Without Lifting A Finger

Kafka remarking (in a letter) on Rilke's words re Kafka's work: Incidentally, back in Prague I remembered Rilke's words. After some extremely kind remarks about "The Stoker," he went on to say that neither Metamorphosis nor "In the Penal Colony" had achieved the same effect. This observation may not be easy to understand, but it is discerning. The footnote on this passage reads (in part): Rilke and Kafka probably never met personally. Kafka may have heard of Rilke's opinion about his works through Eugen Mondt. Since "In the Penal Colony" was not printed at the time, Rilke, who then lived in Munich, must have seen the manuscript which had arrived in Munich on September 30 and discussed it with Eugen Mondt....   Rilke followed Kafka's work with great interest; in a letter to Kurt Wolff of February 17, 1922, he says, "Please put me down especially for anything that appears by Franz Kafka. I am, I might assure you, not his ...

We are his contemporaries and his successors. One has only to close one's eyes and one's own blood delivers lectures on Strindberg.

It kept me company in the john for a few months. Two flushes: the silent one drowned out the louder one. Made me feel I was communing with Nature. Helped keep me sane. Hasta.   

    

Theodor Herzl ( Hebrew : תִאוַדָר הֶרְצֵל , Ti'vadar Hertzel ; Hungarian : Herzl Tivadar ; May 2, 1860 – July 3, 1904), born Benjamin Ze’ev Herzl ( Hebrew : בִּנְיָמִין זְאֵב הֶרְצֵל , also known in Hebrew as חוֹזֵה הַמְדִינָה , Khozeh HaMedinah , lit. "Visionary of the State") was a Jewish journalist and writer from Austria-Hungary . He is considered to have been the father of modern political Zionism and in effect the founder of the State of Israel . Herzl formed the World Zionist Organization and promoted Jewish migration to Palestine in an effort to form a Jewish state. Death and Burial Herzl did not live to see the rejection of the Uganda plan. At 5 p.m. July 3, 1904 in Edlach, a village inside Reichenau an der Rax , Lower Austria , Theodor Herzl, having been diagnosed with a heart issue earlier in the year, died of cardiac sclerosis . A day before his death, he told the Reverend William H. Hechler : "Greet Palestine for me. I gave my heart's blood f...

Zionism ( Hebrew : ציונות ‎, Tsiyonut ; Arabic : صهيونية ‎, Ṣahyūniyya ) is the national movement of Jews and Jewish culture that supports the creation of a Jewish homeland in the territory defined as the Land of Israel . [ 1 ] A religious variety of Zionism supports Jews upholding their Jewish identity, opposes the assimilation of Jews into other societies and has advocated the return of Jews to Israel as a means for Jews to be a majority in their own nation, and to be liberated from antisemitic discrimination, exclusion, and persecution that had historically occurred in the diaspora . [ 1 ] Zionism emerged in the late 19th century in central and eastern Europe as a national revival movement, and soon after this most leaders of the movement associated the main goal with creating the desired state in Palestine , then an area controlled by the Ottoman Empire . [ 2 ] [ 3 ] [ 4 ] Since the establishment of the State of Israel , the Zionist movement continues primarily to advoca...

How you come to terms with Zionism is your affair; any coming to terms with it (indifference is out of the question) will give me pleasure. It is too soon to discuss it now, but should you one day feel yourself to be a Zionist (you flirted with it once, but these were mere flirtations, not a coming to terms), and subsequently realize that I am not a Zionist -- which would probably emerge from an examination -- it wouldn't worry me, nor need it worry you; Zionism is not something that separates well-meaning people.

    



Yaroslavl-Feb-2010-226 , a photo by Mark Grigorian on Flickr. More bell-making: Tutaev.



To Go to Lvov by Adam Zagajewski : The Poetry Foundation Follow the link to read the whole poem. It begins: To go to Lvov. Which station for Lvov, if not in a dream, at dawn, when dew gleams on a suitcase,...   

Boticelli, Sandro (1444-1510) - 1485c.Birth of Venus (Uffizi) , a photo by RasMarley on Flickr.



Soaked up quite a bit of Strindberg, now I'm returning to Franz's letters to Felice Bauer. This postcard, dated August 13, 1916, is worth inserting whole: Dearest, reading incontestable matters such as these, one becomes more and more confused: In 1876 Fontane accepted a civil service appointment as Secretary of the Royal Academy of Arts, and resigned from it at the end of 3 1/2 months amid appalling quarrels with his wife. To a woman friend he writes: "The whole world condemns me, thinks me childish, high-handed. I am forced to put up with it. I have ceased to discuss it, etc." Later: "I have held this appointment for 3 1/2 months. During the entire time I have derived not a single moment of enjoyment, experienced not a single pleasant sensation. The job is as distasteful to me from the personal as from the practical point of view. Everything galls me; everything stultifies me; everything laureates me. I have the distinct feeling that I shall always be unha...

Wilkie Collins , a photo by mrglennmoore on Flickr. Had a cameo in The Invisible Woman . Somewhat a playmate of Dickens. Spotlighted him "playing house" with his "intimate" (i.e. Caroline Graves).

