11 July 2007

A Ginormous Post

I was so happy to see today that, among other words like Bollywood, "ginormous", that hyperbolic mixture of giant and enormous, is now in the collegiate dictionaries. In that spirit, I thought I might explain my stay with some definitions.
Michael's Research in Marbach noun the act of researching the effect of music, i.e. opera, in the early short stories of Thomas Mann at the Deutsches Literaturarchiv in Marbach am Neckar, Germany.
Thomas Mann proper noun German author (1875-1955), winner of the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature, and noted novelist, essayist and public intellectual. He left Germany for Princeton, NJ during the Nazi regime.
Early Short Stories noun Mann's short works from 1897's "Vision" until 1912's "Death in Venice," which is his most famous short story.
Deutsches Literaturarchiv proper noun engl. The German Literature Archive, opened in 1955, is a world-renowned collection of books, manuscripts, slides and artwork covering all of German literature, but with a focus on the present (1850-present).
Marbach am Neckar compound noun Marbach is a town of c. 15,000 located along the Neckar river (hence, am Neckar in German) in the southern German state of Baden-Württemburg. Notable residents included Friedrich Schiller, poet, and Tobias Meyer, astronomer and physicist.

Hopefully I have added to your lexicon, and I will surely be passing this along to Mr. Noah Webster himself to see that this gets added to next year's collegiate dictionary. Tomorrow is indeed my last full day here, but I have reached that critical moment in Newton's first law where an outside force (namely restlessness) is acting upon this body in rest. Until the next part of my journey, Good Night and Good Luck!

1 comment:

  1. Have you thought of publishing your thoughts?

    It's good to see you're enjoying yourself.

    --christina

    ReplyDelete