I just finished this one yesterday. I first read the Tao Te Ching forty or fifty years ago and at least once more since then. But this relatively new edition is far superior to those plain translations. This edition has the original Chinese text, a new translation taking into account some new discoveries of different versions of the text, plus a selection of 2,000 years of Chinese commentary. Wonderful book.
I'm about two-thirds of the way through this book, a collection of excerpts from John Ruskin's enormous output. His Modern Painters is in five volumes and he wrote about many, many subjects. Primarily an art critic he was a tireless advocate of Turner as the greatest landscape painter of all time. Lots of very detailed commentary on culture and society.
6 comments:
Bryan - I would imagine you would agree with the premise of these volumes that J. Horowitz reviews, i.e. the supremacy of Western art, esp. music? https://www.artsjournal.com/uq/2026/10/a-maverick-pedagogical-proposition.html
Yes, lots of interesting observations there. I'm about to do a post comparing the very different paths of music and literature in the 20th century in terms of their different versions of modernism and how they relate to the classical foundation.
Quite a reading stack, Bryan. Revisiting the Tao Te Ching after forty years sounds like a very different book the second time around, and a thousand pages of rhyming iambic pentameter is a brave undertaking. I hope The Unconsoled and Memoirs of Hadrian live up to the billing when you get to them.
Yes, the Spenser is a real challenge, one of the most difficult books I have ever read. The Unconsoled I am about halfway through and I find it dull and trivial, but perhaps the end will surprise me. I read the Yourcenar about forty years ago as well and I'm sure I will find it as interesting now. Haven't started it yet. When I was in my twenties I did a lot of serious reading, but then for a few decades I lapsed due to being just too busy. Now I have more time so I am reading more than ever.
I think I only got through Cantos 1 & 2 of Spenser and it was tough for Canto 1 but by Canto 2 it began to feel moderately accessible. But I never got farther than that.
I know you are formidably well-read! Only a very few even attempt The Faerie Queen. I just finished Canto VI in Book 2 this morning.
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