Monthly Archives: May 2015

A Friend Ingrained

In certain very powerful, “deep” friendships you enter a stage where you not only spend time with your friend but you embody them by adopting some of their clothes, gestures, words, and preferences. Some times it is noticeable, others it … Continue reading

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What does an Archive Do (as opposed to Hold)?

Για μια συστηματική αρχειακή προβληματική Βασίλης Λαμπρόπουλος [Presentation, with bibliography, in a panel on the politics of the archive.] Ομιλία που γράφτηκε για την εκδήλωση «Αρχειακές πολιτικές και εθνική κουλτούρα» του κύκλου συζητήσεων «Κ. Π. Καβάφης» στη Στέγη Γραμμάτων και Τεχνών, Ίδρυμα Ωνάση, … Continue reading

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What does “Collected,” as in “Collected Works,” Mean?

Yesterday I had a wonderful conversation with Will Stroebel, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan, about his dissertation-in-progress, which contributes to Book Studies by examining the materiality of literary production and circulation … Continue reading

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a Cycle of Flower Songs (10 – Aznavour)

Flowers are not natural — they are imaginary, and that is why they feel so gratifyingly real.  They do not exist as such but they provide a well-tempered vocabulary of affections that grow between us and those we grandly love.  … Continue reading

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a Cycle of Flower Songs (9 – Schubert)

Schubert’s “Die Blumensprache“/The Language of Flowers D519 (1818) is a song about flowers as a language — not as a repertoire of signs and symbols but as a system of signification.  As this video argues, flowers constitute a complex code. … Continue reading

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a Cycle of Flower Songs (8 – PiL)

What if Don José returned her flower to Carmen, encouraging her to celebrate with her toreador his victory?  If Parsifal pushed Kundry into the magician’s arms?  If Butterfly kept her son and sent Pinkerton back to his American wife?  If … Continue reading

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a Cycle of Flower Songs (7 – Britten)

A rose may convey things unsaid, such as Octavian’s love for Sophie in Rosenkavalier, or may ignore things said, such as the nightingale’s love for the flower in Britten’s song. “The nightingale and the rose” is the fourth song in … Continue reading

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a Cycle of Flower Songs (6 – Strauss)

If a listener manages to bracket its story and (re)create Der Rosenkavalier (prem. 1911) in purely musical terms, Richard Strauss’ “comedy for music” can turn into an intoxicating experience.  Its plot is then constituted not by Hofmannsthal’s imperial nostalgia for … Continue reading

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a Cycle of Flower Songs (5 – Puccini)

Is Madama Butterfly (1904) colonialist, mythological, camp, or something else?  Should it be discussed in a political, tragic, performative, or (say) feminist frame of reference?  Does the leading role of this tragedia giapponese call for a geisha, gaia, gay, or … Continue reading

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a Cycle of Flower Songs (4 – Chabrier)

Few are the temptresses who smoke in a public square in Seville (in Carmen) or dance in a magic garden facing Seville (that is, Moorish Spain, in Parsifal) and seduce men with flowers in exchange for their freedom.  Most women … Continue reading

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