A story tells that once, when they had only a bundle of straw for a bed, a poor man came to beg some straw for a bed for his sick wife. Akiva at once divided with him his scanty possession, remarking to his wife, “Thou seest, my child, there are those poorer than we!” This pretended poor man was none other than the prophet Elijah, who had come to test Akiva… Akiva

The Philistine element in life is not the failure to understand art. Charming people, such as fishermen, shepherds, ploughboys, peasants and the like, know nothing about art, and are the very salt of the earth. He is the Philistine who upholds and aids the heavy, cumbrous, blind, mechanical forces of society, and who does not recognise dynamic force when he meets it either in a man or a movement…. De Profundis

A pile contained within a third of the circular table surface, surface covered with a checkered table cloth, white and light blue squares predominant. Cerulean central flowers in glass jar — green in the glass of stems half cut by water.

A lone advertisement in third adjacent and to the right of the third that contains the pile (magazine offer); a todo list written on the back of an envelope in the third adjacent and to the right of that one (“store, laundry, Dad”); two pencils around, both short, one a pale yellow and the other a US flag, its likeness, wrapped around the pencil.

The bulk of the pile being comprised of refrigerator magnets (exterior of refrigerator surface having been cleaned) — Cairo, Amsterdam, Iceland, a figure of a gnome, a figure of two cats, a bottle opener that says “Vatican”, largest the circular blue Obama/ Biden and assorted post cards [e.g., from Greece, the Lion’s Gate] and pictures [E.g., woman holding child in arms, evincing pleasure]; the pile, at its highest point, about three inches above table level; in width, the radius of the table minus two inches; the light over it, that of the middle of a gray spring morning.

“Quelle douce mort, si alors elle fût venue ! Si j’avais peu goûté les biens de la vie, j’en avais peu senti les malheurs. Mon âme paisible pouvait partir sans le sentiment cruel de l’injustice des hommes, qui empoisonne la vie et la mort.” [*]

*

How sweet death would be had it come then! Though I’d tasted few of life’s goods, I’d felt also few of its misfortunes; and my peaceful soul would have left without understanding how unjust man can be, which poisons both life and death.

While reading David Chandler’s history of the Napoleonic campaigns, I’ve been vaguely comparing (because of War and Peace and it’s associations) Napoleon and Tolstoy; and this leapt to mind with particular vehemence this morning when I learned of Napoleon’s emotional devastation on first discovering his wife Josephine’s infidelity. I can’t think, from the time when I was heavy into Tolstoy, of him having experienced a similar devastation; rather Tolstoy was the one who, in his youth at least, was devastating in these matters. Chandler writes of Napoleon’s disillusionment (pp.227):

The whole of Europe was to be affected by this destruction of Bonaparte’s personal happiness. July 25, 1798, was indeed an unfortunate turning point in the life of Bonaparte; from that day, the tyrant began to emerge ever more clearly.

Perhaps Chandler is disposed to romanticize Napoleon’s feelings for Josephine a bit, yet one wonders if there is a kind of sense to the idea of Generals being romantics and Authors being libertines, that or of us thinking of them in that way…. I come across randomly, in the evening, that Stendhal seems not to have known of Josephine’s infidelities (or Napoleon’s):

Au reste, le seul être qu’il ait jamais aimé est Joséphine et elle ne le trahit jamais.

Stendhal an admirer of Napoleon, and Tolstoy a despiser of him, and Tolstoy, though too, an admirer of Stendhal. Interesting trifecta there as (at least, I think I’ve read this) Tolstoy used the opening of La Chartreuse for one of War and Peace’s battle scenes with Pierre.

Ngrams: Napoleon,Tolstoy,Stendhal … English language, yet interest in Napoleon, while currently enjoying a resurgence, has clearly dropped to 1810 levels, if the “viewer” can be believed — while remaining higher than interest in Tolstoy has ever been. Tolstoy, Stendhal about even til the 1890’s.

“C’est par amour de la perfection que ces figures sont imparfaites…” Journals, Eugène Delacroix

“I do not know whether I have told you already,” said Don Quixote, as he took leave of Don Lorenzo, “but if so I tell you again that, if you would spare yourself fatigue and toil in reaching the inaccessible summit of the temple of fame, all you need do is turn aside from the somewhat narrow path of poetry and take the still narrower one of knight-errantry. It is wide enough, however, to make you an emperor in the twinkling of an eye.” (Don Quixote, Book 2 chapter 18. Revised Ormsby translation.)

*

-No sé si he dicho a vuesa merced otra vez, y si lo he dicho lo vuelvo a decir, que cuando vuesa merced quisiere ahorrar caminos y trabajos para llegar a la inacesible cumbre del templo de la Fama, no tiene que hacer otra cosa sino dejar a una parte la senda de la poesía, algo estrecha, y tomar la estrechísima de la andante caballería, bastante para hacerle emperador en daca las pajas. [here]

ngrams: garbage can,recycling bin,bottled water ; dump,dumpster,landfill

” L’opium est la seule substance végétale qui nous communiqué l’etat végétal. Par lui nous avons une idee de cette autre vitesse des plantes.” (Cocteau as quoted by Cyril Connolly, The Unquiet Grave.)

