The internet and YouTube are a wonderful things. I find on the internet people are usually so nice to each other and I have made many friends this way. I like to share my love of life, ballet, opera and science and this way I meet people who in real life I would never have had the chance to know. I like to leave comments, as having a YouTube Channel myself I like to receive feedback but sometime as I found to my cost over the last few days I can be horribly wrong.
I had commented on comment that an acquaintance of mine had posted on a video on a new recording of Die Winterreise . Innocent enough but a Bogdan Pau left a rather nasty comment about this that I stupidly answered. I had no idea who Bogdan Pau was but the impression I was given that this was a male academic ,Bogdan Pau, whoever he is, was quick to tell me of his academic credentials and how it is impossible for him to carry on a conversation with such an illiterate women who has only read Shakespeare, Proust, Mann and the complete works of Freud and then suggested that I should read Memoirs of a Anti Semite as I might learn something. This Bogdan Pau informed me that he, I presumed it was a he that:
I do remember recommending you the central-eastern literature, the so callled Mitteleuropean literature. from a rethorical point of view ( that means you should have read aristotel, cicero, quintilian.. and I could mention others , but you are still at Mann and Proust) that's a huge error... that proves that You are not quite capable of grasping the central element of e message and replying to that element ...
I unwisely remarked that his English was a little difficult to comprehend and received this:
when you dear lady will be capable of writing more then 7 languages ( that includes classical latin and greek) - even with mistakes- then we could talk equally
when you dear lady will have three university degrees in three different specialities ( in three different countries) and a PHD form a top swiss university, then we could talk equally .... having a consérvatoire de musique and making solfegios all your life is not quite the same......
quid ( that's a latin word) what should be an educated person? that's a more complex subject and I do not have the time and the patience to treat it here
Bogdan Pau had as Jane Austen puts it so beautifully in Pride and Prejudice Insulted me in every way possible in public for all to see forever and is obviously proud of his achievement. Unknowingly he touched on two subjects on which I have a very raw nerve. That of Die Winterreise Schubert which my husband and I sang just before he died and the persecution of the Jews. Calling or hinting that someone may be an anti semite is dangerous ground at the best of time and to be avoided
I was very cross as can be expected from any woman of my age who has had to put up with this sort of treatment so I decided to find who this Bogdan Pau might be who had written in such a cruel fashion and put it in this blog for posterity. I left this message on the comment then I did a Google and I came up with a female French Lawyer who specialised in human rights and a young woman . It struck me then I might have been naive and this young woman who was either being cruel or having a joke at my expense. I did write the blog but something made me hold back and I did not post it.
Just as well for it seems that this was indeed a woman who says she has three university degrees and can speak 7 languages. Evidently the original post was not meant for me. She/He pointed out that I could be her grandmother and people of my age do not deserve respect. She is possibly right. I was stupid not to check earlier but she was equally wrong not to inform me that I had made a mistake or apologise simply by saying she had replied to the wrong comment.
Obviously I cannot trust this person and I have still no idea of who this could be. It could still be someone playing a rather nasty joke but I have learned another lesson not to take a comment on trust and to do a Google. Anyway for anyone who looks up Bogdan Pau on Google be careful as you might be in for a nasty surprise but at least the world will have been warned or she could be just a silly girl who may live to regret a moment of madness.