Quote of the Day
“Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” ~ Buddha
posted by Rachel at
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May 11, 2013
April 29, 2013
Art of the Day
Sollie 17
"Kienholz' work during the 1970s and 1980s became more sophisticated and elaborate. In a later example entitled Sollie 17 (1979-1980) Kienholz placed three cast images of the same man within a realistically constructed dilapidated urban dwelling. Clad only in a pair of baggy undershorts, the old man is seen lying on a soiled bed reading a pulp Western. On the right edge of the bed the same man sits. His head - a framed photograph attached to the cast body - is downcast as the lonely man plays a game of cards. Finally the man is seen to the rear gazing out a window which opens onto an urban cityscape. The barrenness of the man's life is echoed in the bare bulb that illuminates this sordid interior from above. This is a powerful image of alienation and the despair of a vacuous life; a life wherein time is not measured by a clock but by the water that drips from a faulty tap. Kienholz reproduced familiar environments by taking discarded objects from everyday life and assembling them in such a way that they took on a renewed significance. With an uncanny eye for detail and arrangement Kienholz orchestrated frozen dramas. By demanding that the viewers take an active part in his play he confronts them with images of themselves and the world around them. Everything suddenly becomes imbued with an allegorical significance and a once familiar world becomes hostile. Kienholz acknowledged that his wife often assisted him in his work. After 1973 Kienholz spent six months of each year in Berlin and the other six months in Hope, Idaho. Kienholz died of a heart attack on June 10, 1994 in Hope, Idaho. His burial was reminiscent of his "tableaux." He was buried in the passenger seat of a 1940 Packard coupe with the ashes of his dog in the back seat and, in the glovebox, a bottle of vintage wine. In 1996, a retrospective of his work was shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York."
-Answers
Edward Kienholz
"Kienholz' work during the 1970s and 1980s became more sophisticated and elaborate. In a later example entitled Sollie 17 (1979-1980) Kienholz placed three cast images of the same man within a realistically constructed dilapidated urban dwelling. Clad only in a pair of baggy undershorts, the old man is seen lying on a soiled bed reading a pulp Western. On the right edge of the bed the same man sits. His head - a framed photograph attached to the cast body - is downcast as the lonely man plays a game of cards. Finally the man is seen to the rear gazing out a window which opens onto an urban cityscape. The barrenness of the man's life is echoed in the bare bulb that illuminates this sordid interior from above. This is a powerful image of alienation and the despair of a vacuous life; a life wherein time is not measured by a clock but by the water that drips from a faulty tap. Kienholz reproduced familiar environments by taking discarded objects from everyday life and assembling them in such a way that they took on a renewed significance. With an uncanny eye for detail and arrangement Kienholz orchestrated frozen dramas. By demanding that the viewers take an active part in his play he confronts them with images of themselves and the world around them. Everything suddenly becomes imbued with an allegorical significance and a once familiar world becomes hostile. Kienholz acknowledged that his wife often assisted him in his work. After 1973 Kienholz spent six months of each year in Berlin and the other six months in Hope, Idaho. Kienholz died of a heart attack on June 10, 1994 in Hope, Idaho. His burial was reminiscent of his "tableaux." He was buried in the passenger seat of a 1940 Packard coupe with the ashes of his dog in the back seat and, in the glovebox, a bottle of vintage wine. In 1996, a retrospective of his work was shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York."
-Answers
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10:46 AM
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April 24, 2013
Quote of the Day
"I realized that I should have had only 30 women in the show."
- Peggy Guggenheim, after her husband Max Ernst left her for Dorothea Tanning, one of the thirty-one artists represented at Art of This Century's Exhibition by 31 Women
- Peggy Guggenheim, after her husband Max Ernst left her for Dorothea Tanning, one of the thirty-one artists represented at Art of This Century's Exhibition by 31 Women
posted by Rachel at
10:42 AM
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April 22, 2013
Artist of the Day
Diane
Arbus
Three decades after Diane Arbus took her own life, her controversial portraits of the eccentric, the freakish and the alienated continue to exert a powerful influence on modern photography. "Photography was a license to go wherever I wanted to go and do whatever I wanted to do," Arbus said. With a camera as a shield, she entered a world far beyond the affluent New York of her youth, and returned with unforgettable images-the exasperated child with a toy hand grenade, an unsettling pair of twins, a Jewish giant towering over his parents-that have become icons of strangeness and pathos.
Born in New York City on March 14, 1923, the eldest daughter of David Nemerov and Gertrude Russek, Diane was raised in a household of unusual privilege. Her mother's family owned the Russeks chain of fur and department stores, where her father worked as merchandising director. The son of a grocer, David Nemerov had worked his way up from the position of a window dresser to marry the founder's daughter. Diane, her elder brother Howard and her younger sister Renée were all born into a noveau riche family of the New York fashion circle, where the image of prosperity counted even more than wealth itself.
Of her childhood, Diane would later say: "I was treated like a crummy princess." A private, intelligent girl, highly devoted to her brother, Diane was nevertheless expected to conform to an affluent Jewish ideal that included expensive clothes, piano lessons and the prospect of becoming a full-time wife and mother. This sheltered upbringing, in which she was shielded from all signs of poverty or strangeness, would one day drive her to seek out images of darkness and transgression against societal norms in her work as a photographer.
Even as a child, Diane rebelled against her family in small ways. Though her father objected to the artistic ambitions of his children, Diane excelled in painting at Fieldston, a private school in the Riverdale neighborhood of the Bronx, and confessed that she wanted to be a "great sad artist" when she grew up. (Eventually, the Nemerov children all became artists, notably Howard, who won a Pulitzer Prize for poetry and served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 1988-1990.) In 1937, when Diane was 14, an even greater rebellion presented itself: she fell in love with Allan Arbus, a copy boy in the Russeks art department-and insisted that she wanted to marry him right away.
Despite the fact that their own marriage had also crossed social boundaries, Diane's parents strongly opposed her romance with this 19 year old whose only ambition was to become an actor. Nonetheless, she and Allan continued a clandestine courtship for the next four years. While her brother went off to Harvard University, Diane insisted that marriage was all she wanted. Finally, her parents relented, and she and Allan were married on April 10, 1941, shortly after Diane's eighteenth birthday.
During World War II, Allan was trained in combat photography. After his return, he and Diane began to support themselves as fashion photographers. Diane learned the trade secondhand, assisting Allan at photo shoots and taking lessons from him in the darkroom. Their first major account was photographing Russeks fashion and furs for newspaper ads; other clients soon followed, and by 1947 they were shooting fashion speads for Glamour, Vogue and other magazines on a regular basis.
As a fashion duo, the couple had an almost symbiotic relationship, working in close collaboration on all their assignments. Despite their apparent success, however, they often struggled: fashion work did not pay very well, and Diane's family refused to help support the young couple. Diane herself sometimes suffered from intense depression, which rarely had a visible cause, and may have been genetic in nature. In any case, she insisted that she wanted nothing more than to be a faithful wife and a loving mother to their two daughters, Doon and Amy.
Moreover, neither Diane nor Allan found fashion photography-with its sameness and lack of artistic freedom-very satisfying. Allan continued to dream of success as an actor, while Diane began to take pictures on her own. Chronically shy at first, she began by photographing children and her friends; in 1957, however, she withdrew from fashion work to pursue her own projects full-time. She admired photographer Lisette Model, who was famous for her pictures of poverty and the grotesque; after repeatedly calling Model in hopes of purchasing one of her photographs, she was invited to join Model's art class.
During this period, the elements of Diane's characteristic style began to emerge. Like Model, Diane felt that photography was an exchange between artist and subject, and that it often took many exposures to bring out the subject's true character. Diane was drawn to the strange, even the taboo. "I want to photograph what is evil," she told Model, and with her 35-mm camera as a shield, she ventured into unusual places (tenements, Coney Island, circuses, Hubert's Freak Museum), snapping hundreds of pictures.
Soon afterward, the Arbuses' marriage crumbled. There was apparently infidelity on both sides. Years earlier, Diane had engaged a brief affair with Alex Eliot, the art editor of Time and a longtime mutual friend of the Arbuses; later, Allan fell in love with a woman in one of his acting classes. In 1959, they decided to separate, though they did not divorce for another decade, and Allan continued to send money to Diane and their children when he could. (As an actor, Allan eventually found success, notably in a featured role on the television series M*A*S*H.)
Though deeply depressed by the separation, Diane continued to work, contributing photo essays to Esquire magazine. She photographed people on the street as well as such unconventional subjects as dwarves, giants and transvestites, taking many exposures until she captured the strangeness in the ordinary and the humanity of the strange. Most of her pictures were composed like conventional portraits, with the subject looking directly into the camera lens; the Rolleiflex camera she used provided great clarity and vividness within its square frame.
