another, tied together (Gershon Weiler, Mauthner's Critique of Language [London: Cambridge University Press, 1970], p. 109; Weiler is translating a passage from Mauthner's Beiträge zu einer Kritik der Sprache v. 1 [1901], p. 25)

Hugo von Hofmannsthal:

Below, the sleeping city. Places with endless significance, quite unlike reality; districts I've never seen, but which I know are thus and such. ("Dream Death" in The Lord Chandos Letter and Other Writings, tr. Joel Rotenberg [New York: New York Review Books, 2005], p. 13; the fragment was composed in 1892)

Julio Cortázar:

“Oh, the edge of the city,” Juan said. “Nobody knows where it is, you know.” “In any case [said Tell], the street turned out to be familiar to me because other people had already walked along it." (62: A Model Kit, tr. Gregory Rabassa [New York: Pantheon, 1972], pp. 65-6; appeared in Spanish in 1968)

Ludwig Wittgenstein:

Our language can be seen as an ancient city: a maze of little streets and squares, of old and new houses, and of houses with additions from various periods; and this surrounded by a multitude of new boroughs with straight regular streets and uniform houses. (Philosophical Investigations, tr. G. E. M. Anscombe [Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1958], s. 18)

W. G. Sebald:

If language may be regarded as an old city, full of streets and squares, nooks and crannies, with some quarters dating from far back in time while others have been torn down, cleaned up, and rebuilt, and with suburbs reaching further and further in to the surrounding country, then I was like a man who had been abroad a long time and cannot find his way through this urban sprawl anymore, no longer knows what a bus stop is for, or what a back yard is, or an street junction, an avenue or a bridge. (Austerlitz, tr. Anthea Bell [Vintage Canada, 2002; first published 2001], pp. 123-4)

Roundup of links to Austro-Hungarian outposts

'David. S. Luft’s evocative translations in Hugo von Hofmannsthal and the Austrian Idea: Selected Essays and Addresses 1906-1927 are a welcome addition to the lost literature of Central European modernism.'

From Strange Flowers: 'Trakl was born in Salzburg in 1887, his mother’s drug addiction meaning he was largely raised by a French nanny. Named Marie Boring, she was clearly anything but, introducing her young charge to poets such as Baudelaire and Rimbaud.'

More from Strange Flowers: Alfred Kubin took 'anti-industrialist visionary ideologies' and 'stretch[ed] them ad absurdum'. Kubin's entry at the Weird Fiction Review.

Abstract for an article by Genese Grill: 'Robert Musil’s 1937 address «Über die Dummheit» ['On Stupidity'] navigated a challenging subject in a treacherous climate for free speech and simultaneously affirmed Musil’s conception of the necessary symbiosis of aesthetics and ethics. This paper argues for a reading of the address and its preparatory notes wherein Musil’s gendered «Stupidity» (Die Dummheit) represents the ethical role of the artist, as poetic, non-conscripted voice – and, thus, of Musil himself – in a period of totalitarian brutality.'

Wera Ouckama-Knoop (1900-1919)

Source of above photo. Wera Ouckama-Knoop was a dancer who died young. Rilke, a friend of her parents, dedicated his Sonnets to Orpheus to her.

Adam Kirsch on a new translation of Hilda Spiel's biography of Fanny von Arnstein: 'It soon becomes clear, however, that Fanny von Arnstein is more the occasion for Spiel’s book than its subject. That subject is really the experience of the Jews during the German Enlightenment—say, between 1776, when the 18-year-old Fanny moved from her native Prussia to Austria, and 1814, the year of Napoleon’s downfall, when her house became one of the most glamorous meeting-places during the Congress of Vienna.'

From the publisher's site for the von Arnstein biography: 'Soon Fanny hosted an ever more splendid salon which attracted the leading figures of her day, including Madame de Staël, the Duke of Wellington, Lord Nelson, his lover Lady Hamilton and the young Arthur Schopenhauer.'

From Weird Fiction Review, Larry Nolen on Bruno Schulz: 'The dissolution of states at the end of World War I can be discerned in symbolic form, as the old order has collapsed and something new and chaotic has emerged to take its place.  Yeats in “Easter, 1916” might have proclaimed that a “terrible beauty is born,” but for Schulz there is more the sense of monstrosities being birthed.' From the same site, John Curran Davis' translation of Schulz's 'The Sanatorium at the Sign of the Hourglass'.

From Jacob Mikanowski's 2012 piece on Schulz in the LA Review of Books: 'The fiction of Bruno Schulz is alive with dead things. His stories all take place in the narrow landscape of his childhood: the small, provincial town of Drohobycz in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire.'

