Hence the despotic and all-absorbing power of art, as also its astonishing power of soothing: it frees from every human care, it establishes the artifex, artist or artisan, in a world apart, cloistered, defined and absolute, in which to devote all the strength and intelligence of his manhood to the service of the thing which he is making. This is true of every art; the ennui of living and willing ceases on the threshold of every studio or workshop.
-Jacques Maritain, Art and Scholasticism
Lets be friends ;-)
Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: Mes llibres, mes lliures means (roughly) More books, More freedoms
Born, alas, in an evil time,
I missed that pleasant haven,
For the hair has grown on my upper lip
And the clergy are all clean-shaven
On this day in 1950 George Orwell died, aged forty-six. Whatever Orwell achieved in his last years seems over-balanced by what he suffered. Against the acclaim earned by the two famous novels -- Animal Farm in 1945 and 1984 just seven months before Orwell died -- stands a withering series of personal challenges. In 1945, a little more than a year after their adoption of a one-month-old boy (their only child), Orwell's wife died on the operating table
• Orwell on Orwell [That you can't have it both ways?What are the flour and salt, and what is the fool's mistake? ; Natural Phenomena Named After Frank Zappa ]
• · Dearth of Slovak on contemporary Czech TV a pity, says Czech language expert Prior to the split of Czechoslovakia, Czechs and Slovaks understand one another's languages without any difficulties whatsoever; [At Lunch with John Grisham: The Lawyer Enters a Plea of Lucky]
• · · Right now most of you feel your job in life is to be a promising college applicant. But that means you're designing your life to satisfy a process so mindless that there's a whole industry devoted to subverting it. No wonder you become cynical. The malaise you feel is the same that a producer of reality TV shows or a tobacco industry executive feels. And you don't even get paid a lot. What You'll Wish You'd Known
• · · · Sponsored by the Darker Side of River - Powell.com: Too often are literary awards arbitrary, dull, or meaningless. Too rarely are they determined by an NCAA-style Battle Royale of bloodthirsty competition. It’s time for a change. Rosecrans Baldwin and Kevin Guilfoile announce The First Annual TMN Tournament of Books The Rooster, The Dragon ... ; [Czech born Tomas Straussler or Tom Stoppard and London Library” The library I love ]
• · · · · Phaswane Mpe, who died late last year at 34. If I’m carrying a lot of money, I’ll carry it in a book. For some reason criminals don’t like books," he laughed. "There was one day, I had just come back from Germany, where I received a stipend, so I ended up not having to use my own money. I had about €1 000. I carried it inside The Tin Drum by Günter Grass, which I was reading at the time, and walked quite safely to deposit it in the bank Among much else, it shows one of the advantages of literature not being highly regarded by one and all; [ via Literary Saloon
• · · · · · Like the little gural of Tatranka folkloric fame, whistling children save ancient language Silbo, the ancient whistle language native to one of the Canary Islands ; [What is your ancient Element? Air like me?; Shorter than Czar Peter the Great or Thomas Wolfe but taller than Gene Roddenberry How tall are you? 188cm or 6’2?]