dagblog - Comments for "Those Winter Sundays"

For those who approve of

Verified Atheist — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 18:58:20 +0000

In reply to compress, everyone writes too

For those who approve of compression, I offer up this little anthology.

Had to look up the phrase

Elusive Trope — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 17:18:00 +0000

In reply to Never(well almost never) try

Had to look up the phrase "smells of the lamp"

Said of a literary production manifestly laboured. Plutarch attributes the phrase to Pytheas the orator, who said, “The orations of Demosthenes smell of the lamp,” alluding to the current tale that the great orator lived in an underground cave lighted by a lamp, that he might have no distraction to his severe study.

Learn something new everyday.

compress, everyone writes too

Elusive Trope — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 17:14:29 +0000

In reply to Never(well almost never) try

compress, everyone writes too much.

speaking of which - just finishing up my next blog. :0

Never(well almost never) try

Flavius — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 16:47:20 +0000

In reply to Nice. It strikes me as

Never(well almost never) try thinking of a better word.

Doesn't mean not to edit i.e. compress, everyone writes too much. But don't try thinking of a better word. "Smells of the lamp,."

Nice. It strikes me as

Elusive Trope — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 16:32:38 +0000

In reply to (No subject)

Nice. It strikes me as appropriate (can't think of a better word right now) painting for the self approaching the coming new year. Both the staying in a place and the journey to other places. Two sides of our impulses. Work this land and seek new horizons.

(No subject)

Flavius — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 16:31:30 +0000

In reply to Musee des Beaux Arts About

Musee des Beaux Arts About

Flavius — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 14:07:58 +0000

In reply to Those Winter Sundays

Musee des Beaux Arts

About suffering they were never wrong,

The old Masters: how well they understood

Its human position: how it takes place

While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along'

How, when the aged are reverently,passionately waiting

For the miraculous birth , there always must be

Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating

On a pond at the edge of the wood:

They never forgot

That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course

Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot

Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse

Scratches its innocent behind on a tree

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance : how everything turns away

Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may

Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,

But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone

As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green

Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen

Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,

Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

W.H. Auden