Letzte Worte by Werner Herzog (1968).

I am not there where friends treat the malingering,
chronic illness of their gloomy souls with wine drinking:
I am alone, my evening tea is brewing,
friend to no one, no friends for me, I'm thinking.

Phallic games, that used
to attract me, now make me nauseous,
the monk takes his whip in hand to calm his sex,
but even under the whip I'm not inspired to tenderness.
I don't care what time it is, what century.
Why do I need fame in the contemporary,
when the time of those boyhood dreams
has passed, those when the world seemed many-headed?

It's pleasant to be conscious of having known the essence,
but the essence of essence, alas, is unobtainable,
and we all pass on - and that makes sense,
and to glance at oneself we are never able.

 - Leonid Aronzon.

Picture: 'Silhouette du peintre' by Leon Spilliaert (1907).

Pyramid - Song for Bobby.

Playlist of recent uploads to my channel of forty 1920s recordings of sisters Jelly d'Aranyi and Adila Fachiri.

   The hermit had taken up his quarters in the wooded region, so well hidden that what they call a stroke of luck was necessary in order to find him. But I say that this stroke of luck is none other than identification, you can only find the hermit by suffering his solitude, the movement is unique, produced by a single mechanism. And that is the illusion.

   Miaille listened to these simple words and accepted another drink that the other man poured for him.
   The number two, the most imperfect of all.
   And the notion of a homeland is dwindling, any sort of identification has become impossible.
   Unless the hermit himself cultivates it, warped by his sorrow, and welcomes the exile as his double, everything would have to start anew, go from division to division, and culminate in the mortal number, one plus one equals nothingness.

- Robert Pinget (Fable, 1971).

Picture: 1911 set design by Leon Bakst for Mansion (act) Four 'The Wounded Laurel' from 'Le Martyre de saint Sébastien' by Claude Debussy and Gabriele d'Annunzio.

Gong Ensemble of the Bahnar - Sacrifice to the Communal House (Soi Yang Rông): Sa Kobô (Eating). 

'My mind will be a treasure-house of art, swept and garnished and strong and at its best.'

- Mary MacLane (I Await the Devil's Coming, 1902).

Picture: "Art Lover" cover illustration for The Saturday Evening Post by Stevan Dohanos (3rd March 1956).

“Is the spring coming?” he said. “What is it like?…”

“It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine…”

- Frances Hodgson Burnett (The Secret Garden, 1911).

Picture: "Rain in Britain" by Maurice Denis (1889).

On Easter Monday young men used to raid the homes of their chosen girls and duck them (no less) in ponds or wells. In the cities water was replaced with a deluge of scent. The girl had to respond with a gift of a carnation; and debonair lads paraded the evening streets sporting several.

- Joseph Macleod (The Sisters d'Aranyi, 1969)

Picture: "Carnation and Cloth of Gold" by Salvador Dali (1950).

Girl of Carnations by Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso (1913)

Simon George by Hans Holbein the Younger (c.1533)

"One day, as I viewed the faded portrait of a young girl in an album, someone passed who spoke a name...

"And so I knew you; having heard your name, you, I shall dream of you."

- Edourard Dujardin (Antonia, 1891).

Picture: My photo detail of Jelly d'Aranyi from a photo of the three d'Aranyi sisters.

Joseph Macleod - To an Unborn Child (1957).

One of my favourite poets. I would not say this poem is particularly representative of his poetry but it is the only recording I have come across. Well worth taking the time to seek out his work.

Good sources: 

http://www.joseph.macleod.it/

http://www.waterloopresshove.co.uk/#/joseph-macleod-2012/4571490806

Jelly D'Aranyi plays Tomaso Vitali: Chaconne.

‎"If you are on your own for a long time and get used to being alone and are more or less trained in loneliness, then you begin to discover more and more in places which, for normal people, are essentially bare. On the wall you discover cracks, fine cracks, uneven patches, vermin. There is a tremendous movement on the walls. In actual fact the wall and the page of a book completely resemble one another."

- Thomas Bernhard (Three Days, in The Italians, 1972).

Picture: "The Wall" by Yevgeny Rukhin (1962-63).


Words etched in Russian read "Sasha is a jerk" and "Prick"

Midnight Groover + Pierrot = Christiane Colletin - Four a Chabon la.

"Masculinity and femininity, as they are usually understood, are obstacles to humanity¹ [...] Only a gentle masculinity, only an autonomous femininity are right, true and beautiful. And if this is so, one must not further exaggerate the character of the sex in any way [...] but rather seek to soften it by means of counter-measures, so that everyone in what is proper to him or her, is able to find a space as boundless as possible in which to move freely, according to pleasure and love, in the entire sphere of humanity"

- Friedrich Schlegel (On Philosophy - To Dorothea. An open letter to Brendel Veit in Volume 2 (1) of his Athenaeum journal, 1799).

Picture: "Penthésilée – Pentesiléia" by Raul Ubac (1937).
(Penthesilea was the Amazon Queen who went to die in the Trojan war after killing Hippolyta)

1. This first part of the quote is widely attributed online to Karoline von Günderrode, pretty much wherever her name is mentioned, from Wikipedia onwards (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karoline_von_Günderrode). Whilst the idea would no doubt fit her writing I can find no evidence in my books or online that she actually wrote it, and those that quote it do not indicate a source. I am certain, on the other hand, though that Schlegel committed the lines to paper in the place cited. I have a correction/query pending with Wikipedia etc but if anyone happens to have a better knowledge of Karoline von Günderrode's work and can set me straight then please do. Till then I am chalking it up as another in my win column in the battle of Me v Internet.

DJ. Giovanni Turiaco - Living in the Past (1981).

The old man heard
A crying against his knee and looked down at the eyes
Of his hound-bitch; he said, "You are wrong, Snap-
per. It is no harm. We shall have less distraction
now.
Death and departure are not evil things. I tell you sadly,
every person that leaves
A place, improves it: the mourners at every funeral know
that
In their shamed hearts: and when the sociable races of
man and dog are done with, what a shining wonder
This world will be."

- Robinson Jeffers, from "The Double Axe, Part II: The Inhumanist" (1948).

Picture: Illustration by Ksawery Kozminski from "Tales & Legends From Poland" by Julie Laguirande-Duval (1929).

Alex Oriental Experience - Die Gunst Der Stunde.

Fleeting are the times of love; enduring the hoppings of the little serf whose gaze you ennoble.

The long weariness of enslavements, and of muffled struggles and feebleness. Its wretched paltry irony is without a smile; a modicum of pity for the eternal captive, the one doomed to ill-chosen downfalls.

After the crisis and the calm, in the momentary silence, listen in all serenity to its voices, the voices of your time gone by.

- Gustave Kahn (Voice in the Park from Les Palais Nomades, 1887).

Picture: "The Hesitant Betrothed" by Auguste Toulmouche (1866).

Even if not interested in the reading course the quotes atop each page form the finest collection of book related quotes I have ever come across.

Guide To Daily Reading by Asa Don Dickinson.