The Masked Reviewer

Christian Devotional Classic

Reviewed: 03-01-24

Like all great books, this is a difficult read unless you surrender yourself to it. Worth the effort and worth reading and rereading over time, thus worth owning.

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Imperfect translation (and narrated pronunciation)

Reviewed: 04-09-23

The reader doesn't pronounce the Sanskrit with accurate pronunciation. That is a problem, it is true.

The far bigger iissue here is that the text translation itself is geared toward a less accurate, "nontechnical" reading, which is ultimately less helpful for the type of reader who will likely be reading the Nikayas. The reader is enjoyable enough, and for non-British listeners could well be preferred and "more dignified" than say an American reader but the translation itself is a bit flawed with some jarring phrasing at times... such as "what's up with that?!" and other such more recent colloquialisms which most readers will not likely consider pleasant or appropriate. These sound all the more ridiculous when read aloud by a "dignified" British accent...

Not as dignified nor traditional as most educated Buddhists are probably looking for, therefore, but every translation and reading is going to sacrifice somewhere to please someone. In the case of the Nikayas, I really think it is the reader who should bend to a more accurate and dignified translation and not the other way around, as we have here. The nature of most sutra aside, that sort of issue can be overcome without throwing out the baby with the bath water. So we are largely in need of a good nontechnical rendering the sutra, but the terms become elusive and deceptive, often with one term standing in for many things and sometimes are representing completely different or opposite things entirely from the term used.

There are many translation approaches to have taken here and it's clearly a different type of translation than we would get from Bikku Bodhi. I simply preferred BB's more pragmatic and traditional, somewhat more academic approach over Sujato's more "commonized" style. I also suspect many like me out there will want to search for BB's elusive forthcoming full translation on the Digha once they hone in on these differences.

Maybe the sample should have tried to encapsulate such translation differences from the beginning, and perhaps the Audible book liatingnsummary should explain these better so that the reader understand what a stretch we're talking about here in translation approach. Many times, a single common version of a technical term is used and the reader may be confused as to what is really meant and which traditionally translated term is being indicated.

My own recommendation is therefor to wait for the Bikku Bodhi or a comparable such (traditional/academic) translation to come out for the Digha Nikaya. Otherwise you may find at times you're doing the work of retranslating the translation back to what you imagine the translator was trying NOT to use for this or that (very important) term.

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1 person found this helpful

Wonderful book. Clipped, persnickety reader.

Reviewed: 11-20-22

It's odd how un-difficult it is to follow BT on audio when you get accustomed to the terminology and have a quiet and pleasant reading environment in which to listen. That said, it seems very odd that Martyn Swain was chosen to read a text meant to undermine all that is pretentious and superfluous in ordinary life to get back to the fundamental elements of experience. Heidegger was not a fan of the manners and affectations of the British upperclass, which is still another reason why his selection was odd.

BT attempts to take on the history of western metaphysics as a project of covering over what was immediate and alive in human experience, resulting in a certain technological regime of Modernity and arguably what comes after, posthuman concepts that push the linguistic materials of our present, still-emerging Techne to the level of an all-encompassing prison.

The ideas of BT look at the experience of anxiety as a natural feeling of falling in relation to authentic modes of being that transcend language and linguistic conceptions to break through to the core of human potentiality and a living sense of wonder on the Earth. In so doing, Heidegger is ultimately trying to achieve what Nietzsche arguably fails at: the redemption of the Earth as a scene of something heroically worthwhile, which in this case, is the charted victory of the authentically heroic over the mundane compromise of Modernity's many vapid, unimaginative and utterly life-annulling "certainties", among which are the disregard for the ancient virtues, and therefore all virtuous action, and such as "dangerously" seeing the Real without the aid of our now-digitized precession of the image of what is said to have happened, said by and for the They, as what One does, what One thinks, based upon what One has heard -- that all-encompassing, abstract One that is heard everywhere and sees nothing for what it ever is for the subject in its true and utterly private authenticity.

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3 people found this helpful

Classic Romantic Picaresque Novella

Reviewed: 09-05-22

I was lured to the idea of reading this little romantic page-turner from a (formerly via Great Courses) audio course on Literature by Leo Damrosch entitled "The Rise of the Novel". Incidentally, that course is now on Audible also. It captivated me for the first 3.5 out of the total 5.5 hours and the remainder would have been much more passable if I'd only had some decent red wine to sip or maybe some brandy or scotch to consume it with. There is a quality to it that reminds me of reading A Rebors (or as it's been titles in English, "Against the Grain"), by a similar Jesuit Abbe/priest of similar prodical misadventures, Joris-Karl Huysmans.

