Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Tom T-t

Palewski was [Nancy] Mitford’s great love and influenced what she felt about art, politics and how life should be lived, but Palewski was a philanderer and probably loved no one. (Caroline Moorehead, “Toff love”, TLS January 27 2012, p.30) || She developed a sense for when Hawthorne was at the front door, feeling “just sure it was Mr. Hawthorne as if I had seen him.” She gave him a nosegay of sweet violets, which he kept in water for a week before taking one to Boston to be seet under black crystal – “enshrined from every possible harm” – and mounted on a gold brooch that he intended to wear himself. (Megan Marshall, “The Other Sister”, The New Yorker, March 21, 2005, p.44) || To understand Vauxhall’s history, they tell us, we should look not for the “political or philosphical rationales”, but to the “remarkable but flawed” nature of Tyers himself, who “seems to have had some sort of psychological imbalance, and may even have suffered from a form of bipolar disorder.” The best written evidence for this is apparently a satirical pamphlet of about 1750 which claims that Tyers has become melancholy as a result of the death of tom T-t, his “favourite Ham-shaver”. I have not been able to find this text, but it appears to suggest that Tyers had grown melancholy at the thought that a new waiter, less skilled than Tom, would carve the ham thicker and so shave his profits thinner. (John Barrell, “South bank nights”, TLS January 27 2012, p.4) || The revolutionary photographer Diane Arbus, who died in 1971, at the age of forty-eight, said, “A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.” [...] Over the years, Arbuses that I once found devastating have seemed to wait for me to change just a little, then to devastate me all over again. (Peter Schjeldahl, “Looking Back”, The New Yorker, March 21, 2005, p.78)

Saturday, July 28, 2012

biosphere_0.99_p

There were a few noteworthy marriages: of Ida Stieler to the Bengali intellectual Benoy Kumar Sarkar and of the last king of the Sikhs, Dulip Sing, to the daughter of a German merchant living in Alexandria.
Suzanne Marchand, German Orientalism in the Age of Empire, 2009, p. 435

biosphere_0.99_o

I am not dismissing such explanations: one should doubtless keep an open mind about them, though an open mind, to be sure, should be open at both ends, like the foodpipe, and have a capacity for excretion as well as intake.
Northrop Frye, The Great Code, 1982, p.44

Saturday, July 07, 2012

el imparcial

Lebet wohl, ihr glatten Säle! Glatte Herren! glatte Frauen! Auf die Berge will ich steigen, Lachend auf euch niederschauen. || In the theatre the public sympathized with the unequal lovers and applauded the basic Enlightenment ideal that informed such works: that all people are equal. But it did not take the same view in real life. (O. Figes, Natasha's Dance, Picador: New York, 2002, p.32) || As war with the United States became imminent, it was a common perception among the royalty and politicians that the loss of Cuba would provoke widespread disorder leading to the collapse of the Restoration system. Indeed, rooms were prepared in the Vienna palace of the queen regent's cousin, the emperor of Austria, in case she had to flee from Spain. (S. Balfour, "Riot, Regeneration and Reaction: Spain the Aftermath of the 1898 Disaster" in: The Historical Journal 38:2 (1995), p.406) || An editorial in the daily, El Imparcial, argued that the cause of the problem was the inequality of the sacrifices being demanded by the government for restoring the health of the Spanish economy and it noted that the protest was taking the shape of a social war. (Balfour, 410) || Schwarze Röcke, seidne Strümpfe, Weiße höfliche Manschetten, Sanfte Reden, Embrassieren –Ach, wenn sie nur Herzen hätten!

schlinge

Friday, July 06, 2012

weizen, kirschen, mond

nahe an g.

Monday, July 02, 2012