Without Lifting A Finger

Immense wealth of metal is contained in the roof of this gallery, throughout its whole length; but it remains, and will always remain, untouched. The miners dare not take it, for it is part, and a great part, of the rock which forms their only protection against the sea; and which has been so far worked away here, that its thickness is limited to an average of three feet only between the water and the gallery in which we now stand. No one knows what might be the consequence of another day's labour with the pickaxe on any part of it. This information is rather startling when communicated at a depth of four hundred and twenty feet under ground. We should decidedly have preferred to receive it in the counting-house! It makes us pause for an instant, to the miner's infinite amusement, in the very act of knocking away a tiny morsel of ore from the rock, as a memento of Botallack. Having, however, ventured on reflection to assume the responsibility of weakening our defence against ...

Saw the OK series The Woman in White with my wife. Had heard of Wilkie Collins before (I believe C. S. Lewis mentioned him?) but, not being a mystery fan (and never talking to anyone who'd read him), I didn't look till now. And that's also certainly why I chose the sidebar of Rambles beyond Railways  (it's about his "walking trip" in Cornwall in 1850). * Leaving Pistol Meadow, after gathering a few of the wild herbs growing fragrant and plentiful over the graves of the dead, we turned our steps towards the Lizard Lighthouse. As we passed before the front of the large and massive building, our progress was suddenly and startlingly checked by a hideous chasm in the cliff, sunk to a perpendicular depth of seventy feet, and measuring more than a hundred in circumference. Nothing prepares the stranger for this great gulf; no railing is placed about it; it lies hidden by rising land, and the earth all around is treacherously smooth. The first moment when you s...

Without Lifting A Finger: Baudelairian "Clips" : From Paris Spleen : Life is a hospital, in which every patient is possessed by the desire of changing his bed. One would prefer to suffer...

Fear, revulsion, and horror were the emotions which the big-city crowd aroused in those who first observed it. For Poe it has something barbaric; discipline just barely manages to tame it. Later, James Ensor tirelessly confronted its discipline with its wildness; he liked to put military groups in his carnival mobs, and both got along splendidly—as the prototype of totalitarian states, in which the police make common cause with the looters. Valéry, who had a fine eye for the cluster of symptoms called “civilization,” has characterized one of the pertinent facts. “The inhabitant of the great urban centers,” he writes, “reverts to a state of savagery—that is, of isolation. The feeling of being dependent on others, which used to be kept alive by need, is gradually blunted in the smooth functioning of the social mechanism. Any improvement of this mechanism eliminates certain modes of behavior and emotions.” Comfort isolates; on the other hand, it brings those enjoying it closer to mechan...

Let us consider the village at the foot of Castle Hill whence K.’s alleged employment as a land surveyor is so mysteriously and unexpectedly confirmed. In his Postscript to The Castle Brod mentioned that in depicting this village at the foot of Castle Hill Kafka had in mind a specific place, Zürau in the Erz Gebirge. We may, however, also recognize another village in it. It is the village in a Talmudic legend told by a rabbi in answer to the question why Jews prepare a festive evening meal on Fridays. The legend is about a princess languishing in exile, in a village whose language she does not understand, far from her compatriots. One day this princess receives a letter saying that her fiancé has not forgotten her and is on his way to her. The fiancé, so says the rabbi, is the Messiah; the princess is the soul; the village in which she lives in exile is the body. She prepares a meal for him because this is the only way in which she can express her joy in a village whose language she...

Without Lifting A Finger: Antonio Ciseri's "The Transport of Christ to the S... : I found this in the Madonna del Sasso (Locarno): Antonio Ciseri's "The Transport of Christ to the Sepulcher" [From W...

Without Lifting A Finger: Dribble Dribble: My Locarno : Our next big stop was Locarno, Switzerland (on the northern tip of Lago Maggiore). Of course I had to go to the Ticino largely because of Ma...

