Dafydd ap Gwilym XVI

It's St. David's Day again.

May the Welsh enjoy celebrating their Saint.

Omnium is celebrating their Poet.

Voilà.

It's a pity for me that the girl whose praises I am always singing, and who holds her court in the wood, does not know of the conversation I had about her with the gray friar today.

I went to the friar to confess my sins. I admitted to him that I have been without any doubt an idolatrous poet since I have always loved and adored a certain lovely girl with dark eyebrows, "And", I told him, "I have never had a single favour from my murdress, nor has my lady ever allowed me a moment of happiness: in spite of this I love her continually and am wasted with pining for my darling. I carry her praise through the whole land of Wales, and in spite of this I live without her, though I long to hear her in my bed between me and the wall."

The brother spoke this to me: "I will give you good advice: if you have loved this foamwhite girl (merely the colour of paper) forso long, it is time now to think of lessening your punishment on that dreadful day which comes to all of us, for all this is of no benefit to your soul. Cease from making rhymes and accustom yourself instead to saying your prayers, for God did not redeem the souls of men that they might make rhymes and elegiacs, and your minstrels' songs are nothing but flattery and idle bawling. This praise of the body is not good, and leads the soul to the devil."

Then I answered each word that the friar had spoken.

"God is not so cruel as old men tell us: nor will God cut off the gentle soul of a man for loving a woman or a girl. Three things are loved by the whole world.: women, fine weather, and good health, and girls are the fairest flowers in heaven next to God himself. Every man of all peoples is born of woman save these three: Adam, Eve, Melchizedek, and so it is not surprising that man loves girls and women. Gladness falls from Heaven, all misery comes from Hell.
Song makes glad old and young, sick and healthy, and I have an equal right to make poems as you have to pray, I have the same right to sing for my bread as you beg for it. Are not hymns and sequences but other kinds of odes and elegiacs? And are not the psalms of David poems to the good God?

God does not feed man with one food and one relish, he gives him time to eat and a time to worship, a time to pray and a time to make poems. Song springs up at every feast to give pleasure to the ladies, paters are said in church to seek the land of Paradise. Yscuthach drinking with his poets spoke the truth:
'A happy face, his house is full
A sad face, evil and bitterness.'

Though some love holiness, others love being glad together, and there are few men who can make a sweet verse though everyone can say a prayer. And so, my holy brother, I do not think that singing is the greatest sin. When men are as ready to hear paters as the harp, as ready as the girls of Gwynedd are to hear gay songs, then my right hand I'll say paters all day and for ever without ceasing. Till then shame on Dafydd if he sings paters instead of poems!"

More Strong than Time

Amongst quite a few other personalities - f.e. Levi Strauss, and Johnny Cash, it's also this gentleman's birthday.

Victor Hugo

To make up for the snowball I once couldn't resist to throw at Monsieur's forehead, ...

Statue in Besancon

here's one of his loveliest poems:

More strong than time

Since I have set my lips to your full cup, my sweet,
Since I my pallid face between your hands have laid,
Since I have known your soul, and all the bloom of it,
And all the perfume rare, now buried in the shade;

Since it was given to me to hear on happy while,
The words wherin your heart spoke all its mysteries,
Since I have seen you weep, and since I have seen you smile,
Your lips upon my lips, and your eyes upon my eyes;

Since I have known above my forehead glance and gleam,
A ray, a single ray, of your star, veiled always,
Since I have felt the fall, upon my lifetime's stream,
Of one rose petal plucked from the roses of your days;

I now am bold to say to the swift changing hours,
Pass, pass upon your way, for I grow never old,
Fleet to the dark abysm with all your fading flowers,
One rose that none will pluck, within my heart I hold.

Your flying wings may smite, but they can never spill
The cup fulfilled of love, from which my lips are wet;
My heart has far more fire than you can frost to chill,
My soul more love than you can make my soul forget.

Spring is in the Air

First I 'only' heard their calls. Minutes later:

And suddenly the sky is dark'ning,
And o'er the theater away,
One sees, within a blackish swarming,
A host of cranes pass on its way.

And what a formation! Almost a perfect 'W' of around 150 metres width. Estimating their number as once being taught by an ornithologist, this will have been between 450 and 500 harbingers of spring. Amazing. Wonderful!