Gregor von Rezzori on his roots (from a 1988 interview in Bomb Magazine): 'I was born in Bukovina, Rumania. Before Rumania went into the war it was given to the Russians so I was already more or less a Russian although I still had a Rumanian passport and was living in Vienna at that time. When Bohemia was taken by the Russians I went to our ambassador in Berlin, who was a friend of the family, and I said, “What shall I do, what am I supposed to do?” He said, “Well, you are supposed to go home and find a new identity because you don’t exist."'

Rezzori (as Sir Roderick Crawford) with Johanna von Koczian in Bezaubernde Arabella (1959)

Source of above image. Rezzori's filmography at IMDb.

From Gregg Morris' review of Rezzori's Orient-Express: 'Rezzori is one of those unfashionable intellects whose rootlessness lead him to universalism rather than rancor. Though he now resides in Tuscany, he has published most of his work in German. During the Second World Was he was a broadcaster for British radio and parts of what is perhaps his best-known work, Memoirs of an Anti-Semite, he composed in English.'

From last year's item (by Lorna Scott Fox) on Rezzori in The Nation: 'Von Rezzori’s father was an Italo-Austrian nobleman, proficient in chemistry and the arts, with a sinecure in Bukovina, where after 1919, when the region passed to Romania, he pretended to uphold a teetering bastion of civilization but really stayed on for the hunting.'

Scott Walters on the English translation of Count Miklós Bánffy's Transylvanian Trilogy: 'Translator Patrick Thursfield, in his preface to the Arcadia edition, recounts learning about them by chance from his neighbor in Tangiers, Bánffy’s daughter Katalin Bánffy-Jelin, who had begun an English translation consisting of loosely bound pages partially mangled by her cat. A collaboration began, and the resulting publication, with a foreword by Patrick Leigh Fermor, won the 2002 Oxford-Weidenfeld prize.'

Andrew Cusack on Bánffy, 'The Tolstoy of Transylvania'. The 2010 entry on Bánffy at Neglected Books. From Max Egremont's 2013 review in the Wall Street Journal: 'Bánffy died destitute in Soviet-dominated Budapest in 1950. His life is a grim parable of central Europe's 20th century.'

Hilde Spiel & Thomas Bernhard  (1988)

 The source of the above photo has a translation of Spiel's impressions of her friendship with Bernhard.

A note on Jay Kirk's new article 'Bartók’s Monster' (in the Oct. issue of Harpers), which is about the Transylvanian roots of some of Bartók’s music: 'The tiny, teetotaling Bartók took his recording machine—the monster—across the sheep trails and into village courtyards of Maramureş and Székely Land, where he would “suck the songs” from the peasant fiddlers. He was entranced by the "indeterminate content structure” of the music. “Like Rumpelstiltskin,” writes Kirk, “he hurried back to Budapest to spin the bales of itchy straw into chaotic threads of Lydian gold.”'

'In Erwin Schrödinger and the Quantum Revolution, biographer John Gribbin follows the thread through the Austrian physicist’s fascinating, often eyebrow-raising life alongside scientific milestones.'

'Erich Wolfgang Korngold, born on 29 May, 1897 in Brno as the younger son of fierce Neue Presse music critic Julius Korngold, was a Wunderkind and shooting star of the declining Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. ... He left for Hollywood, to write first for Max Reinhardt and then under contract for Warner Brothers, a true musical “Romantic”, who is credited with creating the Hollywood sound.'

A gathering of the past -- weekend links

Professors & 4th-year graduates of philosophy at Lviv University (1904)

Source. Antoni Łomnicki is standing 3rd from left. (He was killed by Germans in the Massacre of the Lviv Professors.) Here's an article (pdf) about the people in the pic. Seated at the right is physicist and mathematician Marian Smoluchowski.

Anthea Bell's translation of Friedrich Torberg's Young Gerber is out from Pushkin Press (an excellent publisher whose website is not excellent). Here are two reviews. The book is about a tragedy in an Austrian school.

Speaking of which, Duncan Richter has a couple of posts on Musil's The Confusions of Young Törless. The novel was also the springboard for some reflections on value and culture.

Mr. Waggish has an essay on Musil's Man Without Qualities.

An interview with Susan Bernofsky, conducted while she was translating Gotthelf's Black Spider. David Auerbach (aka Mr. Waggish) says via Twitter that the book's release date is Oct. 8. It's strange that the NYRB site has no info about the book (neither does their Tumblr). The book (as Mr. Auerbach says) is on Amazon. Is it just me, or does the right half of the face on the cover look like Margaret Atwood?

