Monthly Archives: August 2017

RIP Jerry Lewis, 91

RIP Jerry Lewis, 91

I saw the enjoyable The King of Comedy in the 1990s, a recommendation of my movie bible Cult Movie Stars.

I know French film criticism of the 1960s was crazy about him.

The reason for this infatuation was explained in the book Why the French Love Jerry Lewis.

Why the French Love Jerry Lewis
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

Well, Lewis died.

I researched him anew.

I found the movie above: Slapstick of Another Kind.

It’s the second Kurt Vonnegut film adaptation I see.

The first was Breakfast of Champions[1] starring Bruce Willis.

Both are bad films.

I enjoyed both films.

Philosophia becoming falsafa …

In Aristote au mont Saint-Michel[1] (2008) Sylvain Gouguenheim claims that it was not so much the Islamic Golden Age which transmitted our Greek heritage, but Nestorian Christians such as Hunayn ibn Ishaq and translators such as James of Venice.

In a telling passage (above) Gouguenheim says:

“Des chrétiens ont ainsi forgé, de A à Z, le vocabulaire scientifique arabe. Telle fut notamment l’oeuvre de Hunayn ibn Ishaq (809-873), le véritable créateur de la terminologie médicale arabe, dont le génie consista non seulement à décalquer des mots grecs et à les «arabiser» en leur donnant une sonorité arabe (philosophia devenant falsafa) …”.
“Thus Christians have forged the Arab scientific vocabulary from A to Z. That was the nature of the work of Hunayn ibn Ishaq (809-873), the true creator of Arab medical terminology, whose genius not only consisted in the calquing of Greek words and to “arabize” them by giving them an Arabic sound (philosophia becoming falsafa) … “

And elsewhere:

“La conclusion est claire : l’Orient musulman doit presque tout à l’Orient chrétien. Et c’est cette dette que l’on passe souvent sous silence de nos jours, tant dans le monde musulman que dans le monde occidental.”
“The conclusion is clear: the Muslim East owes almost everything to the Christian East, and it is this debt that is often overlooked today, both in the Muslim world and in the Western world.”

Translations are mine.