Eric Clapton in Salt Lake

Since Eric Clapton is the current vote winner, I'll start a brief post about his visit to Salt Lake. This post will expand as I get the real experts--Margaret and Misha--to add comments.

The story in brief: Margaret (my wife) and I, after trying insanely to win tickets to the Clapton concert by calling 103.5 "The Arrow," decided to buy them--which we did, and gave them to our son Misha for Christmas. Part of the gift was that he would get to go with his mom, who has been a Clapton fan for many years. Some Christmases ago, I gave her the Cream of Clapton CD. (As she notes below, daughter Kaila gave her Clapton Unplugged.) Misha, who is 15, has become a Clapton fan and is following in his footsteps by becoming an amazing guitarist. Eric Clapton is arguably the finest rock guitarist in the world. I would also put the late George Harrison in the running (Harrison and Clapton were friends, and Clapton plays the guitar on Harrison's "While My Guitar Gently Weeps"), but some think there's no competition.

The concert took place in Salt Lake on March 8. (Margaret and Misha went and made an evening of it; besides the fact that Margaret loves Clapton, it was her turn because some years ago I "got" to go to an 'Nsync concert with daughter Julie.) You can click here or here for stories on the concert and here for photos. But Margaret and Misha need to tell the real story . . .

Here's Margaret:

    First off, Kaila gave me "Clapton Unplugged." You gave me "Cream of Clapton."
    Installment #1: Christmas season. Bruce and I both have speed-dials set for all three numbers of 103.5 fm. When we hear "Cocaine" or anything else by Clapton, we start madly pressing buttons--home phone, office phone, cell phone. We get busy signals. We never win. Finally, we buy the tickets. Then we break the news to Michael that we tried and tried to win the tickets but we just couldn't.
    Meanwhile, I wrap the tickets in a video box with some a few little things to make it rattle and put it under the tree.
    Christmas morning arrives. Michael opens several gifts before getting to that one. He opens it, looked shocked, says, "I thought you said you didn't get them."
    I answer, "No, I said we didn't WIN them."
    He breaks into one of his wonderful, ever subtle smiles.
    SWEET!

Now we need to hear from Misha. And here he is (in the form of a report prepared for school):
    On March, 8th, 2007, I attended the Eric Clapton concert at the Energy Solutions Center in Salt Lake City, Utah. I loved it. I thought it was great. Eric Clapton only said 13 words to the audience: “thank you and good evening” and “thank you” four times. But it doesn’t really matter because he spoke with his guitar.
    There were lots of people. Most of them were old, and a lot had long hair. A lot of them were drinking beer and “having a good time.”
    The opening band (Robert Cray) was good. All they did was blues.
    The songs Eric Clapton played were:
 1.   Tell the Truth
 2.   Key to the Highway
 3.   Got to Get Better in a Little While
 4.   Little Wing (By Jimi Hendrix)
 5.   Anyday
 6.   Driftin’ Blues
 7.   Outside Women Blues
 8.   Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out
 9.   Running on Faith
10.   Motherless Child
11.   Little Queen of Spades
12.   Further on up the Road
13.   Wonderful Tonight
14.   Layla
  Encore:
 1.   Cocaine
 2.   Crossroads
    They brought the opening band to come out in the encore. The concert was just five minutes short of two hours, and I enjoyed every minute of it. I consider Eric Clapton one of the best guitar players in the world, and it was very entertaining to watch him. But I think all the other members of the band were really good too:
 Doyle Bramhall II – guitar
 Derek Trucks – guitar
 Chris Stainton – keyboards
 Tim Carmon – keyboards
 Willie Weeks – bass
 Steve Jordan – drums
 Michelle John – backing vocals
 Sharon White – backing vocals
    They all got a chance to solo and they all very talented, but Eric Clapton is the most talented. He’s played with tons of different bands, and he’s had lots of practicing at guitar and singing over the years. He’s the main reason I went. Eric Clapton played on both electric and acoustic guitar. He was very good at both. Eric Clapton played blues and rock. My favorite songs were “Little Wing” (a ballad written by Jimi Hendrix), “Layla” (he did the “Derek and the Dominoes” rock version), “Cocaine” (also a rock song), and “Wonderful Tonight” (rock but a bit softer).

You vote!: what you'd like to discuss

I've been just a bit busy lately, but would like to keep discussion going by asking you to VOTE on what topic you'd like me to bring up. Here are some possibilities:
(1) Why ritual?
(2) Sonnets
(3) Eric Clapton
(4) Chocolate
(5) The book I'm writing
(6) Courses I'll be teaching this fall (world lit, intro to lit, and C. S. Lewis)
(7) The graduate course on Shakespeare I'll be teaching Winter 2008
(8) "An objective view of the New Testament texts: an attempt"
(9) Groundhog Day (yes, I will be getting back to this soon, but how soon may depend on the degree of interest--and whether you can handle watching the movie again to prepare for discussion)
(10) Other

Just add a comment indicating which topic(s) you're most interested in.