Not really. For two days in a row I saw a homeless person impersonating Tolstoy. Once he was sitting and having his breakfast. Another time he was just walking through the park. I imagined Tolstoy in the park. *** 

        

     John had discovered that men in general were automata. All thought the same; all judged in the same fashion; and the more learned they were, the less independence of mind they displayed. This made him doubt the whole value of book education. The graduates who came from Upsala had, one and all, the same opinions on Rafael and Schiller, though the differences in their characters would have led one to expect a corresponding difference in their judgments. Therefore these men did not think, although they called themselves freethinkers, but merely talked and were merely parrots.

Snake Handlers Church Meeting (version) , a photo by satonya on Flickr. Mark 16: 15 - 18: And he said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. He who has believed and has been baptized shall be saved; but he who has disbelieved shall be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who have believed: in My name they will cast out demons, they will speak with new tongues; they will pick up serpents, and if they drink any deadly poison, it shall not hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover."

Dry out here in CA. Thumbed through Transtromer and found this: might help with the big freeze back east. Can't last forever -- or can it? *** From the Thaw of 1966 Headlong headlong waters; roaring; old hypnosis. The river swamps the car cemetery, glitters behind the masks. I hold tight to the bridge railing. The bridge: a big iron bird sailing past death.

Felicity Jones , a photo by Pilkipics on Flickr. Saw her last night for the first time -- with Ralph Fiennes in The Invisible Woman . She plays Ellen (Nelly).

Catherine Thomson "Kate" Dickens ( née Hogarth ; 19 May 1815 – 22 November 1879) was the wife of English novelist Charles Dickens , and the mother of his ten acknowledged children. * The separation is sparsely alluded to in the film The Invisible Woman . Dickens publishes an article explaining his POV and all or most of it is quoted in the film: Some domestic trouble of mine, of long-standing, on which I will make no further remark than that it claims to be respected, as being of a sacredly private nature, has lately been brought to an arrangement, which involves no anger or ill-will of any kind, and the whole origin, progress, and surrounding circumstances of which have been, throughout, within the knowledge of my children. It is amicably composed, and its details have now to be forgotten by those concerned in it... By some means, arising out of wickedness, or out of folly, or out of inconceivable wild chance, or out of all three, this trouble has been the occasion ...

Ellen Lawless Ternan (3 March 1839 – 25 April 1914), also known as Nelly Ternan or Nelly Robinson , was an English actress who is mainly known as the mistress of Charles Dickens . Life Ellen Lawless Ternan was born in Rochester, Kent . She was the third of four children, including a brother who died in infancy and a sister named Frances (later the second wife of Thomas Adolphus Trollope , the brother of Anthony Trollope ). Her parents, Thomas Lawless Ternan and Frances Eleanor Ternan (née Jarman), were both actors of some distinction. Ternan made her stage debut in Sheffield at the age of three, and she and her two sisters were presented as "infant phenomena". Ternan was considered the least theatrically gifted of the three sisters, but she worked extensively in the provinces, particularly after her father died in 1846. In 1857, she was spotted by Dickens performing at London's Haymarket Theatre . He cast her, along with her mother and one of her sisters, in a p...

            

"Don't be angry because men are stupid and bad, or you will have to be angry because a stone falls; both are subject to the same laws; one must be stupid and the other fall."

Buckle's History of Civilization in England was written in 1857, but did not reach Sweden till 1871 - 1872. Even then the soil was not ready for the seed. The learned critics were unfavourable to Buckle, and the seed took root only in some young minds who had no authoritative voice.      "No literature," says Buckle himself, "can be useful to a people, if they are not prepared to receive it." Thus it was with Buckle and his work, which preceded that of Darwin (1858) and contained all its inferences -- a proof that evolution in the world of thought is  not so strictly conditioned as has been believed. Buckle did not know Mill or Spencer, whose thoughts rule the world, but he said most of what they said subsequently. 

Henry Thomas Buckle (24 November 1821 – 29 May 1862) was an English historian , author of an unfinished History of Civilization and a very strong amateur chess player. Early Life and Education Buckle was born the son of Thomas Henry Buckle, a wealthy London merchant and shipowner, he was born at Lee in Kent . His delicate health prevented him obtaining much formal education; he never attended university and was little at school. However, he received a high degree of education privately, and the love of reading he felt as a child was given many outlets. He first gained distinction as a chess player, being known, before he was twenty, as one of the best in the world. In matchplay he defeated Kieseritsky and Loewenthal [ 1 ] and was named Chessgames.com player of the day on 11 November 2012. After his father's death in January 1840, he inherited an ample fortune and a large library, and travelled with his mother on the continent (1840–1844). He had by then resolved to di...

I only have the Indian variety, but they always remind me of him. They're blooming now. 

Sleepwalker , a photo by Niels Linneberg on Flickr. Found this sleepwalker while looking for the first.

#tonymatell #sleepwalker #sculpture #welleselycollege #bigtado #art #zombie , a photo by glennguy3766 on Flickr.

