
Please help me spread information on good literature. In other words: please consider sharing a post that you like. Thank you!
Friday, 30 October 2015
Book Review: A Tale of False Fortunes by Enchi Fumiko

Labels:
1960s,
fiction,
historical setting,
Japanese literature,
novels
Thursday, 29 October 2015
New on Lagraziana's Kalliopeion: A Year of Revolutions by Fanny Lewald
Chronicles of Raised and Crushed Hopes:
A Year of Revolutions by Fanny Lewald
Undeniably, the year 1848 was one of unrest in Europe. Starting in France – once more – the spirit of revolution spread like a blaze over virtually the entire continent. The then famous and today largely forgotten German writer Fanny Lewald (1811-1889) witnessed...
Labels:
Lagraziana's Kalliopeion
Monday, 26 October 2015
Poetry Revisited: October by Jean Blewitt
October
(from The Cornflower and Other Poems: 1906)Who is it says May is the crown of the year?
Who is it says June is the gladdest?
Who is it says Autumn is withered and sere,
The gloomiest season and saddest?
You shut to your doors as I come with my train,
And heed not the challenge I'm flinging,
The ruddy leaf washed by the fresh falling rain,
The scarlet vine creeping and clinging!
Come out where I'm holding my court like a queen,
With canopy rare stretching over;
Come out where I revel in amber and green,
And soon I may call you my lover!
Come out to the hillside, come out to the vale,
Come out ere your mood turns to blaming,
Come out where my gold is, my red gold and pale,
Come out where my banners are flaming!
Come out where the bare furrows stretch in the glow,
Come out where the stubble fields glisten,
Where the wind it blows high, and the wind it blows low,
And the lean grasses dance as they listen!
Jean Blewitt
(1862-1934)
Labels:
Poetry Revisited
Friday, 23 October 2015
Book Review: Of Love and Other Demons by Gabriel García Márquez
Love is a very powerful emotion that can overwhelm even the strongest and most disciplined character, especially when it comes by surprise and for the first time. Love always feels like magic, but sometimes it appears to the outsider as if a potent spell has been cast on the lovers or only one of them. When the passion is so strong that it becomes harmful and destructive to the people concerned, it isn’t a long way to think that a demon must be at work. This is what happens in the historical novel Of Love and Other Demons by Gabriel García Márquez set in a time when and a place where superstition was common. It tells a story of first love under particularly unfavourable circumstances and between a most unlikely couple, namely between a scarcely adolescent girl alleged of being possessed by demons and her already middle-aged exorcist in an eighteenth-century sea town somewhere in South America.
Monday, 19 October 2015
Poetry Revisited: An Autumn Landscape by Archibald Lampman
An Autumn Landscape
(from Lyrics of Earth: 1895)No wind there is that either pipes or moans;
The fields are cold and still; the sky
Is covered with a blue-gray sheet
Of motionless cloud; and at my feet
The river, curling softly by,
Whispers and dimples round its quiet gray stones.
Along the chill green slope that dips and heaves
The road runs rough and silent, lined
With plum-trees, misty and blue-gray,
And poplars pallid as the day,
In masses spectral, undefined,
Pale greenish stems half hid in dry gray leaves.
And on beside the river's sober edge
A long fresh field lies black. Beyond,
Low thickets gray and reddish stand,
Stroked white with birch; and near at hand,
Over a little steel-smooth pond,
Hang multitudes of thin and withering sedge.
Across a waste and solitary rise
A ploughman urges his dull team,
A stooped gray figure with prone brow
That plunges bending to the plough
With strong, uneven steps. The stream
Rings and re-echoes with his furious cries.
Sometimes the lowing of a cow, long-drawn,
Comes from far off; and crows in strings
Pass on the upper silences.
A flock of small gray goldfinches,
Flown down with silvery twitterings,
Rustle among the birch-cones and are gone.
This day the season seems like one that heeds,
With fixèd ear and lifted hand,
All moods that yet are known on earth,
All motions that have faintest birth,
If haply she may understand
The utmost inward sense of all her deeds.
Archibald Lampman
(1861-1899)
Labels:
Poetry Revisited
Friday, 16 October 2015
Book Review: The Briefcase by Kawakami Hiromi

Labels:
2000s,
book reviews,
fiction,
Japanese literature,
novels
Monday, 12 October 2015
Poetry Revisited: Torre de Névoa – Tower of Mist by Florbela Espanca
Torre de Névoa
(de Livro
de Mágoas: 1919)
Subi ao alto, à minha Torre esguia,
Feita de fumo, névoas e luar,
E pus-me, comovida, a conversar
Com os poetas mortos, todo o dia.
Contei-lhes os meus sonhos, a alegria
Dos versos que são meus, do meu sonhar,
E todos os poetas, a chorar,
Responderam-me então: “Que fantasia,
Criança doida e crente! Nós também
Tivemos ilusões, como ninguém,
E tudo nos fugiu, tudo morreu!...”
Calaram-se os poetas, tristemente...
E é desde então que eu choro amargamente
Na minha Torre esguia junto ao Céu!...
Florbela Espanca
(1894-1930)
|
Tower of Mist
(from The Book of Sorrows: 1919)
I
climbed up high, to my slender tower,
Made of
smoke, mists and moonlight,
And,
moved, I set about conversing
With
the dead poets all day long.
I told
them my dreams, the joy
Of the
verses that are mine, of my dreaming,
And all
poets, crying,
Answered
me then, “What fantasy,
Crazy and
believing child! We too
Had illusions,
like nobody,
And everything
fled us, everything died!...”
The
poets became silent, sadly…
And it
is since then that I cry bitterly
In my slender
tower close to Heaven!...
Literal
translation by
Edith
LaGraziana 2015
|
Labels:
Poetry Revisited
Friday, 9 October 2015
Book Review: Little Apple by Leo Perutz

Monday, 5 October 2015
Poetry Revisited: Autumn Days by Will Carleton
Autumn Days
(from Farm Ballads: 1873)Yellow, mellow, ripened days,
Sheltered in a golden coating;
O'er the dreamy, listless haze,
White and dainty cloudlets floating
Winking at the blushing trees,
And the sombre, furrowed fallow;
Smiling at the airy ease
Of the southward flying swallow.
Sweet and smiling are thy ways,
Beauteous, golden, Autumn days!
Shivering, quivering, tearful days,
Fretfully and sadly weeping;
Dreading still, with anxious gaze,
Icy fetters round thee creeping;
O'er the cheerless, withered plain,
Woefully and hoarsely calling;
Pelting hail and drenching rain,
On thy scanty vestments falling.
Sad and mournful are thy ways,
Grieving, wailing, Autumn days!
Will Carleton
(1845-1912)
Labels:
Poetry Revisited
Friday, 2 October 2015
Book Review: The Happy Foreigner by Enid Bagnold

Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)