To
The Hermitage
Sir
Bradbury
There is so much
to this book that I believe it will require another reading. If you're at all
interested in two of my favorite topics -- the Enlightenment philosophy of reason
and postmodernism -- then you will absolutely LOVE this book. It is so good and
often funny in a very witty, sarcastic manner.
In one timeline, Denis Diderot, the brilliant Enlightenment philosopher/author
(the author of the famous Encyclopeda (go find this on the internet; it is a
fascinating topic) has been invited and has put off several times an invitation
to visit Empress Catherine the Great at her newly-built Hermitage in St.
Petersburg, Russia. She meets with him each afternoon; she has decided she
wants to be an enlightened ruler, but the more Diderot discusses how an
enlightened ruler should rule, she counters with the fact that if she followed
his way of thinking, she'd be assassinated. To me the scenes (told along side
in parallel fashion to a modern journey to St. Petersburg) set at the time of
Catherine the Great were the best -- I couldn't wait until the chapter reading
"then."
A second journey to St. Petersburg is taking place, ironically, the Diderot
project celebrating the age of reason is taking place in Russia just as the
last vestiges of the Old Guard Communists are trying to get Yeltsin out of
power, staging their well-publicized coup. It seems that the participants of
the Diderot project are going to the Hermitage in search of Diderot's works
which were bought and shipped in full to Catherine the Great. However, what
really happens on the way to Russia and once in Russia are vastly different.
There is a lot written on this book; I will tell you that I enjoyed it very
much but I took a long time to get through it and have copious notes which I
will have to go through here shortly. Not for an everyday kind of read, but
well worth sticking to it through the 500+ pages.
Posted
by bcquinnsmom
Jan 1, 2007
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Creada: 06/110/2008
Última Actualización: 06/11/2008