     John had an old grudge against this poet. Once as a child, he had been ill for a whole summer, and had by chance taken Bellmann's Fredman's Epistles out of his father's bookcase. The book seemed to him silly, but he was too young to form a well-grounded opinion on it. **    Bellmann's idylls are careless, extemporized compositions with forced rhymes, and as disconnected as the thoughts in the brain of a drunkard. One does not know whether it is day or night, the thunder rolls in the sunshine, and the waves beat while the boat is floating calmly on the waters. They simply provide a text for music, and for that purpose one might use a book of addresses. The meaning of the words does not matter, as long as they sound well.   

Carl Michael Bellman (   listen   ( help · info ) ; 4 February 1740 – 11 February 1795) was a Swedish poet , songwriter , composer and performer. Bellman is a central figure in the Swedish song tradition and remains a powerful influence in Swedish music , as well as in Scandinavian literature , to this day. Bellman is best known for two collections of poems set to music, Fredman's songs ( Fredmans sånger ) and Fredman's epistles ( Fredmans epistlar ). Each consists of about 70 songs. The general theme is drinking, but the songs wonderfully combine words and music to express feelings and moods ranging from humorous to elegiac, romantic to satirical. Bellman's patrons included the King, Gustav III of Sweden , who called him the master improviser. Bellman has been compared to Shakespeare , Beethoven , Mozart , and Hogarth , but his gift, using elegantly baroque classical references in comic contrast to sordid drinking and prostitution, which are at once regretted and ...

Rose Antonia Maria Valland (1 November 1898 – 18 September 1980) was a French art historian, a member of the French Resistance, a captain in the French military, and one of the most decorated women in French history. She secretly recorded details of the Nazi plundering of National French and private Jewish-owned art from France.[1] World War II In 1941, she was put in paid service and became the overseer of the Museum at the time of the German occupation of France during World War II. Through the "Special Staff for Pictorial Art" (Sonderstab Bildende Kunst) of the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg für die Besetzen Gebiete (The Reich Leader Rosenberg Institute for the Occupied Territories), or ERR, the Germans began the systematic looting of artworks from museums and private art collections throughout France. They used the Jeu de Paume Museum as to their central storage and sorting depot pending distribution to various persons and places in Germany.[1] While the Nazi p...

Portrait of a Young Man , a photo by clarkvr on Flickr. According to the film, this one (by Raphael) was torched. Apparently we just don't know what happened to it.

Ariana -- the best we could make out.     

Michelangelo Madonna and Child , a photo by mkline55 on Flickr. Another personal "graal" I've picked up from The Monuments Men .

Van Eyck, Jan (1390-1441) - 1432 The Ghent Altar with altar wings open , a photo by RasMarley on Flickr. Saw The Monuments Men last night. Very so-so, though I learned a lot. This work was a major recovery.

Sure there were lots of other "biggies" (and big things), but I guess it was nice to see that Nabokov was a letter in the Cyrillic alphabet. Would he have been OK with that -- or shouted POSHLOST???? No idea. Maybe if I reread "The Vane Sisters" I'll get a hint.

Or Yggdrasil burning... 

On teaching: The pupil thinks his work hard, but he is only the carriage while the teacher is the horse. Teaching is decidedly harder than standing by a screw or the crane of a machine, and equally monotonous.

Another of the "autos." He's gone off to college and is also teaching elementary school. *** Re his teaching experience: What it is that makes the competent teacher is not clear. Some produced an effect by their quiet manner, others by their nervousness; some seemed to magnetise the children, others beat them; some imposed on them by their age or their manly appearance, etc. The women worked as women, i.e. through a half-forgotten tradition of a past matriarchate. John was not competent. He looked too young and was only just nineteen; he was skeptical about the methods employed and everything else; with all his seriousness he was playful and boyish. The whole matter to him was only an employment by the way, for he was ambitious and wished to advance, but did not know in which direction. Re writing and talent: John was seized with a craze for writing verse but could not. The gift must be born with one, he thought, and inspiration descend all of a sudden, as i...

Thought the world was on fire. 

                    

LAURA. Power, yes! What has this whole life and death struggle been for but power? CAPTAIN. To me it has meant more. I do not believe in a hereafter; the child was my future life. That was my conception of immortality, and perhaps the only one that has any analogy in reality. If you take that away from me, you cut off my life. LAURA. Why didn't we separate in time? CAPTAIN. Because the child bound us together; but the link became a chain. And how did it happen; how? I have never thought about this, but now memories rise up accusingly, condemningly perhaps. We had been married two years, and had no children; you know why. I fell ill and lay at the point of death. During a conscious interval of fever I heard voices out in the drawing-room. It was you and the lawyer talking about the fortune that I still possessed. He explained that you could inherit nothing because we had no children, and he asked you if you were expecting to become a mother. I did not hear your reply. I recov...

He's not my favorite, but this is certainly my favorite of his. The only one I can kind of remember. It came to me lying in bed this morning. Slept later than usual; woke when the light came through the slats. *** Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.   Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night.   Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.   Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night.   Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.   ...