Works and Days

Ich glaube, man sollte überhaupt nur solche Bücher lesen, die einen beißen und stechen. Wenn das Buch, das wir lesen, uns nicht mit einem Faustschlag auf den Schädel weckt, wozu lesen wir dann das Buch? Damit es uns glücklich macht, wie Du schreibst? Mein Gott, glücklich wären wir eben auch, wenn wir keine Bücher hätten, und solche Bücher, die uns glücklich machen, könnten wir zur Not selber schreiben. Wir brauchen aber die Bücher, die auf uns wirken wie ein Unglück, das uns sehr schmerzt, wie der Tod eines, den wir lieber hatten als uns, wie wenn wir in Wälder verstoßen würden, von allen Menschen weg, wie ein Selbstmord, ein Buch muß die Axt sein für das gefrorene Meer in uns. Das glaube ich.

I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for? …we need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.

–Franz Kafka, Letter to Oskar Pollak (27 January 1904)

Baby Augustine, from the Curt Jester.

 The Joy of Boredom

Dwelling in Possibilities

(Via Arts and Letters Daily.)

The things I have seen, the many things,
have now long faded far;
only three come clear now back to me:
a Cloud, a Tree, a Star.

–Tolkien, Imram (excerpt)

• Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis (Latin)
• The Voyage of St. Brendan (English)

ORBIS TERRAE | Sunt in terrâ tres partes, quibus nomina sunt Asia, Libya, et Europa. Europa vergit ad septentrionem, Libya ad meridiem, et Asia ad orientem. ad occidentem vergit Oceanus, qui etiam terram circumdat. in mediâ terrâ est urbs sancta Ierusalem. Ierusalem est in Asiâ.

MARE MEDITERRANEUM | inter Europam et Libyam est Mare Mediterraneum. Sunt in mari quinque insulae magnae, quibus nomina sunt Corsica, Sardinia, Sicilia, Creta, et Cyprus.

INSULA INUNDATA | hanc fabulam Aegyptii narrant: olim in Oceano erat insula magna, cui nomen erat Atlantis. Nautae et milites hanc insulam inhabitabant. Europam et Libyam vicerunt, sed milites Athenarum Atlanteos superaverunt. tunc erat calamitas. in unâ nocte Atlantis sub undas evanuit. nautae ultra columnas Herculis navigant quod Atlantem invenire volunt, sed nemo Atlantem invenit.

In fact, Tennyson loved jokes, stored them up, and told them beautifully. Many were rustic items from his Lincolnshire youth. Others were modern. He said: ‘They say I write about fairies as if I knew them, and they ask, “What are fairies really like?”’ He then told the story of the New Forest gnome: Holman Hunt went into the forest to get some studies of foliage on paper. Sitting in a glade he was so absorbed in his work that he did not notice that a little brown man, not three feet high, had crept up behind him. Then he saw a little brown arm stretch out and take his bottle. He looked round, and the little brown man said eagerly: ‘Gin?’ ‘No,’ said Hunt, firmly. ‘Water.’ The little brown man vanished immediately.

–Paul Johnson, Ten perfect poems and one little brown man