'...what more does one want but a room, materials, and the National Gallery?
On the whole I am awfully pleased with my existence. I live almost spiritually, looking down with a cynical smile at all the petty little worries of mankind, for I feel that I gracefully float above all these, touching only what is beautiful and worthy. When I look at other men and see what are their worries, their ambitions, their outlooks, I feel that they have in life got hold of the "wrong end of the stick" and that I am really in a way a superman, for in order to be happy they seek unworthy and impossible things whilst I can go out and thrill with happiness over a tree, a blade of grass, a cloud, a child, an onion, any part of nature's innocent work. Have I not the advantage?'

- from a letter by Mark Gertler to William Rothstein (c.1910).

Picture: 'Still Life with Self Portrait' by Mark Gertler (1918).

Bach's Fantasia in A Minor (BWV 922) played by Robert Hill.

Freddie Scott - He Ain't Give You None.

Nothing is more mysterious than the 'seizure' of a personality by a work of art. A work of any of the arts, which may have been familiar for years, suddenly, like an act of focusing, falls into place. Becoming lucent, intelligible - extra dimensional? Whatever phrase you like, but the person to whom it happens is in a state of enlarged being; at the top of their powers, but in tranquility. An experience not of strangeness but of intimacy. 'At that instant her mind was ennobled in Islam' as it was said of the woman in the Arabian Nights.

- Mary Butts (The Crystal Cabinet: My Childhood at Salterns, 1937).

Picture: 'In the Hold' by David Bomberg (1913-14).

Gene Page - Hot City (1974).

In Search of Spencer's Cookham.

I took a trip to find the some of the places, in his beloved Cookham, that Sir Stanley Spencer included in his paintings.

Click for photos.

Mang Koko - Hariring Nu Kungsi Nyanding.

By what chance, or worse what law of the universe was she set there in the road to power and success, unbreakable yet tormenting with the need to conquer and break? ... Those nights of imagined copulation, when one thought not of love nor sensation nor comfort nor triumph, but of torture rather, the very rhythm of the body reinforced by hissed ejaculations - take that and that! That for your pursed mouth and that for your pink patches, your closed knees, your impregnable balance on the high, female shoes - and that if it kills you for your magic and your isled virtue!

- William Golding (Pincher Martin, 1956).

Picture: 'Homme et Femme' by Félix Vallotton (1913).

AĞDAM TOYU RƏMİŞ - 16.11.1991.

'There was more life about the place, and less.'

- Mary Butts (The Crystal Cabinet: My Childhood at Salterns, 1937).

Picture: 'La Baiser en Pincettes' by Charles Maurin (c.1910).

'The crown of petals is the flower's panties. Rip them off and you will have public indecency. They were the pre-adamic fig leaf of nature before the first Eve wore that leaf as her own crown of petals.'

- Malcolm de Chazal (Sens-Plastique, 1948).

Picture: Azorina vidalii (Glockenblume/Bell-flower) with and without petals by Karl Blossfeldt from the second series of 'Art Forms in Nature' (1932).

Nagat - Ana Bashak El Bahr.

Orpheus.

