Verwandte Artikel zu The Hall of Uselessness: Collected Essays (New York...

The Hall of Uselessness: Collected Essays (New York Review Books Classics) - Softcover

Leys, Simon

 
9781590176207: The Hall of Uselessness: Collected Essays (New York Review Books Classics)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1590176200 ISBN 13: 9781590176207
Verlag: NYRB Classics, 2013

Inhaltsangabe

An NYRB Classics Original

Simon Leys is a Renaissance man for the era of globalization. A distinguished scholar of classical Chinese art and literature and one of the first Westerners to recognize the appalling toll of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, Leys also writes with unfailing intelligence, seriousness, and bite about European art, literature, history, and politics and is an unflinching observer of the way we live now.

The Hall of Uselessness is the most extensive collection of Leys’s essays to be published to date. In it, he addresses subjects ranging from the Chinese attitude to the past to the mysteries of Belgium and Belgitude; offers portraits of André Gide and Zhou Enlai; takes on Roland Barthes and Christopher Hitchens; broods on the Cambodian genocide; reflects on the spell of the sea; and writes with keen appreciation about writers as different as Victor Hugo, Evelyn Waugh, and Georges Simenon. Throughout, The Hall of Uselessness is marked with the deep knowledge, skeptical intelligence, and passionate conviction that have made Simon Leys one of the most powerful essayists of our time.

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Simon Leys (1935 - 2014) is the pen name of Pierre Ryckmans, who was born in Belgium and settled in Australia in 1970. He taught Chinese literature at the Australian National University and was Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Sydney from 1987 to 1993. Leys’s writing has appeared in The New York Review of Books, Le Monde, Le Figaro Littéraire, and other periodicals. Among his books are Chinese Shadows, The Death of Napoleon (forthcoming from NYRB Classics), Other People’s Thoughts, and The Wreck of the Batavia & Prosper. In 1996 he delivered the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Boyer lectures. He won many awards, including the Prix Renaudot, the Prix Femina, the Prix Guizot, and the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction.

Von der hinteren Coverseite

Simon Leys is a Renaissance man for the era of globalization. A distinguished scholar of classical Chinese art and literature and one of the first Westerners to recognize the appalling toll of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, Leys also writes with unfailing intelligence, seriousness, and bite about European art, literature, history, and politics and is an unflinching observer of the way we live now.
The Hall of Uselessness is the most extensive collection of Leys’s essays to be published to date. In it, he addresses subjects ranging from the Chinese attitude to the past to the mysteries of Belgium and Belgitude; offers portraits of André Gide and Zhou Enlai; takes on Roland Barthes and Christopher Hitchens; broods on the Cambodian genocide; reflects on the spell of the sea; and writes with keen appreciation about writers as different as Victor Hugo, Evelyn Waugh, and Georges Simenon.Throughout, The Hall of Uselessness is marked with the deep knowledge, skeptical intelligence, and passionate conviction that have made Simon Leys one of the most powerful essayists of our time.
The Hall of Uselessness is an illuminating compendium from a brilliant and quirky writer and an exemplary global voice.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Lies That Tell the Truth
 
            In art truth is suggested by false means.
                                    —EDGAR DEGAS
 
            Truth is only believed when someone has invented it well.
                                    —GEORGE SANTAYANA
 
            To think clearly in human terms you have to be impelled by a poem.
                                    —LES MURRAY
 
 
THIS ESSAY WAS ORIGINALLY an address to the annual conference
of the Supreme Court of New South Wales. where its title, at the
request of the organizers, was changed to 'Historical and Other Truths'
– which was deemed more appropriate for such a serious audience. For
judges Me supposed to be serious; indeed. don't they wear wigs and
gowns to convince us - and remind themselves - of their seriousness?
Serious people have little time for any form of fiction. With such a flippant
title, my talk was not likely to attract many listeners. Still, the
change left me slightly uneasy – since, strictly speaking, I am not a historian
– and I am glad to be able now to relinquish the false advertisement
of which I was somehow guilty.
 
My article carries three epigraphs. Most lectures, addresses – and
essays – are usually forgettable. Epigraphs should be memorable. My
readers will naturally forget this article, but they should remember the
epigraphs. The first one is by a painter, the second one by a philosopher.
the third one by a poet.
 
Painters, philosophers, poets, creative writers – and also inventors
and scientists – all reach truth by taking imaginative short-cuts. Let us
consider some of these.
 