This is kind of interesting: nuclear is more associated with the word ‘power’ than with the word ‘energy’ (here) and solar more associated with the word ‘energy’ than with the word ‘power’ (here), though I suppose it is in part explained by the fact that we use ‘nuclear power’ to denote both energy derived from nuclear reactions and countries possessed of nuclear armaments, while there is no corresponding tic in usage in the case of solar that I can think of.

But what might be the reason for the huge divergence in mentions of power and energy circa 1980? –power over energy with respect to nuclear and energy over power with respect to solar? The oil crisis must be involved but I can’t think of why. Wind power,wind energy occurrences are also elevated in 1980 but there isn’t the same divergence between the two. Nor does power,energy tell us much: ‘energy’ reached its apex during the crisis, while ‘power’ was drifting towards its lows.

An interesting insight of Matisse found in Danchev’s Cezanne, a Life:

“The life of the artist is often a trial to the wife of the artist as Matisse himself remarked: ‘As for me, I remain an old fool, as Madame Paul Cezanne called her husband. They tell me that Madame Pissarro said the same of her husband. These women of humble origins had served their husbands according to their lights, judging their heroes as if they were simple carpenters who had taken it into their heads to make tables with legs in the air.’ Matisse was right. Even the humble and colossal Pissarro was accused of being a pie-in-the-sky fantasist by the long-suffering stout-hearted Julie. Hortense was in good company, company not confined to women of humble origins.“

Nora Barnacle, maybe, of a similar stripe.

Grouping of the passages from La Reserche I looked into —

On Art, Writing

Pouvoir être éclaircie, elle qu’on vit dans les ténèbres
Une Patrie Inconnue
Si l’art n’est que cela, il n’est pas plus réel que la vie
Ce milieu que nous ne voyons pas
Le gisement lui-même
(Knowledge and Art)

On Behavior / General

les autruches humaines
Le ton dubitatif pour les résolutions irrévocables
Water Lily passage (stupidity multiplier)
,,,parce que nous mourons nous-mêmes
Ces hécatombes de régiments anéantis
le défilé d’une armée compacte
Une sanglante barrière
Larivière
Fanés

ngrams viewer: creeped out ; creeped out, creeps me out, creeped me out ; creepy, spooky ; creepy, spooky, scary ; creepy , spooky, scary, weird ; creepy, spooky, scary, weird, bizarre ; creepy, spooky, scary,weird, bizarre, strange; creepy man, creepy woman, creepy dude, creepy person (Maybe interesting, ngrams returns no results for creepy animals of various sorts. Creepy spider ; creepy spider, creepy insect; creepy spider, creepy insect, creepy bug. creepy, creeped out).

WOW: creepy guy is way more popular than creepy man and creepy dude: creepy dude,creepy guy,creepy man. Creepy gal ‘is not found’ but creepy boy is: creepy boy,creepy man.

“Je n’étais pas un seul homme, mais le défilé heure par heure d’une armée compacte où il y avait, selon le moment, des passionnés, des indifférents, des jaloux — des jaloux dont pas un n’était jaloux de la même femme.” [Albertine Disparue 92]

“Les changements de l’atmosphère en provoquent d’autres dans l’homme intérieur, réveillent des « moi » oubliés, contrarient l’assoupissement de l’habitude, redonnent de la force à tels souvenirs, à telles souffrances.” [Albertine Disparue 93]

Was trying to remember the exact wording and provenance of this phrase through much of today:

I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.

Here. Given the current political situation, it is refreshing, too, to find a distinction made between official duty and personal wish, particularly in a case where the latter is of a more generous kind than the former.

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Written on the Wind, with its sports cars and oil rigs and derricks, reminds me very much of similar scenes from La Dolce Vita, made some four years later –the scene where Marcello and his girlfriend have a spat in the industrial park. (Oil rig replica conclusion of this movie also striking.)

Balzac (Vautrin): “Êtes-vous bêtes, vous autres ! n’avez-vous jamais vu de forçat ? Un forçat de la trempe de Collin, ici présent, est un homme moins lâche que les autres, et qui proteste contre les profondes déceptions du contrat social, comme dit Jean-Jacques, dont je me glorifie d’être l’élève. Enfin, je suis seul contre le gouvernement avec son tas de tribunaux, de gendarmes, de budgets, et je les roule.”

Krailsheimer: “How stupid you are, you lot. Haven’t you ever seen a convict before? A convict of Collin’s caliber, and here I am, is not such a coward as other men; he is protesting against the monstrous betrayals of the Social Contract, to use the words of Jean-Jacques, whose disciple I am proud to be. In a word, I stand alone against the government, with its pile of courts, policeman and civil budgets, and I get the better of them.”

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Lampedusa|Trial of The K\·ights Templar. moider.
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knout |·paratactic; liana;/ϐ pleach; Morpheme.
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epigone. sedulity Verdelho\\\ Piero di Cosimo
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…………./ϐ /. /· \….de armados rmados …………da
…………/ϐ /. /· \…..embarrassmentandprivilege
…………/ϐ /. /· \…..la armados … ………………….um>tombolo (x);
…………/ϐ /. /· \…..ls arados ……………. ……………C
…………./ϐ /. /· \….Lenfrentamientos armados —
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