Without Lifting A Finger

From Broch's Sleepwalkers : further, he would like to point out that the money for these lofty objects must be raised, and that in this connection an "Iron Bismarck," for instance, could be erected in the market-place, nails at ten pfennigs per nail,...   And a footnote explains: A wooden statue, into which the public were encouraged to hammer nails until the wood was covered.   *** Doesn't seem like the Bismarck statue ever existed, but the "nail men" were a historical reality and the most famous, according to Wiki, was probably the Iron Hindenburg (see image below).   Nail Men or Men of Nails ( German : Nagelmänner ) were a form of propaganda and fundraising for members of the armed forces and their dependents in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the German Empire in World War I . They consisted of wooden statues (usually of knights in armour) into which nails were driven, either iron (black), or coloured silver or gold, in exchange for donat...

Been busy but I'll leave a few "tracks" (now with the Kindle App on my Nokia I can easily read in every nook and cranny of my life) before getting back to my "real work" (i.e., the work that pays the bills). From Broch's Sleepwalkers  (I'm well into the last chapter, really the last half of the text, but I've wanted for some while to put down the last short chapter of Part II: I love his abrupt endings, especially after a somewhat logorrheic chapter: IMHO, it works): Here's the entirety of Part II/Chapter IV:      When the theatre in Duisburg went bankrupt and both Teltscher and Ilona were once more left destitute, Esch and his wife put almost the whole of what remained of their means into the theatrical business, and soon they had finally lost their money. Yet Esch now secured a post as head book-keeper in a large industrial concern in his Luxemburg home, and for this his wife admired him more than ever. They went their way hand in hand a...

  "Yes, Esch,--nailed to the cross. And in the hour of final loneliness pierced by the spear and anointed with vinegar. And only then can that darkness break in under cover of which the world must fall into dissolution so that it may become again clear and innocent, that darkness in which no man's path can meet another's--and where, even if we walk side by side, we will not hear each other, but will forget each other, as you too, my last dear friend, will forget what I say to you now, forget it like a dream."     

The band was making a great din, and Harry, leaning over the table so as not to have to shout, said mysteriously and in a low voice: "Love is a matter of distance; here are two people, and each is on a separate star, and neither can know anything of the other. And then suddenly distance is annihilated and time is annihilated, and they have flown together, so that they have no separate awareness of each other or of themselves, and feel no need of it. That is love."

San Francisco - Fisherman's Wharf: Musée Mécanique - Englehardt Orchestrion , a photo by wallyg on Flickr. Example of an orchestrion (built in 1915).

This musical instrument "plays a part" early on in part two: "The Anarchist": Between the two windows stood an orchestrion with its folding-doors open, showing its internal works and the roll of music. Actually the doors should have remained closed, and anyone who wished to enjoy the music should have inserted a coin in the slot.   *** An orchestrion is a generic name for a machine that plays music and is designed to sound like an orchestra or band. Orchestrions may be operated by means of a large pinned cylinder or by a music roll and less commonly book music . The sound is usually produced by pipes, though they will be voiced differently to those found in a pipe organ , as well as percussion instruments. Many orchestrions contain a piano as well.  The first known automatic playing orchestrion was the panharmonicon , invented in 1805 by Johann Nepomuk Mälzel . Friedrich Wilhelm Kaufmann copied this automatic playing machine in 1808 and his family produ...

Surprisingly (not) Starbucks was open. Finished the first part of Broch's trilogy and moved onto the second. I delighted in the ending of part one and wouldn't be surprised if I steal it (but make it NEW) at some future point. The ending of part one is a separate and very short Chapter IV: Nevertheless after some eighteen months they had their first child. It actually happened. How this came about cannot be told here. Besides, after the material for character construction already provided, the reader can imagine it for himself.   * Part Two is titled "The Anarchist."

Decided to take up Broch again: this time his The Sleepwalkers . Re Joachim's passion for Ruzena (Bohemian/Czech girl he met at the casino):  Love meant to take refuge from one's own world in another's . . . Re "conventional feeling" and Joachim's brother's death from a duel:  Bertrand went on: "We take it quite as a matter of course that two men, both of them honourable--for your brother would not have fought with a man who was not honourable--should of a morning stand and shoot at each other. And the fact that we put up with such a thing, and that they do it, shows how completely imprisoned we all are in conventional feeling. But feelings are inert, and that's why they're so cruel. The world is ruled by the inertia of feeling."