Plato's dialogues remain the cornerstone of all Western philosophy.
Very often what we find at their core is not discursive reasoning but various
myths - short philosophical parables. Myth is the oldest and richest
form of fiction. It performs an essential function: 'what myth
communicates is not truth but reality; truth is always about something—
reality is what truth is about' (C.S. Lewis).
 
At roughly the same time as Plato in the West, ancient Daoist thinkers
in China also expressed their ideas in imaginative form. On the subject
that occupies us here – how do our minds reach truth – there is one
tale in Lie Zi that seems illuminating and fundamental.
 
In the time of the Warring States, horses were very important for
military reasons. The feudal lords employed the services of experts to
find good ones. Best of all was the super-horse (qian-li ma), an animal
which could run a thousand miles a day without leaving tracks and without
raising dust. Super-horses were most sought after, but they were
also very rare and hard to detect. Hence the need for highly specialized
experts; most famous among these was a man called Bole. Eventually
Bole became too old to pursue his field trips prospecting for super-horses.
Thus his employer, the Duke of Qin, asked him if he could recommend
another expert to carry on with this task. 'Yes,' said Bole. 'I
have a friend, a pedlar of firewood in the market, who is quite a connoisseur
of horses. ' Following Bole's advice. the duke dispatched this man
on a mission to find a super-horse. Three months later, the man
returned and reported to the duke: 'I have found one; it is in such-and-such
a place; it's a brown mare.' The duke sent his people to fetch the
animal, which proved to be a black stallion. The duke was not happy and
summoned Bole: That friend of yours – he does not seem to be much
of an expert: he could not even get the animal's sex and colour right!'
On hearing this, Bole was amazed:
 
“Fantastic! He is even better than myself, a hundred, a thousand
times better than myself! What he perceives is the innermost nature
of the animal. He looks for and sees what he needs to see. He ignores
what he does not need to see. Not distracted by external appearances,
he goes straight to the inner essence. The way he judges
horses shows that he should be judge of more important things than
horses.”
 
And, needless to say, this particular animal proved to be a super-horse
indeed, a horse that could run a thousand miles a day without leaving
tracks and without raising dust.
 
In reflecting on the ways by which our minds apprehend truth, you
may feel that a 2300-year-old Chinese parable is of only limited relevance.
But if so, let us consider something closer to hand: the mental
processes followed by modern Western science.
 
Claude Bernard, the great pathologist whose research and discoveries
were of momentous importance in the development of modern
medical science, one day entered the lecture hall where he was going to
teach and noticed something peculiar: various trays were on a table,
containing different human organs; on one of these trays, flies had gathered.
A common mind would have made a common observation, perhaps
deploring a lack of cleanliness in the room or instructing the
janitor to keep the windows shut. But Bernard's was not a common
mind: he observed that the flies had gathered on the tray which contained
livers – and he thought, There must be sugar there. And he discovered
the glycogenic function of the liver – a discovery that proved
decisive for the understanding and treatment of diabetes.
 
I found this anecdote not in any history of medical science, but in
the diaries of the greatest modern French poet, Paul Claudel. And
Claudel commented: 'This mental process is identical to that of poetical
writing ... The impelling motion is the same. Which shows that the primary
source of scientific thought is not reasoning, but the precise verification
of an association originally supplied by the imagination.'
 
Note that when I refer to 'poetry', I am taking this word in its most
fundamental sense. Samuel Johnson, in his monumental dictionary of
the English language, assigns three definitions to the word ' poet', in
decreasing order of importance: first, 'an inventor'; second, 'an author
of fiction'; and last, 'a writer of poems.'
 
Truth is grasped by an imaginative leap. This applies not only to
scientific thinking but also to philosophical thought. When I was a
naive young student in the first year of university, our Arts course
included the study of philosophy - a prospect that excited me much at
first, though I was soon disappointed by the mediocrity of our lecturer.
However, through family acquaintances I had the good fortune to
know personally an eminent philosopher of our time, who happened to
be also a kind and generous man. On my request, he drafted for me a
list of basic readings: one handwritten page with bibliographic references
of a selection of classic texts, modern works, histories of philosophy
and introductions to philosophy. I treasured this document;...

„Über diesen Titel“ kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Verlag
NYRB Classics
Erscheinungsdatum
2013
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1590176200
ISBN 13 
9781590176207
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
576
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
eucomply OÜ, Pärnu mnt
hello@eucompliancepartner.com

139b-14
Tallinn
11317
Estland