This particular Jesuit confessional by Prevost is similarly able to keep the attention as an interesting and at times positively spell-binding yarn, and it sparingly informs us, as all good novels do, as to the atmosphere, customs and mores of the time and place where the action is happening. That said, be warned that this is a tragic tale all in all, and though it ends well for one lover in some ways, it does not end well for the (later, singular) title character. It also lacks the splendor of a Don Quixote with all its humorous episodes, songs, poems and magical interludes, though it does justice to the sentiments of a Cervantes with the adroit little aphoristic quotes that presage each chapter, as was good form up till that time to do. The story, as a confessional, has something of the epistolary novel to it, though we're not given that pretense of it being written in the form of letters to an acquaintance, but rather as a straightforward narration. Otherwise, it would not be as brief as 5+ hrs via audiobook.

In his chapter on Manon Lescaut, Damrosch explains how the story of the lovers in Manon Lescaut was a touchstone in the course of western story-telling due to the intriguing nature of the story and the lively way the story is told, Enlightenment mannerisms, formalities and all such as they inevitably are in such a story written during the Enlightenment's fading. And despite what might seem a rather nasal and over-assuming diction on the part of the narrator, with noticeably uneven qualities at various points. I think the reader must have caught the flu at some point or the tape underwent perhaps some magnetic anomaly. Nonetheless he does good service to the voice of the narrator in this rare audiobook of the English translation. His storytelling also managed great brevity in what could easily have been a much-extended story -- so much so that one suspects a healing purpose of the Abbe's having written such a thing out with such quick fervor...


About the story's history
----------------------------
Originally written in 1731 under the title, Histoire du Chevalier des Grieux, et de Manon Lescaut, by the Abbé Prévost, a high-ranking Jesuit Priest with some adventures of his own under his belt in his time, this brief little novella exemplifies the picaresque mode that was breaking through the Enlightenment and which took its cues from such earlier examples as Don Quixote and to some extent the bawdy ancient Roman novel, the Golden Ass. It would be for another century before the likes of Puccini would memorialize the tale.

At the time of its reeling landmark 1731 publication, this wayward tale of petty nobility engaged in a harrowing and unchristened romantic love affair in the face of all odds truly rocked the foundations of the western European society along the petty nobility and probably more so among the upper-bourgeois as a scandalous tale of romance against all odds and in the face of respectable convention, no doubt as the performing piano composers Lizt and Beethoven had begun to explore the more heart-rending and scandalous romantic themes in roughly the century or so afterward in music halls all along the Rhine, no doubt with the tale somewhere in their minds. The French, German and even the English at that time would have recalled famous Greek lovers, giving pallor to their faded marbled faces, invigorating the budding Romantic period just around the corner as its themes became more of a mainstay.

The story itself was memorialized by Puccini's opera of the much abbreviated title, "Manon Lescaut". Puccini's opera adds much visual and musical tangibility to this tale and manages to make the characters and themes eternal for the opera-goers ever afterward, but it is from a Jesuit priest's own hand that the yarn was scrivened, and it is despite its pretensions to act as an (indirect) morality tale to which many future picaresques would often allude -- hopeless romantic adventures gone awry in the name of some singular love, mission, or inarticulated need in the quenching of which would require extensive travel, sometimes humorous anecdotes and heroic (or as in this case, ostensibly anti-heroic) travail.

The list of operas, films and television adaptations and incorporations to follow Pucinini's own (including the three lesser-known auteurs before him) may stagger the minds of those who have not heard of ML and otherwise consider themselves confident aficionados of the nooks and crannies of the western literary canon:

I'd give the story itself 4 and a half stars if that were permissible, but since it's not, I'll err on the side of 5 stars.


Errors
----------------------------
There is at least one mistaken overlap of what appears to be previous earlier dialogue in the taping of the original cassette-to-digital transfer, however brief it is, mid-way through, and which will appear obvious enough. It does nothing to mar the overall enjoyment or following of the story. Generally, the voice of the reader coincides well with that of the narrator. Thus the 3 out of 5 stars in this review of the audiobook version.


