Quotables

A recurring featurette where I type good stuff that I have read or heard lately, in an effort to procrastinate instead of reading more stuff.

in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little lame baloonman

whistles far and wee

and eddyandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer
old baloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisabel come dancing

from hopscotch and jump-rope and

it's
spring
and
the
goat-footed

baloonMan whistles

far
and
wee
--e e cummings (1923)
Yeah, I know it's not spring and I have read this poem aplenty before today, but the words "mud-luscious" and "puddle-wonderful" were dancing around my brain today because it was 52 (FIFTY TWO) degrees and everything was muddy and slushy. But no matter. I spent some time tramping around the fields by my apartment while waiting for my laundry (getting my sneakers very gross in the process) and then opened all the windows in here. It is hard to be grumpy when the air smells like dirt.

"Rubens is the nastiest most vulgar noisy painter that ever lived. His men are twisted to pieces. His modeling is always crooked & dropsical & no marking is ever in its right place or anything like what he sees in nature, his people never have bones, his color is dashy & flashy, his people must all be in the most violent action, must use the strength of Hercules if a little watch is to be wound up, the wind must be blowing great guns even in a chamber or dining room, everything must be making a noise & tumbling about, there must be monsters too for his men were not monstrous enough for him. His pictures always put me in mind of chamber pots & I would not be sorry if they were all burnt."
--Thomas Eakins in a letter to his father, December 2, 1869, excerpted in American Art to 1900: A Documentary History: U of California Press, 592.
One thing I am learning from this American art class is that 19th century artists and art reviews are HILARIOUS. I don't feel this strongly about Rubens (I quite like his colors and compositions a lot, actually), but I enjoyed this too.

And near the unpeopled stream-sides, on the ground,
By her Spring cry the moorhen's nest is found,
Where the drained flood-lands flaunt their marigold.
--Part of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's sonnet (I think it's a sonnet), Spring.
I came across this poem (sonnet?) while doing some research about Botticelli--Rossetti wrote it in honor of Botticelli's Primavera. And as I seem to be fixated on spring (spring spring spriiing) I copied it down.

"walnut church pews. 9ft. 7in. over 60 years old . good condition $100.00 each"
I was on craigslist looking for a chair (unsuccessfully, so if anyone has a chair they want to give me..) and under furniture was listed some church pews--with pictures!--for sale. My first thought was, "I want that," before cooler heads prevailed and I realized that they would be 1. probably uncomfortable, and 2. waaay too big for my apartment

On the reported Spice Girls musical, Viva Forever, "For many readers this may consist of Wannabe (their ubiquitous debut hit) and "the other ones". But for a sizeable minority of young people who were children when the songs came out but will have significant disposable income by the time the show arrives on stage the list of meaningful Spice Girls songs is much longer and includes the likes of Say You'll Be There, 2 Become 1, Mama, Spice Up Your Life and Viva Forever."
I don't know about the "significant disposable income" part, but would I go see a Spice Girls song-based musical? Absolutely I would. Check out the article here.

Un segno risplendente
della bontà di Dio!
Per tre sere dell'anno solamente,
all'uscire dal coro,
Dio ci concede di vedere il sole
che batte sulla fonte e la fa d'oro.
--Puccini, Suor Angelica
Translation:
A shining sign
of God's goodness!
On three evenings only in the year,
as we come out of chapel,
God allows us to see the sun
falling upon the fountain and
turning it to gold.
I went to see Il Trittico over the weekend (gushing blog post about that forthcoming) and while Puccini is not my favorite, Italian + nuns = win. Suor Angelica is lovely, lovely too. I think it's something about the all-female cast that I like.

Roux: I should probably warn ya: you make friends with us, you make enemies with everyone else.
Vianne: Is that a promise?
Roux: It's a guarantee.
--Chocolat. My friends and I watched it last night (after procuring all manner of chocolate and strawberry champagne from the grocery store). What a good move it is. And Johnny Depp (Roux) as a River Rat? I heartily approve of him, his Irish accent, and his French braid. I love the score, the dialogue, the scenery, and Vianne's clothes. Oh, and the chocolate, of course!

And a picture, worth 1000 quotations:Winslow Homer, Apple Picking, 1878, watercolor over graphite
Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago

Quotables

I'm in the process of battening down the hatches, or more accurately, staring out my window at the ice accumulation on the tree in front of my apartment. I still have class in a few hours, despite all the dire predictions for the Icepocalypse gripping the Midwest. I am dubious. I am not so dubious, though, to not hope with every fibre of my being that my Italian class will be canceled this evening, because it is Exam Night and I do not want to go.

