Without Lifting A Finger

Tomorrow I’ll send the father-letter to your apartment, please take good care of it, I still might want to give it to my father someday. If possible don’t let anyone else read it. And as you read it understand all the lawyer’s tricks: it is a lawyer’s letter. And at the same time never forget your great Nevertheless.  * But now I have to go to my sister’s wedding.—By the way, why am I a human being, with all the torments this extremely vague and horribly responsible condition entails? Why am I not, for example, the happy wardrobe in your room, which has you in full view whenever you’re sitting in your chair or at your desk or when you’re lying down or sleeping (all blessings upon your sleep!)? Why am I not that? Because I would break down with grief if I had seen your misery during these last days, or even if—you should leave Vienna. * How happy I am, how happy you make me! A client came—imagine, I have clients too. The man interrupted my writing; I was annoyed, but he h...

Or at least part of the way. We started from Altadena @ the Eaton Canyon Nature Center. Toughest "walk" I've done in some while. Still sore. Returned to the flatland today. ***

There's a chance I'll make it back to the eternal city. If only for a single night and too far from the Stare Mesto (but still within walking distance). Knight-errant thoughts: Mozart, the children's drawings of Terezin, Petrin Hill, The Hunger Wall, Kafka and Milena, getting lost (a good thing) in Prague. * A few clips from the letters: Of course I understand Czech. I’ve meant to ask you several times already why you never write in Czech. Not to imply that your command of German leaves anything to be desired. Most of the time it is amazing and on those occasions when it does falter, the German language becomes pliant just for you, of its own accord, and then it is particularly beautiful, something a German doesn’t even dare hope for; a German wouldn’t dare write so personally. But I wanted to read you in Czech because, after all, you do belong to that language, because only there can Milena be found in her entirety (the translation confirms this), whereas here ther...

How we wish we could here convey to our readers at least a touch of that singular sensation which can strike us with such electrifying and spellbinding force even when one unrelated chord floats from an open window, when our hearing catches it as we pass, aware that it can only come from that unknown source; even a touch of that sweet perturbation which affects us as we sit in a theatre while the orchestra tunes, and wait for the curtain to rise! Is it not so? If, on the threshold of any sublime and tragic work of art, whether it be called Macbeth or Oedipus or anything else, we feel a hovering tremor of eternal beauty: where could this be more the case, or even as much the case, as in the present situation? Man simultaneously longs and fears to be driven out of his usual self, he feels that he will be touched by the infinite, by something that will seize his heart, contracting it even as it expands it, as it violently embraces his spirit. 

http://kindredsubjects.blogspot.com/2012/11/bohemia-lies-by-sea-anselm-kiefer.html

Bohemia Lies by the Sea If houses here are green, I'll step inside a house. If bridges here are sound, I'll walk on solid ground. If love's labour's lost in every age, I'll gladly lose it here. If it's not me, it's one who is as good as me. If a word here borders on me, I'll let it border. If Bohemia still lies by the sea, I'll believe in the sea again. And believing in the sea, thus I can hope for land. If it's me, then it's anyone, for he's as worthy as me. I want nothing more for myself. I want to go under. Under – that means the sea, there I'll find Bohemia again. From my grave, I wake in peace. From deep down I know now, and I'm not lost. Come here, all you Bohemians, seafarers, dock whores, and ships unanchored. Don't you want to be Bohemians, all you Illyrians, Veronese and Venetians. Play the comedies that make us laugh until we cry. And err a hundred times, as I er...

Eduard Friedrich Mörike  (8 September 1804 – 4 June 1875) was a German  Romantic  poet and writer of novellas and novels. Biography Mörike was born in  Ludwigsburg . His father was Karl Friedrich Mörike (died 1817), a district medical councilor; his mother was Charlotte Bayer. After the death of his father, in 1817, he went to live with his uncle Eberhard Friedrich Georgii in Stuttgart, who intended his nephew to become a clergyman. Therefore, after one year at the Stuttgart  Gymnasium illustre , Mörike joined the Evangelical Seminary  Urach , a humanist grammar school, in 1818 and from 1822 to 1826 attended the  Tübinger Stift . [1]  There, he scored low grades and failed the admission test to Urach Seminary, yet was accepted anyhow. At the Seminary he went on to study the classics, something that was to become a major influence on his writing, and he made the acquaintance of Wilhelm Hartlaub and  Wilhelm Waiblinger . Afterwards he stud...

Downloaded this novella because Handke alluded to Morike and this was all that's available. Morike was known more as a poet, but he wrote this little piece. The only piece on Kindle available in English. I visited the Mozart Museum in Prague more than 20 years ago, so I thought I'd give it a try. Very short. Already half way through. * ‘It’s seventeen years now since I saw Italy. What man who has seen it, and seen Naples above all, does not remember it for the rest of his life, even if, like myself, he was still half a child at the time! But scarcely ever have I experienced so vivid a recollection of that beautiful evening by the Gulf as today, in your garden. Every time I closed my eyes, there it was – quite plain and clear and bright, its last veil lifting and drifting away, that heavenly panorama spread out before me! The sea and the sea-shore, the mountain and the city, the motley crowd of people on the embankment, and then that wonderful complicated game with the b...

No machines in the house; everything was still done by hand. Objects out of a past century, now generally transfigured with nostalgia: not only the coffee mill, which you had actually come to love as a toy—also the GOOD OLD ironing-board, the COSY hearth, the often-mended cooking pots, the DANGEROUS poker, the STURDY wheelbarrow, the ENTERPRISING weed cutter, the SHINING BRIGHT knives, which over the years had been ground to a vanishing narrowness by BURLY scissor-grinders, the FIENDISH thimble, the STUPID darning egg, the CLUMSY OLD flat-iron, which provided variety by having to be put back on the stove every so often, and finally the PRIZE PIECE, the foot- and hand-operated Singer sewing-machine. But the golden haze is all in the manner of listing. Another way of listing would be equally idyllic: your aching back; your hands scalded in the wash boiler, then frozen red while hanging up the clothes (how the frozen washing crackled as you folded it up!); an occasional nosebleed when...

First book I ever read by Handke (given to me by a friend) was a used copy of Three By Peter Handke: The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick; Short Letter, Long Farewell; A Sorrow Beyond Dreams. I certainly have reread the other two once or twice, I can't remember re "Beyond Dreams." Anyway, Handke's mother plays a very important role in "Moravian Night," so I've decided I'd better give "Beyond" another go. *** As usual when engaged in literary work, I am alienated from myself and transformed into an object, a remembering and formulating machine. I am writing the story of my mother, first of all because I think I know more about her and how she came to her death than any outside investigator who might, with the help of a religious, psychological, or sociological guide to the interpretation of dreams, arrive at a facile explanation of this interesting case of suicide; but second in my own interest, because having something to do...