"Teacher, I saw Mirrinia crying in the neighbouring grove today. She was beating her breast and swearing that there was no man on earth more unbending than you... She even threatened to commit suicide, like Teleboia... Why do you drive them away?"
"You desire to know, Haemonian, why I rejected the love of blue-eyed Mirrinia, why I chased away white-handed Teleboia when she came to me in a black cloak? My dear, can you really not have noticed that all women in the world are as nothing for me?"
O thrice-great Orpheus, O my teacher, so many years have passed since you lost Eurydice. Can it be that even now your inconsolable heart still yearns for her?"
"No, my boy, I do not long for the wife I left behind in Tartarus. And if the god who rules the underworld were to release her once again to the surface of the earth and she were to come to me in Haemonia - believe me - I would only turn away from her in silence."
"Teacher, but didn't you love her? Or is the talk of how you descended to the depths of Hades for the sake of your wife just idle gossip? I have heard that terrible Pluto himself was touched by the music of your lyre and your sad song. I have heard that he allowed you to take Eurydice away, to the bright expanse under the curve of the azure sky. And only because you failed to heed his injunction not to look at her until you were completely out of Tartarus did the winged god Hermes draw her back down to black Hades... Isn't this true, son of the sweet-sounding Muse? ... But forgive me, you are frowning, no doubt I've touched on an unhealed wound in your anguished heart."
For a time there was silence on the crown of the cypress-covered hill. Orpheus sat on the gentle slope. A large black panther lay near him amongst the motley flowers; purring, she arched her back against the singer's caressing hand. The twitching end of the bloodthirsty animal's tail beat playfully on the green grass. On the lower branches of a cypress hung the lyre of glorious renown. Hushed birds sat in the trees all around. They had come from afar to listen to Orpheus.
The Thracian now stopped caressing the animal, and fixing his gaze in the direction of the distant ravines, he spoke in a thoughtful tone, "You have been told the truth, O Antimachus, but not the whole truth. I repeat, if the woman I once called my Eurydice were to return from the dark realm, my heart would not ache with sweet pain. Women and girls no longer exist for me on this earth, washed with blue-green waves. They are all deceivers, and behind the contrived clarity of their gaze shines a dog-like, slavish baseness and a fear of the strong; at the bottom of their hearts lurks eternal lust, and they are forever seeking new embraces, new conquests!..."
"But surely, teacher, not your Eurydice?!"
"Yes, even she. I can never forget what happened in the land of the dead... When gloomy Pluto, giving in to Persephone's pleas, agreed to give Eurydice back and two nymphs from the dark waters of Lethe led her to me, I cast my attentive gaze over the face of the woman who had been my wife.
"She stood naked, pale, shyly lowering her lashes as if concealing the joy of the meeting with her husband.
" 'Here is your Eurydice! Hermes will escort you to the gates of the kingdom of oblivion. Your wife will follow behind you. But woe unto you if you glance back before you are out! ... And you, son of Maia, approach so you may hear my commission to my aegis-bearing brother.'
"Hermes approached the king of the underworld, and the immortal gods whispered together for a long time, laughing and glancing now and then at Eurydice and me.
" 'You may go!' said the sovereign of Tartarus finally, and to the amazement of the mournful shades, we started on our way.
"With firm steps I made for the gates. My heart was bursting with the pride of victory. My fingers strummed the strings of my lyre, and our procession was accompanied by celebratory tones ...Shades of the deceased silently made way for us. Their sad faces gazed apathetically at us from all sides. The gates were close now. an azure and lilac shaft of daylight cut into the gloom.
"I slowed my steps. Behind me it seemed to me I could hear whispers and kissing. I thought at first that it was only a test to make me turn around, and I drove off my suspicions. After another dozen steps I found myself at a turning, from beyond which a current of warm, fragrant air wafted against my face, and a piece of azure sky and flowery slopes and hills covered with forests met my gaze ...Behind me all was quiet. But then from behind me I again caught the sound of quiet, smothered laughter and someone's drawn-out sigh ...There could be no doubt. Only she sighed that way, my Eurydice, in the hours of our blissful embraces.
"Forgetting myself in my rage, forgetting Pluto's admonition, like an anthropophagous beast from faraway India, I threw myself back into the jaws of the gate to hell.
"Gods, what I saw there! Around the bend in the path, she, my Eurydice, my tender beloved with all her demure melancholy - like a wild satyress, in ardent ecstasy, was yielding to the caresses of perfidious Hermes...
"I stood as if carved in marble, frozen in horror. And only my eyes followed as the son of Maia, with insolent laughter, took the woman who had been my wife back into dark Hades.
" 'You defied the prohibition, son of Calliope, and therefore you'll never see your Eurydice again!' he cried, disappearing into the gloom.
"Clinging to the treacherous god, the white shade of my depraved wife obediently vanished with him.
"Not a single curse did I hurl after them.
"Without a word I lifted my lyre and quietly set off away from Tartarus among green hills and shady hollows. My path led me here, to thickly-wooded Thessaly ...Here my heart is not so heavy. Here I can only barely hear that deceitful feminine laughter. Here the wind murmurs in the ravines; dark-green pines nod their heads at me, and wild beasts follow at my heels and rub their soft fur lovingly against my bare knees..."
And as if wishing to show that she understood the poet's speech, the black panther yawned and started tenderly licking Orpheus's dust-covered feet with her long, pink tongue.
When she finished, she gave a stretch, arching her supple back like a wave, and then settled back down, assuming a tranquil pose and attentively fastening her yellow-green eyes on the face of the Muse's son.
Orpheus and his disciple sat without moving. Around them silence reigned. Only a single small bird timidly twittered something in the branches of a cypress.

- Alexander Kondratiev (1876 - 1967).

Picture: 'Orpheus' by Franz von Stuck (1891).

JOSEPH MACLEOD.

Riddle-me-ree.

I was afraid and they gave me guts.

I was alone and they made me love.

Round that wild heat they built a furnace

and in the torment smelted me.

