Talk:Ove Jørgensen

GA Review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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This review is transcluded from Talk:Ove Jørgensen/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Chiswick Chap (talk · contribs) 14:21, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for taking this on: looking forward to your comments. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 14:24, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Sorry for the late response: thank you for your review -- all looks very wise; I'll get to it as soon as I can. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 09:38, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Comments

• Interesting article. Complete with a history of acid (perfect for a DYK). Surprised he's not on Danish Wiki (maybe translate this :-} ).

• Frederik Poulsen is on Danish Wiki, on the other hand, so do link him to the article there.
  • Done. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 10:29, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

• I wonder if the first para of 'Later career' shouldn't be in 'Classical scholarship'?
  • I think they're in the right place: the split is his colossal falling-out over the Greek Society for Philhellenes, and he gives up research into the classics despite carrying on teaching the languages. The lines were fuzzy in those days, but I think only the former really counts as "scholarship". UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 10:29, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

• It might make sense to split 'Later career' into either whole chapters or to add subsections, with one for 'Ballet' and one for 'Other scholarship', say.

• The one-line paragraph on personal life and death doesn't fit well in Career. Perhaps we should split out 'Personal life' (as is usual) and put the friendship (from 'Classical scholarship') and correspondence with Nielsen etc (from 'Later career') in there. Perhaps Poulsen's comments belong there too, as they're not much to do with career either.
  • I've added a Personal Life section: I'm cautious about moving Nielsen there, as he was such a big part of J's life that it's useful to have him in the right chronological places, and because I think it's significant to keep N. involved around the Greek Society palaver so as to be clear that J doesn't break with him despite throwing away just about everything else from his previous life. I'm not wedded to this solution, though, and will keep chewing on it. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 10:29, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

• Jørgensen's law should be linked somewhere in 'Classical scholarship' as well as in the lead; I suppose it could just be a 'further' link but it'd be nicer to have it in the text.
  • Done.

• Why is J's law described as "these principles" when it's one thing?

• were described in 1998 as ... by the classicist Ruth Scodel -> active voice "Ruth Scodel described the law in 1998 as ..."
  • Done. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 10:29, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

• Dionysian: so he saw Duncan's approach as in some way Apollonian? How would that work? Some explanation seems to be needed here.
  • I don't think that's his point: I think he more saw "proper" Danish ballet as Dionysian in the sense of fundamentally vital, and Duncan etc. as fundamentally sterile -- this isn't the Apollonian/Dionysian dichotomy of Nietzsche, as far as I can tell. Might be tricky to expand too much here without falling into OR: sources are extremely few. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 10:29, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
    • Still, we need to say something, as the adjective isn't comprehensible as it stands: either readers won't know anything of what it might mean, or they'll think Nietzsche, which you say is wrong, so the current wording is actively misleading.
      • OK: here's what we have in the source: Suggesting that the French style had in fact been refined in the hands of the Danish ballet master, Jørgensen refers to the male dancer trained in the Bournonville style as the epitome of a Dionysian and modernised masculinity. It is against this virile figure, [sic] he poses Isadora Duncan, the 'dancer of the future'. I've made a bit of a rework here. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 07:47, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

• Jørgensen described his conception of the aesthetic perception of art: "his" must mean "Wanscher's" here?
  • Indeed; fixed. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 10:29, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

• He maintained his friendship and correspondence with Carl Nielsen,[15] who discussed Shakespeare with Jørgensen and wrote to him in 1916 about his abortive efforts to write an opera based on The Tempest, as well as about the precarious state of Nielsen's marriage. - a bit long and rambling: maybe split?
  • Somewhat reworked now. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 10:29, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

• edition of Dickens's novel Great Expectations, to which he added an introductory essay, later praised by the literary scholar Jørgen Erik Nielsen as displaying an extensive knowledge both of Dickens and of... - maybe drop "Dickens's novel" to avoid repeating the name in the same sentence (and he's already named in the previous sentence, too). Or split and reword a little.
  • Split with a slight rephrase. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 10:29, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

• Duncan, and the liberalising ideas of the Modern Breakthrough she represented - represented to whom? Just Jørgensen? Duncan had probably never heard of the Scandinavian Modern Breakthrough ...
  • Still to do: will check the source. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 10:29, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
    • Added a "he felt": Vedel is clear that J was the one who ascribed such lofty significance to Duncan's dance style. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 07:47, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

• There are several uses of "also" in the text that don't add anything. Maybe get rid of them.
  • I see two, both of which I think are better in than out (each one continues the theme of the previous sentence: without them, both passages read jarringly to me.) UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 10:29, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

• You've said Poulsen went with him to Athens ... twice. Maybe say "and travelled with him" the second time, or something.
  • This is done (did you do it? Thank you if so.) UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 10:29, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Images

• Lead image is clearly fine as non-free. The Duncan image is certainly PD. Both are wonderfully entertaining, btw. (And I'm itching to sharpen J's image up a bit.)

Sources

• I note in passing that it would have been easier if [1] covered all the Hartmann 2011 refs (and so on for other sources), but it doesn't because you sometimes group refs as in [5]. It's not forbidden but I can't see the point really when there are never more than 3 refs together.
  • I've erred on the side of readability: the main principle being to avoid multiple blue footnotes in a row in the body text. What you describe is entirely possible but would err the other way, making the reference list more readable at the expense of the article itself: to me, that's not the best solution. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 10:29, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

• Current & Current don't actually say a lot about Symbolism and Art Nouveau, but it's enough.

• [16] Fanning & Assay: the pages given are wrong, The Tempest is pp 83–92.

• J writes very plain direct Danish, judging by a quick read of Balletens Kunst. This link and the next (Duncan Kontra Bournonville) could be specified more precisely by linking straight to the first page of the relevant article rather than the magazine's ToC, but it works fine. Though he calls Duncan "an American dilettante" rather than "the..." in D Kontra B.
  • Fixed the latter: still to do on the former, which I think should be possible. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 10:29, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

• [24] Poulsen: ref tells the reader to "search". Why not give page or chapter?
  • It's an ebook: not paginated, and I couldn't find a chapter number from the preview I could access. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 10:29, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

• Other spot-checks are fine.

Summary

This is a nice article on an interesting character, well situated in European and Western culture by the text. The comments are mostly very minor and I hope to see the article at GA very shortly. Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:22, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

UndercoverClassicist?

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.