To obtain the emotional immediacy that made her pictures so famous, Diane Arbus often went to extremes, sometimes following her subjects into their homes. Rumor has it that Arbus slept with many of her subjects; in any case, she became much more sexually adventurous after her separation. "Taking a portrait is like seducing someone," she told a friend, and she seems to have approached sex much as she did photography: as a way of testing herself, of having novel experiences and fighting off depression.
By the early 1960s, Arbus's uncanny magazine work had become highly regarded in the intimate circle of New York artists and publishers. As her reputation grew, she began to receive fashion and celebrity assignments from such publications as Show and Harper's Bazaar, where her friend Marvin Israel worked as art director. Her subjects included Mae West, Marcello Mastroianni and Norman Mailer-who commented that "Giving a camera to Diane Arbus is like giving a hand grenade to a baby." She also began experimenting with a direct flash, which seemed to peel away the public faces of her subjects. This use of the flash, along with the square frame, became one of the most widely imitated features of her work.
Three Arbus pictures were included in a 1965 exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art, "Recent Acquisitions." Reaction to Arbus's portraits of nudists and female impersonators was sharply divided; workers at the museum had to come in early to wipe the spit off her photographs. Similar controversy greeted the 1967 show "New Documents," in which her disturbing portraits were given a room of their own. That show is now seen as a landmark in this history of photography, but at the time, Arbus was wary of being stereotyped as a photographer of "freaks."
With her younger daughter away at school, Arbus moved into an artists' colony in New York, where she taught a class in photography. In her lessons, she emphasized that a picture was the product of the relationship between artist and subject: a photographer's truest art lay in coaxing a moment of revelation from a sometimes-reluctant individual. At the same time, however, Arbus had begun to take pictures of mentally retarded patients at a home in Vineland, New Jersey-subjects who were completely absorbed in themselves, whom she could never control or reach. This frustration contributed to the depression and loneliness that had long been part of Arbus's life.
On July 26, 1971, Diane Arbus committed suicide by slashing her wrists. Her friend Marvin Israel found her two days later, lying fully clothed in her bathtub. A rumor arose that Arbus had taken pictures of herself as she lay dying, but no film was ever recovered. Because Arbus left no note or other message, the reason for her suicide remains uncertain. Her reputation has only increased since her death, due largely to a famous retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art and the publication of several collections of her photographs, edited by Marvin Israel and her daughter Doon.
Brain-Juice
Three decades after Diane Arbus took her own life, her controversial portraits of the eccentric, the freakish and the alienated continue to exert a powerful influence on modern photography. "Photography was a license to go wherever I wanted to go and do whatever I wanted to do," Arbus said. With a camera as a shield, she entered a world far beyond the affluent New York of her youth, and returned with unforgettable images-the exasperated child with a toy hand grenade, an unsettling pair of twins, a Jewish giant towering over his parents-that have become icons of strangeness and pathos.
Born in New York City on March 14, 1923, the eldest daughter of David Nemerov and Gertrude Russek, Diane was raised in a household of unusual privilege. Her mother's family owned the Russeks chain of fur and department stores, where her father worked as merchandising director. The son of a grocer, David Nemerov had worked his way up from the position of a window dresser to marry the founder's daughter. Diane, her elder brother Howard and her younger sister Renée were all born into a noveau riche family of the New York fashion circle, where the image of prosperity counted even more than wealth itself.
Of her childhood, Diane would later say: "I was treated like a crummy princess." A private, intelligent girl, highly devoted to her brother, Diane was nevertheless expected to conform to an affluent Jewish ideal that included expensive clothes, piano lessons and the prospect of becoming a full-time wife and mother. This sheltered upbringing, in which she was shielded from all signs of poverty or strangeness, would one day drive her to seek out images of darkness and transgression against societal norms in her work as a photographer.
Even as a child, Diane rebelled against her family in small ways. Though her father objected to the artistic ambitions of his children, Diane excelled in painting at Fieldston, a private school in the Riverdale neighborhood of the Bronx, and confessed that she wanted to be a "great sad artist" when she grew up. (Eventually, the Nemerov children all became artists, notably Howard, who won a Pulitzer Prize for poetry and served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 1988-1990.) In 1937, when Diane was 14, an even greater rebellion presented itself: she fell in love with Allan Arbus, a copy boy in the Russeks art department-and insisted that she wanted to marry him right away.
Despite the fact that their own marriage had also crossed social boundaries, Diane's parents strongly opposed her romance with this 19 year old whose only ambition was to become an actor. Nonetheless, she and Allan continued a clandestine courtship for the next four years. While her brother went off to Harvard University, Diane insisted that marriage was all she wanted. Finally, her parents relented, and she and Allan were married on April 10, 1941, shortly after Diane's eighteenth birthday.
During World War II, Allan was trained in combat photography. After his return, he and Diane began to support themselves as fashion photographers. Diane learned the trade secondhand, assisting Allan at photo shoots and taking lessons from him in the darkroom. Their first major account was photographing Russeks fashion and furs for newspaper ads; other clients soon followed, and by 1947 they were shooting fashion speads for Glamour, Vogue and other magazines on a regular basis.
As a fashion duo, the couple had an almost symbiotic relationship, working in close collaboration on all their assignments. Despite their apparent success, however, they often struggled: fashion work did not pay very well, and Diane's family refused to help support the young couple. Diane herself sometimes suffered from intense depression, which rarely had a visible cause, and may have been genetic in nature. In any case, she insisted that she wanted nothing more than to be a faithful wife and a loving mother to their two daughters, Doon and Amy.
Moreover, neither Diane nor Allan found fashion photography-with its sameness and lack of artistic freedom-very satisfying. Allan continued to dream of success as an actor, while Diane began to take pictures on her own. Chronically shy at first, she began by photographing children and her friends; in 1957, however, she withdrew from fashion work to pursue her own projects full-time. She admired photographer Lisette Model, who was famous for her pictures of poverty and the grotesque; after repeatedly calling Model in hopes of purchasing one of her photographs, she was invited to join Model's art class.
During this period, the elements of Diane's characteristic style began to emerge. Like Model, Diane felt that photography was an exchange between artist and subject, and that it often took many exposures to bring out the subject's true character. Diane was drawn to the strange, even the taboo. "I want to photograph what is evil," she told Model, and with her 35-mm camera as a shield, she ventured into unusual places (tenements, Coney Island, circuses, Hubert's Freak Museum), snapping hundreds of pictures.
Soon afterward, the Arbuses' marriage crumbled. There was apparently infidelity on both sides. Years earlier, Diane had engaged a brief affair with Alex Eliot, the art editor of Time and a longtime mutual friend of the Arbuses; later, Allan fell in love with a woman in one of his acting classes. In 1959, they decided to separate, though they did not divorce for another decade, and Allan continued to send money to Diane and their children when he could. (As an actor, Allan eventually found success, notably in a featured role on the television series M*A*S*H.)
Though deeply depressed by the separation, Diane continued to work, contributing photo essays to Esquire magazine. She photographed people on the street as well as such unconventional subjects as dwarves, giants and transvestites, taking many exposures until she captured the strangeness in the ordinary and the humanity of the strange. Most of her pictures were composed like conventional portraits, with the subject looking directly into the camera lens; the Rolleiflex camera she used provided great clarity and vividness within its square frame.
To obtain the emotional immediacy that made her pictures so famous, Diane Arbus often went to extremes, sometimes following her subjects into their homes. Rumor has it that Arbus slept with many of her subjects; in any case, she became much more sexually adventurous after her separation. "Taking a portrait is like seducing someone," she told a friend, and she seems to have approached sex much as she did photography: as a way of testing herself, of having novel experiences and fighting off depression.
By the early 1960s, Arbus's uncanny magazine work had become highly regarded in the intimate circle of New York artists and publishers. As her reputation grew, she began to receive fashion and celebrity assignments from such publications as Show and Harper's Bazaar, where her friend Marvin Israel worked as art director. Her subjects included Mae West, Marcello Mastroianni and Norman Mailer-who commented that "Giving a camera to Diane Arbus is like giving a hand grenade to a baby." She also began experimenting with a direct flash, which seemed to peel away the public faces of her subjects. This use of the flash, along with the square frame, became one of the most widely imitated features of her work.
Three Arbus pictures were included in a 1965 exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art, "Recent Acquisitions." Reaction to Arbus's portraits of nudists and female impersonators was sharply divided; workers at the museum had to come in early to wipe the spit off her photographs. Similar controversy greeted the 1967 show "New Documents," in which her disturbing portraits were given a room of their own. That show is now seen as a landmark in this history of photography, but at the time, Arbus was wary of being stereotyped as a photographer of "freaks."
With her younger daughter away at school, Arbus moved into an artists' colony in New York, where she taught a class in photography. In her lessons, she emphasized that a picture was the product of the relationship between artist and subject: a photographer's truest art lay in coaxing a moment of revelation from a sometimes-reluctant individual. At the same time, however, Arbus had begun to take pictures of mentally retarded patients at a home in Vineland, New Jersey-subjects who were completely absorbed in themselves, whom she could never control or reach. This frustration contributed to the depression and loneliness that had long been part of Arbus's life.
