Mork's Log 2017
Posted: Mon Apr 10, 2017 10:50 pm
Maybe I should enter the Super Challenge, even though it is very very late. This year I have already watched the first 30 episodes of the French Maigret series that began in 1991. Each episode is at least 90 minutes long. I read a couple of the novels, too. Simenon is far better novelist than I thought. Also rewatched the first 3 episodes of Un Village Français, but I doubt I will watch many more. Just too grim. The series did prompt me to buy a CD of 7 Maupassant stories, which are read by Robin Renucci, one of the leads of Un Village Français. Renucci also showed up in an early episode of Maigret as a bit of a nerd originally suspected of the murder. Also I am reading, sporadically, Le comte de Monte Cristo. I wish I had an abridged version because the pace of the full-length novel is torturously slow. I left the good count when he found his treasure. Don't know if I can ever go back. Best of all, I found the best French poet nobody has ever heard of, Henri de Regnier.
In Spanish I am reading Mario Vargas Llosa's Cinco Esquinas, a kind of political thriller with sex and drugs. Starting off with a steamy sex scene between two young and wealthy Peruvian wives. How, I wondered, would a first-class, world-renowned novelist like Vargas Llosa, go from there? He once ran for President of Peru, and the man he lost to appears tangentially in the novel. I'm on page 258 of the 314 page novel.
For Ancient Greek, here are some excerpts from email I have sent (removing the name, email address and remarks of the recipient). I also softened some criticism, which I felt unfair without a proper context:
FIRST:
"Especially missing for everything [in Ancient Greek or Latin] is audio. LOTS of audio. I have found a bit of it on Youtube. I am not a purist in matters of vocal interpretation and accent. Lombardo's reading of Iliad 1 is more than adequate. There is as well a good reading of Chapter 1 of Book 1 of Anabasis by Ioannis Stratakis in reconstructed Ancient Greek: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEcQxQRVa-A (Stratakis has a web site: Podium-Arts.com). Because there is a reading of Book 23 of The Iliad, I wonder whether Lombardo recorded the whole epic. There are a few more bits by Stratakis and others. Various plays done at Cambridge and in Greece have been video recorded, but the quality of the sound makes them unfit for teaching. . . . .
"As for Kamp. I am developing a variation (some might say, a bastardization) of the Kamp method of GigaFrench. I use 3 to 6 minutes snippets of whatever I could find, listen to it until as Kamps-GigaFrench suggests I can hear and understand every word clearly, and of course understand the meaning. So far I worked thought the first 20 lines or so of Lombardo's reading of The Iliad. I tried to use the first long monologue of Electra in Sophocles' version. The sound was not impossible, but it is difficult to understand. Coughing is a real distraction. I tried a later passage between Electra, the Pedagogue and Orestes, but gave up. Now I have moved on to Stratakis's Xenophon. There's some Thucydides and Plato (I'm going to try the Crito) for later.
"Latin is the other story. First I read and listened through the first chapter of the first book of Sallust. Now I'm doing a couple of odes of Horace. Virgil and Tacitus (there is a fine reading of The Annals by a fellow from Textkit (name forgotten for now)) are on my list, too. And I'm preparing to do my own reading of a couple of Seneca's letters to Lucilius (pronouncing Ancient Greek intimidates me too much).
"Thank you for the reference for Lombardo's reading from Book 23. Criticism of folks who try reading Ancient Greek remind me of the fellow stranded several days in the desert. Nearly dead of thirst when found, he was offered water by the rescue party, but he refused, saying he wanted a Coca Cola. "
SECOND:
"Bringing French and Spanish up to speed showed me the value of aural input and what way worked best for me to use aural input. So I’ve done loads of reading+listening, and I thought loads of reading and listening were necessary for Latin and Greek. When I saw Kamp seemed to bank on making shorter clips work, but listened to very intensely, I thought maybe it’s worth a try. Luckily, since shorter clips are all we’ve got, for the most part.
"Plus I remembered that Lombardo reading of Iliad I. I just wondered what would happen if I put that together with the odds and ends of Ancient Greek I could find on Youtube. There are also some Daitz audios from Bolchazy. For Latin there are Evan de Millner’s recordings and, again from Bolchazy, Robert Sonkowsky readings. Not to forget the Sallus[t]. That reader did a couple things from Seneca, too, but the audio quality is iffy. ...
"I won’t pretend that all the available recordings thrill me. Audacity can spruce up some of them and can make portentious audio ... sprightlier, but maybe only a professional sound engineer can soften the hammer blows of [some of the] Latin. What little I have listened to Daitz (Birds) let me know it’s [acceptable] ...
