GOLO MANN

Hi, I am also re-reading works of Golo's father. What do you think of him? For me 'Death in Venice' was the work that changed my life when I was 17 and altered the way I feel. But I have never read it since fearing the over-whelming influence it exerts. The novel starts nr the Northern Friedhof. Aschenbach is walking towards Schwabing. I've been up there. The novel intimates death but the novel is really about decadence, a dying class of whom Aschenbach is one of the last intellectual defenders, author of The Abject and a treatise on art seriously compared to Schiller's 'Naive and Sentimental' (I've also read this tract).

If you don't like Golo Mann, can you suggest some German historians that you do like? There is always a need for people like GM, populisers who can write elegantly, have a certain command of their subject and can communicate with people. There is no need for every fact to be exact in a book like this. We are carried along by the force of argument, by the author's charisma, by the wisdom of his comments on certain historical personalities. At the end we may be none the wiser, but we have been entertained. The book is readable.

Gruss

Hi Paul,

I like Golo Mann too, I read this book in my youth. But Mann isn't a very good historian, because some of his "facts" aren't true, it is proven that he made many mistakes. I give you one example: G. Mann wrote that the German operation against Poland (the raid on a German radio station with German concentration camp prisoners in August 1939) had been organized by the SS, but we all know that the attack was carried out by KZ-prisoners. At the time Mann wrote his book this knowledge was already available. The German raid was the occasion for Hitler to start the 2nd world war and to attack Poland. He is a good Belles-letrist with a brilliant style who has written a book that is nice to read, but it is unexact and unhistorical.
Mann is very much credited and everything sounds very clear and reliable, but as a historian you may not cite him. He is not recognised as a historian because too many inaccuracies are to be found in his work.

Gruß
Armin

I'm reading Golo Mann's History of Germany. He is a fantastic historian with a wonderful, clear style and many very good points to make. He is also a gifted reader of philosophy, the sections on Schopenhauer, Marx, Hegel, Nietzsche and Lasselle are excellent primers on their subjects.

BAGLADY, CONTINUING DIALOGUE WITH URUGUAYAN SURREALIST, CARLOS FLEITAS

CF: Selling products is today's motto, not making films.
Movie you describe is to me the current lack of ideas in Hollywood, although they are some good ones but very few.
So 'can-movies' or pret-a-porter ones are the fad and profit. Hit the box-office whatever it takes...

http://reallybadmovies.blogspot.com/

Smart anyway semiotics may help up
Attached some more bad news for the planet and for folks. Wooopsss


Hi, just teaching IELTS this morning and we began to discuss the pros and cons of email when I said that I was sick of receiving spam advertising penis enlargement kits. Well everyone pretended not to know what one was until some bright spark chirped up, asking if enlargement could ever be used in any adverbial sense. What a pertinent question, I thought. I immediately chalked up all the consequential paradigms of 'enlargement' including its etymology. Flip, I was glad that someone takes learning English seriously.

P.M.

FREUD IN THE RAIN/SOMETHING FOR THE WEEKEND - DIALOGUE WITH URUGUAYAN SURREALIST, CARLOS FLEITAS

CF: Immigrants are not welcomed in Europe or in USA. Trouble in Europe that the "european population" is shrinking at an alarming rate, therefore in 50 years it will be a region of "oldies"". So inmigrants will take over...Funny how history works...

PM: Hi, nothing much to report. When I do email I just seem to spend time deleting junkmail, so I have allowed my internet time to recede quite a bit. Basically I regard it as another part of our culture of junk, of things that wouldnt awaken the interest of a half-dead mouse. That's a bit sad, so there. I discovered a statue of Sigmund Freud at the bottom of the hill I live on. Freud lived in Hampstead in 1939, just before his death. Getting to London was exceptionally difficult. His colleague Ernest Jones in London and Princess Marie Bonaparte (??) in Paris had to plead with the Nazi government. Unbelievably the Nazis allowed Freud to leave Vienna, which definitely tells us that Freud had some very powerful friends indeed. Perhaps Freud was irrelevant to them in terms of the war effort. As you know the Nazis regarded all Jews as criminals, by the fact of their race, so Freud wouldnt have been exempt from that. They practiced collective punishment.
bw

CF: No problem at all, I read always your emails with most attention. You are a good friend. I currently have some health trouble that somedays gives me a hard time. I am at home permanently and only go out to see the doctor So i am confined but i take the best of it, writing reading listening music, yesterday Bach, he was one of the greatest, reminds me of Nietzsche's ideal the blend between Apollo and Dyonisus, the perfect art work.

