Wednesday, April 25, 2012
A Letter to Three Wives (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1949)
They do not, I am as sure as I am sorry, make them like this any more. A great great film.
As a bonus, the French poster. They order this matter better in... &c. &c. &c.
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Frank Womack (1888-1968)
Odilon Redon (1840-1916)
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Simnel Cake
My parents, purveyors of high-class baked goods, are visiting this weekend. As well as six Florentines (well, it was six Florentines for about ten minutes, now it's a number you can cound on the fingers of only one hand) they brought a simnel cake. Traditional simnel cakes have balls of marzipan on top: either eleven (to represent the twelve apostles minus Judas) or thirteen (to represent the twelve apostles plus Christ). This variant has thirty-nine chocolate Easter eggs. Aside from the troubling theological implications (unless this was a deliberate homage to the 39 Articles), I think this is an improvement.
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
André Foy (c.1880-c.1950)
Very little information available. He worked a lot for Le canard enchaîné, whose current website is here.
Friday, April 06, 2012
Wednesday, April 04, 2012
Meshullam Depiera (early C.13th - after 1260)
How Could You Press For Song
How could you press for song from me,
when my tongue is tied and I'm unworthy,
and pleasure now is gone from poetry,
until Time restores it to me.
And since my flute's music was halted,
my mind was settled on the Talmud's mystery;
the Midrash is what I seek out instead,
and the Mishnah's become a shelter to me:
I study the rules of prayer before standing,
bequeathal's laws in the Order of Owning,
confronting the Book of Creation's secrets
and probing the seven letters' doubling.
What good is the verb's declension and pattern?
Do conjugations make things happen?
Can quadrilateral forms of the verb
teach us of arcs and expanses of circles?
Has grammar ever made a man wise?
Are pedants appointed to lead the people?
All their distinctions just weary the spirit.
There's nothing of worth within their linguistics
(though morphology's known to the masters of Scripture),
and so they come to the greatness of prophets
with the wisdom of letters - hard and soft -
hoping that grammar might cut through their haze,
or the comments of Qimhi, of blessed memory,
and the wise one of Fez, whom they all praise.
The fight over roots and the weaving of words
is the sole achievement of the winged-one's age.
With dots and lines they live out their days;
their hearts heavy, they labour in vain -
for seeing the word's form is sufficient
to know its gender and how it should change.
What are those shifting verbs to me -
full and hollow, weak and strong?
Only eternity, and with it my honour,
moves through me with dance-like song.
Yedi'ot HaMakhnon leHeqer HaShira Ha'Ivrit 4, no. 16, ll. 32-end. From the great great anthology of Spanish Hebrew poetry, The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain 950-1492, translated and edited by Peter Cole. Look it out, you won't regret it.
How could you press for song from me,
when my tongue is tied and I'm unworthy,
and pleasure now is gone from poetry,
until Time restores it to me.
And since my flute's music was halted,
my mind was settled on the Talmud's mystery;
the Midrash is what I seek out instead,
and the Mishnah's become a shelter to me:
I study the rules of prayer before standing,
bequeathal's laws in the Order of Owning,
confronting the Book of Creation's secrets
and probing the seven letters' doubling.
What good is the verb's declension and pattern?
Do conjugations make things happen?
Can quadrilateral forms of the verb
teach us of arcs and expanses of circles?
Has grammar ever made a man wise?
Are pedants appointed to lead the people?
All their distinctions just weary the spirit.
There's nothing of worth within their linguistics
(though morphology's known to the masters of Scripture),
and so they come to the greatness of prophets
with the wisdom of letters - hard and soft -
hoping that grammar might cut through their haze,
or the comments of Qimhi, of blessed memory,
and the wise one of Fez, whom they all praise.
The fight over roots and the weaving of words
is the sole achievement of the winged-one's age.
With dots and lines they live out their days;
their hearts heavy, they labour in vain -
for seeing the word's form is sufficient
to know its gender and how it should change.
What are those shifting verbs to me -
full and hollow, weak and strong?
Only eternity, and with it my honour,
moves through me with dance-like song.
Yedi'ot HaMakhnon leHeqer HaShira Ha'Ivrit 4, no. 16, ll. 32-end. From the great great anthology of Spanish Hebrew poetry, The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain 950-1492, translated and edited by Peter Cole. Look it out, you won't regret it.
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