GREAT CONVERSATIONS

Our Great Conversations reading group is currently discussing: The Grand Inquisitor.

The Grand Inquisitor is a chapter from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s book, The Brothers Karamazov.

It is proving to be another one of our more enthusiastically discussed selections, so much so that we are going to continue discussing it again next week.

The basic argument of the chapter is being related through a conversation between two brothers, Ivan, an Atheist, and Alyosha, a Monk.

The dialog, and our discussion, involves the philosophical aspects of Religion, Human Nature, Freedom, Free Will, and Happiness; all these are common themes throughout our discussion series.

To lighten the atmosphere a bit we watched a somewhat related Woody Allen film, Love and Death; it is rife with typical Woody Allen humor and satire. The film is set in Russia during the Napoleonic War, with plenty of Gogolian and Dostoevsky’n lines as parody.

In conclusion: I recommend The Grand Inquisitor as a thought-provoking piece of reading. At twenty-seven pages it is a quick read; but you may find yourself rereading several of the passages, and thinking about them a lot, over the next few days.

The Grand Inquisitor is available as public domain on the Internet.
Or one can take the easy way and read the synopsis offered on Wikkipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grand_Inquisitor
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073312/

Birding Miller Island

Nancy and I birded Miller Island this evening to check up on our Sandhill Crane families. We were lucky and spotted both families. The first family spotted was too far away to get any images of them; they were feeding about a quarter of a mile off the road. The second family, with a chick, was feeding just seventy-five feet from the roadside, in tall grass. We are not sure whether this is the same family that was two chicks last month or not. Anyway, it was a treat for us to have viewed them up close again.

OUT OF AFRICA

Out of Africa: Starring Merle Streep, and Robert Redford, adapted from the memoirs of Isak Dinesen, set in early twentieth century of East Africa, what a combination for a great, and epic, Motion Picture Film.

It won seven Academy Awards for the 1985 season. I’ve seen it at least five times, not including this morning, again; and this morning’s viewing, for myself, for some reason, was the most poignant viewing of all.

I’m moving it to number one on my all time favorite list, until something else blows it away, and I cannot imagine what that would be.

I guess my knowing the story so well allowed me, this time, to concentrate on the interaction of the characters, and from my point of view, the seminal moments of their bonding together: the first story telling session, Simultaneously shooting the charging lions, and the first airplane ride together. In these actions they melded together into one entity, the ultimate human relationship.

The last few scenes of the film: the burial scene, the farewell drinks at the Hunting Club Bar, and the lions lounging on Denis’ grave site, bring to my mind, the true measure of one’s happiness: in the end, and upon reflection, is one proud of one’s self, satisfied in heart and mind, saddened to see the end, and willing to do it all over again exactly the same way.

True happiness does, sometimes, have a tinge of melancholy to it.