Have you ever been on a double-deck bus, seems pretty great. We do not have that kind of bus here.
I saw a couple of days ago a documentary concerning Lady Di, interesting. Anyway monarchy seems quite obsolete to me, and sometimes a school for scandal. Hard to tell why folks are so enthusiastic about it...


PM: Hi, sorry to disturb you from your slumbers. Today a friend Desmond came over to Hampstead, we went to the Heath for a dip in the pond. The pond was very cold indeed and took a bit of getting used to. We avoided the men only pond and went to the mixed pond. The Heath was v colourful today, with many groups and gatherings.

I found out that George Orwell worked in a 2nd hand bookshop nr the Heath and wrote 'Keep the Aspidistra Flying' from his experiences in Hampstead. After this he went to Spain where he fought for the Republic, writing 'Homage to Catalonia', possibly the greatest work of political science ever written, even if it doesnt pertain to be one. No it is an autobiographical novel but it really brings to life the conflict in Spain, providing a hard-bitten account of the war, penetrating as an arrow through the head on a cold winter's morning nr Epsom.
best wishes,
Your Comrade,
smewhere nr Hampstead, London

Ps my students name is Jamshid. He has bright red hair, very pale skin and always comes to class dressed in a suit. He was scared, I was told, possibly because my style of teaching is very direct, challenging the student to declare their interest in learning English. There are no passengers in my classes!

WALKING THE FREUD - DIALOGUE WITH URUGUAYAN SURREALIST, CARLOS FLEITAS

CF: Yes, everyone thinks that the country they live in is the center of the world, and that others such as LAm are but barbarians.
This is shallow thinking and ignorance. LAm is quite colorful and more diverse than Europe and maybe LAm people have more authentic things to say. Some have suffered a lot, a real lot and lots of human beings are extremely poor. Funny thing, in the UK half of the pets are obese...Can you think of something more immoral...
And Salvador yes great, its capital city Bahia is something beyond imagination. I do love Brazil, everything is full of contradictions and surprises.


PM: my student Milena told me about the beaches to the north of the cities, in Salvador and all around the Brazilian coast, are magnificent and probably far, far better than any beaches in Europe. I have two Colombian students, Camilla and Ximena and another Brazilian student, Jacqueline who attends infrequently. Generally they are livelier, friendlier than Europeans but they lack education in the European sense which is some knowledge of the past or literature or art. Of course they may regard us Europeans as an arrogant bunch of bastards, but I for one am always eager to learn more and now that I know about those beaches, I'm tempted to travel to Brazil, seek out the sun, relax and go swimming. I know that British people have little interest in LAm, apart from the Malvenas, and are probably only interested in those islands because of the resources of oil and gas that might be exploited in the near future. In a sense there's a blood for oil exchange, as long as it is not their upper-class blood, of course. The same holds true for Iraq which is now being forgotten about by the media. Even my students are surprised when I mention it and think that I am obsessed with it. Out of sight, out of mind. They have no concept of the unbelievable tide of humanity or even that some British people wish we werent there.


CF: Montevideo, what it is like. Well there are wonderful places (minor areas) and neighbourhoods that are terribly poor.
It has changed it's architecture for 60 or 70 years so there is nothing that is fluently, personally i dislike it most. Due to the fact of unemployment and underpaid jobs i can't leave the capital areas and go to small places by the sea which are scarcely populated and where i would truly like to be.


PM: Hola, took the students to the Museum on Thursday - a guy from Rome, 3 Spanish women (one from Zaragoza, Spain, a Colombian from Bogota and another Colombian from a minor city that I hadn't heard of). They seemed to enjoy it a lot, definitely one of the best things in London to go and see. I don't like the new flat I'm in, but hopefully I won't be there for very long. It's in Canning Town, one of the most abysmal/horrible areas in London and I want out of there as soon as possible. But it is possible for me to leave, since, as a keyworker I'm entitled to subsidy. This will enable me to live in the better, quieter areas of north and west London. I must sound like a snob but since I'm earning money I'd like to live somewhere that has facilities and not just hundreds of people milling around, playing music loudly and behaving like pathetic teenagers. (most of these people are men) Okay its clearly very vibrant but also dark and terrible, there is concrete everywhere, just mile upon mile of blank tenement where thousands of people are just stuffed in to tiny, dank pisos. of course its digusting but if the people of a certain area have dignity and intelligence then this will show in everything they do. what is Montevideo like?