Tragedies of loneliness and sadness, empty desires and uncommunicable loves, dangerous illusions and madness; yet written with voluptuous, gorgeous language, like refined and spare haiku prose-poems; the works of Yasunari Kawabata are a last stand of meaning and elegance in a world robbed of its significance. Like all who battle against time and the … Continue reading Yasunari Kawabata , on his birthday June 11
“Solitude produces originality, bold & astonishing beauty, poetry. But solitude also produces perverseness, the disproportionate, the absurd, and the forbidden.” ― Thomas Mann, Death in Venice Beautiful words questioning the value and pursuit of Beauty, like an Ourosbouros as a narrative swallowing its own tail; Thomas Mann uses disease and death as metaphors … Continue reading Thomas Mann, on his birthday June 6
A Romantic who modeled himself and his poetry on Byron and supported the Greek Revolution with his hero, invented the modern Russian language as it is used today, inspired his student Gogol and many admirers including Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Chekov, Bunin, and Turgenev, foresaw his own death in the Great Book Eugene Onegin, which was gloriously … Continue reading Alexander Pushkin, on his birthday June 6
A brilliant intellect in service to a deep humanity and a compassionate heart, Bill Moyers set the gold standard of journalism, news commentary, and a public discourse of civility, reason, and openness. His honesty and fairness, curiosity, liveliness, and boundless empathy modeled not only how the Fourth Estate may best serve its purpose in … Continue reading Bill Moyers, on his birthday June 5
“The artist, and particularly the poet, is always an anarchist in the best sense of the word. He must heed only the call that arises within him from three strong voices: the voice of death, with all its foreboding, the voice of love and the voice of art.” ― Federico García Lorca Poems … Continue reading Federico Garcia Lorca, on his birthday June 5
Inheritor of Walt Whitman’s free verse based on the natural rhythms of breathing and meant to be spoken aloud, and also the prose of Herman Melville and the philosophy of Emerson and Thoreau, inspired by visions of William Blake reading his poetry and shaped by his study of William Carlos Williams and the collaborative … Continue reading Allen Ginsberg, on his birthday June 4
“I envision dreams, memories, and reality like a Möbius strip whose sides are indistinguishable from one another.” Mircea Cartarescu Blinding, a translation into words of the visions of Hieronymus Bosch, part of a magisterial trilogy which reimagines the Biblical story of human origin and destiny, and in the original Romanian written like Vikram Seth’s … Continue reading Mircea Cartarescu, on his birthday June 1
“Oh while I live, to be the ruler of life, not a slave, to meet life as a powerful conqueror, and nothing exterior to me will ever take command of me.” Walt Whitman Inventor of free verse as an American poetry, liberated from historical forces and the formalism of British meter and structure, … Continue reading Walt Whitman, on his birthday May 31
An immense and enigmatic brilliance and scholarship, expressed in gorgeous prose; Roberto Calasso forges an art of myths, history, philosophy, literature, in fact the whole of Western Civilization. His works are like the colored patterns of light shining through stained glass windows, transforming and illuminating his subjects in beautiful, glorious ways. His work as … Continue reading Roberto Calasso, on his birthday May 30
“There are two kinds of madness one should guard against, Ben. One is the belief that we can do everything. The other is the belief that we can do nothing.” Andre Brink, A Dry White Season, p.304 An African magical realism of huge interlinked narratives, history and myth, the multilevel richness of the … Continue reading Andre Brink, on his birthday May 29
Dollhouse Park Conservatory & Imaginarium 