Without Lifting A Finger

Kleist met Henriette Vogel in 1809 through his friend  Adam Müller  and a friendship flourished between them. They shared a fondness for music, and according to Ernest Peguilhen, Henriette Vogel asked her friend to explain to her the art of war, as well as to teach her  fencing , for the dramatist had been a soldier. The relationship between the two became more intimate in the autumn of 1811. According to their contemporaries, there was no fire of passion but a purely spiritual love. It was Adam Müller's point of view, who in fact had been in love with Henriette for a while.  Marie von Kleist , who was the most important sponsor and confidant of Heinrich von Kleist, also made sure that this claim was widely spread. On November 21, 1811, the two traveled from Berlin to Wannsee. Prior to their departure, they both penned farewell letters, which along with an account of the final night they spent at the inn Gasthof Stimming, are now part of world literature. Upon th...

This passage made me smile. Mixing domestic with literary concerns. Had one good writer thinking about (and reading) a great writer. * I was getting worried about becoming too happily stodgily practical: instead of studying Locke, for instance, or writing - - - I go make an apple pie, or study the Joy of Cooking, reading it like a rare novel. Whoa, I said to myself. You will escape into domesticity & stifle yourself by falling headfirst into a bowl of cookie batter. And just now I pick up the blessed diary of Virginia Woolf which I bought with a battery of her novels Saturday with Ted. And she works off her depression over rejections from Harper's (no less - - - and I hardly believe that the Big Ones get rejected, too!) by cleaning out the kitchen. And cooks haddock & sausage. Bless her. I feel my life linked to her, somehow. I love her - - - from reading Mrs. Dalloway for Mr. Crockett - - - and I can still hear Elizabeth Drew's voice sending a shiver down my back ...

Read about him -- death, poetry, connection to Sara Teasdale -- yesterday. Envy him the walking trips and trading songs/poetry for room and board. Don't envy him re poetry or the bottle of Lysol. * Nicholas Vachel Lindsay ( / ˈ v eɪ tʃ əl ˈ l ɪ n z i / ; November 10, 1879 – December 5, 1931) was an American poet . He is considered the father of modern singing poetry, as he referred to it, in which verses are meant to be sung or chanted. His extensive correspondence with the poet W. B. Yeats details his intentions to revive the musical qualities in poetry as had been practiced by the ancient Greeks. Because of his identity as a performance artist and his use of American Midwest themes, Lindsay became known in the 1910s as the " Prairie Troubador ." For the final twenty years of his life, Lindsay was one of the best-known poets in the US. His reputation was high enough to enable him to befriend, encourage, and mentor other poets, such as Langston Hughes and Sara ...

A common urban legend surrounds Teasdale's suicide. The legend claims that her poem "I Shall Not Care" (which features themes of abandonment, bitterness, and contemplation of death) was penned as a suicide note to a former lover. However, the poem was actually first published in her 1915 collection Rivers to the Sea , a full 18 years before her suicide: [6] I Shall Not Care WHEN I am dead and over me bright April Shakes out her rain-drenched hair, Tho' you should lean above me broken-hearted, I shall not care. I shall have peace, as leafy trees are peaceful When rain bends down the bough, And I shall be more silent and cold-hearted Than you are now. [From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sara_Teasdale ]

          And there is the fallacy of existence: the idea that one would be happy forever and aye with a given situation or series of accomplishments. Why did Virginia Woolf commit suicide? Or Sara Teasdale -- or the other brilliant women -- neurotic? Was their writing sublimation (oh horrible word) of deep, basic desires? If only I knew. If only I knew how high I could set my goals, my requirements for my life! I am in the position of a blind girl playing with a slide-ruler of values. I am calculating powers.