"For lots of listening to work for me, the matter has to really, really interest me. ... But if listening to less has some benefit, I don’t have to like the matter so much. Even so, nearly an hour of the Iliad and 4 hours of Sallust should be plenty. Besides, I can always create my own."
Today I prettied up a rendition of the first 4 chapters of Book 1 of Herodotus. Nothing wrong with it except the original recording had some flaws.
In Spanish I am reading Mario Vargas Llosa's Cinco Esquinas, a kind of political thriller with sex and drugs. Starting off with a steamy sex scene between two young and wealthy Peruvian wives. How, I wondered, would a first-class, world-renowned novelist like Vargas Llosa, go from there? He once ran for President of Peru, and the man he lost to appears tangentially in the novel. I'm on page 258 of the 314 page novel.
For Ancient Greek, here are some excerpts from email I have sent (removing the name, email address and remarks of the recipient). I also softened some criticism, which I felt unfair without a proper context:
FIRST:
"Especially missing for everything [in Ancient Greek or Latin] is audio. LOTS of audio. I have found a bit of it on Youtube. I am not a purist in matters of vocal interpretation and accent. Lombardo's reading of Iliad 1 is more than adequate. There is as well a good reading of Chapter 1 of Book 1 of Anabasis by Ioannis Stratakis in reconstructed Ancient Greek: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEcQxQRVa-A (Stratakis has a web site: Podium-Arts.com). Because there is a reading of Book 23 of The Iliad, I wonder whether Lombardo recorded the whole epic. There are a few more bits by Stratakis and others. Various plays done at Cambridge and in Greece have been video recorded, but the quality of the sound makes them unfit for teaching. . . . .
"As for Kamp. I am developing a variation (some might say, a bastardization) of the Kamp method of GigaFrench. I use 3 to 6 minutes snippets of whatever I could find, listen to it until as Kamps-GigaFrench suggests I can hear and understand every word clearly, and of course understand the meaning. So far I worked thought the first 20 lines or so of Lombardo's reading of The Iliad. I tried to use the first long monologue of Electra in Sophocles' version. The sound was not impossible, but it is difficult to understand. Coughing is a real distraction. I tried a later passage between Electra, the Pedagogue and Orestes, but gave up. Now I have moved on to Stratakis's Xenophon. There's some Thucydides and Plato (I'm going to try the Crito) for later.
"Latin is the other story. First I read and listened through the first chapter of the first book of Sallust. Now I'm doing a couple of odes of Horace. Virgil and Tacitus (there is a fine reading of The Annals by a fellow from Textkit (name forgotten for now)) are on my list, too. And I'm preparing to do my own reading of a couple of Seneca's letters to Lucilius (pronouncing Ancient Greek intimidates me too much).
"Thank you for the reference for Lombardo's reading from Book 23. Criticism of folks who try reading Ancient Greek remind me of the fellow stranded several days in the desert. Nearly dead of thirst when found, he was offered water by the rescue party, but he refused, saying he wanted a Coca Cola. "
SECOND:
"Bringing French and Spanish up to speed showed me the value of aural input and what way worked best for me to use aural input. So I’ve done loads of reading+listening, and I thought loads of reading and listening were necessary for Latin and Greek. When I saw Kamp seemed to bank on making shorter clips work, but listened to very intensely, I thought maybe it’s worth a try. Luckily, since shorter clips are all we’ve got, for the most part.
"Plus I remembered that Lombardo reading of Iliad I. I just wondered what would happen if I put that together with the odds and ends of Ancient Greek I could find on Youtube. There are also some Daitz audios from Bolchazy. For Latin there are Evan de Millner’s recordings and, again from Bolchazy, Robert Sonkowsky readings. Not to forget the Sallus[t]. That reader did a couple things from Seneca, too, but the audio quality is iffy. ...
"I won’t pretend that all the available recordings thrill me. Audacity can spruce up some of them and can make portentious audio ... sprightlier, but maybe only a professional sound engineer can soften the hammer blows of [some of the] Latin. What little I have listened to Daitz (Birds) let me know it’s [acceptable] ...
"For lots of listening to work for me, the matter has to really, really interest me. ... But if listening to less has some benefit, I don’t have to like the matter so much. Even so, nearly an hour of the Iliad and 4 hours of Sallust should be plenty. Besides, I can always create my own."
Today I prettied up a rendition of the first 4 chapters of Book 1 of Herodotus. Nothing wrong with it except the original recording had some flaws.