I changed your life, Superman, out of cold curiosity. Will you destroy me for it? Or will I defend myself despite my sins?
Sayfa 16Kitabı okudu
"So, if this were one of your books, who would we be?”
“That depends,” I said. “What kind of book is it? A romance? Mystery? Fairy tale?”
“Fairy tale,” Brett said very seriously.
“I’m guessing you want to be the prince?”
“Only if you’re the princess."
It is the logic of our times,
No subject for immortal verse,
that we who live by honest dreams
Defend the bad against the worse.
Ölümsüz şiirlerin konusu değil,
Çağımızın mantığıdır bu:
Dürüst düşler sayesinde yaşayan bizler,
Kötüleri savunuruz daha beter olanlara karşı.
~Cecil Day Lewis
Sayfa 308 - YKYKitabı okudu
Cultural Complicities
Culture is not an individual's expertise, acquired by a deliberately pro-active attitude directed toward the establishments that specialize in its diffusion, but a manner of being, a way of living, an element of the habitus like courtesy, respect for ancestors and traditions, and a taste for being among one's peers.
Familiarity with culture also depends on financial comfort. Véronique de Montremy remembers the bookstore at the comer of the Avenue Marceau "where Papa had opened for us an absolutely unlimited account, which was brilliant because the director of the bookstore adored all foreign literature. Every Saturday afternoon we spent at least an hour discussing foreign books. Papa was very centered on the 19th and 20th centuries of France, so that it is thanks to this lady, a sort of intellectual mentor, that we read a lot of foreign literature." Her maternal grandmother made it possible for her to attend the Bayreuth Festival as a reward for passing the baccalaureat exam. "So I went to Bayreuth for my graduation. Culture was integrated into our life indeed."
Cultural Complicities
School can take the place of the family milieubut it depends on which school, of course. Éva Thomassin, as we have seen, daughter of a rich family originally from Argentina, boarder at a Lausanne school frequented by royal children and heirs of great international fortunes, shows that these exceptional private schools replicate this relationship of complicity with the cultural universe. "We took a trip to Italy, from Milan to Naples; all of Italyvisiting museums. I will never forget that trip! The marvelous trains of that era, the paintings I saw in museums. We must have been very, very well escorted, to have succeeded in getting us to like Fra Angelicos at that point. . . Unforgettable! to the point that when I see a picture today, I immediately recognize it. The other day I said: Ah! that is a Filippo Lippi. You don't forget these things." This cultural training always has as a social dimension: it is a question of mastering the culture necessary to efficiently manage the social capital. "They prepared us to go into a salon and know how to converse intelligently, in a cultivated manner." In any case, what characterizes the schools favored by the great families resides in the complementary fashion with which they assure the transmission of all forms of capital: academic, cultural, and also social, symbolic and even physical, by the importance granted to the body and sports. In sum, a complete education for a complete person.
This is perhaps China’s greatest divide – that between urban and rural, rich and poor – and, as we shall see later, it worries the ruling Communist Party. It knows that the unity and stability of the People’s Republic depend to a great extent on bridging the gap, and that its iron grip on the people will slip if it fails to do so.
Sayfa 14 - Elliott and Thompson