Dramas, operas and ballets
----------------------------
Manon Lescaut (1830), a ballet by Jean-Louis Aumer
Manon Lescaut (1856), an opera by French composer Daniel Auber
Manon (1884), an opera by French composer Jules Massenet
Manon Lescaut (1893), an opera by Italian composer Giacomo Puccini
Manon Lescaut (1940), a drama in verse by Czech poet Vítězslav Nezval
Boulevard Solitude (1952) "Lyrisches Drama" (lyric drama) or opera by German composer Hans Werner Henze
Manon (first performed in 1974), a ballet with music by Jules Massenet and choreography by Kenneth MacMillan
Manon (2015), a musical written for the Takarazuka troupe by librettist/director Keiko Ueda and composer Joy Son[2]


Films
----------------------------
Manon Lescaut (1926), directed by Arthur Robison, with Lya de Putti
When a Man Loves (1927), directed by Alan Crosland, with John Barrymore and Dolores Costello
Manon Lescaut (1940), directed by Carmine Gallone, with Vittorio de Sica and Alida Valli
Manon (1949), directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot, with Michel Auclair and Cécile Aubry
The Lovers of Manon Lescaut (1954), directed by Mario Costa
Manon 70 (1968), directed by Jean Aurel, with Catherine Deneuve and Sami Frey
Manón (1986), Venezuelan movie directed by Román Chalbaud, with Mayra Alejandra
Manon Lescaut (2013), directed by Gabriel Aghion, with Céline Perreau and Samuel Theis

Total Translations Performed to Date
----------------------------
English translations of the original 1731 version of the novel include Helen Waddell's (1931). For the 1753 revision, there are translations by, among others, L. W. Tancock (Penguin, 1949—though he divides the 2-part novel into a number of chapters), Donald M. Frame (Signet, 1961—which notes differences between the 1731 and 1753 editions), Angela Scholar (Oxford, 2004, with extensive notes and commentary), and Andrew Brown (Hesperus, 2004, with a foreword by Germaine Greer).

Henri Valienne (1854–1908), a physician and author of the first novel in the constructed language Esperanto, translated Manon Lescaut into that language. His translation was published at Paris in 1908, and reissued by the British Esperanto Association in 1926.

Other Uses
----------------------------
Dorothy L. Sayers used the novel's plot for her 1926 novel, Clouds of Witness, which was filmed and became episode 1 of the Lord Peter Wimsey (TV series) television series.


* Ending credits borrowed from Wikipedia's diligent, if pedantic, bean-counting scholars in hiding.

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Not for the Lacking in Heart

Reviewed: 03-06-22

Starts off hilariously funny but winds gradually into the truly darkest recesses of the human soul, mocking while cursing in tears, as we all normally would only do in secret.

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3 people found this helpful

Face cross-examination of 4 representative voices

Reviewed: 04-29-21

This is a quality production in every aspect, covering one of if not THE most significant moment of modern philosophy. Highly recommended work.

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Perfect as it is.

Reviewed: 01-02-21

This sutra is perhaps one of the most important if not the MOST important sutre of the Mahayana fail hiya canon. The reason? The point of Buddhadharma is the effect.

The narrator is also perfect as he is. Why! Because he enunciated and with great care and exactitudw with a pleasing sound and cadence that pays respect to the words enunciated.

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4 people found this helpful

Textual Scholarship on Aryan Legend & Religion

Reviewed: 04-26-20

Important, fascinating, useful. Pagan rituals and deities, masked holidays, Atlantis, Shambala, Hyperborea. What's left? Not much.

The authors do a wonderful job of leaving no stone unturned as they rifle through the existing scholarship, including both hot and lukewarm trails, spinoff cultures, and the connections that make a book like this tantalizing. Moreover, Odin's characteristics are not neglected, which turns out to be the rug that ties the room together.

Siman Vance does an outstanding job as narrator for this book, having somehow the perfect voice, tone and accent to pull it off without ever seeming to be mechanical or dry.

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15 people found this helpful

Not deletable.

Reviewed: 12-16-19

I don't care who you are or what you think of your current life, this book is not deletable.

This book is a stone with which to hone your life.

Become the truly best version of yourself that you can reach.

This book is your ready coach in your corner for the fight of life.

If you're a good person, or just want to be, you deserve to have this book in your permanent library.

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Great material, partially spotty recording.

Reviewed: 11-07-19

Fascinating essays that touch on American history in profound ways. That said, about 2 chapters in, the audio becomes marred pretty badly, strangely enough, as the author covers the personal character of a heroic figure of the Left, FDR (Vidal was an avid Democrat). It appears to stop with the next chapter, but in a later chapter covering the FBI fiasco at Waco, TX, it seems to begin again, introducing the tiniest hint of reasonable suspicion at that point. It's strange that the marred material covers FDR's character flaws, which appears to be essential to the next chapter (and FDR is a pretty big figure in American history and politics, so this is a major issue).

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