听着John这学期推荐的歌复习英国文学,
1.听到Lullaby my sweet baby有点感人:This song is meant to be the lullaby that Mary sang to Jesus as they were fleeing to safety as refugees.发现每首歌的点评讲解都是另一门课。
2.圣诞前一个月叫Advent:the four weeks of preparation for the Feast of Christmas, which in the Christian tradition commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ.
3.另外一首美丽的歌:The story found in this ballad is one such: it tells the tradition of a miracle Christ performed before he was even born. In this version, it also assumes that St Joseph, the husband of the Virgin Mary, was quite elderly--an tradition that was meant to explain why St Joseph wasn't present at the Crucifixion. It's a haunting, strange, and lovely story, here performed beautifully in a live performance from that greatest of folk bands: Peter, Paul and Mary.
If you want to read all the variants of this ballad that Francis Child collected, you can find themhere. And if you want in-depth academic historical background of the text, well that'shere.
4. 2016年的双十一,John也发了祝福,但不推荐我们花1111元去买打折衣服或者方便面(Japanese noodles)。他这这一天在欧洲和美国,却是一个关于一战的哀悼日Armistice Day, 同时那天他也哀悼了刚去世的一位名人:on Monday, Leonard Cohen died. He was a living legend, rock star and songwriter, poet and novelist, a Zen monk and a rabbi's grandson, a pessimist and a prophet. There was no one like Leonard Cohen.
Our song this week, then, honours the memory of the soldiers killed in the First and Second World Wars, and the memory of Leonard Cohen. Here is television footage from 1969 of Cohen singing 'The Partisan', a song that tells the story of a French resistance fighter during the war.这个mv里的歌手皱着眉头,目不转睛,好像在看着歌词里的回忆。很有魅力,这首歌好想单曲循环。
5。关于美国总统大选,John用“March of the Sinister Ducks” 表达他的看法。
6. 台风后他发了歌哀悼被吹倒的树“Channels and Winds” is the work of two hugely influential modern composers,Philip Glass and Ravi Shankar.他说在这里面,人的歌声也成了乐器的一种融入曲子,整个曲子就像绵绵长河。还请他弟弟,一个专业音乐家给我们补充信息介绍。想起他说过,他问他弟弟怎么创作那些音乐,人家说,就像他写小说,音乐只是另外一种表达自己情感和思想的艺术形式。从这个角度理解,各种艺术形式就有了相通之处,很棒的一个启发。
7. 鲍勃迪伦获奖时,John也提了His great innovation was to combine the patchwork of traditions that is American folk music with the high literary stylings of Whitman, Hemingway, and the Beat poets.说他影响很大,在civil rights movement时就可以说创作了现代摇滚。而John推荐的歌,是迪伦的好朋友,George Harrison(披头士吉他手)唱的MAMA You’ve been on my mind,这首歌的演绎十分复杂,深情。鲍勃写这首歌是为了表达和女友分手后的沮丧和孤单,而Harrison却用来表达对自己逝去母亲的思念,情感的转变轻柔但深远,把鲍勃的歌演绎成自己的。
8. 国庆听的是Morrissey的You’re gonna need someone.第一代的rock&Roll,‘Someone kindly told me that you’d wasted | Eight of your nine lives’。This is very British sarcasm: one would only say‘you don’t need to look so pleased!’to someone who looks dismayed, upset or horrified. Morrissey is swanning in to save the listeners--and they're none too happy about it.
9. 终于听到比较现代的歌Cross Your Fingers这首歌很美,John说他很喜欢这个歌手的创作Constance Amiot is truly a world musician: born in Ivory Coast, raised in Washington D.C., and now living and working in Paris. Her music draws on folk elements from all these traditions, and she sings both in English and French. Her songwriting, too, articulates a sense ofdisplacement, or estrangement—a feeling of being, as a French travel-writer once put it,‘a stranger, a passerby, a person without place or fire.’‘Cross Your Fingers’is one of the few English tracks on her 2007 album Fairytale; like much of the album, it's both artistic introspection and encouragement to self-reflection. The impressionistic lyrics and the woodwind warmth of Amiot’s voice combine to provide a poignant musing on the aspirations, fears, and loneliness of displacement.
10. 原来第一首歌跟这学期最后一首的名字一样的changes:"Changes" is partly a pensive, almost fearful meditation on adolescence and ageing. But it's also a cry of defiance, affirming the questions and doubts of youth against the hidebound certainties of (middle) age: "These children that you spit on | As they try to change their worlds | Are immune to your consultations, | They're quite aware what they're going through."
Not a bad note to begin a semester with, that!
11. 万圣节他也发来祝福,给我们一些恐怖故事看:Neil Gaiman, the British author. It’s called All Hallows’Read, and it’s really very simple: On Hallowe’en, give someone a scary book.
还吓唬我们hh:You might want to read these stories immediately, while it’s warmly autumnal and bright and cheerful outside. Or you may want to wait till it’s dark, and the dorm is quiet, and the only light is the greenish glow from your mobile phone, and the only sound is something breathing and snuffling, just outside your door. Whichever you prefer, enjoy.