On July 26, 1971, Diane Arbus committed suicide by slashing her wrists. Her friend Marvin Israel found her two days later, lying fully clothed in her bathtub. A rumor arose that Arbus had taken pictures of herself as she lay dying, but no film was ever recovered. Because Arbus left no note or other message, the reason for her suicide remains uncertain. Her reputation has only increased since her death, due largely to a famous retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art and the publication of several collections of her photographs, edited by Marvin Israel and her daughter Doon.
Brain-Juice
posted by Rachel at
9:48 PM
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April 19, 2013
Photograph
Josef Albers's collage of photos of Gropius with Shifra Carnesi, taken in Ascona, 1930.
posted by Rachel at
10:41 PM
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April 16, 2013
Quote of the Day
“First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, and then you win.”
― Mahatma Gandhi
― Mahatma Gandhi
posted by Rachel at
12:55 PM
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April 8, 2013
RIP
Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, one of the most formidable leaders of the 20th century, died Monday morning from a stroke, reports The Telegraph. She was 87.
"It is with great sadness that Mark and Carol Thatcher announced that their mother Baroness Thatcher died peacefully following a stroke this morning. A further statement will be made later," confirmed Thatcher's spokesman.
As the first female British prime minister and a member of the Conservative Party, Thatcher was a polarizing figure in British politics, serving from 1979-1990. On one hand, she was lauded for her bold condemnation against Communism—it was the Soviets themselves who coined her "The Iron Lady"; on the other hand, her approach to the economy by privatizing aspects of Britain’s government and for reducing social services and restricting labor unions unleashed a fury of accusations that she was destroying the country's safety net.
One of the key turning points in Thatcher's political career was when she helped Britain achieve victory over Argentina in the Falklands War in 1982. Although sovereignty of the islands was not settled, her popularity soared, helping assure her re-election in 1983.
As one of only a handful of female world leaders, Thatcher cultivated close relationships with politicians, including U.S. President Ronald Reagan; the two are considered pivotal "architects of the West’s victory in the Cold War." Thatcher also became a fan of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and his policies of “perestroika,” which was a movement to reform Communism.
Thatcher left office in November 1990 after serving three terms as prime minister. She was given the title “Baroness,” and she was welcomed into the highest order of knighthood in England, the order of the garter. She also established the Margaret Thatcher Foundation, an organization dedicated to encouraging free trade, free enterprise, and democracy throughout the world.
Thatcher's health started to suffer through a series of strokes starting in 2001, and in 2008, her daughter Carol announced she had been diagnosed with dementia.
Thatcher is survived by her son and daughter. Her husband of almost 52 years, Sir Dennis, died in 2003.
posted by Rachel at
11:35 AM
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April 3, 2013
Art of the Day
The Code of Hammurabi
Perhaps the most remarkable and influential creation of its time, Hammurabi’s code is the oldest set of laws known to exist. Hammurabi, king and chief priest of Babylonia from 1792-1750 B.C., expanded his empire greatly before focusing his energies toward wealth and justice for his people. He created a code protecting all classes of Babylonian society, including women and slaves. He sought protection of the weak from the powerful and the poor from the rich. The carving on the stone on which the code is written depicts Hammurabi receiving the divine laws from the sun god, the god most often associated with justice. This stone was unearthed by French archaeologists at S_sa, Iraq (ancient Elam), in 1901-02. The black diorite rock is 2.4 m high and had been broken into three pieces.
Hammurabi’s Code is 44 columns of text, 28 paragraphs of which contain the actual code. There are 282 laws (possibly more have been rubbed off) that probably amend common Babylonian law rather than define it. It describes regulations for legal procedure, fixes rates on services performed in most branches of commerce and describes property rights, personal injury, and penalties for false testimony and accusations. It has no laws regarding religion.
The Code of Hammurabi is significant because its creation allowed men, women, slaves, and all others to read and understand the laws that governed their lives in Babylon. It is unique in that laws of other civilizations were not written down, and thus could be manipulated to suite the rulers that dictated them. The Code is particularly just for its time. Although it follows the practice of "an eye for an eye", it does not allow for vigilante justice, but rather demands a trial by judges. It also glorifies acts of peace and justice done during Hammurabi’s rule. It symbolizes not only the emergence of justice in the minds of men, but also man’s rise above ignorance and barbarism toward the peaceful and just societies still pursued today. In the words of Hammurabi as carved on the stone, "Let any oppressed man who has a cause come into the presence of my statue as king of justice, and have the inscription on my stele read out, and hear my precious words, that my stele may make the case clear to him; may he understand his cause, and may his heart be set at ease!"
-Oracle Thinkquest
Perhaps the most remarkable and influential creation of its time, Hammurabi’s code is the oldest set of laws known to exist. Hammurabi, king and chief priest of Babylonia from 1792-1750 B.C., expanded his empire greatly before focusing his energies toward wealth and justice for his people. He created a code protecting all classes of Babylonian society, including women and slaves. He sought protection of the weak from the powerful and the poor from the rich. The carving on the stone on which the code is written depicts Hammurabi receiving the divine laws from the sun god, the god most often associated with justice. This stone was unearthed by French archaeologists at S_sa, Iraq (ancient Elam), in 1901-02. The black diorite rock is 2.4 m high and had been broken into three pieces.
Hammurabi’s Code is 44 columns of text, 28 paragraphs of which contain the actual code. There are 282 laws (possibly more have been rubbed off) that probably amend common Babylonian law rather than define it. It describes regulations for legal procedure, fixes rates on services performed in most branches of commerce and describes property rights, personal injury, and penalties for false testimony and accusations. It has no laws regarding religion.
The Code of Hammurabi is significant because its creation allowed men, women, slaves, and all others to read and understand the laws that governed their lives in Babylon. It is unique in that laws of other civilizations were not written down, and thus could be manipulated to suite the rulers that dictated them. The Code is particularly just for its time. Although it follows the practice of "an eye for an eye", it does not allow for vigilante justice, but rather demands a trial by judges. It also glorifies acts of peace and justice done during Hammurabi’s rule. It symbolizes not only the emergence of justice in the minds of men, but also man’s rise above ignorance and barbarism toward the peaceful and just societies still pursued today. In the words of Hammurabi as carved on the stone, "Let any oppressed man who has a cause come into the presence of my statue as king of justice, and have the inscription on my stele read out, and hear my precious words, that my stele may make the case clear to him; may he understand his cause, and may his heart be set at ease!"
-Oracle Thinkquest
posted by Rachel at
10:16 PM
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April 2, 2013
Poetry
Demain, dès l'aube
Demain, dès l'aube, à l'heure où blanchit la campagne,
Je partirai. Vois-tu, je sais que tu m'attends.
J'irai par la forêt, j'irai par la montagne.
Je ne puis demeurer loin de toi plus longtemps.
Je marcherai les yeux fixés sur mes pensées,
Sans rien voir au dehors, sans entendre aucun bruit,
Seul, inconnu, le dos courbé, les mains croisées,
Triste, et le jour pour moi sera comme la nuit.
Je ne regarderai ni l'or du soir qui tombe,
Ni les voiles au loin descendant vers Harfleur,
Et quand j'arriverai, je mettrai sur ta tombe
Un bouquet de houx vert et de bruyère en fleur.
Tomorrow at Dawn
Tomorrow, at dawn, at the hour when the countryside is alit,
I will leave. See here, you know what I must do.
I will go through the forest, I will go across the mountain.
I will not remain far from you for long.
I will trudge on with eyes fixed on my thoughts,
Without seeing what it outside of me, without hearing any noise,
Alone, unknown, bent, with crossed hands,
Sad, and the day will be for me as night.
I will not notice either the golden sunset as night falls,
Nor the distant mist which descends over Harfleur,
And when I arrive, I will place on your grave
A bouquet of holly and heather in bloom.
by Victor Hugo dedicated to his daughter Léopoldine Hugo after her death.
Demain, dès l'aube, à l'heure où blanchit la campagne,
Je partirai. Vois-tu, je sais que tu m'attends.
J'irai par la forêt, j'irai par la montagne.
Je ne puis demeurer loin de toi plus longtemps.
Je marcherai les yeux fixés sur mes pensées,
Sans rien voir au dehors, sans entendre aucun bruit,
Seul, inconnu, le dos courbé, les mains croisées,
Triste, et le jour pour moi sera comme la nuit.
Je ne regarderai ni l'or du soir qui tombe,
Ni les voiles au loin descendant vers Harfleur,
Et quand j'arriverai, je mettrai sur ta tombe
Un bouquet de houx vert et de bruyère en fleur.
Tomorrow at Dawn
Tomorrow, at dawn, at the hour when the countryside is alit,
I will leave. See here, you know what I must do.
