If counted well the Germans today can/could watch Dinner for One (The 90th Birthday) 13 times at different times on various TV-channels, and apart from the original in various German dialects, inclusive Schwiizerdütsch (Swiss German). Very strange folks, the Germans. Well, judge for yourself.
Tiny tip-off: Be absolutely determined not to laugh.
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| È un modo comodo di vivere quello di credersi grande di una grandezza latente. * It is comfortable to live in the belief that you are great, though your greatness is latent. |
Cecilia Bartoli *4 June 1966
Antonio Vivaldi (4 March 1678 – 28 July 1741)
Il Giardino Armonico
Conductor and flautino soloist:
Giovanni Antonini *1965
Concert Master and Violin:
Enrico Onofri * 1 April 1967
Lute:
Luca Pianca *1958
Oboe:
Maria Grazia d'Alessio
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| ... |
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (11 December 1918 – 3 August 2008)
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| “If curses came from the heart, it would be a sin. But if it is from the lips they come, and we use them only to give force to our speech, they are a great relief to the heart.” |
Peig Sayers (1873 – 8 December 1958)
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| Non sopporto più le persone che mi annoiano anche pochissimo, che mi fanno perdere anche un solo secondo di vita. * I can no longer stand people who bore me even a little, who make me lose even a second of my life. |
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| "All the pale horses of the apocalypse have stormed through my life, revolution, starvation, devaluation of currency and terror, epidemics, emigration; I have seen the great ideologies of the masses grow and spread out before my eyes. Fascism in Italy, National Socialism in Germany, Bolshevism in Russia, and, above all, that archpestilence, nationalism, which poisoned our flourishing European culture." |
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| The ratio of literacy to illiteracy is constant, but nowadays the illiterates can read and write. |
Alberto Moravia (28 November 1907 - 26 September 1990)
Iakovos Kambanellis (2 December 1921 – 29 March 2011)
Mikis Theodorakis (29 July 1925 – 2 September 2021)
Maria Farantouri * 28 November 1947
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| My baker said it by using a German idiom: Violence against women does not come into the bag |
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| And in 13 other languages: SAY NO to violence against women! Living in freedom without violence |
International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women
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| The trouble is that once you see it, you can't unsee it. And once you've seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an act as speaking out. There's no innocence. Either way, you're accountable. |
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| A body is a body, but only voices are capable of love |
Ricardo Piglia (24 November 1941 – 6 January 2017)
Camille Thomas * May 1988
Beatrice Berrut * 19 April 1985
Franz Schubert (31 January 1797 – 19 November 1828)
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| Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were. |
From the very beginning of this blog I was not keen to make many "friends".
The more thankful I am that I "found" a few.
When
Jams who died eight years ago, aged 54, I thought I can't give up
blogging because of Claude; when Claude died this year, aged 92, I
thought, ...
... but now it happened.
There is an Ending
Andrew aka "my" Don QuiScottie has announced it.
Thus, time for "his" Seanso (Panza) to follow.
Not as rigorously, though, as there are quite a few authors and their books scheduled; and now and then I might answer comments in case there are some.
As a man and a donkey do know more than a man, to completely delete Omnium is not planned, so far, either.
May most of the time be happiness upon you.
Sean
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| The best of life is life lived quietly, where nothing happens but our calm journey through the day, where change is imperceptible and the precious life is everything. |
John McGahern (12 November 1934 – 30 March 2006)
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| He who is discouraged after a failure is not a real artist. |
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| In the end, nature is inexorable: it has no reason to hurry and, sooner or later, it takes what belongs to it. Unconsciously and inflexibly obedient to its own laws, it doesn't know art, just as it doesn't know freedom, just as it doesn't know goodness. |
Ivan Turgenev (9 November 1818 – 3 September 1883)
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| Life is meaningless, but worth living, provided you recognize it's meaningless. |
Albert Camus (7 November 1913 – 4 January 1960)
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| ... there is a particular propensity in the world for people, wherever they appear in great numbers, to permit themselves collectively everything that would be forbidden them individually. |
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| Rocket drive, computer, indicator flowers. |
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| Strange, to wander in the fog! Alone each bush and stone, No tree does see the other, Each is alone. [...] Strange, to wander in the fog! Life is loneliness. No man knows the other, Each is alone. |
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| A serious prophet upon predicting a flood should be the first man to climb a tree. This would demonstrate that he was indeed a seer. |
"Nowadays the rage for possession has got to such a pitch that there is nothing in the realm of nature, whether sacred or profane, out of which profit cannot be squeezed."
Erasmus of Rotterdam (28 October 1469 – 12 July 1536)
Jordi Savall * 1 August 1941
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| "Join the army and see the next world." |
Dylan Thomas (27 October 1914 – 9 November 1953)
"If I go into the forest and meet a man with a thin jumper who has been walking around there for three days and screams out of fear when he sees me and I say he is safe with me and then he hugs me and cries for 20 minutes, I have never experienced anything like that."
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| Measured by the number of titles, D'Arrigo's literary oeuvre is slim - one volume of poetry, two novels - but his monumental magnum opus, Horcynus Orca, whose perfection occupied him for decades, was perceived as a masterpiece of Italian literature when the first edition appeared in 1975. The first translation of this novel into another language 40 years later, the translation into German by Moshe Kahn in 2015, was consistently hailed by literary critics as the discovery of a hitherto internationally unknown piece of world literature. Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version) |
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| There it had happened. During a photo session Burro lost balance and a second later found himself backwards on the beer bottom. |
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| As rescue was at hand the bur(ro)lesque had a happy end, though. Afterwards, Burro felt, as he said, Aphrodite-esque risen from the foam. |
* [For first time visitors]:
Typo in the title?
Nah.
It's just that
I would not let a tiny T spoil an avantgardistic alliteration.
Although I know that the longer I live the shorter I'll be dead, I shan't crow about.
I might regret, once ...
The American who was the first to discover Columbus made a fatal discovery.
Der Amerikaner, der den Kolumbus zuerst entdeckte,
machte eine böse Entdeckung. [G 183]
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742 - 1799)
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| We are hurtling back into a Soviet abyss, into an information vacuum that spells death from our own ignorance. All we have left is the internet, where information is still freely available. For the rest, if you want to go on working as a journalist, it's total servility to Putin. Otherwise, it can be death, the bullet, poison, or trial – whatever our special services, Putin's guard dogs, see fit.* |
Anna Politkovskaya (30 August 1958 – 7 October 2006)
*Today 15 years ago, Anna Politkovskaya got murdered. Vladimir Putin celebrated his 54th birthday.
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| When health is bad and your heart feels strange, And your face is pale and wan, When doctors say that you need a change, A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN. |
Flann O'Brien (5 October 1911 – 1 April 1966)
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| We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter. * Skepticism is the first step on the road to philosophy. * The Christian religion teaches us to imitate a God that is cruel, insidious, jealous, and implacable in his wrath. * Watch out for the fellow who talks about putting things in order! Putting things in order always means getting other people under your control. * No man has received from nature the right to command his fellow human beings. |
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| We know that the nature of genius is to provide idiots with ideas twenty years later. |
