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4.0
Curiosity
ByPublisher Description
An eclectic history of human curiosity, a great feast of ideas, and a memoir of a reading life from an internationally celebrated reader and thinker
Curiosity has been seen through the ages as the impulse that drives our knowledge forward and the temptation that leads us toward dangerous and forbidden waters. The question “Why?” has appeared under a multiplicity of guises and in vastly different contexts throughout the chapters of human history. Why does evil exist? What is beauty? How does language inform us? What defines our identity? What is our responsibility to the world? In Alberto Manguel’s most personal book to date, the author tracks his own life of curiosity through the reading that has mapped his way.
Manguel chooses as his guides a selection of writers who sparked his imagination. He dedicates each chapter to a single thinker, scientist, artist, or other figure who demonstrated in a fresh way how to ask “Why?” Leading us through a full gallery of inquisitives, among them Thomas Aquinas, David Hume, Lewis Carroll, Rachel Carson, Socrates, and, most importantly, Dante, Manguel affirms how deeply connected our curiosity is to the readings that most astonish us, and how essential to the soaring of our own imaginations.
Curiosity has been seen through the ages as the impulse that drives our knowledge forward and the temptation that leads us toward dangerous and forbidden waters. The question “Why?” has appeared under a multiplicity of guises and in vastly different contexts throughout the chapters of human history. Why does evil exist? What is beauty? How does language inform us? What defines our identity? What is our responsibility to the world? In Alberto Manguel’s most personal book to date, the author tracks his own life of curiosity through the reading that has mapped his way.
Manguel chooses as his guides a selection of writers who sparked his imagination. He dedicates each chapter to a single thinker, scientist, artist, or other figure who demonstrated in a fresh way how to ask “Why?” Leading us through a full gallery of inquisitives, among them Thomas Aquinas, David Hume, Lewis Carroll, Rachel Carson, Socrates, and, most importantly, Dante, Manguel affirms how deeply connected our curiosity is to the readings that most astonish us, and how essential to the soaring of our own imaginations.
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4.0
“I lack the patience and will to read or appreciate things like Dante, so I am pleased this guy has done the work for me.”
“радячи людям альберто мангуеля, я зазвичай кажу, що це такий умберто еко, тільки аргентинський (і, звісно, згадую еталонний фрагмент із https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53085.A_History_of_Reading , у якому борхес приходить із мамою до книгарні, де працює юний альберто). але не знаю, чи це порівняння може пояснити, як сильно мені подобаються його тексти.
мангуель – чудесний оповідач, у якого мене захоплюють й історії, і метод.
As Petrarch understood it, the intimate conviction of readers is that there are no individually written books: there is only one text, infinite and fragmented, through which we leaf with no concern for continuity or anachronism or bureaucratic property claims. Since I first started reading, I know that I think in quotations and that I write with what others have written, and that I can have no other ambition than to reshuffle and rearrange. I find great satisfaction in this task. And at the same time, I’m convinced that no satisfaction can be truly everlasting.
у «цікавості» він заручається насамперед підтримкою данте, а далі майстерно маневрує в цьому морі тексту, однаково вишукано пов'язуючи данте з хасидами, прімо леві, льюїсом керролом, карло коллоді чи з деталями власної біографії. образ чеширської усмішки беатріче – або навпаки, чеширського кота з її усмішкою – мабуть, нескоро мене відпустить. звісно, запитання, з яких починається плетиво окремих розділів (як ми думаємо? що ми тут робимо? що буде далі? що є істина?), остаточних відповідей не отримують, але ж це якраз і є маркер авторської адекватності.”
“Curiosity, evidently, need only be explored through Dante.”
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