Archive for 2012
Crambe repetita (21)
2 January 2012, around 14.09.
Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, ‘Democritus to the Reader’.
levity
8 January 2012, around 15.47.
We are at last reduced to talking about the weather. I suppose it must happen eventually, when you are learning a language – talking about the weather. It is more than collection of vocabulary and predictions, though; we haven’t anything else to talk about. Daily routines, general likes and dislikes, grammatical particularities, and the answers […]
go on
24 January 2012, around 22.51.
I live in fear that there is not enough material to complete the task. This fear prevents me from doing anything with or about or to or on the project; it is much easier that way. I need never fear that it will be incomplete, because it will never be done. Yes, that will do.
on biography (2)
9 February 2012, around 11.41.
Hermione Lee. Virginia Woolf. New York: Vintage, 1996. I have little more to say. If my readers find that I have not said enough, I have said too much. I cannot measure or judge of such a character as hers. I cannot map out vices, and virtues, and debateable land. —Elizabeth Gaskell (Life of Charlotte […]
afflatus criticus
11 February 2012, around 9.26.
This is as far as we can get on the assumption that the scholar and the man of taste are connected by nothing more than a common interest in literature. If this assumption is true, the high percentage of sheer futility in all criticism should be honestly faced, for the percentage can only increase with […]
no fuss no muss
12 February 2012, around 12.40.
Repetition and cross-cultural echoes.
self-help
14 March 2012, around 4.47.
Let all such fancies, illusive and destructive, be banished henceforward from your thoughts for ever. Resolve, and keep your resolution; choose, and pursue your choice. If you spend this day in study, you will find yourself still more able to study to-morrow; not that you are to expect that you shall at once obtain a […]
petrified
24 March 2012, around 19.16.
10 Gower St, Hope Mirrlees in a hat, with Lytton Strachey et al.1 Pigeons perch on statues And are turned to stone.2I found this image via the Persephone Post, but they persist in reorganizing their archives and breaking links – a laudable pastime, but one which prevents me from giving them credit as directly as […]
affected
27 March 2012, around 15.00.
There are books which are too powerful, or which are too powerfully effective. I was reading such a book just a few minutes ago – but I won’t name it – about miserable people, leading miserable aimless lives in a gray and dismal country thousands of miles away. It is sunny here, and warm, as […]
Requiem
28 March 2012, around 9.49.
Antonio Tabucchi. Requiem: A Hallucination trans. Margaret Jull Costa. London: Harvill, 1994. Please, he said, don’t abandon me to all these people who are so certain about everything, they’re dreadful. You don’t need me, I said, don’t talk nonsense, the whole world admires you, I was the one who needed you, but now it’s time […]
Citation (45)
31 March 2012, around 17.59.
scholarly limitations…
A view (34)
24 April 2012, around 7.03.
They said spring was dusty; they were not wrong.
desertification
3 May 2012, around 19.51.
‘ a bitterly cold wind which drove the dust and tiny pebbles against our faces like a continual storm of hail’
Crambe repetita (22)
17 June 2012, around 18.03.
Blaise Cendrars, Moravagine.
hope against hope (1)
22 June 2012, around 18.24.
in which nothing much is said, especially about Hope Mirrlees.
Citation (46)
29 June 2012, around 15.16.
on the Greek language.
respite
22 July 2012, around 10.26.
Crambe repetita (23)
29 July 2012, around 17.28.
Hope Mirrlees, The Counterplot
pointed
31 July 2012, around 9.23.
It’s nice not to have to focus on anything.
hope against hope (2)
6 August 2012, around 10.48.
on Mirrlees and extravagant biographies; briefly.
pullover
8 August 2012, around 8.43.
Annoyed at having first to turn his pullovers the right side out every time he puts them on, he decides to turn them around as soon as he has taken them off. Surely, this is rational. But since this decision does not override the decision automatically to turn out his pullover when he puts it […]
Crambe repetita (24)
17 August 2012, around 1.21.
Agnes Jekyll, Kitchen Essays.
Citation (47)
20 September 2012, around 21.30.
on architecture, art, busts, and weight…
seasonal
1 November 2012, around 9.36.
It’s too cold to ride.
hope against hope (3)
4 November 2012, around 7.41.
a counter reformation.
substantiation
22 November 2012, around 19.22.
I was almost exactly halfway through Céleste Albaret’s recollections of Monsieur Proust when I realized I had erred in the matter of genre. I had supposed it was merely a servant’s memoir of her eccentric employer. Given the pains she takes to clarify her stances on her employer (not crazy, not malingering, not a bit […]
sssllyyynnxxx
24 November 2012, around 6.14.
a few remark’s on Tatyana Tolstaya’s dystopian novel, The Slynx.
Citation (48)
26 November 2012, around 6.15.
facing the void…
Crambe repetita (25)
21 December 2012, around 5.03.
Margaret Cavendish, Sociable Letters.