太kind了。看着他的song of the week,也把这学期以来的一些大事回顾了一下。对他介绍的记录,比复习记录还过瘾。
我就从尾复习到头吧
(最后一课讲的是the girl who loved the sun一个女孩喜欢太阳而变成树,尽管有一个爱她的丈夫,她最终还是变成树,却发现树对她没有特别感觉,她醒悟了,她是为自己而变成树。另外一个故事是the truth is a cave in the black mountains。。。两个男人去寻宝,其实这个故事要讲的就是没有固定的truth,每个人心里有一个truth)
1.Seamus Heaney: 1939年出生。他的诗歌Digging写自己的笔就像枪,让我想起鲁迅,把笔杆当武器。Digging还联想到自己爸爸和爷爷,他们的耕作,现在轮到他了。也体现对国土的热爱。他的Forge有点奇怪,他看不到门里的场景,却写了自己幻想中的铁匠在里面的工作,不懂。他的角度比较特别,他对那些虽然已经远离我们的东西的描写,对我们来说是不陌生的,可能是因为他从我们的角度来描写,而不是象二战的诗歌一样 ,从经历者的角度描写,对我们来说有些陌生。
2.DouglasDunn:写过和母亲去看病的时候自己的痛苦,先用其他病人的描写引入。不过这个我没打印,应该不写这个。
3.Philip Larkin: 这个诗人厉害了,写的诗歌有点消极,粗口不避,那首This Be the Verse直接就说了They f**k you up, your mum and dad.表达他的观念:Man hands on misery to man。在弗洛伊德的理论里,小孩子天生有种对大人的恐惧,child anxiety, 然后这种焦虑感一代传一代,越积越多,是一种decay。Larkin认为科技进步,同时产生的一切显示了我们内心的空虚。他的诗歌我还是挺喜欢的,虽然不是全看懂。我背了他的Talking in bed。在床上,两个人不知为何沉默无语,找不到话聊。找不到true and kind的话,或者not untrue not unkind。他擅长的是从普通事物中写出不普通的思想。他的诗歌属于每个字都知道什么意思,合在一起就不一定了。Aubade里说,what we know,Have always known,know that we can’t escape, Yet can’t accept.第六感就觉得他说的很有道理。
4.John Betjeman1906-1984英国桂冠诗人,有怀旧情结nostalgia,写的语言也比较靠近现代生活,sex的也不避讳。对建筑有特殊情感,会嘲讽现在的退旧屋盖新房。
5.Samuel Beckett1906-1989是Joyec的助理,他的作品有等待戈多,还有这部终局Endgame.有些剧情看起来荒谬,其实更加荒谬的应该是人生,joyce讲故事,主角也喜欢讲故事,都是荒谬的,都不能信,都是假的。
6.J.R.R. Tolkien, Smith of Wooton Major,
7.W. H. Auden爱这个诗人,尤其那首AS I walked out one evening, 因为爱在三部曲也引用了,而我也在不记得的情况下对这首诗产生好感。怎么看自己喜欢的诗,可能就是诗歌以某种要么特贴切,要么特新颖的方式抒发了某种感动我的情感。或者只是以这种形式描述某个不易察觉的场景。Auden和下面这个诗人都喜欢故意迷惑读者,不展示真正含义。我也是喜欢这样,有些情感,我想抱为秘密,但又藏不住,想和人分享,又不想让人知道,于是就像那本故事天使雕像的老奶奶一样,让别人知道自己有秘密,但又不公开秘密。这种感觉应该是人之常情。
8.Dylan Thomas,没做什么记录。
9.丘吉尔的三个演讲,讲了演讲的成功因素。
‘Blood, Toil, Tears, and Sweat’
http://www.winstonchurchill.org/resources/speeches/1940-the-finest-hour/blood-toil-tears-and-sweat
‘We Shall Fight on the Beaches’
‘Their Finest Hour’
http://www.winstonchurchill.org/resources/speeches/1940-the-finest-hour/their-finest-hour
10.James Joyce:The Dead 1882-1941
11.D. H. Lawrence: 1884-1930作品体现人的本性等
12.E. M. Forster:the other boat同性。但是其中一个受传统观念毒害,认为自己和爱人有罪,于是亲手处决爱人和自己。他也不知道自己在做些什么。Crucification
13.A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf.现代主义,所有权-管理财产,钱-平等社会地位,房间-精神自由,身体独立
14.T. S. Eliot伟大诗人,荒原等
二战诗人:
15.Section Intro (pp. 1954-1955)
16.Rupert Brooke (all) officer国家主义
17.Siegfried Sassoon ('They', 'The Rear-Guard', 'Glory of Women', 'Everyone Sang', 'From Memoirs...') In me the tiger sniffs the rose,但是这首诗不表现这个。
18.Isaac Rosenberg (all)
19.Wilfred Owen ('Anthem for Doomed Youth', 'Apologia Pro Poemate Meo', 'Dulce et Decorum Est', 'Strange Meeting', 'Disabled', From Owen's Letters)
20.May Wedderburn Cannan (all)每天小事物的回忆
21.Housman, the essay by Flint & Pound,the so-called Imagist Cluster
22.Thomas Hardy:说人逃脱不了命运,是因为人们没意识去抵抗。
23.W. B. Yeats:另外一个我喜欢的诗人,写的场景很美,但是a stolen child里的美好场景却让人心酸。