I will go through the forest, I will go across the mountain.
I will not remain far from you for long.
I will trudge on with eyes fixed on my thoughts,
Without seeing what it outside of me, without hearing any noise,
Alone, unknown, bent, with crossed hands,
Sad, and the day will be for me as night.
I will not notice either the golden sunset as night falls,
Nor the distant mist which descends over Harfleur,
And when I arrive, I will place on your grave
A bouquet of holly and heather in bloom.
by Victor Hugo dedicated to his daughter Léopoldine Hugo after her death.
posted by Rachel at
8:34 PM
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Art of the Day
Spring Landscape in Rain
Bai Xueshi
born 1915 China
Bai Xueshi
born 1915 China
posted by Rachel at
8:06 PM
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March 25, 2013
March 23, 2013
R.I.P
Bebo Valdés, Giant Of Cuban Music has passed away
One of the giants of Cuban music, pianist and composer/arranger Bebo Valdés, died Friday in Switzerland due to complications from pneumonia, according to his wife and manager. He was 94.Ramón Emilio "Bebo" Valdés Amaro was born in 1918 in a village outside Havana. Trained at conservatory, and having absorbed the sounds of Afro-Cuban street music and American jazz in various ensembles, he became the house pianist and arranger at the Tropicana Nightclub in 1948. The Tropicana was the hottest venue in Havana at the time; many American entertainers performed there, and Valdés became known as the go-to arranger in town for studio dates, film scores and dance numbers. In 1952, he also participated in the first Afro-Cuban descarga, or jam session, recorded in Cuba, where a group improvisation turned into the recording "Con Poco Coco."
But as his career was booming, a revolutionary government took over in Cuba, accompanied by a crackdown on the entertainment industry. In 1960, he left Cuba to play a gig in Mexico City with his own band. He never returned, leaving behind his wife and children. Valdés eventually wound up in Sweden, where he remarried and pursued a quieter music career, often playing piano for cruise ships or in choice hotels."If you are a musician and you do one thing, you should enjoy what you do," Valdés told NPR's Felix Contreras in 2006. "This is my profession, and it is my hobby, and I live in love with what I do. In those years in Stockholm, even if I wasn't successful, I did it because I liked it, and I'll keep doing it until I die."
Meanwhile, one of his children had matured into a piano virtuoso himself, and had co-founded his own jazz-influenced, genre-crossing band called Irakere. When Chucho Valdes and Irakere played a date at Carnegie Hall in 1977, Bebo Valdes crossed the Atlantic Ocean to reunite with his son. It set into motion a reconciliation which resulted in several collaborations, in concert and on recordings like the Latin jazz performance film Calle 54 and the duet album Juntos Para Siempre.
Late in his career, Bebo Valdés enjoyed a resurgence of popularity. In 1994, another Irakere veteran and Cuban exile, reedman Paquito D'Rivera, convinced Valdés to record Bebo Rides Again, a disc of Cuban classics mixed with original compositions. The album led to future recordings, among them Grammy-winning efforts like El Arte de Sabor and Lagrimas Negras. He was also the inspiration and pianist for the animated film Chico and Rita, about Cuban musicians in the 1940s.
"This attention is a gift from God," he told NPR. "I did not ask for all of this. But since it was sent to me, I accept it from the heart."
~NPR
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Art of the Day
Finial in the Form of a Parrot
- Object Name: Finial
- Date: 17th–18th century
- Geography: Northern India
- Medium: Brass
- Dimensions: H. 5 3/4 in. (14.6 cm) L. 11 in. (27.9 cm)
- Classification: Metal
- Credit Line: Gift of Robert W. and Lockwood De Forest, 1919
- Accession Number: 19.135.3
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R.I.P
Chinua Achebe, Nigerian Author Of 'Things Fall Apart,' Dies
Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe, widely seen as the grandfather of modern African literature, has died at the age of 82.
From the publication of his first novel, "Things Fall Apart", over 50 years ago, Achebe shaped an understanding of Africa from an African perspective more than any other author.
As a novelist, poet, broadcaster and lecturer, Achebe was a yardstick against which generations of African writers have been judged. For children across Africa, his books have for decades been an eye-opening introduction to the power of literature.
Describing Achebe as a "colossus of African writing", South African President Jacob Zuma expressed sadness at his death.
Nelson Mandela, who read Achebe's work in jail, has called him a writer "in whose company the prison walls fell down."
Achebe's "Things Fall Apart", published in 1958, told of his Igbo ethnic group's fatal brush with British colonizers in the 1800s - the first time the story of European colonialism had been told from an African viewpoint to an international audience. The book was translated into 50 languages and has sold more than 10 million copies worldwide.
He later turned his sights on the devastation wrought to Nigeria and Africa by military coups and entrenched dictatorship.
"Anthills of the Savannah," published in 1987, is set after a coup in a fictional African country, where power has corrupted and state brutality silenced all but the most courageous.
The pain at Achebe's death was felt across Nigeria, and particularly in the southeastern homeland of the Igbos.
"Our whole household is crying out in grief," a cousin and traditional chief, Uba Onubon, told Reuters in Ikenga village.
WAR
Born at Ogidi in southeast Nigeria on November 16, 1930, Achebe was the son of a Christian evangelist. He went to mission schools and to University College, Ibadan, and taught briefly before joining the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation, where he was director of external broadcasting from 1961 to 1966.
When his homeland broke away from Nigeria in a disastrous bid for independence, Achebe launched a publishing company in Enugu, capital of the self-declared republic of Biafra.
After the war, which cost a million lives along with Biafra's hopes of statehood, Achebe returned to Enugu to teach at the nearby Nsukka University.
In 1972 he moved to Massachusetts and since then spent much of his time in the United States, with occasional spells in Nigeria. His last post was at Brown University in Rhode Island.
Through tears, former government minister and friend Dora Akunyili said Achebe's death "leaves a void in Nigeria, Africa and globally."
Although Achebe never won the Nobel literature prize like fellow Nigerian Wole Soyinka his works won praise for their vivid portrayal of African realities and their accessibility.
His contribution was recognized when he won The Man Booker International Prize in 2007.
"Professor Achebe will live forever in the hearts and minds of present and future generations through his great works," Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan said in a statement.
CORRUPTION
Achebe never hesitated to turn harsh words on his home country, publishing a pamphlet in 1983, "The Trouble With Nigeria", excoriating its corruption and condemning it as "dirty, callous, noisy, ostentatious, dishonest and vulgar. In short it is among the most unpleasant places on earth."
"The Nigerian problem is the unwillingness or inability of its leaders to rise to the responsibility," he wrote, words which chimed with the feelings of many Nigerians.
In 2004, he turned down the title 'Commander of the Federal Republic' offered to him by then President Olusegun Obasanjo, replying that he was appalled by the cliques who had turned Nigeria into "a bankrupt and lawless fiefdom".
Undaunted, President Jonathan also tried to confer a national honor on him in 2011. He snubbed that one too.
A car accident put Achebe in a wheelchair in 1990 and he wrote no books for more than 20 years.
His last, "There Was a Country" was a deeply personal account, in prose and poetry, of the horrors of the 1967-70 Biafra war, lifting decades of silence on the loss of friends, family and countrymen that forever shaped his life.
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March 22, 2013
Quote of the Day
“You may shoot me with your words, you may cut me with your eyes,
you may kill me with your hatefulness, but still, like air, I'll rise!”
― Maya Angelou
― Maya Angelou
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Photograph of the Day
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Simone de Beauvoir, Jean Paul Sartre and Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara (Cuba, 1960)
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March 21, 2013
Literary Pick (**)
Pale Fire
-Vladimir Nabokov
-Vladimir Nabokov
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March 16, 2013
Art news
Yoko Ono awarded the 2012 Oscar Kokoschka prize, Austria’s highest award for applied contemporary art.
On Thursday 1 March 2012, artist Yoko Ono won the 2012 Oscar Kokoschka prize, Austria’s highest award for applied contemporary art.
The Oskar Kokoschka prize, named after an Austrian painter who died in 1980, is awarded every two years to a contemporary artist and is worth 20,000 euros (26,600 dollars).By awarding Yoko Ono the Oskar Kokoschka Prize 2012, the jury acknowledges her distinguished artistic career as a whole and her clear sociopolitical positioning, explains jury chairman Gerald Bast.
The Tokyo-born artist ranks amongst the most important representatives of the Fluxus movement and was a pioneering figure in the avant-garde New York art scene as a filmmaker, composer of experimental music, and vocalist.
In 1962, Yoko returned to Japan for two years, where she drew attention with her numerous solo exhibitions and performances. From 1964-1966, and 1972 onwards, she lived in New York once again.
“Wall Piece for Orchestra” or “Cut Piece” are two of her most exciting and memorable concept art projects.
In 1972 and 1987, she participated in the documenta in Kassel.
