হিমাদ্রি চ্যাটার্জী Himadri Chatterjee
@hairygit
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Retired operational research analyst. Loves Shakespeare, Verdi, Ibsen, Sherlock Holmes stories.
near London
Joined February 2011
This book is on a subject very close to my heart, and I can only hope my love of these plays come through. As well as my thoughts on them, of course. You may order it from https://t.co/kUyM7ii0v2 , or from https://t.co/BuJhzZRY1E .
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Indeed. I love classic literature myself, and love to share my enthusiasms, but endlessly haranguing people to read these books borders on harassment. I’ve been seeing a lot of that lately on Twitter.
Baffled by people who just day in, day out exhort others to read classic literature. If you value reading, do it, demonstrate it, talk about the books you cherish & tell others why they mean so much to you.
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The Pearl Fishers’ Duet is obviously one of the greatest of all tunes, but the problem with it is you can’t even hum it to yourself in the shower.
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“The problem for me with decolonising maths is that it promotes a false and racist view of history in order to justify the false and racist view that non-Europeans are less rational and less capable of abstract reasoning”. Watch @johnarmstrong5 at the War on Science book launch
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The idea that the classics are racist & oppressive would certainly come as a surprise to my cousin who teaches Sanskrit in India. Maybe it’s just the classics from a particular region of the world that are racist & oppressive?
Few things depress me more than the way that elements of contemporary academia see their role as trashing scholarship & learning. Great example: there are an increasing number of classicists who hate their own subject and don't think students should have to learn Greek or Latin
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From this list, Citizen Kane, Casablanca, Double Indemnity, The Maltese Falcon, The Third Man. Outside this list, The Grapes of Wrath, To Be or Not to Be, Kind Hearts & Coronets, A Matter of Life & Death, Sullivan’s Travels, Bicycle Thieves … What a fantastic decade for films!
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Bengali expression my mother uses: “sukhe thakte bhoote dhara”, ie “Getting possessed by ghost when you’re at peace”. Doesn’t translate well, but it means “Why seek out trouble when you’re comfortable?” Comes to mind whenever I feel like commenting here on some contentious issue
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Review of new production of Othello has nothing to say about interpretation, but is disappointed that it doesn't make some banal point about Trumpism. "It ... does not ... seek to connect the play’s manipulations with our era of Trumpian truths and lies"
theguardian.com
Harewood is captivating alongside Toby Jones and Caitlin FitzGerald but Tom Morris’s stylish staging could probe greater depths
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“I’ve only been admitted back into polite society very recently”. Kate Clanchy MBE - a teacher, author and poet who championed the poetry of young immigrants and refugees - was excommunicated by her publisher and accused of exploiting young poets by her peers. This was nothing
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Despite its tragic content, it’s surprisingly free of angst. By the end, after all the turmoil, there is a profound sense of calm & serenity. It’s almost as if, after all the pain & anguish of his previous tragedies, Shakespeare had found here some sort of resolution.
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“What’s your favourite Shakespeare play?” is a hard one to answer, but this is the one I return to most often.
bbc.co.uk
Kenneth Branagh and Alex Kingston star in Shakespeare's tragedy of love and power.
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Isnt this a wonderful one? Clemenceau's full quote on Émile Zola that so resonates today and on X: "Men have been found to resist the most powerful monarchs and to refuse to bow down before them, but few indeed have been found to resist the crowd, to stand up alone before
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“The greatest ever …” is a meaningless term, but this one is certainly in the shortlist. I first saw it when I was about 13 or 14 in the early 70s, in the BBC series “World Cinema”, which showed films from around the world, both classic & modern.
On this day, 72 years ago, Yasujirô Ozu's "Tokyo Story" (1953) was released in Japan.
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Horrifying.
This female RSF militia commander makes it clear that following the massacres in El Fasher that the militia should extend its terror to other parts of Sudan. She encourages the militiamen to head to North State to rape and impregnate the women in order to “cleanse their lineage”
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Absolutely no excuse when there is no shortage of fine translations available.
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Can you imagine it if all performances of Beethoven’s symphonies were re-arranged versions ‘for modern audiences’? Can you imagine it if all available editions of ‘Middlemarch’ were re-written versions? But this is what is happening in performances of classic drama.
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Another “re-imagining”. No-one would now dream of filming Ibsen’s play in a straight translation. Stage productions are all “in a new version by” jobs - ie re-writings. Why bother with Ibsen at all if you aren’t going to respect what he actually wrote?
bbc.com
An unhappy bride plotting others' downfalls, 19th-Century anti-heroine Hedda Gabler is one of the great roles for women – and as new film Hedda is released, she remains controversial.
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Had the most lovely evening in. My sincere thanks to the Highland Park distillery; to the Stilton creamery; to Artur Rubinstein; and last, though by no means least, to Frédéric Chopin.
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Blue stilton cheese, and a dram of 14 year old Highland Park malt whisky. Heaven! Nationalists can say what they like, but when the best of England and Scotland come together, you do get something special!
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All eyes should be on Sudan. And yet almost no eyes are on Sudan.
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