Without Lifting A Finger

Bouncing around (why ask why): Herbert (drank from the same glass as Eliot), Roth (him on him -- so-so), J. F. Powers (found via Roth -- also so-so, but I'll keep trying), Macbeth (because I want to revisit Leskov's Lady). Also, just finished my second Penelope Fitzgerald novel (about spring and Russia; not as good as Blue Flower). Anyway, from Zbigniew Herbert: To Ryszard Krynicki -- A Letter    Not much will remain Ryszard in truth not much of the poetry of our mad century Rilke Eliot sure a few other worthy shamans who knew the secret of word spells time-resistant forms without which no phrase deserves memory and speech is like sand   our school notebooks subjected to earnest torture with their traces of sweat tears and blood will be to the eternal proofreader a song without a score nobly righteous and all too self-evident   we came too easily to believe beauty does not save that it leads wantons from dream to dream to death none ...

Not a showcase of great writing (so I won't need to read more Penelope anytime soon), but I'm learning a little bit (mostly names and places) and I can appreciate the research (can't make everything up when it's "historical"). I can see, however, what at least one critic has said: Weak in terms of the philosophy behind the movement and the man. Perhaps her Blue Flower will inspire me to dig deeper? * 'But there is something else which I have written and which I want to read to you while I still have time,' Fritz told Karoline. 'It will not truly exist until you have heard it.'      'Is it then poetry?'      'It is poetry, but not verse.'      'Then it is a story?' asked Karoline, who dreaded the reappearance of Fichte's triads.      'It is the beginning of a story.'      'Well, we will wait until my Aunt Rahel comes back from the evening service.'   ...

Flip-flopping between Bernhard's Lime Works and Fitzgerald's The Blue Flower (via Bernhard, Kropotkin and Novalis, I got to Fitzgerald's "opus" -- wasn't sure about historical fiction, not my fave genre, but I figured it would be relatively short and informational: OK so far). * Anyway, Blue Flower kicked up Dr. John Brown. From Blue Flower : Dr. Brown, of Edinburgh, had cured a number of patients by refusing to let blood, and by recommending exercise, sufficient sex, and fresh air. But he held that to be alive was not a natural state, and to prevent immediate collapse the constitution must be held in perpetual balance by a series of stimuli, either jacking it up with alcohol, or damping it down with opium. From the online Britannica :