Bookslut's review of Frierich Reck's Diary of a Man in Despair. It's also reviewed at the Guardian, by Common Reader, Futile Preoccupations, and Mookse and Gripes. This time, NYRB does have a site for the book. Reck, aka Friedrich Percival Reck-Malleczewen, died in Dachau. Here's a lengthy piece on him in German.

A review of Eduard Habsburg(-Lothringen)'s novel, Lena in Waldersbach.

Webern is 3rd from right

Source.

From David Wilson's review of Alain Badiou's Wittgenstein's Antiphilosophy: 'Badiou’s bombast finally testifies in defense of Wittgenstein. Not that Badiou admits that Wittgenstein might be right. But this uncharitable and incomprehensible critique shows it. For silence would say so much more.'

Wuthering Expectations has several posts on Austrian writers, on Bernhard, Broch, Hofmannsthal, and Stifter (twice).

On the death of Anton Webern.

On James Joyce in Trieste.

Here are some nice old and new photos of the country houses that Patrick Leigh Fermor came across in Transylvania and Fermor's postcard from Cluj.

Neglected Books Page has an entry on You Still Have Your Head, a book by Franz Schoenberner.

Review of a newly translated French biography of Émile Durkheim.

Llosa on why Proust is important for everyone.

A podcast of John Marenbon on Boethius.

This strikes me as depressing. The Journal of Happiness Studies published this paper, 'Arthur’s advice: comparing Arthur Schopenhauer’s advice on happiness with contemporary research'. According to the Abstract, 'We summarize [Schopenhauer's] recommendations and compare these with conditions for happiness as observed in present day empirical research. Little of the advice appears to fit current research on conditions for happiness. Following Schopenhauer’s advice would probably make us unhappier, even if we had the same neurotic personality.' It's open access.

The latest on Kakania

Mr. Waggish has a new post about Robert Musil, in which a new book on Musil by Genese Grill is discussed.

The Monist's submissions deadline for its Musil issue has just passed. Achille Varzi, a philosophy professor at Columbia University (who was a tutor in my first logic class), has contributed a paper on the Confusions of Young Törleß, a draft of which is available as a pdf.

At Wuthering Expectations, Amateur Reader is on a pre-WWI Austrian lit kick, with posts on Hofmannsthal, Zweig, and Schnitzler.

From the Vienna Review: 'It is perhaps less well-known that [Arthur] Schnitzler also wrote for the cinema. Intrigued by the new medium and its language – shifting perspectives, the use of close-ups and montage techniques – Schnitzler wrote altogether nine film scripts based on his works and left a number of sketches for new projects.'

How did I not know that Stefan Zweig's post-secondary education was in philosophy? He completed a dissertation on Hippolyte Taine. It was supervised by Friedrich Jodl (source), who also supervised Otto Weininger.

Roger Boylan's review of Joseph Roth: a Life in Letters. And a review of Roth's Emperor's Tomb in the Economist (the latest of Michael Hofmann's Roth translations).

Douglas Glover on Thomas Bernhard's The Loser. And a neat recounting of Bernhard's relation to his long-suffering publisher.

M.A.Orthofer's new review of Franz Werfel's Pale Blue Ink in a Lady's Hand (reviewed last year by Brooke Allen),  and Liel Leibovitz's review of Werfel's The Forty Days of Musa Dagh.

There's a new website devoted to Hermann Ungar, who attended the same school in Brno as Ernst Weiss.

From an interview with translator Mark Corner about Jaroslav Hašek: 'I have a colleague at the university where I teach in Brussels, who always says to me, "If you want a new idea, read an old book." ... I think that Hašek is still very relevant, and the sense of being a traveller in a disordered universe does bear some parallels with the modern day.'

Bits & pieces

Lawrence Welk introduced us to many wunnerful tunes, including this stirring rendition of 'One toke over the line' by Gail & Dale (that's Dick Dale), originally by Brewer and Shipley. (I missed this when it was linked on Boing Boing in '08.)

Loads o' book lists.

I like digging up neglected, good books, and two more lists of them have appeared.

"Anyway. What? Yes. Anyway. One study says that e-mail is more corrosive to your I.Q. than pot."

Vanished Persian army found.

That von Hofmannsthal was oh! so precious.

Video of London in 1927. (ht Crooked Timber)

In preparation for Remembrance Day, explore WWI poetry. (ht Books, Inq.)