In 2008, the Kunsthalle Bielefeld organised a retrospective exhibition on her work.
At the Venice Biennale 2009, she was awarded the Golden Lion, the highest recognition for a living artist.
Time and again, she causes a furore with large-scale actions for the benefit of world peace and compliance with international human rights. Her commitment to the recognition of same-sex partnerships, her political statements, and her artistic work make the music and concept artist an extraordinary personality – and not only in the art scene.
Yoko Ono lives and works in New York.
The artist was selected for the Oskar Kokoschka Prize 2012 by a jury consisting of Dr. Gerald Bast (chairman, rector of the University of Applied Arts Vienna), Univ.-Prof. Brigitte Kowanz (representative of the Senate of the University of Applied Arts Vienna), General Secretary Mag. Friedrich Faulhammer (represented by MinR Dr. Peter Seitz, representative of the BM:UKK – Austrian Federal Ministry for Education, Arts and Culture), Mag. Olga Okunev (representative of the BM:UKK), em.o.Univ.-Prof. Arch. Mag.arch. Hans Hollein (president of the Austrian Arts Senate, indisposed on short notice due to illness), Karola Kraus (director of the Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig), Prof. Dr. Erwin Melchardt (representative for media coverage on art), Mag. Eva Blimlinger (rector of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna), Dr. Klaus Albrecht Schröder (director of the Albertina, represented by Dr. Antonia Hoerschelmann), and Univ.-Prof. Dr. Daniela Hammer-Tugendhat (University of Applied Arts Vienna, head of the Art History department).
With this decision, the jury honours Yoko Ono as “an exceptional artistic personality who is not only one of the most important members of the Fluxus movement but also of the utmost topicality given, in particular, her transdisciplinary approach in artistic production. Her multimedia artistic work, which is connected by an ideology-critical red thread, ranges from film to experimental music, concept art to performance. In her work, Yoko Ono links the pursuit of artistic innovation with the assertion of art’s efficacy in society, which is convincingly evidenced in her political engagement for peace and human rights.”
The prize – established by the Austrian Federal Government in 1980 on the occasion of the death of the painter Oskar Kokoschka, born 1886 in Pöchlarn – is awarded to a visual artist every two years in recognition of his or her artistic work. The Oskar Kokoschka Prize is one of the most important awards for visual art in Austria, bestowed to a national or also international artist. The first prize was given to Hans Hartung in 1981; since then Mario Merz, Gerhard Richter, Siegfried Anzinger, Agnes Martin, Jannis Kounellis, John Baldessari, Maria Lassnig, VALIE EXPORT, Ilya Kabakov, Günter Brus, Martha Rosler, William Kentridge, and Raymond Pettibon, in 2010, have received this distinction.
The presentation of the Oskar Kokoschka Prize by the Federal Minister of Science and Research and organised by the University of applied Arts Vienna took place – in accordance with the statutes – on March 1, the birthday of Oskar Kokoschka.
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March 4, 2013
Quote of the Day
“When the people fear the government there is tyranny, when the government fears the people there is liberty.”
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Art of the Day
Cycladic; Keros-Syros culture Marble
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January 23, 2013
Literary Pick (**)
Dirty Havana Trilogy
-Pedro Juan Gutiérrez
-Pedro Juan Gutiérrez
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January 22, 2013
Literary Pick (**)
Eleven Kinds of Loneliness
-Richard Yates
-Richard Yates
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January 1, 2013
Quote of the Day
“For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.”
And next year's words await another voice.”
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December 11, 2012
Literary Pick (***)
The Tenant
-Roland Topor
-Roland Topor
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December 9, 2012
December 8, 2012
Literary Pick (***)
A Thousand Country Roads
-Robert James Waller
I didn't know where this book was heading at the beginning. At first I wondered if I was even reading the epilogue to Bridges.
I remember I once went to a performance by Dave Brubeck, the recently deceased famed jazz musician. Dave was wrapping up a wonderful show when he asked the audience if we had any special requests, and of course, having not yet heard him play Take-5, we all echoed take-5. But Dave asked if instead we wouldn't prefer to listen to Laura, but we were like "noooo, we want take-5!" people kept chanting Take-5, Take-5! Dave Brubeck was so annoyed. With a frown Dave swatted the audience, as if to say, "you people always asking for the same thing, always wanting to hear take 5." and so Dave rolled his eyes and pushed out the shittiest rendition of Take-5 he has ever done. He did that on purpose, just to show us. I felt so cattle-like at that moment. A bunch of dopes.
It seems as if Robert Waller did this with A Thousand Country Roads to shut up undying fans of his original novel The Bridges of Madison County. He probably wanted to turn people on to Laura, but people were like noooo, Bridges! I Can't exactly say it was "a shitty rendition", but it definitely felt like a toss of a dirty metal bowl of food on the porch for the dogs type of deal.
I guess readers simply couldn't accept the fact that Francesca and Robert don't ever meet again. We all knew that from the first book, so why read this one? For me it was wanting to have them in my heart, alive again. I remember reading Bridges back in the early 90'a and literally bawling my eyes out, same when the movie came out, which is odd because movies to me don't usually translate well on film, but it was that good. I think many people easily dismiss bridges because "it's a love story of two old people"... but replace Meryl and Clint with two young sexy actors and I think it would've had a broader, wider appeal. This entire novel has been unfairly judged by many from the beginning, even myself, thinking how silly and sentimental the title alone was.
I recommend this book to people who read The Bridges of Madison County, or watched the movie.
-Robert James Waller
I didn't know where this book was heading at the beginning. At first I wondered if I was even reading the epilogue to Bridges.
I remember I once went to a performance by Dave Brubeck, the recently deceased famed jazz musician. Dave was wrapping up a wonderful show when he asked the audience if we had any special requests, and of course, having not yet heard him play Take-5, we all echoed take-5. But Dave asked if instead we wouldn't prefer to listen to Laura, but we were like "noooo, we want take-5!" people kept chanting Take-5, Take-5! Dave Brubeck was so annoyed. With a frown Dave swatted the audience, as if to say, "you people always asking for the same thing, always wanting to hear take 5." and so Dave rolled his eyes and pushed out the shittiest rendition of Take-5 he has ever done. He did that on purpose, just to show us. I felt so cattle-like at that moment. A bunch of dopes.
It seems as if Robert Waller did this with A Thousand Country Roads to shut up undying fans of his original novel The Bridges of Madison County. He probably wanted to turn people on to Laura, but people were like noooo, Bridges! I Can't exactly say it was "a shitty rendition", but it definitely felt like a toss of a dirty metal bowl of food on the porch for the dogs type of deal.
I guess readers simply couldn't accept the fact that Francesca and Robert don't ever meet again. We all knew that from the first book, so why read this one? For me it was wanting to have them in my heart, alive again. I remember reading Bridges back in the early 90'a and literally bawling my eyes out, same when the movie came out, which is odd because movies to me don't usually translate well on film, but it was that good. I think many people easily dismiss bridges because "it's a love story of two old people"... but replace Meryl and Clint with two young sexy actors and I think it would've had a broader, wider appeal. This entire novel has been unfairly judged by many from the beginning, even myself, thinking how silly and sentimental the title alone was.
I recommend this book to people who read The Bridges of Madison County, or watched the movie.
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December 7, 2012
Literary Pick (***)
This Family of Mine
-Victoria Gotti
-Victoria Gotti
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December 6, 2012
R.I.P
Legendary Jazz Musician Dave Brubeck Dies
Dave Brubeck, the legendary jazz pianist and composer, known for defying jazz conventions and for recordings like "Take Five" and "Blue Rondo a la Turk," has died.
Brubeck died of heart failure in Norwalk, Conn. He was one day short of his 92nd birthday.
His All Music biography says Brubeck distinguished himself from the popular jazz musicians of the West Coast by playing unusual time signatures, "adventurous tonalities," and proving that complex music could find a larger audience.
Perhaps a testimony of that was that in 1954, Brubeck became only the second jazz musician ever featured on the cover of Time Magazine. The first? Louis Armstrong.
Born Dec. 6, 1920, Brubeck grew up on a 45,000-acre ranch in California and he came to music through a circuitous route. In a 1999 interview with Fresh Air's Terry Gross, he said his first love was rodeo roping. But his mother, who spotted a special talent when he sat at the piano, insisted he not rope anything larger than a yearling.
"She didn't want my fingers to become hurt," Brubeck said. "My uncle, who was also a rodeo roper, got his finger caught between the saddle horn and the rope, and it took his finger off. And he used to kid the other cowboys and say, 'I would've been a great pianist like my nephew Dave, had I not lost this finger.'"
Brubeck went on to college but a zoology teacher told him he should focus on what he had spotted as his true love: Music. So Brubeck started taking classes at Mills College in Oakland, California, except there was one huge problem — Brubeck never learned to read music and the dean at the college threatened not to let him graduate.
