Category: Uncategorized
Roth is a great writer and strongly recommend -Summer Before the Dark: Stefan Zweig and Joseph Roth, Ostend 1936 by Volker Weidermann too!
The Radetzky March is listed in 1001 Books so I pounced when I saw it at the library!
This is why the editors included it:
The Radetzky March ranks as one of the finest European historical novels of the twentieth century and is the outstanding literary work produced by the prolific journalist and novelist Joseph Roth.
Through three generations of the Trotta family, the story traces the decline of the Hapsburg Empire in its dying days, but this is not a family saga. From the hero of the battle of Solferino who saves the Emperor Franz Joseph’s life and is subsequently ennobled from plain Lieutenant Trotta to Baron von Trotta and Sipolje; to his son Herr Van Trotta who becomes the District Commissioner; to his grandson Carl-Joseph who has an indifferent peacetime career in the army, the book focusses just on these three men who are all, effectively, bachelors, and how they…
View original post 727 more words
I find this scene by Sir Cedric Morris interesting in so many ways. The setting and perspective are intriguing and the atmosphere from the time and dress also are fascinating. The bohemian atmosphere reminds me of the novel, “The Horse’s Mouth” the 1944 novel by Joyce Cary that curiously I have never managed to finish.
Here are three of my own sketches from coffee bars, restaurants and so on:-
Categories
Lady Lever Gallery
These collections in or near cities are great. Just visited the Joseph Wright collection in Derby also fascinating.
//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js
Last weekend we were stayed with our friends Steve and Anne who live in Waverton near Chester. We were expected in the evening so decided to have an afternoon in Port Sunlight on the Wirral, a “model” village built during the late 19th and early 20th Centuries to house workers at the Lever Brothers soap factory. The Lady Lever art gallery, opened in 1922, built as a memorial to Elizabeth, the wife of William Hesketh Lever, the founder of the Lever Brothers Empire, is in the middle of the village and we decided to go and have a look inside.
The gallery was originally built around Lord Lever’s collection of mainly British Victorian art, but also including examples of Chinese art, Roman sculpture and Greek vases. Today it’s part of Liverpool Museums group but Lever’s collection still forms the core of the collection. Consequently, the exhibits are dominated by…
View original post 444 more words
Categories
England in Königsberg
As an Englishman, albeit one that has no interest in football, I would hope that some of the English football fans might give a moment’s thought to the old city of Königsberg as their team play there today. Destroyed by the RAF in 1944 and now occupied by the Russians.
Categories
Blue Garden View
Like a kind of superposition of a Mondrain!
Framing a scene, like this view of Park Guell in Barcelona, really makes it pop. The blue wall doesn’t hurt either.
Click on the image to enlarge (it really does look better) or to Purchase a Print.
Bee white buzzes – drunk with honey – in my soul
and you twist in slow spirals of smoke.
I am the desperate, the word without echoes,
the one who lost everything, and the one who had everything.
Last bind, cries in you my last anxiety.
In my desert land you are the last rose.
Oh silent!
Close your deep eyes. There the night flies.
Ah, undress your body of a fearful statue.
You have deep eyes where night alloy.
Fresh flower arms and pink lap.
Your breasts look like white snails.
A butterfly of shadow has come to sleep in your belly.
Oh silent!
Here the solitude of where you are absent.
Rains. The sea wind hunts wandering gulls.
The water goes barefoot through the wet streets.
From that tree the leaves complain as sick.
White bee, absent, you still buzz in my soul.
You live in time, thin and silent.
Oh silent!
More Neruda poems and a timeline may be found at https://www.poemas-del-alma.com/
Love the contrasting colours of blues and yellows. Is this Edinburgh?
“There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature — the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.”
― Rachel Carson, Silent Spring
A little while ago, I wrote about the return of a pair of black-backed gulls to the roof-tops opposite our apartment. Since then, we have been keeping a keen eye on proceedings and I am delighted to be able to provide an update (click on any image for a closer look).
To give some context, you can see in the photo below our vantage point across to the gulls’ nest, which has been built in front of the third chimney pot to the right of the gull in the centre of the picture:
Hub is the ‘proper’ photographer in our house and has been magnificently putting up with my nagging gentle encouragement to take some pictures of events as they have unfolded…
View original post 193 more words
Looks beautiful and would like to be in Berlin!
Löwenmäulchen des Lebens – 13 x 18 cm – Tusche auf Hahnemuehle Aquarellkarton Burgund (c) Zeichnung von Susanne Haun
Mein Balkon ist nicht einfach zu bepflanzen, im vierten Stock meiner Atelierwohnung ist es Nachmittags sehr sonnig und dazu weht ein strammer Wind.
So habe ich schon seit Jahren Hängegeranien in meinen Kästen. Die hängen, wie es der Name verspricht, herunter. So bin ich dazu übergegangen zwischen den Geranien andere Blumen wie Nelken, Löwenmäulchen oder auch Phlox zu pflanzen. Dieses Jahr dominieren – wie die meisten Jahre – die Rottöne.
Hier (Klick) könnt ihr umfassend meinen Balkon im Jahr 2016 sehen.
Categories
The Balkans
One reason we need to stay in the E.U. is to contain and maintain dialogue in areas where local nationalisms are so strongly embedded.
The Balkans are a fascinating part of Europe.
The Macedonians build a fountain and upset the Greeks. On the road to Lake Ohrid villages fly Albanian flags instead of Macedonian ones. Kosovan taxi drivers believe fundamentalists are being sponsored in their country by former foes. In Sarajevo, the place the First World War started is not easy to find, but evidence of more recent atrocities is.
Memories are long in The Balkans, contrasts and contradictions are all around. History is always in your face, reminding you nothing stays the same for long in this most fascinating corner of Europe.
In Croatia, Dubrovnik is so popular a one-way system is now in operation on the city walls. Kotor in Montenegro is quieter and has a more beautiful setting. These places show what can happen if the past can be forgotten and the present allowed to persevere.
This book will help explain why things are the way they are in a few short stories.
penwithlit 