Comparing translations of a passage from The Purgatorio

For those interested in translations of Dante, I thought I'd try out a passage: the last 19 lines of canto 27 of the Purgatorio. To avoid using up lots of space here, though, I've created a document you can reach by clicking on this link:

http://english2.byu.edu/faculty/youngb/purgatorio-27.pdf or, if you prefer, http://english2.byu.edu/faculty/youngb/purgatorio-27.doc.

Here you'll find the Italian plus a couple of English translations. Take a look and tell me what you think. And if you have another translation you'd like us to look at, post it as a comment.

More on Dante (or should I say "allegro"?)

For those interested in Garry Wilmore's Tuscan bean and rice soup recipe (and musings on Dante), go to http://imieicariamici.blogspot.com/2005/05/my-now-famous-tuscan-bean-and-rice.html.

Favorite translations of Dante

I'd be interested to know if anyone out there has a favorite translation of Dante--meaning mainly the Commedia ("Divine Comedy")--and why it's your favorite.

My favorite is the one by John Ciardi, mainly because I know it well. It seems to me clear, contemporary sounding, and fast paced (meaning it doesn't get bogged down in sounding eloquent). And it seems (from what I can tell) reasonably accurate.

Ciardi attempts to capture the feel of Dante's terza rima by rhyming the first and third lines of every group of three lines (these three-line stanzas are called "tercets"). For you lit majors, that means axa bxb cxc dxd--with "x" referring to the middle line of each stanza, which does NOT rhyme with other lines. Dante, by contrast, rhymes the middle line of every tercet with the outer lines of the following tercet, thus: aba bcb cdc ded efe.

As Dante buffs will know, the Commedia is made up of three large "canticles" (cantiche): the Inferno, the Purgatorio, and the Paradiso. Each canticle is made up of 33 cantos (except that the Inferno has an extra introductory canto for a total of 34). The entire Commedia thus has 100 cantos (which, being 10 times 10 [3 times 3, plus 1], is a cool number alluding to the Trinity, whose superlative three-ness [3 squared] plus perfect unity [1] Dante associates with the number 10). Got that?

Ciardi ends each canto with a rhyming couplet, which Dante does NOT do. Dante ends a canto by rhyming the middle line of the second to last stanza with one more solitary line at the end, thus--aba bcb cdc d--whereas Ciardi ends a canto aba bcb cdc dd.

Maybe at some point we can compare specific passages in different translations.

Meaning of "The Face of the Other"

Since I'm not quite ready to get back to Groundhog Day, I thought I'd throw in an explanation of the title of this blog site. "The face of the Other" is a phrase used by Emmanuel Levinas, an important twentieth-century philosopher who has won my deep interest and admiration. I'll make two clarifying points and then give some quotations from Levinas:

(1) “Other” (sometimes capitalized, sometimes not) usually translates the French word autrui, which means “the other person,” “someone else” (other than oneself). It is thus the personal other, the other person, whoever it is, that each of us encounters directly, or experiences the traces of, every day. Of course, we encounter a multiplicity of others, but Levinas more often uses the singular “other” to emphasize that we encounter others one at a time, face to face.

(2) By “face” Levinas means the human face (or in French, visage), but not thought of or experienced as a physical or aesthetic object. Rather, the first, usual, unreflective encounter with the face is as the living presence of another person. Thus, when we come "face to face" with another person, the experience is a social and ethical one (rather than intellectual, aesthetic, or merely physical). “Living presence,” for Levinas, would imply that the other person (as someone genuinely other than myself) is exposed to me--that is, is vulnerably present--and expresses him or herself simply by being there as an undeniable reality that I cannot reduce to images or ideas in my head. This impossibility of capturing the other conceptually or otherwise reveals the other’s “infinity” (i.e., irreducibility to a finite [bounded] entity over which I can have power). The other person is, of course, exposed and expressive in other ways than through the literal face (e.g., through speech, gesture, action, and bodily presence generally), but the face is the most exposed, most vulnerable, and most expressive aspect of the other’s presence.

Some quotations from Levinas:

The face is a living presence; it is expression. . . . The face speaks. (Totality and Infinity 66)

. . . the face speaks to me and thereby invites me to a relation . . . (Totality and Infinity 198)

The face opens the primordial discourse whose first word is obligation. (Totality and Infinity 201)

. . . the face presents itself, and demands justice. (Totality and Infinity 294)

In front of the face, I always demand more of myself. (“Signature” 294 in Difficult Freedom: Essays on Judaism)

[I am] not free to ignore the meaningful world into which the face of the Other has introduced [me]. (Totality and Infinity 219)

For many more quotations concerning "the face," see http://english2.byu.edu/faculty/youngb/levinas/face.pdf or http://english2.byu.edu/faculty/youngb/levinas/face.rtf. And for more on Levinas, see http://english2.byu.edu/faculty/youngb/levinas/guide.htm.