Saturday Night Music – Dmitri Hvorostovsky

Dmitri Hvorostovsky (16 October 1962 – 22 November 2017)

Beers & Books CXLII– Oscar Wilde

We live in an age
when unnecessary things
are our only necessities.

Oscar Wilde *October 16th, 1854

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)

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.

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 ...

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)

Beers & Books CXL – Leonardo Padura

. . .

Leonardo Padura * 9 October 1955

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.

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)

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) 

Saturday Night Music – Alma Deutscher

Alma Deutscher *February 2005

Franz Schubert (31 January 1797 – 19 November 1828)

Friday is Skyday

...