February 2012
43 posts
Why everything is connected to everything else, in... →
“Sie aber — schöner als jemals — streckten und drehten sich, ließen das schaurige...”
– Kafka, “Das Schweigen der Sirenen”
“But only those who leave for leaving’s sake
are travelers; hearts tugging...”
– Baudelaire, trans. Richard Howard
What it's like to be president of the United... →
What it's like to be president of the United... →
1 tag
Someone has been posting dramatic signs on the...
Up until about a week ago, when Paris managed to crawl out from under its little ice age, there was a sign on the door that read:
THANK YOU FOR KEEPING THE DOOR CLOSED DURING THIS GREAT PERIOD OF COLD
That is, not “this period of great cold,” but “this great period of cold.” I don’t know who wrote it, but it struck me as a bit theatrical, albeit charmingly so.
...
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“Well, do you think I believe in ghosts? But how can my not believing help me?”
– Kafka, “Unhappiness”
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“Without you I’ve not slept, not once in the garden
nor cared much whether...”
– Shahnameh (as related in Bunting’s Persia)
4 tags
“There is an incessant blurring together of various things, and this is good,...”
– Robert Walser, “Berlin and the Artist”
5 tags
“Why does everybody think that women are debasing... →
More Mayakovsky
I have married the moon and she combs the water,
the beaches of uncharted seas.
She’s my lunar lady, she has long red hair
and she drives a herd of horses
through a screaming streak of stars
— “A Few Words About My Wife”, trans. Paul Schmidt
Book Maps (!) →
3 tags
“To show by one’s gaze and gestures that one is finding things a bit...”
– Robert Walser, “In the Electric Tram”
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“How could a body like this have a big love?
It should be teeny-weeny,
humble,...”
– Vladimir Mayakovsky, “A Cloud in Trousers”
“When ‘The Stoker’ was all he had read of Kafka, [Walter Benjamin] had already...”
– Hannah Arendt, Introduction to Illuminations by Walter Benjamin
2 tags
More fabulous Hungarian things to read: Ádám... →
A line from the lovely poem [of Chinese exile]... →
3 tags
“Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,
Let maps to other, worlds on...”
– John Donne, “The Good-Morrow”
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January 2012
28 posts
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Robert Walser's Berlin Stories
nyrbclassics:
Today is the publication date for Robert Walser’s Berlin Stories, a collection of his early stories, with some later ones as well, set in Berlin where he followed his elder brother in 1905, translated by Susan Bernofsky and others including Christopher Middleton. We thought we’d share the first story in the book, titled “Good Morning, Giantess!”:
It’s as if a giantess were...
“All of nature is series and pivot, like Pythagoras’ numbers, like the...”
– Guy Davenport, Da Vinci’s Bicycle
1 tag
“Like just about everyone else, I went to see Ghost, I don’t know if you remember...”
– Roberto Bolaño, “The Return”