# johnshade says: "I learn a lot of things from reading this blog. Such as that Milton wrote in Italian." Hmmm. Good catch. My point was about Great Writers who wrote in their vernacular, rather than in learned Establishment Greek or Latin, and thus thrust that vernacular into Canonical Literature, instead of just low-brow pop culture. I suppose I should claim some sort of categorical or Topos Theory triality wherein Milton wrote in Italian exactly to the extent that Dante wrote in German, which in turn is exactly the same extent as Goethe wrote in English. And then provide a proof from James Joyce. Or a German crossword puzzle on a Klein bottle, in which is embedded a Chess puzzle as a poem in Russian by Nabokov. As a teacher, my philosophy of education is to award you a Gold Star for extra credit for catching me in a mistake. Now, what KIND of star is that, you may well wonder. For the uninitiated, since we are talking about Writers' Writers: John Shade [born July 5, 1898; died July 21, 1959] is a fictional character in Vladimir Nabokov's 1962 hypertext novel "Pale Fire." Or so we would have you believe [cf. Professor Pnin; "The Real Life of Sebastian Knight; "The Hyperprismatic Bezel"].

* Jonathan Vos Post says (29 January, 2008): "I bet actual crackpots never, ever ask themselves if they are crackpots."I, of course, asked a meta-question about psychoceramic coefficients and recursion.The psychology is vaguely parallel if we make a domain transformation or two: Do heretics ask themselves: "Theologically, am I a heretic?" Except, of course, in strategically in preparing their defense.Jewish community AND Christian community: "Baruch Spinoza: you are obviously a heretic, and we cast thee out." Spinoza: "You petty fools, and this world, and all matter and energy and time and space are all merely low amplitude first-order perturbations in the Mind of God. Also, Albert Einstein will say the same, more mathematically, in a few centuries, and admit that my Theology is the basis of his. So nyah, nyah, nyah." I also cite the speech that Iago makes to the audience in Shakespeare's Othello. His actions and plans are ascribed superficially plausible motives behind them. but then he kills his own wife pretty much because he could, which weakens his argument to those in the audience who were somewhat peresuaded. He got annoyed with her and then. knife time for Emilia. Verbally, at first, he is grappling rather cleverly with the question: "Am I an evil, villainous, antagonist?" He concludes otherwise, in a brilliant rationalization of his modus vivendi (not so vivendi for Desdemona or then Othello). Anyway, Iago's arguments to his pawn Rodrigo, and to himself, and to us, bear the seeds of their own disproof, as nicely analyzed in "Shakespeare and the History of Soliloquies" by James E. Hirsh...That axiomatization of the relativity of evil by Iago changed the nature of bad guys forever, in English literature, just as John Milton's Satan ["Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven"] had done in Italian, and Goethe's Mephisto in Faust, for German.

As John Rumrich wrote:"'Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven' In saying this Satan distinguishes himself from the shade of Achilles, who tells Odysseus that it would be better to live as the servant of a slave than to reign over all the exhausted dead." Michael Bryson makes a natural transformation and probes more deeply into meta-politics: "Milton puts many of these very same arguments in the mouth of his Satan. Satan uses the Protestant rhetoric of legitimate rebellion by 'princes' or 'inferior magistrates' against a king and transforms it into a rallying cry for the overthrow of God himself. Satan continually refers to his compatriots as 'Princes,' as 'Powers,' as 'Potentates.' Even the poem's narrator gets in on the act: in referring to Mammon in his pre-fall role as Heaven's architect, the narrator gives readers an image of 'Scepter'd Angels' who viewed 'many a Tow'red structure high,' angels who 'sat as Princes, whom the supreme King / Exalted to such power, and gave to rule, / Each in his hierarchy, the Orders bright' (I. 733-737). The political structure of Heaven itself is drawn on a model of a King and his princely magistrates, the very magistrates by whom, according to the above-mentioned Protestant thinkers, resistance, rebellion, and overthrow could be carried out under the right circumstances. In making Satan the mouthpiece for Protestant theories of rebellion that spell out the 'proper' relation of the individual Christian to secular authority, Milton critiques not only the theories themselves (which tended to uphold secular tyranny so long as it was decent enough to refrain from intruding into the realm of Christian religion), but also the notions of
magistracy and kingship contained therein. Milton wants to take the arguments of Luther, Calvin, Mh ntzer, and Marshall into much more radical territory than those men were willing to enter."[ The Tyranny of Heaven Milton's Rejection of God as King Michael Bryson U. Delaware Press, 2004] So, meta-meta-question: am I a meta-crackpot? And what is the fixed point of this sequence?

johnshade says:
7 February, 2008

I learn a lot of things from reading this blog. Such as that Milton wrote in Italian.

Todd Trimble says:
10 February, 2008

Any idea why you get so much spam on this blog? Of the math blogs I read, this receives far more than others.

Jonathan Vos Post says:
11 February, 2008

# johnshade Says: "I learn a lot of things from reading this blog. Such as that Milton wrote in Italian." Hmmm. Good catch. My point was about Great Writers who wrote in their vernacular, rather than in learned Establishment Greek or Latin, and thus thrust that vernacular into Canonical Literature, instead of just low-brow pop culture.I suppose I should claim some sort of categorical or Topos Theory triality wherein Milton wrote in Italian exactly to the extent that Dante wrote in German, which in turn is exactly the same extent as Goethe wrote in English. And then provide a proof from James Joyce. Or a German crossword puzzle on a Klein bottle, in which is embedded a Chess puzzle as a poem in Russian by Nabokov. As a teacher, my philosophy of education is to award you a Gold Star for extra credit for catching me in a mistake. Now, what KIND of star is that, you may well wonder. For the uninitiated, since we are talking about Writers' Writers:John Shade [born July 5, 1898; died July 21, 1959] is a fictional character in Vladimir Nabokov's 1962 hypertext novel "Pale Fire." Or so we would have you believe [cf. Professor Pnin; "The Real Life of Sebastian Knight; "The Hyperprismatic Bezel"].
...

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