Witold Gombrowicz's "Cosmos"

Perhaps one of my favorite novels. This is just an early excerpt from the frenetic beginning of Chapter 1:


[Translation by Eric Mosbacher]

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Edinburgh: St. Cuthbert's: Thomas De Quincey's Grave

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We were in the Ibis just off the Royal Mile. I had walked halfway around the castle on the first night and I knew basically where St. Cuthbert's was. I woke early, checked the "big board" (a magical electronic map in the hotel) in terms of details, and was off. Of course, once there, it took me a little while to find De Quincey (I even Googled to get a look at his stone and adjacent stones -- this helped immensely). Luckily it was a pretty small graveyard. Pics: "on the way to" and "within" the churchyard/graveyard of St. Cuthbert's, Edinburgh. *                                    
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Tarkovsky's Death and the Film "Stalker"

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Hermann Hesse & Psychoanalysis

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Ewelina Hanska (1805 - 1882)

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Eveline Hańska ( Ewelina , née Rzewuska , 6 January c. 1805 – 11 April 1882) was a Polish noblewoman best known for her marriage to French novelist Honoré de Balzac . Born at the Wierzchownia estate in Volhynia , [ 1 ] (now Ukraine) Hańska married landowner Wacław Hański (Wenceslas Hanski) when she was a teenager. [ 2 ] Hański, who was about 20 years her senior, suffered from depression. They had five children, but only a daughter, Anna, survived. In the late 1820s, Hańska began reading Balzac's novels, and in 1832, she sent him an anonymous letter. This began a decades-long correspondence in which Hańska and Balzac expressed a deep mutual affection. In 1832, they met for the first time, in Switzerland . Soon afterward he began writing the novel Séraphîta , which includes a character based on Hańska. After her husband died in 1841, a series of complications obstructed Hańska's marriage to Balzac. Chief of these was the estate and her daughter Anna's inheritance, bot...
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