Postscript to Monday Night's Discussion

Sigmund Freud in 1926

Thanks to the 22 people who came out on a rainy night for Monday's discussion of "Thoughts for the Times on War and Death," by Sigmund Freud.  Here are a few of the reactions of group members:

Freud's final position is that we can't get our minds around death, so how can we possibly reconcile ourselves to the brutality of war?

Some thought Freud was pushing the agenda of psychoanalysis at the expense of an incisive analysis of the causes of war.

In the context of Freud's lament over the schism that took place within the European nations during the First World War, one discussant commented that it was to be expected as it was caused by imperialism.

The old saw that "One musn't speak ill of the dead," mentioned by Freud as telling about our attitude toward death, was mentioned by one of us as a good example of how we keep death at an arm's length.

Freud as a physician and healer, sensed a sense of disillusionment around him concerning the war and the prevalence of death. His Rx: to probe our primitive, darker sides and accept them as part of our selves.  That is how we can get through life's tough patches.

Janus Face Time

In the spirit of the many year-in-review articles we see at this time of the year, permit me to offer a 2012 year-in-review of the Huntington Public Library Great Books Reading and Discussion Group:

January: "Epic of Gilgamesh"
February: "Prometheus Bound," by Aeschylus
March: "Of Friendship" and "Of Solitude" by Montaigne
April: "Pensées," by Pascal
May: "Self-Reliance," by Emerson
June" "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking," by Whitman
September: "Democracy in America," by de Tocqueville
October: "An Enemy of the People," by Ibsen
November: "The Value of Science," by Poincaré

In July and August we experimented with the themes of Money and Sex as found in the readings in the Vital Ideas anthologies (click here to see link).

Here's to reading MORE Great Literature in '13. Happy New Year!!!

Henri Poincaré (1854-1912)

Our discussion of excerpts from French mathematician Henri Poincaré's "The Value of Science" takes place Monday evening.  Does "science for science's sake" make any sense?  Or must it serve some perceived "useful" purpose?

October's Author: Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906)

Join us on October 22d for a discussion of Ibsen's play "An Enemy of the People." When Dr. Thomas Stockmann raises the alarm about contamination of a city's spa, it sets in motion a row among a cast of prominent personages that results in Stockmann's demonization. "An Enemy of the People" might be the first literary effort to weigh the benefits of economic growth against the costs of environmental damage. 

Portrait of Ibsen by Eilif Peterssen (1852-1928)

Original Norwegian ms. of "An Enemy of the People" ("En Folkefiende")

"Democracy in America": Passages for Textual Analysis

page 204: from "Democratic laws generally tend" to "but the object it has in view is more useful."

page 211: "the government of the democracy" to "and society cannot perish."

page 243: "I am wrong, however, in saying all classes" to "A law is observed because it is a self-imposed eveil iln the first place and an evil of transient duration in the second."

page 214: "It is not possible to conceive the surpassing liberty the Americans enjoy" to "to give a constant example of temperance."

page 217: "We must first understand what the purport of society" to "to the end you have in view."

Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859)

Alexis de Tocqueville in a portrait
by Théodore Chassériau (1819-1856)

French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville traveled through the United States with his friend Gustave de Beaumont during the years 1831 and 1832. As employees of the French Interior Ministry, their trip was intended as a "fact-finding" mission on conditions in the American penal system. De Toqueville and de Beaumont landed in Newport, Rhode Island on 9 May 1831.  They traveled through the states of New York, Michigan, Wisconsin, made a foray into Québec, then into Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio, Tennessee, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, and D.C. before sailing back to France from New York City on 20 February 1832.

De Tocqueville was a scholar of history and politics with a deep interest in the affairs of his own country. France in his time had been embroiled in a series of revolutions and counterrevolutions. His 10-month visit to America took place during the second half of the first administration of President Andrew Jackson. When he returned to France, he set to writing what became his most famous work, De la démocratie en Amérique or Democracy in America, published in two volumes in 1835 and 1840.

Democracy in America was and is much more than a report on the U.S. criminal justice system or a road trip journal. It is a deep meditation on our political system, and we Americans have ever since been looking into de Tocqueville's mirror to understand ourselves better.

 

Readings for August 27th in "Sex"

Last evening our "Money" discussion drew 20 attendees and ranged over authors as diverse as Thoreau, Marx, Harriet Jacobs, Zora Neale Hurston, John Cheever, and Barbara Ehrenreich. It was the first time in our 8 years together that we've attempted to discuss such a large number of readings (10 in all) at once.

Next month's discussion on "Sex" will focus on seven of the readings contained in that volume.  They are:

David and Bathsheba (2 Samuel 11-12:7)
"To His Mistress Going to Bed," by John Donne
Sex (selection) by Fay Weldon
"Helen of Troy Goes Counter Dancing" by Margaret Atwood
"Lust," by Susan Minot
"Love and Trust" by Louann Brizendine
"For the Relief of Unbearable Urges" by Nathan Englander