So anyway, since I am clearly not reading or studying and I want to stay in my pajamas, I am procrastinating on here! And since the semester is in full swing and I spend every waking hour reading (when not with my friends or knitting or carousing), here are some of the best things I've read or heard this week. I suspect this may become a regular feature.

"'Umar said that the Messenger of Allah was with a group of his Companions when a bedouin came who had caught a lizard. The bedouin asked, 'Who is this?' They replied, 'The Prophet of Allah.' He said, 'By al-Lat and al-'Uzza, I do not believe in you nor does this lizard believe in you.' He threw it in front of the Prophet who said, 'Lizard!' It answered in a clear tongue which everyone heard, 'At your service, O adornment of the One who will bring the Rising!'...The bedouin became Muslim." --Qadi 'Iyad ibn Musa al-Yahsubi, translated by Aisha Abdarrahman Bewley, Madinah Press Inverness: Scotland, p 171
--I love this. I am picturing a lizard like Liz from the Magic School Bus. Most of the Muhammad parable-type stories (showing his miracles or kindness) were quite excellent.

I LOVE THE WAY PEOPLE EXPRESSED THEMSELVES 100 YEARS AGO. IN THE "IN YEARS PAST" SECTION OF THE P.J. THERE WAS A STORY OF A WOMAN WHO SHOT HER HUSBAND IN THE BACK OF THE HEAD AND KILLED HIM. THE LAST LINE OF THE STORY IS "IN VIEW OF CERTAIN KNOWLEDGE OF THE AFFAIRS OF THE TWO, SENTIMENT RAN HIGH IN FAVOR OF MRS. VOGT."
--email yesterday from my dad. The P.J. is the Jamestown Post-Journal, and they usually have a page of news stories from 100, 50, and 25 years ago. They are usually pretty good.

Paraphrased:
Sebastiano del Piombo: Um, Michelangelo? The Last Judgment Scene for the Sistine Chapel? I think perchance you could paint in oil on stone instead of fresco.
Michelangelo: What? What? Why would I do that?
Sebastiano: Well, it would last longer for one thing, and I've been experimenting with it a lot lately, with wonderful results.
Michelangelo: Absolutely not. Oil painting is a womanly art [he either said that or "effeminate," I can't remember] and I do not take advice from underlings. Go away.
Sebastiano: See, the problem is, I have an in with the Pope, and I told him to prime the wall for oil, not fresco. Sorry. Just trying to be helpful.
Michelangelo: Then we'll tear down the wall. And despite being your son's godfather, I am not going to talk to you for the rest of our lives.
--And he didn't. Thus proving, yet again, that Michelangelo is a diva and a real piece of work.

"By now I was actually starting to feel a little hypoglycemic. I needed a sugar hit. Luckily there was a small cookie provided. It had caught my eye earlier due to it's baffling presentation: see image 4, above. It appears to be in an evidence bag from the scene of a crime. A CRIME AGAINST BLOODY COOKING. Either that or some sort of back-street underground cookie, purchased off a gun-toting maniac high on his own supply of yeast. You certainly wouldn't want to be caught carrying one of these through customs. Imagine biting into a piece of brass Richard. That would be softer on the teeth than the specimen above."
--excerpted from a complaint letter to Sir Richard Branson, owner of Virgin Atlantic, about the really bad airplane food on a flight from Mumbai to Heathrow. The pictures included are worth a thousand words. Full article? See here. It's hilarious.

"[Winslow Homer] is almost barbarously simple, and, to our eye, he is horribly ugly; but there is nevertheless something one likes about him. What is it? For ourselves, it is not his subjects. We frankly confess that we detest his subjects--his barren plank fences, his glaring, bald, blue skies, his big, dreary, vacant lots of meadows, his freckled, straight -haired Yankee urchins, his flat-breasted maidens, suggestive of a dish of rural doughnuts and pie, his calico sun-bonnets, his flannel shirts, his cowhide boots...a very honest, and vivid, and manly piece of work. Our only complaint with it is that it is damnably ugly!"
--Henry James on Winslow Homer's paintings in the New York Exhibition of 1875, excerpted in American Art to 1900: A Documentary History: U of California Press, p 575-576. About this: 1. Henry James wanted to be European, so I don't think he really has much room to criticize Homer, who is lovely, and 2. as my professor put it, "James was a better critic than he was a novelist, in my opinion." His whole review is witty and snippy, although I still have no idea what "rural doughnuts and pie" actually is. I would read more reviews if they were all like this.

"We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, 'O me! O life!...of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless...of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?' Answer. That you are here--that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?"
--Dead Poets Society

Stay safe out there everyone--there is a storm on!