Tweet
Re: notes / comments
Monday, March 05, 2007
***************************************
FROM MY DIARY
*********************************
For two years a best seller in the Arab world, the YACOUBIAN BUILDING by Alaa Al Aswany is now available in English. In a glowing review of this novel in the SPECTATOR I read that the building of the title is named after Hagop Yacoubian, “an Egyptian millionaire and doyen of Cairo’s Armenian community.” The building itself is described as “a ten-storey block of apartments in Suleiman Basha Street.” I would like to hear from anyone who may know more about this fellow countryman.
*
To policeman, lawyers, and judges, the word murder does not have the same meaning as it does to the victims’ family. Something similar could be said of our Turcocentric pundits and the word genocide. In their writing the word is depersonalized and despoiled of its original meaning. It is almost as if our pundits were collaborating with denialists by minimizing the seriousness of the charge.
*
To be effectively brainwashed means to be totally unaware of the fact.
*
Paul Valéry: “A painter should not paint what he sees, but what will be seen.” I think of Gertrude Stein in her old age looking like Picasso’s portrait of her in her younger days; and of Marlon Brando studying Renaissance paintings for expressions and body postures.
*
Victor Hugo: “Some people have libraries the way eunuchs have harems.”
#
Monday, March 05, 2007
***************************************
FROM MY DIARY
*********************************
For two years a best seller in the Arab world, the YACOUBIAN BUILDING by Alaa Al Aswany is now available in English. In a glowing review of this novel in the SPECTATOR I read that the building of the title is named after Hagop Yacoubian, “an Egyptian millionaire and doyen of Cairo’s Armenian community.” The building itself is described as “a ten-storey block of apartments in Suleiman Basha Street.” I would like to hear from anyone who may know more about this fellow countryman.
*
To policeman, lawyers, and judges, the word murder does not have the same meaning as it does to the victims’ family. Something similar could be said of our Turcocentric pundits and the word genocide. In their writing the word is depersonalized and despoiled of its original meaning. It is almost as if our pundits were collaborating with denialists by minimizing the seriousness of the charge.
*
To be effectively brainwashed means to be totally unaware of the fact.
*
Paul Valéry: “A painter should not paint what he sees, but what will be seen.” I think of Gertrude Stein in her old age looking like Picasso’s portrait of her in her younger days; and of Marlon Brando studying Renaissance paintings for expressions and body postures.
*
Victor Hugo: “Some people have libraries the way eunuchs have harems.”
#
Comment