Out of my fragments came design:

I was assembled. I moved, I worked,

I grew receptive. Thanks to them

I have fashioned me.

Who am I?

- Joseph Macleod (from 'An Old Olive Tree', 1971)

Championed by Ezra Pound and Delmore Schwartz; published, then roundly rejected, by T.S.Eliot; life-long friend and youthful collaborator of Graham Greene and Adrian Stokes; poet; theatre director; playwright; actor; historian; biographer; author; Labour Parliamentary Candidate and one of Orwell's Cryptocommunists: there are abundant hooks upon which a person's interest might catch along all the branches of the life and work of Joseph Todd Gordon Macleod (1903-1984) and yet the man and the products of his pen have failed to snag many new admirers since his death with the majority of his reasonably modest output out-of-print and off the beaten track. The number of books that make up his body of work may be relatively small in number but they are, however, expansive in scope and all are long overdue restoration to the realm of the read.

Selection of books from my own collection. Back L-R: 'The New Soviet Theatre', 'Actors Cross The Volga', 'Soviet Theatre Sketchbook', 'A Job at the BBC, 'The Actor's Right to Act', 'People of Florence'. Front L-R: 'The Sisters d'Aranyi', 'Beauty and the Beast', 'An Old Olive Tree'.
(Click to enlarge)

    Macleod's first book is a stimulating and idiosyncratic book of literary criticism entitled 'Beauty and the Beast' (Chatto & Windus, 1927) in which he guides us along his own journey through literature to that point, sets out the principles that guide his taste and which he bookends with two of his own poems. This book followed contributions to various Oxford Journals, including the Oxford Outlook under the editorship of Graham Greene and his own editorship at Cherwell, and marked Macleod out as a high modernist; an identification cemented with the publication, three years later, of 'The Ecliptic' (Faber and Faber, 1930).

Poems and frontispiece from 'Beauty and the Beast'.
(Click to enlarge)

    'The Ecliptic' is a long poem, a collection of interlinked verse divided up under the signs of the Zodiac with a preface of short synopses of each section. The poem seeks to chart the journey through existence of a single consciousness. It is inevitably and, in a sense deliberately, difficult reading; Macleod acknowledges the turn in modern taste towards the generally easier literary form: the novel, and is seeking to resurrect and remind readers of the rewards of grappling with a poem of great length and 'strange symbolism'. The poem's design and Macleod's versification earned the admiration of both Ezra Pound and Delmore Schwartz with the former being in part responsible for the publication of the poem; having recommended it for publication to T.S.Eliot who was then Poetry Editor at Faber and Faber. Macleod corresponded with both Pound and Schwartz for a time and both selected his work for their own literary journals.

    The next work Macleod submitted for publication, 'Foray of Centaurs: a poem of to-day' (1931, revised 1936), my favourite of his poems, was a displacement of the centaur myth in to the London of the day and deals with themes of civilisation and barbarism and desire and abstinence. This work was roundly rejected by everyone it was submitted to. Eliot published a section from the poem in 'The Criterion' but denied it publication with Faber and Faber and it was not until 2009 when the Waterloo Press published their selections from Macleod's poetic works, 'Cyclic Serial Zeniths From the Flux', that the piece became available as a whole.

A favourite passage from the opening of 'Foray of Centaurs'. A ritual beheading during a sword dance.
(Click to enlarge)

     Later, and perhaps partly due to the failure of 'Foray of Centaurs' to find a publisher; though also related it would seem, to his rising profile as a BBC newsreader, Macleod adopted the pseudonym Adam Drinan. Along with this assumed name came a shift in style and focus in his work. Whilst still displaying some modernist complexity and still seeking new and rewarding forms he now began to strive for realism and a documentary style and also began to incorporate dialect words and rhythms of, in the first instance, Cornwall and then thereafter in the Drinan phase those of the Scottish Highlands and Western Islands to which his family line immediately led. The works of the Drinan period include: 'The Cove: A poem sequence' (French & sons, 1940): a thirty-three poem sequence set in Cornwall under the shadow of war; 'The Men of the Rocks' (Fortune Press, 1942): another poem sequence but this time set in the Scotland of the time and this time with the Highland Clearances casting the shadow; 'The Ghosts of the Strath' (Fortune Press, 1943): a play written in verse set in Sutherland and concerned with both the Highland Clearances and the onset of World War II and 'Women of the Happy Island' (MacLellan & Co., 1944): forty-seven soliloquies of mainly female characters left behind on the Hebridean Isle of Barra when the men go off to war. In 1946 Drinan/Macleod composed 'The MacPhails of London' but it failed to find a publisher. The final book Macleod wrote as Drinan, 'Script from Norway' (MacLellan & co., 1953), was a call for Scottish independence from Britain in the form of a poem in the form of a film script that follows a group of documentarians looking to make a film in Norway (Norway having gained independence from Swedish rule in 1905). Macleod revealed himself as Drinan at this point by attaching his own name to 'Script from Norway' alongside the pseudonym This was not, however, the first time the names had been published together, selections from Macleod and his Drinan persona were included in Kenneth Rexroth's 'The New British Poets' anthology in 1949 but in that instance no link was made between the two. Prior to Macleod revealing he was Adam Drinan the disguise seems to have been entirely effective and, aside from a very small number let in on the secret, few seem to have realised it was a pseudonym let alone guessed who was behind it. When he finally cast off the mask it was, for those paying attention, a great surprise, and for some who had corresponded with Macleod as Drinan, or both with Macleod as well as with Macleod-as-Drinan, perhaps a slightly uncomfortable one.

