The Core Blog

Greetings, Corelings. This week we bring you news of art installations, controversial reinterpretations of plays from the literary canon, and more. Read on:

• Artists Various & Gould’s “City Skins – Marx and Engels” is a papier mache piece molded onto bronze statues of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels located in Berlin, as part of an international competition “Art in the Underground – The Middle in Nowhere.”

Hanging around. (Photo: Various & Gould Studio)

• Delacorte Theater in Central Park, NYC, presents a performance of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, directed by Oskar Eustis, that bears a (controversial) resemblance to the current situation in the United States. The show closes on June 18.
• “Whether its Coleridges nightingale or Petrarchs, Ted Hughess wren or Shelleys skylark, Helen Macdonalds hawk or Max Porters crow,” birds and birdsong are classic metaphors in poetry and literature. So why do birds sing? Author Richard Smyth hopes to find out in his book A Sweet, Wild Note.
• Did you know that Descartes wasn’t appreciated before the 19th century? Did you also know that St. Teresa of Avila, a 16th-century Catholic mystic from Spain, established the foundation to Descartes’ Cogito argument? Read moreon Quartz.
• Turns out Bob Dylan referenced Homer in a lecture upon receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature. Long quotation incoming:
  

  “When Odysseus in The Odyssey visits the famed warrior Achilles in the underworld Achilles, who traded a long life full of peace and contentment for a short one full of honor and glory tells Odysseus it was all a mistake. ‘I just died, thats all.’ There was no honor. No immortality. And that if he could, he would choose to go back and be a lowly slave to a tenant farmer on Earth rather than be what he is a king in the land of the dead that whatever his struggles of life were, they were preferable to being here in this dead place. Thats what songs are, too. Our songs are alive in the land of the living. But songs are unlike literature. Theyre meant to be sung, not read… I return once again to Homer, who says, ‘Sing in me, O Muse, and through me tell the story.’” (source)

That’ll be it! May your days be blessed with tolerable warmth and limited UV radiation.

Happy June, Core folk! Our hope for this month is that the sun will finally emerge (but not too much).

• Turns out Montaigne was an early promoter of bibliotherapy (as well as the unreliability of relationships with other people). An insight: Human beings will abandon you, but books will never leave.
• Candide, An American Dream is writer-director Ken Finkleman's modern-day take on Voltaire's work. The film runs from June 2-4 at the Royal Cinema in Toronto, Ontario.
• Speaking of updates, Jeff James and James Yeatsman bring Jane Austen's Persuasion to the stage in a production that features a playlist with songs by Nicki Minaj, among others, as well as bikinis, a dance floor, and a distinct lack of crinoline. It runs until June 24th at the Royal Exchange in Manchester, England.

Anne (Lara Rossi, right) and Antony Bunsee. (Photograph: Johan Persson)

• Walt Whitman celebrated his 198th birthday last Wednesday, May 31. Quiet his restless spirit by reading some fun facts over on Biography.com.
• In his recently published work Goethe: Life as a Work of Art, translated by David Dollenmayer, Rdiger Safranski claims that the polymath calculated his experiences so that each one would lead to personal growth. (We usually calculate our experiences for maximum free-food consumption.)

"Goethe: Life as a Work of Art," by Rdiger Safranski and David Dollenmayer (Liveright)

Well, that should do it. Until next week, scholars!

Helloooo scholars! Today we're going to distract you from the lateness of this post with the (ahem) greatness of these links. Read on:

• Dr. Du Bois and Miss Ovington closed at the Robey Theatre last Sunday, May 21, at the Los Angeles Theatre Center. The production explores the dynamics between W.E.B. Du Bois and Mary Ovington, who together would go on to help form the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People).
• Every portrait, a different story: Six portraits of Jane Austen will be shown at an exhibit entitled The Mysterious Miss Austen at the Winchester Discovery Center in Hampshire in the UK.

This portrait's story: disappointing, according to curator Kathryn Sutherland. James Andrews, Jane Austen (1869), watercolor (Private collection, courtesy of the 19th Century Rare Book and Photograph Shop, Stevenson, Maryland)

• Where do babies come from? Aristotle, da Vinci--everybody's got a hot take for Edward Dolnick's recently published book The Seeds of Life: From Aristotle to da Vinci, from Sharks Teeth to Frogs Pants, the Long and Strange Quest to Discover Where Babies Come From. One belief the author examines: "The prevailing wisdom was that God not only created all living creatures during the first week of Genesis, but that he created all generations of all creatures back then. By this logic, Eves egg (or Adams semen) contained miniature humans who in turn contained miniature humans, and so on like an infinite set of nesting dolls."
• Dorothy Fortenberrys Species Native to California is an update ofChekhov's The Cherry Orchard for Trump's America. The production runs through June 11 at the Atwater Village Theatre.
• Aristotle got it wrong when he proposed that there are five senses; in fact, Barry C. Smith of the Centre for the Study of the Senses at the University of London claims that there are at least 22 and maybe as many as 33.

That should do it! We hope the summer months continue to treat you well.

Hello, scholars! How is the first week of summer going? Excited for Commencement? We sure are. Read on:

• Reminder: Graduating seniors are welcome to visit the Core Office (CAS119) for the Core Senior Send-off Reception from 4-6pm. Special thanks to EnCore, the Core alumni association, for organizing the event. (IMPORTANT: There will be wine.)
• "Forget death and seek life!" Heritage Daily posted a guide to the Epic of Gilgamesh, citing our translation of choice, David Ferry's Gilgamesh: A New Rendering in English Verse (1992), as the most readable of translations of the work.
• James Holmes and John Maurer of The National Interest argue the case for teaching Thucydides at war colleges. Thucydides, along with Clausewitz, Sun Tzu, Mahan, Corbett, and Mao, comprise the canon of war colleges' strategy courses.
• I believe theres a lot to learn from reading Capital,'" said British shadow chancellor John McDonnell on May 7th. Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn had to agree, admitting Marx was a "great economist." Naturally, such statements stirred controversy, primarily having to do with Marxist history rather than Marxian theory. The Economist, meanwhile, claims that Marx can teach us a great deal even in today's world.
• The history of the Hogarth Press: In 1917, Virginia and Leonard Woolf established the Hogarth Press. It would be an investment that, though time-consuming, allowed them greater freedom in publishing their own works as well as those of other authors. Yet they experienced limitations as well--in one instance, they rejected James Joyce's Ulysses due to its length, a much too difficult task for the couple to publish.

Virginia and Leonard Woolf in 1914. (Via Alamy Stock Photo)

That's it for this week. Enjoy the lovely weather! Wear sunscreen! Stay hydrated!