Wednesday: Hili dialogue

June 10, 2015 • 5:46 am

Professor Ceiling Cat has a busy day today, with little time for posting. However, there is also lagniappe this morning: a Cyrus dialogue. But first, down by the Vistula, the Furry Princess of Poland is in existential despair:

Hili: This is meaningless.
A: What is meaningless?
Hili: It’s so beautiful here and not a single mouse.

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In Polish:
Hili: To bez sensu.
Ja: Co jest bez sensu?
Hili: Tak tu pięknie i ani jednej myszy.
*******

The lagniappe, posted on Andrzej’s Facebook page. Hili and Cyrus discuss music:

Hili: Do you like Wagner?
Cyrus: I find something repulsive in him.
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14 thoughts on “Wednesday: Hili dialogue”

  1. I never liked Wagner until I discovered Parsifal, which I think is fantastic, although the best of it is earlier on. And it would have been better without the singing! I mean I prefer symphonic music. You have to divorce the art from the artist.

    2. The best interpretation of Wagner is Anna Russell’s version of the Ring Cycle. She gets the whole thing into eighteen minutes which is about the right length for that utterly pompous, bombastic, endlessly repetitive work. I think Wagner invented the Leitmotif because he was incredibly lazy and had a way to stretch three minutes of music into a four hour “musical drama” (Wagner did not do “opera”).

    3. IMO, although Gotterdamerung (sp??) earns its 6-hour length, I don’t think Parsifal does. Act I could be trimmed to half its original length, with no loss.

      Parsifal was the one opera some Nazis did not like, apparently alarmed by an overtly anti-racist message embedded in the text somewhere. It’s world premiere had a Jewish conductor.

  2. As Twain said, “Wagner’s music is better than it sounds.” Personally, I’ve been a fan since I was a boy. In fact, I think I’ll go listen to the overture from Tannhauser.

  5. I remember reading somewhere that Wagner’s Ring Cycle was described by contemporary critics as sounding like “demons drowning in a torrent of brandy” and “advanced cat music.” Though the latter might sound like a compliment to many readers at WEIT, it was not meant as such by the critic.

  6. Although I enjoy Wagner, I liked the comment by Woody Allen’s character in “Manhattan Murder Mystery”.
    “I can’t listen to too much Wagner- it makes me want to invade Poland”.

  7. We used to discuss and argue about music a lot in my postdoctoral lab – my fellow postdocs in favor of Wagner, and I against. I considered this news item from the August 9, 1994 Chicago Tribune a “win” for my negative position on Wagner:

    “Opera may be sweet to some people’s ears. But to one animal, the strains of Wagner were fatal. The Copenhagen Zoo said Tuesday that one of its okapis-a rare African mammal related to the giraffe-died from stress apparently triggered by opera singers rehearsing 300 yards away in a park. Katanda, a 6-year-old okapi, collapsed after Royal Theater performers began singing selections from “Tannhauser” on Friday, zoo spokesman Peter Haase said. “She started hyperventilating, went into shock and collapsed,” he said. “We did all we could, but she died Saturday. An autopsy determined the animal suffered a severe “stress” attack.”

  9. “Hili: It’s so beautiful here and not a single mouse.”

    Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, keep looking Hili, there will be a mouse somewhere.

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