Update (Nov. 10): A paper charging Bernard Malamud with plagiarism. (ht Legal Theory Blog)

Cafe Imperial

I wasn't much interested in Cafe Imperial. It seemed to be just an extension of a ritzy hotel, so I didn't even venture inside. Too bad, since it turns out to have a very interesting history.

First, Elias Canetti gives a mean-spirited anecdote about his meeting there with Stefan Zweig. I don't believe this anecdote to be accurate -- Canetti's autobiography is not that reliable, especially when he's talking about someone he didn't like. He evidently didn't like Zweig. Here's the relevant quotation:

"Soon after my return I ran into [Stefan] Zweig at the Cafe Imperial. He was sitting alone in one of the back rooms, holding his hand over his mouth to hide the absence of teeth [due to dental work]. Though he did not like to be seen in that condition, he beckoned me over to his table and bade me be seated. 'I've heard the whole story from Broch,' he said. 'You've met Joyce. ... Get Joyce to write a preface. Then your book will get attention.'" (Elias Canetti, The Play of the Eyes, p. 186)

Cafe Imperial also appears in Robert Musil's Diaries, but (again) Musil doesn't have much of interest to say about a cafe: "Yesterday, or the day before yesterday, spent some time with Morgenstern in the Cafe Imperial." (Robert Musil, Diaries, entry for March 26, 1930, p. 366)

More interestingly, Ludwig Wittgenstein met at this cafe with Ludwig von Ficker during the latter's visit to Vienna (so that Wittgenstein could give away part of his family's fortune to worthy artists under Ficker's guidance). Here's Ficker's description of a meeting with Wittgenstein on July 24, 1914:

"We met in Cafe Imperial, where there ensued a somewhat strenuous, but positively stimulating conversation between [Ludwig Wittgenstein] and the hard-of-hearing builder [Adolf Loos] on the still contoversial Haus am Michaelerplatz on questions of modern architecture, which seemed to interest Wittgenstein." (Ludwig von Ficker describing a meeting on July 24, 1914 at Cafe Imperial; quoted from Wittgenstein in Vienna, Allan S. Janik & Hans Veigl [Springer, 1998], p. 123)

The cafe in the Hotel Imperial was initially called Cafe Frohner. It's mentioned by Fritz Wittels, a med student and budding psychoanalyst in Freud's circle. According to Edward Timms, Wittels was also part of Karl Kraus' circle in 1907-08. Timms summarizes Wittels' description as follows:

"Later they [Kraus and Wittels] would go on to the Cafe Frohner, situated in the luxurious Hotel Imperial. Kraus was a heavy smoker, but never took a drop of alcohol. He was a gifted conversationalist and on good days, Wittels recalls, he enchanted everyone. All kinds of people -- senior government officials as well as artists, actors, and attractive girls -- would come to his table; and Kraus made them feel they were the 'centre of the universe'. Later, feeling the need to escape from the stifling atmosphere of bourgeois coffee houses, Kraus and his circle would move on to lower-class cafes patronised by prostitutes and bookies." (Edward Timms, 'The 'Child-Woman': Kraus, Freud, Wittles, and Irma Karczewska', in Vienna 1900: from Altenberg to Wittgenstein, ed. E. Timms and R. Robertson [Edinburgh University Press, 1990], p. 88)

Cafe Imperial was favoured by musicians; Mahler was a regular, as were Schonberg, Berg and Webern. According to Janik and Veigl, the Imperial was also visited by Freud, Hofmannsthal, Werfel, Rilke, Bruckner, Wagner, Brahms and Trotsky -- which raises a question: Is there a Viennese cafe from Trotsky's time in the Habsburg capital in which he did not luxuriate, excogitate or vegetate?

Update: I just read that Stalin was in Vienna briefly in early 1913 with Lenin, Bukharin and Trotsky. I can't find evidence that Stalin frequented any cafes. In his excellent Stalin biography, Simon Sebag Montefiore reports that Stalin, like Hitler, liked to take walks in the park around the Schonbrunn Palace.

Montefiore quotes Trotsky's description of his first encounter with Stalin: "I was sitting at the table beside the samovar in the apartment of Skobelev ... in the ancient capital of the Habsburgs [...] when suddenly the door opened with a knock and an unkown man entered. He was short ... thin ... his greyish-brown skin covered in pockmarks ... I saw nothing in his eyes that resembled friendliness [...] Then, as silently as he had come, he left, leaving a very depressing but unusual impression on me." (Simon Sebag Montefiore, Young Stalin [Weidenfield & Nicolson, 2007], p. 275)