Daniel Mendelsohn in conversation with Ayad Akhtar: Homer’s The Odyssey, at the 92nd Street Y (April 10): Threads from Homer’s Odyssey are “so tightly woven into the fabric of our literature and art, music and drama,” notes the classicist Daniel Mendelsohn, that “it’s with a start that we recall someone had to invent them.” It’s easy to forget that each generation has to retranslate the poem, too, if those threads are to be discerned (at least until Ancient Greek makes its way into the common curriculum). To mark the publication of Mendelsohn’s new hexameter translation, an excerpt of which appears in The New Criterion’s special April poetry issue, the classicist will take the stage with the writer Ayad Akhtar this Thursday to discuss Homer’s meter, his meaning, and more. Presented by the Unterberg Poetry Center at the 92nd Street Y, the event can be attended in person or virtually. —RE
DogDogs, by Elliott Erwitt (Phaidon): C. S. Lewis declared that “Man with dog closes a gap in the universe,” in one of the many sharp turns of phrases that James Como presents in a forthcoming stylistic examination of the twentieth-century master for the May issue of The New Criterion. And who could doubt the veracity of that aphorism after paging through the mid-century photographer Elliott Erwitt’s DogDogs, a reissue of a beloved 1998 collection of man’s best friend in a variety of charming situations. Each reader will have his favorite of these candid capturings (the lonely dachshund on the sands of Deauville particularly caught my eye), but all will agree that somehow dogs make humans more human indeed. —BR
Drawing Masterclass: 100 Creative Techniques of Great Artists, by Guy Noble (Thames & Hudson): A little technical knowledge can go a long way in bolstering even the most casual appreciation of an artwork. Understanding the difference between oil and tempera, say, or etching and engraving makes a museum visit all the more enriching. So even though Guy Noble’s recently reissued Drawing Masterclass, which examines one hundred drawings through technique, material, and their artists’ biographies, pitches itself as a guide and a fillip to artists, it will surely be just as enlightening to the amateur as to the art student. —SM
Jordi Savall & Hespèrion XXI at the 92nd Street Y (April 11): To pigeonhole a piece of music within a particular national school or historical movement can sometimes deaden its appreciation. A gambist, conductor, and leader of myriad ensembles and projects, Jordi Savall does the exact opposite: combining meticulous research with historically informed performance, he sets music free. His achievement is to uncover and restore music of the early modern era and bring it to vivid and thrilling life onstage, and to place obscure music from far-flung corners of the globe—Peru, for example, or Armenia—within a greater, cosmopolitan continuum. Not to be missed is his concert this Friday at the 92nd Street Y with Hespèrion XXI, in a performance of “Music of Fire and Love.” On the program will be“grounds and improvisations; selections from Captain Hume’s Musicall Humours and Battles; Catalan laments; and other music from Spain, Peru, Mexico, England, and Italy.” —IS
Dance Theatre of Harlem at New York City Center (April 10–13): Dance Theatre of Harlem returns this week for its annual parade through New York City Center. Now in its second year under the leadership of Robert Garland, its longtime dancer and choreographer, the fifty-six-year-old company founded by Arthur Mitchell continues to champion a mix of classical and uptown influences. Two company premieres reflect the classical side: George Balanchine’s Donizetti Variations, which New York City Ballet debuted on the same stage in 1960; and William Forsythe’s The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude, of 1996, which draws on Balanchine-like partnering through the final movement of Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 9. Rounding out the program will be the world premiere of Jodie Gates’s The Passage of Being, which is set to the contemporary compositions of Ryan Lott, while the New York premiere of Garland’s The Cookout is danced to the soul music of Jill Scott, Cymande, Caron Wheeler, and Brass Construction. —JP
Dispatch:
“Van Gogh’s loneliness,” by Laura Sheahen. On A Fire in His Soul: Van Gogh, Paris, and the Making of an Artist, by Miles J. Unger.
By the Editors:
“Actions v. Words”
Roger Kimball, American Greatness
From the Archives:
“Raymond Aron & the power of ideas,” by Roger Kimball (May 2001). On the reissue of Aron’s Opium of the Intellectuals.
