Still feeling pretty sick, slowly getting better anyway.

Thinking a lot about stylistic influence across languages, particularly about the series Sterne -> Jean Paul -> Carlyle -> Ruskin -> Proust. Would also be interested in knowing more about the impact of Empiricism in mainland Europe, the reception of Hume in Russia seems like it must've been odd, for example, never been all that interested in it as philosophy, seems prone to being highly culturally effective. Wonder how much work has been done on the cross cultural effect of Walter Scott, can't stand reading him well enough to get a good sense of it myself. Feeling like I should be busying myself learning languages, German especially, but there are so many that I'd like to be able to at least read passably well, so much to do. Also wishing I knew a lot more than I do about the history of comedy. It's kind of overwhelming, will probably end up doing nothing, or refreshing myself on Perl or some such.

Peretz seems to be feeling a lot better this morning.