"But when some of the younger teachers heard this, they went to the dean and said, 'You're making a big mistake, because he writes the best counterpoint that I've ever heard,'" Brubeck said. "So they convinced the dean to let me graduate. And the dean said, 'You can graduate if you promise never to teach and embarrass the conservatory.' And that's the way I've gotten through life, is having to substitute other things for not being able to read well. But I can write, which is something very few people understand."
NPR's Felix Contreras tells our Newscast unit that Brubeck's "Take Five," released in 1959, changed jazz "by adding an extra beat to jazz's standard 4/4 time."
As Hedrick Smith wrote for PBS, "Take Five" was in 5/4 time and other songs in the "Time Out" album were just as odd. "Blue Rondo a la Turk" was in 9/8 time.
Critics didn't like it and Brubeck even lost some gigs for playing those odd time signatures and for his use of polytonality.
Smith reports:
Our friends at NPR Music will have more on Brubeck over at The Record. They've also put together an "artist page" for Brubeck.
-NPR
Dave Brubeck, the legendary jazz pianist and composer, known for defying jazz conventions and for recordings like "Take Five" and "Blue Rondo a la Turk," has died.
Brubeck died of heart failure in Norwalk, Conn. He was one day short of his 92nd birthday.
His All Music biography says Brubeck distinguished himself from the popular jazz musicians of the West Coast by playing unusual time signatures, "adventurous tonalities," and proving that complex music could find a larger audience.
Perhaps a testimony of that was that in 1954, Brubeck became only the second jazz musician ever featured on the cover of Time Magazine. The first? Louis Armstrong.
Born Dec. 6, 1920, Brubeck grew up on a 45,000-acre ranch in California and he came to music through a circuitous route. In a 1999 interview with Fresh Air's Terry Gross, he said his first love was rodeo roping. But his mother, who spotted a special talent when he sat at the piano, insisted he not rope anything larger than a yearling.
"She didn't want my fingers to become hurt," Brubeck said. "My uncle, who was also a rodeo roper, got his finger caught between the saddle horn and the rope, and it took his finger off. And he used to kid the other cowboys and say, 'I would've been a great pianist like my nephew Dave, had I not lost this finger.'"
Brubeck went on to college but a zoology teacher told him he should focus on what he had spotted as his true love: Music. So Brubeck started taking classes at Mills College in Oakland, California, except there was one huge problem — Brubeck never learned to read music and the dean at the college threatened not to let him graduate.
"But when some of the younger teachers heard this, they went to the dean and said, 'You're making a big mistake, because he writes the best counterpoint that I've ever heard,'" Brubeck said. "So they convinced the dean to let me graduate. And the dean said, 'You can graduate if you promise never to teach and embarrass the conservatory.' And that's the way I've gotten through life, is having to substitute other things for not being able to read well. But I can write, which is something very few people understand."
NPR's Felix Contreras tells our Newscast unit that Brubeck's "Take Five," released in 1959, changed jazz "by adding an extra beat to jazz's standard 4/4 time."
As Hedrick Smith wrote for PBS, "Take Five" was in 5/4 time and other songs in the "Time Out" album were just as odd. "Blue Rondo a la Turk" was in 9/8 time.
Critics didn't like it and Brubeck even lost some gigs for playing those odd time signatures and for his use of polytonality.
Smith reports:
"'Much of the earlier European music was in one tonality,' Brubeck explains. 'We've become so used to that. Gradually musicians and composers wanted to stretch that and get it more complicated.' But as Brubeck remembers, it took some time for his unique approach to catch on. 'I wrote [a piece] for Stan Kenton when I was 22 that had some polytonality, called Prayer of the Conquered,' Brubeck recalls. 'He said 'Bring it back in 10 years.' He thought it was complicated.'"In the end, however, the masses embraced Brubeck. "Time Out" sold more than a million copies and became the first jazz record to hit gold.
Our friends at NPR Music will have more on Brubeck over at The Record. They've also put together an "artist page" for Brubeck.
-NPR
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November 28, 2012
Literary Pick (***)
Paris, I Love You but You're Bringing Me Down
-Rosecrans Baldwin
Boy, do I have a love/hate relationship with Paris.. I have to admit that if I had no interest in Paris at all, this book would've been incredibly boring to me. I think if you would've plugged in any other city other than Paris, this book would've never made it to the newsstands. The sheer fact that so many people from all over the world, but most especially from the United States, dream of someday moving to Paris is this novels only appeal.
In an odd way, reading this novel makes me want to actually move to Paris, although my visit there last Oct/Nov was less than stellar.
-Rosecrans Baldwin
Boy, do I have a love/hate relationship with Paris.. I have to admit that if I had no interest in Paris at all, this book would've been incredibly boring to me. I think if you would've plugged in any other city other than Paris, this book would've never made it to the newsstands. The sheer fact that so many people from all over the world, but most especially from the United States, dream of someday moving to Paris is this novels only appeal.
In an odd way, reading this novel makes me want to actually move to Paris, although my visit there last Oct/Nov was less than stellar.
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November 14, 2012
Literary Pick (***)
Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir
-Paul Monette
When I first began reading this book, I though "oh God, is this memoir going to be this depressing the whole way through?" It was.. but it got increasingly better. I initially felt it was overly cerebral for an AIDS memoir (that sounds terrible..) and a tad over-dramatic, but it comes together gracefully, powerfully, and lovingly.
I felt there was a certain level of self-martyrdom in Paul's account of Roger's illness, but became convinced it was a memoir written purely for the honor of Roger's memory when Monette ended the novel without addressing his own issues with the virus.
I'd only recommend this to certain people. Ones who are compassionate and patient.
-Paul Monette
When I first began reading this book, I though "oh God, is this memoir going to be this depressing the whole way through?" It was.. but it got increasingly better. I initially felt it was overly cerebral for an AIDS memoir (that sounds terrible..) and a tad over-dramatic, but it comes together gracefully, powerfully, and lovingly.
I felt there was a certain level of self-martyrdom in Paul's account of Roger's illness, but became convinced it was a memoir written purely for the honor of Roger's memory when Monette ended the novel without addressing his own issues with the virus.
I'd only recommend this to certain people. Ones who are compassionate and patient.
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November 6, 2012
Questionnaire
The Proust Questionnaire
The young Marcel was asked to fill out questionnaires at two social events:
one when he was 13, another when he was 20. Proust did not invent this
party game; he is simply the most extraordinary person to respond to them.
At the birthday party of Antoinette Felix-Faure, the 13-year-old Marcel was
asked to answer the following questions in the birthday book, and here's
what he said:
What is fascinating about this questionnaire is that it was considered so great an amusement to very young people in Proust's time. It is hard to imagine a party of 13-year-olds in these times being quizzed about their favorite virtues, painters or characters of fiction and history. If the questionnaire were not to smack of exam, it would have to ask "what's your favorite TV show?" or "what's your favorite band?"
Seven years after the first questionnaire, Proust was asked, at another social event, to fill out another; the questions are much the same, but the answers somewhat different, indicative of his traits at 20:
The young Marcel was asked to fill out questionnaires at two social events:
one when he was 13, another when he was 20. Proust did not invent this
party game; he is simply the most extraordinary person to respond to them.
At the birthday party of Antoinette Felix-Faure, the 13-year-old Marcel was
asked to answer the following questions in the birthday book, and here's
what he said:
- What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
- To be separated from Mama
- Where would you like to live?
- In the country of the Ideal, or, rather, of my ideal
- What is your idea of earthly happiness?
- To live in contact with those I love, with the beauties of nature, with a
quantity of books and music, and to have, within easy distance, a French
theater
- To what faults do you feel most indulgent?
- To a life deprived of the works of genius
- Who are your favorite heroes of fiction?
- Those of romance and poetry, those who are the expression of an ideal
rather than an imitation of the real
- Who are your favorite characters in history?
- A mixture of Socrates, Pericles, Mahomet, Pliny the Younger and Augustin
Thierry
- Who are your favorite heroines in real life?
- A woman of genius leading an ordinary life
- Who are your favorite heroines of fiction?
- Those who are more than women without ceasing to be womanly; everything
that is tender, poetic, pure and in every way beautiful
- Your favorite painter?
- Meissonier
- Your favorite musician?
- Mozart
- The quality you most admire in a man?
- Intelligence, moral sense
- The quality you most admire in a woman?
- Gentleness, naturalness, intelligence
- Your favorite virtue?
- All virtues that are not limited to a sect: the universal virtues
- Your favorite occupation?
- Reading, dreaming, and writing verse
- Who would you have liked to be?
- Since the question does not arise, I prefer not to answer it. All the
same, I should very much have liked to be Pliny the Younger.
What is fascinating about this questionnaire is that it was considered so great an amusement to very young people in Proust's time. It is hard to imagine a party of 13-year-olds in these times being quizzed about their favorite virtues, painters or characters of fiction and history. If the questionnaire were not to smack of exam, it would have to ask "what's your favorite TV show?" or "what's your favorite band?"
