"Home Thoughts from Abroad" is the name of a poem by Robert Browning, in which he expresses a longing, a Sehnsucht for home, which for him was England. "Home Thoughts from Abroad" was also a sketch in the 1960s English comedy "Beyond the Fringe", which my brother and I have performed intermittently since high school. In this sketch American life and culture is humorously portrayed as philistine and critiqued from an upper-class Oxbridge English perspective. It does have some amazing insights. The sketch actually endeared to me those very American peculiarities which it so humorously lampoons.
To me "Home Thoughts from Abroad" is a place where, as a resident of a unique, historic, and multicultural city, I can explore and reflect on the notions and experiences of place, culture, language, ethnicity, rootedness and Entfremdung (alienation) from a perspective which is rooted in Western religious, literary, and philosophical tradition. New Orleans provides one with an experience of life in every extreme - joy and sadness, the heights and depths, wealth and poverty, life and death - in such concentrated doses that it makes it difficult or impossible to escape reality. This, for me, is one of the joys and gifts of living in this city.
"Zeitgeistliche Überlegungen" continues this theme to include observations about current events and ideas, and my thoughts about them. Although the blog will be mainly in English, some German may appear from time-to-time.
Home Thoughts from Abroad
"Home Thoughts from Abroad" is the name of a poem by Robert Browning, in which he expresses a longing, a Sehnsucht for home, which for him was England. "Home Thoughts from Abroad" was also a sketch in the 1960s English comedy "Beyond the Fringe", which my brother and I have performed intermittently since high school. In this sketch American life and culture is humorously portrayed as philistine and critiqued from an upper-class Oxbridge English perspective. It does have some amazing insights. The sketch actually endeared to me those very American peculiarities which it so humorously lampoons.
To me "Home Thoughts from Abroad" is a place where, as a resident of three very different, unique, historic, and multicultural cities, I can explore and reflect on the notions and experiences of place, culture, language, ethnicity, rootedness and Entfremdung (alienation) from a perspective which is rooted in Western religious, literary, and philosophical tradition. New Orleans provides one with an experience of life in every extreme - joy and sadness, the heights and depths, wealth and poverty, life and death - in such concentrated doses that it makes it difficult or impossible to escape reality. This, for me, is one of the joys and gifts of New Orleans. Vienna is to me like an old glove, in which I feel very comfortable and at home. In Vienna, one can enjoy the very best that Europe has to offer. Paris is both foreign, but familiar - a place and a culture for which one longs and one is not disappointed.
"Zeitgeistliche Überlegungen" continues this theme to include observations about current events and ideas, and my thoughts about them. Although the blog will be mainly in English, some German or French may appear from time-to-time.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
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