A passage from 'Script From Norway'.
(Click to enlarge)

     The Drinan works are not all that easy to come by but three of them have been published recently, once again by The Waterloo Press. 'The Cove', 'The Men of the Rocks' and 'Script From Norway' comprise 'A Drinan Trilogy' (2012).

Macleod/Drinan titles from Waterloo Press.
(Click to enlarge)

     During the Drinan period Macleod published another poem that centered on Scotland but which was published under his real name. 'The Passage of the Torch: a heroical-historical lay for the fifth centenary of the founding of Glasgow University' (Oliver & Boyd, 1951) is, as the title suggests, a lay of rhyming couplets which tells of the carrying of a torch across Scotland in celebration of the fifth centenary of Glasgow University and offers poetic description and historical account of the places passed through.
       Macleod's last work as a poet, 'An Old Olive Tree' (M. Macdonald, 1971), came after eighteen years in which he published no new volumes of poetry and is markedly different from all that went before. Whilst all his work displays an expansive vocabulary and a linguistic precision this final collection is of a much simpler nature. Here is a small group of short poems about family, friends and aging with a poem each for Graham Greene and Adrian Stokes. The print run for the book was limited to two hundred and fifty copies and none of the poems were published anywhere else.

Two poems from 'An Old Olive Tree'. The poem on the left is dedicated to Adrian Stokes whilst the one on the right was, secretly, dedicated to Graham Greene.
(Click to enlarge)

     If Macleod is remembered in the literary world it is primarily as a poet, and rightly so, an encounter with his verse is something unlikely to be soon forgotten; after my own first encounter with his poetry it was not long before he took up a presiding position in my own pantheon of poets (expand on others in a note?). As the opening of this post indicated though, poetry was not Macleod's only passion and his work outside the poetical sphere stands happily beside his work in it and certainly merits rediscovery also.

     Almost equal to his passion for poetry was his passion for the theatre. Macleod developed a deep interest in the art and served as director at the Cambridge Festival Theatre where he also contributed plays, directed, produced and acted. He even contributed poems to the theatre programme/newsletter under the symbol of Taurus - a form of pseudonym that preceded the Drinan moniker but which did not really seek to hide the true identity of the author, Macleod's first contributions having been made under his own name.

     Out of this love of, and involvement in, the theatre grew six books. Half of those books were concerned with Soviet theatre; the state of the art and its audience: 'The New Soviet Theatre' (Allen & Unwin, 1943), 'Actors Cross the Volga: A Study in 19th Century Russian Theatre and of Soviet Theatre in War' (Allen & Unwin, 1946) and 'Soviet Theatre Sketchbook' (Allen & Unwin, 1951). The first of these Soviet studies earned Macleod a front cover of the Times Literary Supplement where it received a glowing review.

From 'The New Soviet Theatre.
(Click to enlarge)

From 'The New Soviet Theatre.
(Click to enlarge)

     A further two books also dealt with theatre history. 'The Right to Act: A History of British Actor's Equity' (Allen & Unwin, 1981) was written in 1953 but did not see publication until 1981 making it the last of Macleod's works to be published in his lifetime. It is a well regarded history of the establishment of Equity though it was seen to be a little dated by the time it finally reached publication. The final piece of theatre history to mention is 'Piccolo Storia del Teatro Brittanico' (Sansoni, 1961) - a concise history of theatre in Britain which only found a publisher in Florence, the English language version being rejected by all.

