<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: water as life, intelligence and inspiration
Review: I have this book in an italian translation and I would love to read it in the original language. The book in intelligent, accurate and gives you the right idea that underlines the love of generations of great men for the water. Water as adventure, water as duel and meditation, water as gathering matter and sense of life. Episodes and tales to think about, a book that pushes you straight to the closest lake, seaside or swimming pool. Makes you understand as, sometimes, the most valuable and exciting things are not hidden in the deep and dark forest but are easily available and are just waiting to be discovered.
Rating:
Summary: water as muse and temptress
Review: Something primordial exists in swimming for those willing to recognize it, perhaps some residue of an ancestral species instinct to the sea, a subliminal memory of submergence in the amniotic sac, or the proffered suspension of temporal consciousness in its weightless rhythms. Sprawson explores this allure in athletics and in literature. Most central to his study are the Romantic poets obsession with swimming and water-- among them Goethe, Shelley, Swinburne, Pushkin, Poe and especially Byron who was a formidable marathon swimmer in his own right. The Romantic ideal was closely associated with Classical notions of the body and nature, and its notion of hero was intertwined with this. Hellenism held a special thrall over the Romantic period. This was the impetus to Byron's swimming of the Hellespont, and to a tragic sub text to his and other lives as they were swept up in naive movements or misadventure (Byron died in a Greek rebellion against the Turks). Swimming was seen as a dissent from the priggish, sanctimonious, imposed to something pure, original, regenerative through nature. But there was an impulse to self annihilation as well. Some were smashed on rocks, or gripped by undertows or had their health broken by cold water and over exertion. Fitness was not the prevailing motivation; swimming was muse, cave, judge. Its influence continued into the 20th Century, In Jack London's 'Martin Eden', John Cheever's 'the Swimmer" or Yukio Mishima's seduction by Byron's hedonistic fantasies, it again cast down verdicts of elevation, dissolution and destruction. I was drawn to this book by an Australian broadcast on swimming during the Sydney Olympics, amongst which was excerpts from this book and an interview with Jon Konrads, the 1500 Meter Olympic Champion of 1960, who had returned to swimming in late middle age after decades of absence. In it he found a cerebral tonic, albeit at a much slower pace-- an invigoration, relaxation and something spiritually satisfying, even more so now than in his Olympic form. This is a worth while read for anyone interested in the sport and pastime. Even for the most pedestrian of lappers, it is an invitation to glide in eddies of imagination, sublimely cognizant of and refining the stroke, seeking some mysterious grace. There swimming provides an elixir of meditation and inspiration-- for those that it does not consume.
Rating:
Summary: Water, Water Everywhere...
Review: Sprawson is an avid swimmer and diver who interpolates his own aquatic feats among a flood of anecdotes from Homer through Fitzgerald. The book combines memoir with literary references and a short history of swimming to explore, as the author states in his thesis, "the peculiar psychology of the swimmer and his feel for the water." Australian champion Annette Kellerman associated swimming with the ability to face the unknown in life, thus seeing it as a symbol of the adventurer and explorer. Her belief that "swimming cultivates imagination" perhaps accounts for the occurrence of water as both theme and setting in numerous paintings, poems, and songs. Writers in particular, many of them compulsive swimmers, noted the influence of water in their work and in their lives: water is best (Pindar); "clear, light, of high value and desirable" (Homer); a way of measuring the decline of Rome (Juvenal); enticing and difficult to leave (Arnold); a craving lust (Swinburne); "a delight only comparable to love" (Valery); a symbol of youth and revolt against civilization (Rupert Brooke); akin to philosophical thinking (Wittgenstein); the only relief from ennui (Byron); like opium addiction (DeQuincey); innocence, boyhood, and a release from introspection (Clough); a return to the pastoral, pagan world of Greek mythology (Goethe); and the symbol of one man against the elements (Jack London). Sprawson himself notes that many swimmers suffer "like Narcissus, from a form of autism, a self-encapsulation in an isolated world, a morbid self-admiration, an absorption in fantasy." As his examples accrue, Sprawson gives us that sense of discovering something profound in what previously seemed so common and obvious. This is an odd, surprisingly enjoyable book. It's the only book I've read about swimming. It's the only book I've read that follows swimming as a theme in literary and cultural history. Although it appears to be the sort of book aimed at grad students, who will drool over its obsessiveness and allusions, it should find a home among many other readers.
Rating: 
Summary: plunging into the matter of life
Review: Sprawson's book, more than a decade after its publication, is still the best post-modernist collection of thoughts on swimming in all its forms. It will be of interest to both the atheletic dabbler and the scholarly plunger (not that the two, as ably demonstrated by Sprawson himself, cannot be the same). This remains the best book about the historic and intellectual roots of our modern swimming mad world. Readers wishing to continue their exploration of water's embrace on the human mind and body will find much of interest in my sequal to Sprawson's book - Deep Immersion: The Experience of Water (nominated as top environmental book of the year), which reviews over two hundred modern accounts by writers plunging into water around the world. Stay wet! As Thoreau wrote: "That part of you that is wettest is fullest of life" (quoted in Profitably Soaked: Thoreau's Engagement with Water; Green Frigate Books, 2003)
Rating:
Summary: Hypnotic, poetic, educational, enlightening ... Great!
Review: The author examines swimming from all angles: the history, the competition, the recreation. The style is mesmerizing and turns a mundane subject into a revelation. This book should appeal to swimmers and non-swimmers alike. The artwork included is outstanding, and makes mw wish the author had included more. The author includes several stories about his own swimming adventures, but rather than being self-centered, these episodes are avenues into intriguing stories and history. The style of the writing is smooth and inviting. One gets the feeling that the book is a giant metaphor ... not strictly about water and swimming, but rather using water as a symbol for something larger. Highly recommended!
Rating:
Summary: Hypnotic, poetic, educational, enlightening ... Great!
Review: The author examines swimming from all angles: the history, the competition, the recreation. The style is mesmerizing and turns a mundane subject into a revelation. This book should appeal to swimmers and non-swimmers alike. The artwork included is outstanding, and makes mw wish the author had included more. The author includes several stories about his own swimming adventures, but rather than being self-centered, these episodes are avenues into intriguing stories and history. The style of the writing is smooth and inviting. One gets the feeling that the book is a giant metaphor ... not strictly about water and swimming, but rather using water as a symbol for something larger. Highly recommended!
<< 1 >>
| 