Seven years after the first questionnaire, Proust was asked, at another social event, to fill out another; the questions are much the same, but the answers somewhat different, indicative of his traits at 20:
- Your most marked characteristic?
- A craving to be loved, or, to be more precise, to be caressed and spoiled
rather than to be admired
- The quality you most like in a man?
- Feminine charm
- The quality you most like in a woman?
- A man's virtues, and frankness in friendship
- What do you most value in your friends?
- Tenderness - provided they possess a physical charm which makes their
tenderness worth having
- What is your principle defect?
- Lack of understanding; weakness of will
- What is your favorite occupation?
- Loving
- What is your dream of happiness?
- Not, I fear, a very elevated one. I really haven't the courage to say
what it is, and if I did I should probably destroy it by the mere fact of
putting it into words.
- What to your mind would be the greatest of misfortunes?
- Never to have known my mother or my grandmother
- What would you like to be?
- Myself - as those whom I admire would like me to be
- In what country would you like to live?
- One where certain things that I want would be realized - and where
feelings of tenderness would always be reciprocated. [Proust's
underlining]
- What is your favorite color?
- Beauty lies not in colors but in thier harmony
- What is your favorite flower?
- Hers - but apart from that, all
- What is your favorite bird?
- The swallow
- Who are your favorite prose writers?
- At the moment, Anatole France and Pierre Loti
- Who are your favoite poets?
- Baudelaire and Alfred de Vigny
- Who is your favorite hero of fiction?
- Hamlet
- Who are your favorite heroines of fiction?
- Phedre (crossed out) Berenice
- Who are your favorite composers?
- Beethoven, Wagner, Shuhmann
- Who are your favorite painters?
- Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt
- Who are your heroes in real life?
- Monsieur Darlu, Monsieur Boutroux (professors)
- Who are your favorite heroines of history?
- Cleopatra
- What are your favorite names?
- I only have one at a time
- What is it you most dislike?
- My own worst qualities
- What historical figures do you most despise?
- I am not sufficiently educated to say
- What event in military history do you most admire?
- My own enlistment as a volunteer!
- What reform do you most admire?
- (no response)
- What natural gift would you most like to possess?
- Will power and irresistible charm
- How would you like to die?
- A better man than I am, and much beloved
- What is your present state of mind?
- Annoyance at having to think about myself in order to answer these
questions
- To what faults do you feel most indulgent?
- Those that I understand
- What is your motto?
- I prefer not to say, for fear it might bring me bad luck.
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November 4, 2012
.jpg)
Literary Pick (****)
A Moveable Feast
-Ernest Hemingway
I purchased this book at Shakespeare & Co. on the first day I arrived in Paris. I rented a flat in the St. Germain area (Rue de Conde), and knowing the strong connection between Hemingway and the 6th arrondissement, I thought what a perfect time to read this book, and get to see and experience first-hand the area and quiet streets referred to in this memoir during the time Hemingway lived in Paris with his first wife, Hadley, and first child, Bumby. I was also interested in reading about his earlier friendships with other famous writers living in Paris at the time as well, such as Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, and Ezra Pound, to name a few.
Unfortunately, for me, Paris didn't live up to my expectations. I found it disgustingly crowded, and somewhat commercialized. It was far from my visions of the romantic European idealization I've had of Paris all my life. Yes, point your finger at me and laugh at my naivete. I realize that if Hemingway were living now, he'd hate Paris too, so I've come to terms with my disappointment.. however, in my heart the Paris of my dreams still does and will always exist, somewhere, and in many unexpected places, and the Paris of my imagination is very much alive in A Moveable Feast. Although this is exactly the kind of literature I blame for embedding false and unrealistic illusions of Paris into my phyche, I am also thankful that there are pieces of literature that patronize my fantasies about a certain time and place that does not exist anymore. This memoir was beautifully nostalgic, but I recommend you do not read it before your first trip to Paris, because otherwise you will be deeply disappointed.
Update:
As time went on Paris grew on me, tremendously. There were a lot of factors that didn't allow me to enjoy it quite that much while I was there, but take away the smoke and the crowds I actually have very fond memories of the city.
-Ernest Hemingway
I purchased this book at Shakespeare & Co. on the first day I arrived in Paris. I rented a flat in the St. Germain area (Rue de Conde), and knowing the strong connection between Hemingway and the 6th arrondissement, I thought what a perfect time to read this book, and get to see and experience first-hand the area and quiet streets referred to in this memoir during the time Hemingway lived in Paris with his first wife, Hadley, and first child, Bumby. I was also interested in reading about his earlier friendships with other famous writers living in Paris at the time as well, such as Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, and Ezra Pound, to name a few.
Unfortunately, for me, Paris didn't live up to my expectations. I found it disgustingly crowded, and somewhat commercialized. It was far from my visions of the romantic European idealization I've had of Paris all my life. Yes, point your finger at me and laugh at my naivete. I realize that if Hemingway were living now, he'd hate Paris too, so I've come to terms with my disappointment.. however, in my heart the Paris of my dreams still does and will always exist, somewhere, and in many unexpected places, and the Paris of my imagination is very much alive in A Moveable Feast. Although this is exactly the kind of literature I blame for embedding false and unrealistic illusions of Paris into my phyche, I am also thankful that there are pieces of literature that patronize my fantasies about a certain time and place that does not exist anymore. This memoir was beautifully nostalgic, but I recommend you do not read it before your first trip to Paris, because otherwise you will be deeply disappointed.
Update:
As time went on Paris grew on me, tremendously. There were a lot of factors that didn't allow me to enjoy it quite that much while I was there, but take away the smoke and the crowds I actually have very fond memories of the city.
posted by Rachel at
5:52 PM
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October 13, 2012
Art of the Day
Café de la Paix
-Antoine Blanchard
posted by Rachel at
8:19 PM
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Literary Pick (***)
Norwegian Wood
-Haruki Murakami
-Haruki Murakami
posted by Rachel at
8:09 PM
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October 9, 2012
Quote of the Day
"In 1953, Hemingway's cat Uncle Willie was hit by a car. He wrote a
heartbreaking letter to his friend Giangranco Ivancich about his
decision to put the animal out of his misery.
"Dear Gianfranco:
Just after I finished writing you and was putting the letter in the envelope Mary came down from the Torre and said, ‘Something terrible has happened to Willie.’ I went out and found Willie with both his right legs broken: one at the hip, the other below the knee. A car must have run over him or somebody hit him with a club. He had come all the way home on the two feet of one side. It was a multiple compound fracture with much dirt in the wound and fragments protruding. But he purred and seemed sure that I could fix it.
I had René get a bowl of milk for him and René held him and caressed him and Willie was drinking the milk while I shot him through the head. I don’t think he could have suffered and the nerves had been crushed so his legs had not begun to really hurt. Monstruo wished to shoot him for me, but I could not delegate the responsibility or leave a chance of Will knowing anybody was killing him…
Have had to shoot people but never anyone I knew and loved for eleven years. Nor anyone that purred with two broken legs."
"Dear Gianfranco:
Just after I finished writing you and was putting the letter in the envelope Mary came down from the Torre and said, ‘Something terrible has happened to Willie.’ I went out and found Willie with both his right legs broken: one at the hip, the other below the knee. A car must have run over him or somebody hit him with a club. He had come all the way home on the two feet of one side. It was a multiple compound fracture with much dirt in the wound and fragments protruding. But he purred and seemed sure that I could fix it.
I had René get a bowl of milk for him and René held him and caressed him and Willie was drinking the milk while I shot him through the head. I don’t think he could have suffered and the nerves had been crushed so his legs had not begun to really hurt. Monstruo wished to shoot him for me, but I could not delegate the responsibility or leave a chance of Will knowing anybody was killing him…
Have had to shoot people but never anyone I knew and loved for eleven years. Nor anyone that purred with two broken legs."
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Artist of the Day
Jeanne Hébuterne
(6 April 1898 – 25 January 1920)
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September 28, 2012
Quote of the Day
“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”
– Desmond Tutu.
– Desmond Tutu.
posted by Rachel at
11:25 PM
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September 24, 2012
Literary Pick (*)
A Child in Time
-Ian McEwan
Ok, that's it. I'm done with Ian McEwan. This book was total bullshit.
This was my third book by the author, and this is why I don't like reading too much by the same writer, especially popular "NYT best-seller" authors. I purchased this book because I thought it was going to be about a three year old girl (Kate) who gets kidnapped at a supermarket while out with her dad. True, McEwan wastes no time in describing the kidnapping in the very first chapter of the book, but after that the rest is about inane events that has little or nothing to do with the kidnapping, guilt, loss and anguish that would normally occur after such a tragic event. I despised the main character of the book. In true McEwan fashion Stephen Lewis (Kate's father) is a pretentious self-centered snob.
