Free Thinking - Walter Benjamin; A cultural history of the body; Edvard Munch; Soviet Superwoman
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 23 June 2016
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Anne McElvoy evaluates the first major English edition of short fiction by the great German critic and essayist, Walter Benjamin with the translator and scholar Esther Leslie and the critic, Kevin Jackson. Also in the programme a guide to the Soviet Superwoman courtesy of curator Elena Sudokova and Dolya Gavanski -- the moving forces behind the GRAD gallery show devoted to women in the Soviet Union from 1917 to 1991.
And as Peter Watkins' critically acclaimed film based on the life of Edvard Munch is re-released New Generation Thinker Leah Broad considers the Norwegian painter's achievement and the art of biography.
Fay Bound Alberti's cultural history of the body completes the programme - why do we talk of the heart as the seat of our emotions and where would you expect to find someone's "mind" ?
This Mortal Coil by Fay Bound Alberti is published by Oxford University Press.
The Storyteller by Walter Benjamin is published by Verso on 23rd June.
Superwoman: Work, Build and Don't Whine is on at GRAD in Little Portland Street in London from 18 June -17 September
Edvard Munch - a 1974 biographical film about the Norwegian Expressionist painter Edvard Munch, written and directed by Peter Watkins, has been re-released on DVD by Eureka.
Leah Broad's research at the University of Oxford is focused on Nordic modernism. She is editor of The Oxford Culture Review and winner of the Observer/Anthony Burgess prize for the best arts journalism essay in 2015 for her reappraisal of the Finnish composer Sibelius.
Producer: Zahid Warley
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right? |
| 0:23.3 | It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's out of ice cream. |
| 0:28.8 | Listen to Evil Genius on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:32.3 | Hello, in an uncertain world, one thing is certain about tonight's programme. |
| 0:37.1 | I definitely won't be trying to predict the outcome of the referendum |
| 0:40.4 | on British membership of the European Union. |
| 0:43.5 | And indeed, I have other, for the moment, more pressing questions to answer. |
| 0:47.6 | What makes for a Soviet superwoman? |
| 0:50.1 | And how is she faring in these post-communist days? |
| 0:53.2 | And who described their life in these chilly terms? |
| 0:58.1 | Illness, insanity and death |
| 1:00.4 | were the black angels that kept watch over my cradle |
| 1:04.3 | and accompanied me in my life. |
| 1:16.6 | A tiny verbal selfie there, courtesy of Edvard Munch, taken from Peter Watkins celebrated film about the Norwegian painter's life. |
| 1:21.6 | The film makes its DVD debut this month, |
| 1:23.6 | and Lear Broad, one of Radio 3's New Generation Thinkers, will be examining its |
| 1:28.6 | approach to the art of biography later. The Soviet superwoman will have to wait too, because I want |
| 1:35.3 | to start with Walter Benjamin. Benjamin was born in Berlin in 1892, and by the time of his death |
| 1:42.3 | in Catalonia, 48 years later, had established himself as one of the continent's most original writers and thinkers. |
| 1:49.6 | He published a memoir of his childhood, wrote and performed radio plays, translated Proust, illuminated the work of Kafka in Baudelaire, and produced theoretical essays, notably the work of art in the age |
| 2:02.7 | of mechanical reproduction, an exploration of the idea of authenticity. Well, now for the first time |
| 2:09.2 | in English, there's an addition to the canon, his short fiction. It's collected under the title |
... |
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