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4.19 AVERAGE
4.19 AVERAGE
“Be open to mystery. Not everything needs sharp lines.”
considering i how little i like male genius narratives, thought this was surprisingly good
An very well researched biography of Leonardo da Vinci's life and work.well written and easy to read. An very interesting subject indeed
We toss around this word, genius, until its definition is meaningless. I thought I knew Leonardo da Vinci. Don't we all? We hear about him as children (in my case via The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, first, but nevermind) and then throughout our lives. Most of us recognize that he was a true genius, in the sense that is actually meaningful. We're awed by his art and inspired by his inventions. But it turns out, we knew nothing. I knew nothing. I had not a g-damn clue. I'm not sure I've ever finished a book, biography or otherwise, feeling so humbled. And a little bit enraged. What if Leonardo had published his papers? Who and where would we be now? A hundred years more advanced than we are? Two hundred? Jesus.
https://roofbeamreader.com/2021/06/25/mostly-history/
https://roofbeamreader.com/2021/06/25/mostly-history/
Wnikliwa i doskonale napisana. Isaacson odarł Leonarda z mistycyzmu i przedstawił jako opętanego ciekawością wrażliwego perfekcjonistę.
Da Vinci daje nadzieję wszystkim z nas, którzy na sto zaczętych przedsięwzięć, do końca doprowadzają jedno - a i to nie zawsze. Ja go sobie chyba w serduszku pobłogosławię i uczynię patronem Wiecznie Wątpiących Perfekcjonistów.
„Powiedz mi, czy cokolwiek zostało zrobione - brzmiało natrętne pytanie, jakie raz po raz powtarzał w zapiskach. - Powiedz mi. Powiedz mi. Powiedz mi, czy kiedykolwiek czegoś dokonałem (...). Powiedz mi, czy cokolwiek zostało zrobione”.
Zostało. A książka Isaacsona jest na to niesamowitym zbiorem potwierdzeń.
Da Vinci daje nadzieję wszystkim z nas, którzy na sto zaczętych przedsięwzięć, do końca doprowadzają jedno - a i to nie zawsze. Ja go sobie chyba w serduszku pobłogosławię i uczynię patronem Wiecznie Wątpiących Perfekcjonistów.
„Powiedz mi, czy cokolwiek zostało zrobione - brzmiało natrętne pytanie, jakie raz po raz powtarzał w zapiskach. - Powiedz mi. Powiedz mi. Powiedz mi, czy kiedykolwiek czegoś dokonałem (...). Powiedz mi, czy cokolwiek zostało zrobione”.
Zostało. A książka Isaacsona jest na to niesamowitym zbiorem potwierdzeń.
This was a long but easy listen, an accessible cataloguing of Leonardo's delightfully mind-bending array of passions, foibles, wrestles, and epiphanies. It's such a boon that Leonardo scribbled obsessively in notebooks and that so many of them survived, because there is *so* much more to him than the few finished works he left behind (genius though they are). As Isaacson points out more than once, Leonardo's penchant for plunging into a project only to dwindle into an endless touching and retouching up, or to pursue a question relentlessly until he was satisfied with his answers but feeling no need to go as far as publishing them, are very humanizing and relatable qualities. Especially for those of us with ADHD. (There seems to be a lot of evidence pointing to this potential diagnosis for Leonardo.) But the number of times Isaacson had reason to say "In this conclusion Leonardo was two centuries ahead of his time..." I wish I had kept a tally. I was especially delighted by his insatiable and wide-ranging interest in the natural and physical world, from comparative human vs. horse anatomy to fluid dynamics to stratigraphy to flight mechanics to "how does the woodpecker's tongue work?" And it was for some reason also delightful that his deep intuition for geometry was matched by his ineptitude with arithmetic and algebra. I also had forgotten or was unaware before reading this that Leonardo was gay, and not too bothered by being so in an oppressive climate.
Anyway, there's a lot more that could be enumerated from the treasure trove of Leonardo da Vinci's fascinations. I recommend the book if you want more. I will say the writing style bordered on bland at times and was certainly repetitive in a "Don't forget about this key takeaway" or "Maybe you're reading this slowly enough that you've forgotten this piece of contextual information I phrased in almost exactly the same way ten chapters ago" kind of way, but it's thorough and informative all the same. (You don't need to bother with the introduction or epilogue, though, it's the worst of the repetition without any new information.)
Anyway, there's a lot more that could be enumerated from the treasure trove of Leonardo da Vinci's fascinations. I recommend the book if you want more. I will say the writing style bordered on bland at times and was certainly repetitive in a "Don't forget about this key takeaway" or "Maybe you're reading this slowly enough that you've forgotten this piece of contextual information I phrased in almost exactly the same way ten chapters ago" kind of way, but it's thorough and informative all the same. (You don't need to bother with the introduction or epilogue, though, it's the worst of the repetition without any new information.)
This was such a great read. Leonardo was a genius in every sense of the word; the man had an insatiable thirst for how the world worked, then used that knowledge to make his paintings that much better. Definitely recommend.
I appreciated Isaacson's approach of treating Leonardo not with cold scholarly rigor, but a sort of wide-eyed curiosity. Even if Leonardo's inquisitive persona masked internal darkness in the way it seems to have, Isaacson does well at balancing the darker moments with plenty of pages backing in the glory of observation - not just Leonardo's observations, but the act of human observation itself.
It's fine. If you are looking for a readable, enjoyable overview of Leonardo's life and work, you can't go wrong with Isaacson's biography. Where it falters is with the author's adulatory tone: nothing by Leonardo is considered less than genius or groundbreaking. Isaacson also relies on numerous quotes from rather outdated art historians (Kenneth Clarke is quoted numerously throughout). Where the book truly shines is when Isaacson incorporates contemporary research and discoveries into the afterlife of Leonardo's objects and work.
When I first flipped through the printed book, I had thought that the volume of detail about Lenoardo's notes and paintings might become overly tedious but a deep dive into this genius' life was not something I could skip. I chose the audiobook instead with the accompanying PDF of paintings and notes by Leonardo and others. This is a much better option because the audiobook acts like a guide taking the listener through these works; you can zoom in to the minutiae without having to tear your eyes away to move on to the next point.