Unfortunately it was already too dark for taking photos. Thus my thoughts returned to Schiller.

Sieh da, sieh da, Timotheus,
die Kraniche des Ibikus.

However - sorry Friedrich - that ballad is a bit long for a post. (If you like, you will find it here, though - and in English.)

So I chose a poem which does not contain of cranes, but has been written by a crane.
Enjoy.

I met a seer.
He held in his hands
The book of wisdom.

"Sir", I addressed him,
"Let me read."
"Child", he began.

"Sir", I said,
"Think not that I am a child,
For already I know much
of that which you hold.
Aye, much."

He smiled.
Then he opened the book
And held it before me.

Strange that I should have grown so suddenly blind.

Stephen Crane (1871 - 1900)

The peace of the night.

Trying it this way

Hm.

As Bloggers repeatedly refused to publish my reply to the comments on previous post, I'll try it this way.

Dear All,
thanks for your kindness and patience.
As soon as possible I hope to find leisure to do what I am missing these days - visiting you regularly.
Thus - fingers crossed - until soon.

Hans,
glad you like the 'Irish ones'.

D.E.,
you are great. Thanks a lot! Update will (also) follow as soon as possible.

Nevin,
you are so kind. thank you.
Probably I should not (have) complain(ed) as a) it could be taken as fishing for compliments and b) as it's all my fault; after all, I could have studied harder, hm?
Actually, I am just complaining about that my German is better than my English. :)

CherryPie,
:) ... and I am still oweing you the letters t till z. :)

BP,
ha ha ha ...

Ardent,
you are lovely. Thank you.

jmb,
ah, imagineing how marvellously I could confuse you were my English perfect! :)
Thanks a lot for your kind words, Mylady.

Jams,
thank you. As DE's photos will show, Redcross has indeed changed - like the whole Ireland; if for the better on the long row, I am not sure, though.
Speak to you soon.

What a post (office)

Sometimes I am sad that I can't write in English as fluently as I'd like, 'cause there's so much I'd like to write.

Sometimes .... sometimes I think my readers are lucky that ...

Anyway, here I am back again.

Thanks to those who left kind comments; thanks to those who sent kind and encouraging emails.

Well, once being told 'Sean you are either a genial slob or chaotic genius' - and I am taking this for one of the best compliments I ever got - I'd of course not be writing all the time.

Suddenly I thought of all those thousands of photos waiting to be scanned. :)

Why wouldn't I digitise them years ago? Answer: Look above. :)

Anyway, while scanning each photo brought memories back; all the thoughts I had while taking the pictures.

Amazing.

To give you a glimpse here are some (random) photos I took when striving through the Wicklows in Ireland, in 1985:

As my English is so bad, when reading 'Collier' I did, 'of course', think of the French meaning (jewelry); anyway, what a shop! Two pages in my diary. :)

Opposed you'd found this idyll.

Getting a bit closer ...

... and closer ...

Now, is this a post office?!
And now I wonder if any visitor is able to show me what those two spots in Redcross are looking like nowadays. :)


PS (especially for my dear watchdogs): While writing (not in English) I might bore you with posting some light 'Irish posts'. Don't give up. Stand by. One never knows when I am fancy of writing that Monsanto et al seem to be bucking fastards.

The peace of the night.

Hilarious hiatus

To cut it short:

I am enjoying a lovely little writing frenzy; not in English, though. :)

Won't take too long.

Until soon. Enjoy life.

More Dickens

Today is the 531st birthday of Thomas Morus (Thomas More) and the 197th of Charles Dickens.

There'd be much to tell.

The first an interesting man, the second made my boyhood interesting.

That's why, as I am presently re-reading a fascinating book and thus want to cut this post short, here's a bit more Dickens:

Lucy's Song

How beautiful at eventide

To see the twilight shadows pale,

Steal o'er the landscape, far and wide,

O'er stream and meadow, mound and dale!

How soft is Nature's calm repose

When ev'ning skies their cool dews weep:

The gentlest wind more gently blows,

As if to soothe her in her sleep!

The gay morn breaks,

Mists roll away,

All Nature awakes

To glorious day.

In my breast alone

Dark shadows remain;

The peace it has known

It can never regain.

Ah, the book I am reading: The Praise of Folly.
Erasmus of Rotterdam, by the way, dedicated it to the beheaded author of 'Utopia'.
So, chin up, Thomas.

