Comments on: Beards and other outerwear

By: Na'ama

Na'ama — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 14:14:05 +0000

Elif – Another associative connection – do you know the essay by Peter Stallybrass on Marx who had to pawn his coat in order to go to the library and write about the commodity? I thought I would find a link to it online (following your industrious example), but all I could find was this brilliant student essay that suggests that if Marx could have pawned his beard – or indeed his facial skin – he would have jumped on the opportunity. I didn’t read through it, but as an incentive to you I would mention that there’s mention of a paper-mill early on!

http://www.socialjusticemedicine.blogspot.com/

By: Elif

Elif — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 02:25:32 +0000

Dear LK, yes, this Facebook group sounds like a good way of illustrating what a grave environmental catastrophe it was when Walesa shaved off his amazing mustache.

Dear SW Foska, I was very entertained by this etymology for chinovnik. Perhaps it inspired Gogol’s “Nose,” and it’s less the nose that fell off, so much as the chin that just took over the whole face: an allegory for the rank swallowing up the man, in the eternally repeating tragedy of bureaucratization.

I am suddenly wondering: could this be what happened to Walesa’s mustache?

Dear Marie, thanks for the kind words, which I thought were right on topic. Indeed Chekhov, with his modest goatee, must have been doing the math right there in the stream… for f(x) defined as “x’s beard,” f(x) approaches infinity as x approaches Tolstoy…

By: marie

marie — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 22:36:49 +0000

I really enjoyed your piece in Harper’s. It was excellent. In the interest of appearing remotely on topic as opposed to a randomly dropped “Hey! Dude! Sweet article!” … I’ll add that I particularly enjoyed the image of Tolstoy’s beard floating “majestically” in the stream. Beard. Beard.

By: SW Foska

SW Foska — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 17:08:58 +0000

elif, maybe there is a clue here to the origin of the Russian word ‘chin (chinovnik)’, (person of) rank. Maybe borrowed by Peter from the English, along with all that naval – i nearly wrote navel – terminology?

By: LK

LK — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 21:49:59 +0000

Elif, being the randomest of spatialists, may I venture a moustache (preferred spelling) — the diametrical opposite of the beard, an über-mouth of sorts?

As I was reading thought the “beards” (not yet having made it to the “other outerware”) section of this post, my associative threading unraveled from beards to Bohemia to Poland and ultimately to Lech Walesa’s whiskers.

Strange? Yeah. But there’s some cohesion here.

You see, last week I’d stumbled across this group on Facebook:

I want to live in Lech Walesa moustache [sic]

And joined it, because of this (the group Admins) charming logic:

Because it’s Warmer and full of surprises… little friends, Bortsch and with an orkestar playing everydays… [sic again]

Thought you might find this relevant. Or laughable.