Almost passed it by (I was heading to the "real" text of Benjamin's Illuminations and it was at the end of the intro): a great (essential) Kafka quote. Can't believe I didn't post it already (maybe I did), can't believe I didn't drown it in yellow or underscore it a score of times in the hardcopy (maybe I'll look eventually). * “Anyone who cannot cope with life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate . . . but with his other hand he can jot down what he sees among the ruins, for he sees different and more things than the others; after all, he is dead in his own lifetime and the real survivor.” —Franz Kafka, DIARIES, entry of October 19, 1921

They've been around a while. Mostly on the edge of the lagoon. The other night they tried to get in a round of golf for free (the course is closed, but I guess they "walked on"?). No balls. No clubs. They spent most of the time around the sand traps. *

Stated more briefly and dialectically, this means that the sphere of poetry was here explored from within by a closely knit circle of people pushing the “poetic life” to the utmost limits of possibility. And they can be taken at their word when they assert that Rimbaud’s Saison en enfer no longer had any secrets for them. For this book is indeed the first document of the movement (in recent times; earlier precursors will be discussed later). Can the point at issue be more definitively and incisively presented than by Rimbaud himself in his personal copy of the book? In the margin, beside the passage “on the silk of the seas and the arctic flowers,” he later wrote, “There’s no such thing.” * The reader, the thinker, the loiterer, the flâneur, are types of illuminati just as much as the opium eater, the dreamer, the ecstatic. And more profane. Not to mention that most terrible drug—ourselves—which we take in solitude.

"That," I said, "is why this mystery is the most surprising I know. Edgar Allan Poe, in 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue,' invented nothing like it. The place of that crime was sufficiently closed to prevent the escape of a man; but there was that window through which the monkey, the perpetrator of the murder, could slip away!" * You writers forget that what the senses furnish is not proof. If I am taking cognisance of what is offered me by my senses I do so but to bring the results within the circle of my reason. That circle may be the most circumscribed, but if it is, it has this advantage—it holds nothing but the truth! Yes, I swear that I have never used the evidence of the senses but as servants to my reason. I have never permitted them to become my master. They have not made of me that monstrous thing,—worse than a blind man,—a man who sees falsely. And that is why I can triumph over your error and your merely animal intelligence, Frederic Larsan. ...

I'll fault Benjamin for getting me sidetracked on The Mystery of the Yellow Room . He mentioned Gaston Leroux (had never heard of him before now, though perhaps I should have from his Phantom fame). Mystery is not usually one of my genres, though I'm admitting I dip into it occasionally.:) I suppose what also caught my attention, after running down Leroux, was the subgenre of Locked-room Mysteries. Will I ever return to "The Murders of the Rue Morgue" or read for the first time Carr's "The Hollow Man"? Only time will tell. * Wikipedia Link

The Writer’s Technique in Thirteen Theses Anyone intending to embark on a major work should be lenient with himself and, having completed a stint, deny himself nothing that will not prejudice the next. Talk about what you have written, by all means, but do not read from it while the work is in progress. Every gratification procured in this way will slacken your tempo. If this regime is followed, the growing desire to communicate will become in the end a motor for completion. In your working conditions avoid everyday mediocrity. Semirelaxation, to a background of insipid sounds, is degrading. On the other hand, accompaniment by an étude or a cacophony of voices can become as significant for work as the perceptible silence of the night. If the latter sharpens the inner ear, the former acts as touchstone for a diction ample enough to bury even the most wayward sounds. Avoid haphazard writing materials. A pedantic adherence to certain papers, pens, inks is beneficial. No luxury, but an ...

I'm still walking, though the venues have narrowed a bit. And yes, like all good Long Beachers, I'm practicing "social distancing." * Reading-wise, I've finished The Fall (went for weeks playing the judge-penitent), but probably won't, at least anytime soon, reread The Plague . Last time out I found it somewhat boring. Instead I've been thinking about rereading Death in Venice . We'll see. ***

FROM THE POETRY FOUNDATION