Friday is Poet's Day

Well, as I've learned that quite a few amongst those inhabitants of the United (?) Kingdom who still have a job do think of Poet's Day as 'Piss off early, tomorrow's Saturday', I decided to post this on Friday night.

Of Petrarca I was thinking, of Hafis and - ha ha, of course: Dafydd ap Gwilym, but although I tried (relatively) hard I did not (yet) find in English what I love in German.

So help me Ringelnatz!

And if it were to prove that not only some caterpillars, but also some ants are pretty clever.

Enjoy:

In Hamburg lebten zwei Ameisen,
Die wollten nach Australien reisen.
Bei Altona auf der Chaussee,
Da taten ihnen die Beine weh,
Und da verzichteten sie weise
Dann auf den letzten Teil der Reise.
Joachim Ringelnatz

And here's the glorious free translation by John Brough which I found at Brian Cole's Brindin Press website.

Two ants who lived in London planned
To walk to Melbourne overland,
But, footsore in Southampton Row
when there were still some miles to go,
They thought it wise to not extend
The Journey to the bitter end.

Tricky caterpillar: Dining like an ant-queen

Now, that's clever:

A kind of European caterpillar can garner royal treatment from ants by mimicking the ch-ch-ch-ch of their queen, says an international research team.

Ants of the species Myrmica schencki can be fooled into carrying certain caterpillars into the colony nurseries where the fakers enjoy full care and five-star dining, explains Jeremy Thomas of the University of Oxford in England. An interloper caterpillar gains most of its body mass while luxuriating in ant care, and then turns into a Maculinea rebeli butterfly.

Learn more 'antazing' details at ScienceNews.

And don't miss hearing the caterpillar and ant sounds

Njam njam njam: Living like god in Ants.

Laughing Lhursday

Typo in the title?
Nah. It's just that I would not let a tiny T spoil an avantgardistic alliteration.

Hard news first.

According to Tetrapilotomos a most reliable deep throat of his eminent trustworthy source has off the records been told by General İlker Başbuğ, the Commander of the mighty Turkish Armed Forces (TAF), that the Turkish military is going to marginally change its device, by changing 'at home' to 'in bed'.

Peace in bed, Peace in the World.

Asked for the reason, after sipping a drop of coffee and reaching for a fig the Commander reportedly said: Sorry, I am urgently awaited at home. You'll find all details at Internation Musing.

Another good news:

Ardent has not got lost in The Numinous Vacuum.

Well, and all good things come in threes:

Especially Asterisk- respectively *-afficionados will enjoy Bock the Robber's 'very open letter' to the PC-Brigade.

I am sure, even if you happen to be a most sensitive contemporary like I am, you'll be *ucking amused.

Personal note to my various Nonsanto watchdoggies: Choose the attributes you like best at Bock's and let me know, so that I may be able to address you in the way you like best.

Closed book opened

Thanks to Tetrapilotomos since yesterday the mechanisms of bourse respectively stock exchange to me no longer are a riddle wrapped up in enigmata:

You buy one hen, one cock,
and sooner or later you have 100 hens.

Then there comes a torrential flood,
and all your hens get drowned.

When in this moment you sigh:
'Ah, if only I had bought ducks', - that's stock exchange.

Felicitous jubilee

Nothing much to be written. Today's the 200th birthday of Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy who died early, whose music, though, is still alive.

Enjoy the 13 year old Itzhak Perlman performing the Violine Concerto ...




... and the 17 year old Felix' Midsummer Night's Dream

James Joyce - Walking into Eternity

It's been said he would have written like Flann O'Brien had he not been crackbrained; and who am I to disagree.
On the other side, what James Augustine Aloysius Joyce put on paper is not the worst one could find in the realm of letters, would you agree?
And: It's Jim's 127th birthday today.

So, what about a(n informative and entertaining) 'walk into eternity' and - who knows? - on the very tower in Sandycove we might get served some pints of plain so that we can raise our glasses on Mr. Joyce and his protagonists.


Part one



Part two





For those who did not have the pleasure yet, and those who couldn't get enough of it - voilà:

Pitch'n'Putt with Joyce'n'Beckett:

Molly Bloom's Soliloquy


Enjoy(ce)! :)