Friday, December 31, 2021

Same Procedure as Every Year

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. 

 

Dinner for One

Sunday, December 19, 2021

Beers & Books CLXXIX – Italo Svevo

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.

Aron Hector Schmitz
(19 December 1861 – 13 September 1928)


Wednesday, December 08, 2021

Beers & Books CLXXIV – Peig Sayers

“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)

Beers & Books CLXXIII – Goffredo Parise

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.

Goffredo Parise (* 8. Dezember 1929 – 31. August 1986)

Wednesday, December 01, 2021

Beers & Books CLXX – Stefan Zweig

"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."

Stefan Zweig
(28 November 1881 – 23 February 1942)

Monday, November 29, 2021

Rare visitor

A buzzard taking a rest ...

... this morning in Seanhenge.

 

Sunday, November 28, 2021

Thursday, November 25, 2021

End Violence [...] Now!

My baker said it by using
a German idiom:
Violence
against women
does not come
into the bag

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

Wednesday, November 24, 2021

Beers & Books CLXVIII – Arundhati Roy

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.


Arundhati Roy *24 November 1961

Beers & Books CLXVII– Ricardo Piglia

A body is a body,
but only voices are capable of love

Ricardo Piglia (24 November 1941 – 6 January 2017)

Monday, November 22, 2021

Friday, November 19, 2021

Thursday, November 18, 2021

Beers & Books CLXVI – Marcel Proust

 

Remembrance of things past
is not necessarily the remembrance of things
as they were.

Marcel Proust ( 10 July 1871 –  18 November 1922)

Wednesday, November 17, 2021

Beers & Books CLXV – Banksy

“Art should comfort the disturbed
and disturb the comfortable.”

 

Tuesday, November 16, 2021

Beers & Books CLXIV – One Thousand and One Nights

One Thousand and One Nights

Ending

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

Sunday, November 14, 2021

Saturday, November 13, 2021

Friday, November 12, 2021

Beers & Books CLXIII – John McGahern

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)

Beers & Books CLXII – Rodin

 

He who is discouraged after a failure
is not a real artist.

Auguste Rodin (12 November 1840 – 17 November 1917)

Thursday, November 11, 2021

Tuesday, November 09, 2021

Beers & Books CLX – Ivan Turgenev

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)

Sunday, November 07, 2021

Beers & Books CXLIX – Antonio Skármeta

Poetry belongs to those who use it,
not those who write it!

Antonio Skármeta * 7 November 1940

Beers & Books CXLVIII – Albert Camus

Life is meaningless,
but worth living,
provided you recognize it's meaningless.


Albert Camus (7 November 1913 – 4 January 1960)


Saturday, November 06, 2021

Beers & Books CXLVII – Robert Musil

... 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.

Robert Musil (6 November 1880 – 15 April 1942)

The Man Without Qualities


Friday, November 05, 2021

Thursday, November 04, 2021

Laughing Lhursday*

Rocket drive,
computer,
indicator flowers.


Prognosis:
As soon as all police cars will look like this prototype
there will be no crime on this planet.


* [For first time visitors]:
Typo in the title? Nah. It's just that
I would not let a tiny T spoil an avantgardistic alliteration.

Wednesday, November 03, 2021

In the Fog*

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.

 Hermann Hesse, November 1905

* For a change, but the first and fourth stanza, translated by me.

Tuesday, November 02, 2021

Heron

On top of the mighty fir
Standing sentinel
over Seanhenge

Monday, November 01, 2021

Beers & Books CXLVI – Stephen Crane

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.

Stephen Crane
(November 1, 1871 – June 5, 1900)

Thursday, October 28, 2021

Erasme de Rotterdam

 

"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

Wednesday, October 27, 2021

Beers & Books CXLV – Dylan Thomas

"Join the army and see the next world."

Dylan Thomas (27 October 1914 – 9 November 1953)

Friday, October 22, 2021

Friday is Skyday

...

 

Reading tears in my eyes

 "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."

Friday, October 15, 2021

Beers & Books CXLI – Stefano D'Arrigo

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)

Stefano D'Arrigo (15 October 1919 – 2 May 1992)

Thursday, October 14, 2021

Laughing Lhursday*

There it had happened.
During a photo session
Burro lost balance
and a second later found himself
backwards on the beer bottom.

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.

Wednesday, October 13, 2021

Another year survived

Although I know that the longer I live the shorter I'll be dead, I shan't crow about.
I might regret, once ...

Tuesday, October 12, 2021

Today 529 years ago

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)

Thursday, October 07, 2021

Beers & Books CXXXIX – Anna Politkovskaya

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.

Tuesday, October 05, 2021

Beers & Books CXXXVIII – Flann O'Brien

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)

Beers&Books CXXXVII – Denis Diderot

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.

Denis Diderot ( 5 October 1713 –  31 July 1784)

Sunday, October 03, 2021

Beers & Books CXXXVI – Louis Aragon

We know that the nature of genius is
to provide idiots with ideas twenty years later.

Louis Aragon (3 October 1897 – 24 December 1982)