    The final book to mention, that sprung out of Macleod's time in the theatre, was 'Overture to Cambridge: A Satirical Story' (Allen & Unwin, 1936). This was Macleod's only published novel (though he apparently had more that were not accepted for publication) and was adapted from a play he wrote and put on during his time at the Cambridge Festival Theatre. I have not been able to track down a copy of the book as yet but from the little I have read of it it appears to be a piece of dystopian prophesy likened at the time to works by H.G.Wells and Aldous Huxley.

     Macleod's interest in the theatre and his study of the actor's art served him well when he came to work for the BBC. In 1925 Macleod had made a small piece of history when he took part, again alongside Graham Greene, in the first radio broadcast of a poetry reading. Now, thirteen years later he found himself engaged as an announcer after the success of two programmes he produced, one of which concerned the New Soviet Theatre that he was so well versed in. Macleod soon became a household name and a beloved voice (though not without some complaints about the occasional suggestion of a Scottish accent) across the country and throughout the war but his time with the BBC was not to end well and he was urged to leave the organisation in 1945. The BBC years, from happy beginnings to uneasy end, are remembered under 'How To' headings in his 'A Job at the BBC' (MacLellan & Co., 1947).

Contents page from 'A Job at the BBC'.
(Click to enlarge)

     In 1973 Macleod would be involved with the BBC once more when BBC Scotland traveled to Florence, where Macleod spent much of the year from 1956 onward, to conduct an interview about his career at the BBC, life in Florence and his poetry.

Macleod reading 'To an Unborn Child'.

     Two more titles complete Macleod's oeuvre; 'The Sisters d'Aranyi' (Allen & Unwin, 1969): a biography of Hungarian Emigre sisters (Jelly, Hortense and Adila d'Aranyi); two of whom became musical stars in their day but join Macleod in obscurity at present, and 'People of Florence: A Study in Locality' (Allen & Unwin, 1968): a study of Florence and its people.

     'The Sisters d'Aranyi' was the first of Macleod's non-fiction books I came upon and read and one which I fell in love with from the very first page.

First page of chapter one of 'The Sisters d'Aranyi'.
(Click to enlarge)

     The biography was a labour of love for Macleod who had been profoundly touched by Jelly d'Aranyi after seeing her play when he was a youth, he felt she ignited his love of music and that he owed pretty much all the knowledge he had of it, a knowledge on full display throughout the book, to that first fire of enthusiasm. I had heard only one recording of Jelly d'Aranyi prior to picking up the book but through Macleod's stirring descriptions of performances by Jelly and Adila as well as the countless touching, entertaining or astounding anecdotes and recollections concerning all three sisters compiled (most of which came from conversation with Jelly over an extended period, up to her death) meant that I soon shared something of the same love Macleod obviously felt for the sisters and has lead to a little digging which has increased my knowledge of the recordings of the sisters that hint at the reality reached for in Macleod's rapturous depictions.

Jelly d'Aranyi and Arthur Bergh - Vitali Chaconne in G Minor.

Click for playlist of all 40 uploads.

     The work dedicated to the city of Florence is given the subtitle of 'A Study in Locality'. We can see what Macleod understands by the term 'locality' in the opening to 'The Sisters d'Aranyi' pictured above and it is clear it is an important idea throughout much of his work. It is clearly central to the Florence book but it also informs the realism of the localised Drinan works, is fruitful in his Russian studies, plays its part in the Macleod's approach to biography and, contracting the scope of its sphere to the self, provides the setting for the opening of his final poetic work.

Opening poem for 'An Old Olive Tree'.
(Click to enlarge)

     Macleod died in 1984 and in a fairly short space of time his work has been entirely sidelined if not largely forgotten. His body of work is mostly out-of-print and no extended consideration of his life and work has ever been published. The work has been done though, A PHD thesis by James Fountain has told the story of Macleod's life and career/s and has looked, in no small detail, at his poetical works and their development but so far it remains a thesis and has not seen commercial publication beyond its informing of Fountain's foreword to the Waterloo Press selection of Drinan poetry. The only other contribution to Macleod scholarship comes from Andrew Duncan who provides fine introductions to both of the Waterloo Press titles. With Macleod's drift in to obscurity a poet of genius and a unique voice in all the fields he explored has been temporarily silenced; an oversight that has begun to be addressed but is still far from being rectified.

                                                                                                                        - Ian Meads.

Click for Joseph Macleod titles at Waterloo Press.

Click to read Macleod's 'Nightslide': a parody written to be part of Terence Gray's production of 'The Birds'.

 The Joseph Macleod Website.

Portrait of Joseph Macleod by Sadra Bronetti (1970)
(Click to enlarge)

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.

From, "What Shall I Eat? The Housewife’s Manual" by Miss E. Neill, (1892)

Priorities straight.