“History is...

...that certainty produced at the point where 

the imperfections of memory 

meet the inadequacies of documentation.” 

Julian Barnes

Note: The artwork above is from the series Heroic Rising (2018) by Christos Bokoros – a detail from a four-fold dedicated to the Exodus in Missolonghi. 

Free time and a fish

Lately, I have noticed that many titles of children's books answer to the parents's needs for raising a child, eg: how to eat your lunch, how to wash your hands before lunch, how much mummy loves you, etc. I realise the need for these titles and the convenience they offer but I'm wondering how compatible they are with the development of the children's interests and curiosity. How effective are they, actually, for cultivating  a child's imagination, language and spirit? 

This is why I liked  "This is a poem that heals Fish"  so much – it is an introduction to something as useless as poetry might be considered. In it, we follow a little boy as he tries to heal his friend - a red fish that feels sad and very bored. When he asks his mother what to do, she advises him to tell his friend a poem. But little Arthur doesn't know what a poem is, nor where to find one. He imagines it as some kind of a tangible object and so, he starts searching for it inside home and outside, in the neighbourhood.

I really loved the way Jean-Pierre Siméon gives the definition  of a poem. Being both lyrical and succinct, the French poet –novelist and playwright, too–  brings together the thoughts, feelings and experiences of many different people: a romantic bicycle mechanic, a realist  baker, an aged immigrant who waters his rhododendrons with devotion; Arthur's modern grandmother and his amateur poet grandfather. He even gives voice to an expressive canary named Aristophanes. Their words –simple answers to the same one question– shape a poem which magically gives joy to the little fish. Arthur is happy, too. 

This story helps young readers understand the concept of poetry, its cultural power and the abstract process that precedes writing and reading a poem. The book is so beautifully composed that even adults will be charmed. It has a spectacular impressionistic illustration with vibrant colours by Olivier Tallec and, also, the reputation that it is the new "Little Prince" – that's quite an exaggeration. However, this tale emits an equally dreamlike sense of simplicity and wisdom as the classic one does. 

''This is a poem that heals fish" is one of those books that give space and time to the children to explore themselves; their thoughts, their senses, their abilities, their choices. And to express their being, i.e. to communicate – contemplate, for example, write their own poem and read it, afterwards, to their friends or parents. Full of inspiration, unpretentious childishness and the necessary potions of humor and thoughtful pondering, this book really sets the foundations for a truly free spirit, i.e. an unprejudiced human being.

"In Berlin, 

...Schinkel fought to realise his vision, Kollwitz struggled to shape her fear, Isherwood –living on a tutor's stipend– reworked reality, and Bowie made his journey from addiction to indepedence, from celebrity paranoia to radical, unmasked messenger who told us, all the fat- skinny people, all the nobody people who had dreamt of a new world of equals, that we were beautiful, that we could be ourselves."

Note: The photograph was drawn in random from the internet and is possibly extracted from Hero: David Bowie by the English journalist Lesley-Ann Jones.

Christmas Wishes

Retain each charm that gladdens home, 
And dear friendships that can impart
A Christmas banquet for the heart!

Be Merry!

Note: This year's wishes are inspired by a poem Helen Maria Williams wrote "To Mrs. K___, On her sending me an English plum-cake at Paris". 

"A bad review... 

...may spoil your breakfast, but you shouldn't allow it to spoil your lunch." 

Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1933, when he had already been residing in Paris for thirteen years. He was the first Russian to be presented with the highest of literary distinctions for "... the strict artistry with which he carried on the classical Russian traditions in the writing of prose and poetry." 

Russia's last classic author, who was born on this day in 1870, " ...made everybody uncomfortable. Having got this severe and sharp eye for real art, feeling acutely the power of a word, he was full of hatred towards every kind of artistic excess. In times when (quoting Andrey Bely) "throwing pineapples to the sky" was the order of the day, Bunin's very presence made words stick in people's throats," Boris Zaitsev, a fellow author and member of the Moscow literary group that Bunin used to attended, once said.   

This texture of his works is known as the "Bunin brocade" and is considered to be one of the richest in the language. You can listen to the author reading "Jericho", one of the poems he also wrote, here. Unfortunately it is in Russian but you can still get the sense of the language and his speech. 

      Untitled

“Outside the leaves on the trees constricted slightly; they were the deep done green of the beginning of autumn. It was a Sunday in September. There would only be four. The clouds were high and the swallows would be here for another month or so before they left for the south before they returned again next summer.” 

Ali Smith

                                                                                

Notes: The painting is titled "Wineglasses" and it's an early study by the American artist John Singer Sargent, considered "the leading portrait artist of his generation". / Have a nice September! (Here, at last.)

Views on an author 

''A man with true, warm heart, and a soul and an intellect, — with life to his fingerprints; earnest, sincere, and reverent; very tender and modest. And I am not sure that he is not a very great man. He has very keen perceptive power; but what astonishes me is, that his eyes are not large and deep. He seems to me to see everything accurately; and how he can do so with his small eyes, I cannot tell. They are not keen eyes, either, but quite undistinguished in any way. His nose is straight and handsome, his mouth expressive of sensibility and emotion. He is tall and erect, with an air free, brave, and manly. When conversing, he is full of gesture and force, and loses himself in his subject. There is no grace or polish. Once in a while, his animation gives place to a singularly quiet expression, out of those eyes to which I have objected; an indrawn, dim look, but which at the same time makes you feel that he is at that instant taking deepest note of what is before him. It is a strange, lazy glance, but with a power in it quite unique. It does not seem to penetrate through you, but to take you into itself."

Notes: The above are words by Sophia Hawthorne, in a letter to her mother (1850), as quoted in Herman Melville: Mariner and Mystic (1921) by Raymond Melbourne Weaver. // Herman Melville added greatly to the American Renaissance period with his works –novels, short stories and poems. He is best known, though, for one of them: the classical whaling novel Moby-Dick which has a wide appeal, even to our time. In spring 2011 Plymouth University hosted a unique symposium and exhibition about the whale. It was created by two artists inspired by their mutual obsession with the great American novel and the subject of the whale. Out of this project, another one was created: The Big Read, the online version of Melvilles's magisterial tome – each of its 135 chapters are read out aloud by a mixture of famous artists, academics and the unknown. You can listen to the podcasts online here. Each one, publicly and freely accessible, is followed by a piece of art and some facts about whales at present. Enjoy!