There was not an ounce of angst, despair, madness, or desperation you'd expect in a book about a child who has been kidnapped and whose parents are suppose to be in mourning. The story is about Stephen, who often visits his friends in the county. Who btw never bring up his daughter. He also saved a man from a car-wreck, and he's often in a meeting in which child welfare is the topic of discussion. It was a very flat, boring drawn-out story. The chapters were so long... so tedious. It's infuriating to be strung along so many chapters without so much of a mention of what these parents were supposedly going through! It didn't compel me to feel any sympathy for him or his wife. This was one of the worst novels I've ever read.
-Ian McEwan
Ok, that's it. I'm done with Ian McEwan. This book was total bullshit.
This was my third book by the author, and this is why I don't like reading too much by the same writer, especially popular "NYT best-seller" authors. I purchased this book because I thought it was going to be about a three year old girl (Kate) who gets kidnapped at a supermarket while out with her dad. True, McEwan wastes no time in describing the kidnapping in the very first chapter of the book, but after that the rest is about inane events that has little or nothing to do with the kidnapping, guilt, loss and anguish that would normally occur after such a tragic event. I despised the main character of the book. In true McEwan fashion Stephen Lewis (Kate's father) is a pretentious self-centered snob.
There was not an ounce of angst, despair, madness, or desperation you'd expect in a book about a child who has been kidnapped and whose parents are suppose to be in mourning. The story is about Stephen, who often visits his friends in the county. Who btw never bring up his daughter. He also saved a man from a car-wreck, and he's often in a meeting in which child welfare is the topic of discussion. It was a very flat, boring drawn-out story. The chapters were so long... so tedious. It's infuriating to be strung along so many chapters without so much of a mention of what these parents were supposedly going through! It didn't compel me to feel any sympathy for him or his wife. This was one of the worst novels I've ever read.
posted by Rachel at
1:02 PM
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September 21, 2012
Literary Pick (***)
Bonjour Tristesse
-Françoise Sagan
Overall the story was tolerable, if not satisfactory. However, one small detail prevented me from truly enjoying it... the fact that the author was 17 when she wrote it. Everything about the author and story reeked of impudence. There's nothing more annoying than a talented underaged brat.
-Françoise Sagan
Overall the story was tolerable, if not satisfactory. However, one small detail prevented me from truly enjoying it... the fact that the author was 17 when she wrote it. Everything about the author and story reeked of impudence. There's nothing more annoying than a talented underaged brat.
posted by Rachel at
9:16 PM
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September 20, 2012
Literary Pick (****)
Open
-Andre Agassi
I'm a big fan of biographies and auto-biographies, so when I read that OPEN was one of the best sports auto-bio's ever written, it was hard to resist. I thoroughly enjoyed this story despite not being a sports fan at all. I know it may sound trite but it read like fictional novel.
There's a lot of self-pity in his journey. I think the only reason it works in this book is because Andre is the epitome of humility. He's a very quiet and shy person, and it seems that all his life he has had to battle to balance his obligation to tennis, and what he really wanted to do with his life, which even he wasn't sure of. An uneducated man who dropped out of school (a choice his father made for him) at a young age to focus his career on tennis, had no previous career training. The story is a balance between his tennis career and personal relationships with Brooke Shields and Steffi Graf. I didn't get too bored of the tennis scenes, although I know absolutely nothing about the sport, whatsoever. It was pretty much a good insight to how fragile and sensitive he is as a person. He always wanting to please others and not disappoint anyone. At times I think it must've been frustrating being his coach, or trainer because sometimes you just wanted them yell, "If you hate it so fucking much get the hell out of the game, quit tennis, but stop bitching, stop being so negative all the time and play the fucking game". At least that's what I would've said to him. It felt like the people around him had to constantly draw him in. It seemed exhausting. To have a gift and to whine about it constantly, I'm surprised some of the people in his life didn't just walk out on him. He seems to have come to terms with his choices later in life, after his first child was born.
Brooke Shields was portrayed a self-centered snob, which doesn't surprise me at all. She seems like one of the most bring people in Hollywood. I don't know how he put up with her...I guess he didn't. Steffi Graf, seems unemotional and void of personality. I don't get her., but he loves her, so all the power to them. It had a happily ever after ending that was really sweet. I'd say it's worth the read if you're nosy like me and like to read about celebrity lives. Even I'm surprised I'm giving this book a 4 star rating.
Quite possibly my favorite book cover.
-Andre Agassi
I'm a big fan of biographies and auto-biographies, so when I read that OPEN was one of the best sports auto-bio's ever written, it was hard to resist. I thoroughly enjoyed this story despite not being a sports fan at all. I know it may sound trite but it read like fictional novel.
There's a lot of self-pity in his journey. I think the only reason it works in this book is because Andre is the epitome of humility. He's a very quiet and shy person, and it seems that all his life he has had to battle to balance his obligation to tennis, and what he really wanted to do with his life, which even he wasn't sure of. An uneducated man who dropped out of school (a choice his father made for him) at a young age to focus his career on tennis, had no previous career training. The story is a balance between his tennis career and personal relationships with Brooke Shields and Steffi Graf. I didn't get too bored of the tennis scenes, although I know absolutely nothing about the sport, whatsoever. It was pretty much a good insight to how fragile and sensitive he is as a person. He always wanting to please others and not disappoint anyone. At times I think it must've been frustrating being his coach, or trainer because sometimes you just wanted them yell, "If you hate it so fucking much get the hell out of the game, quit tennis, but stop bitching, stop being so negative all the time and play the fucking game". At least that's what I would've said to him. It felt like the people around him had to constantly draw him in. It seemed exhausting. To have a gift and to whine about it constantly, I'm surprised some of the people in his life didn't just walk out on him. He seems to have come to terms with his choices later in life, after his first child was born.
Brooke Shields was portrayed a self-centered snob, which doesn't surprise me at all. She seems like one of the most bring people in Hollywood. I don't know how he put up with her...I guess he didn't. Steffi Graf, seems unemotional and void of personality. I don't get her., but he loves her, so all the power to them. It had a happily ever after ending that was really sweet. I'd say it's worth the read if you're nosy like me and like to read about celebrity lives. Even I'm surprised I'm giving this book a 4 star rating.
Quite possibly my favorite book cover.
posted by Rachel at
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September 18, 2012
September 16, 2012
Quote of the Day
"Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it."
-André Gide
-André Gide
posted by Rachel at
6:36 PM
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September 15, 2012
Literary Pick (**)
Out Stealing Horses
-Per Petterson
-Per Petterson
posted by Rachel at
9:00 PM
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September 3, 2012
Quote of the Day
“Only the dead have seen the end of war.”
― Plato
― Plato
posted by Rachel at
11:13 PM
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Literary Pick(****)
The Sickness
-Alberto Barrera Tyszka
A good page-turner to the end. The kind of story that stays with you and leaves an everlasting impression for the rest of your life, I'm sure of it. It brings up many questions about death.. either one's own, or of a loved one. I actually caught myself counting the last page hoping there were at least 2-3 pages more to read. I highly recommend this book to everyone.
-Alberto Barrera Tyszka
A good page-turner to the end. The kind of story that stays with you and leaves an everlasting impression for the rest of your life, I'm sure of it. It brings up many questions about death.. either one's own, or of a loved one. I actually caught myself counting the last page hoping there were at least 2-3 pages more to read. I highly recommend this book to everyone.
posted by Rachel at
9:55 PM
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August 31, 2012
Literary Pick (**)
Nine Stories
-J.D. Salinger
-J.D. Salinger
posted by Rachel at
9:09 PM
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August 27, 2012
Literary Pick (***)
Atonement
-Ian McEwan
What I enjoy most about Ian McEwan's novels is the gracefulness of his prose.
You won't go wrong if you're in search of good conscientious writing that is unlabored or overly manipulated. There's a certain placidity in the manner of his writing that for me is steady and calming, and that from now on, after having read two of his books, I will have the need to return to every now and then, like an intermezzo. I believe McEwan has not yet written his best life's work. This story developed very slowly for me. I read McEwan's Saturday, and although, perhaps just a little less complex than Atonement, possessed more of the qualities I search for in a dramatic work.
Although I feel his stories aren't exactly solid, they're worth the course.
I reluctantly give it a 3.
posted by Rachel at
2:27 PM
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August 23, 2012
Art of the Day
Monarch of the Glen
-Sir Edwin Henry Landseer
posted by Rachel at
3:11 PM
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August 22, 2012
August 20, 2012
RIP
Phyllis Diller
(July 17, 1917 – August 20, 2012)
posted by Rachel at
8:13 PM
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About Me
- Name: Rachel
- Location: away, CT, United States
"I have known the joy and pain of friendship. I have served and been served. I have made some good enemies for which I am not a bit sorry. I have loved unselfishly, and I have fondled hatred with the red-hot tongs of Hell. That's living." — Zora Neale Hurston
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