when the wild winds coldly blow…

…this is what I like.

Essay: Zadie Smith on the essay. (bonus: Joan Didion anno 1967)

Perspective: everything’s amazing, nobody’s happy. (bonus: very funny!)

Philosophy: The Romantic Manifesto by Ayn Rand.

Radio: Weekend Woman’s Hour

Tune #1: Tougher than the Rest with Bruce Springsteen (bonus: fashion anno 1988)

Tune #2: Pata Pata with Miriam Makeba

Poem: “Spellbound” by Emily Brontë:

The night is darkening round me,
The wild winds coldly blow;
But a tyrant spell has bound me
And I cannot, cannot go.

The giant trees are bending
Their bare boughs weighed with snow.
And the storm is fast descending,
And yet I cannot go.

Clouds beyond clouds above me,
Wastes beyond wastes below;
But nothing dear can move me;
I will not, cannot go.

Painting #1: Waterhouse – St Eulalia

Painting #2: Millais – Blow, Blow Thou Winter Wind

Painting #3: Friedrich – Winter Landscape

we are the people we’ve been waiting for

Education is dead! Long live education! I am highly anticipating this documentary, should be released soon methinks, also, can I add; I ♥ Ken Robinson.

mingle sweet song and sunshine together

Edward Poynter Horae Serenae (detail)

Franz von Stuck Ringelreihen

Duncan Grant Dancers

Henri Matisse Dance

I’m on a google-ban as well as a blogging-ban, but again, for things that really irritate or excite me, I make an exception (procrastinating? Me? Never.). Have I ever mentioned how much I love Edward Poynter? Well I do. Almost as much as von Stuck (did you know that I share this affection for him with Hitler? He was Hitler’s favourite painter. This von Stuck – Hitler relationship is actually freakingly interesting, at least if you have some inclinations towards the superstitious. Will have to return to this subject methinks, we could do a von Stuck Special). I like Duncan Grant very much too, although, admittedly, much more because of my fascination with the Bloomsbury set then for his actual art. His Dancers is on display at Tate, the colours are simply dazzling, just not my thing. It reminded me a lot of Matisse, and then Tate confirmed this by saying it is probable that Matisse provided inspiration for Grant. So Matisse is included here too although I am actually not a big fan.

a long rant about education policies

I’m currently on a sort of blogging-ban because I have such a monstrous amount of uni work to do this week. Very high goals have been set in terms of word count so I can’t really afford to waste any of them here. But, but, but. Today Lord Mandelson has stirred up debate with the announcement of a new Plan for Higher Education. So I will make an exception so that I can get these frustrations out of my system and then I’ll go back to my Dostoevsky, I promise.

The plan has not been released yet; this is all said in the true spirit of making a mountain out of a molehill, and in response to Mandelson’s appearance on BBC’s Today and the numerous agitated articles published shortly afterwards.  Education policies are always interesting because they are about change, with the purpose to improve, but then in the end they only seem to increase the problems that already exist.

First off, I agree with Mandelson. I agree with everyone who thinks higher education needs to be improved. When he says that “universities are not islands, they are not ivory towers, they have to respond to the world around them” I think exactly, they are not, although they would very much like to think so. I often get the feeling that the university world is confined to its own little academic bubble, entirely disconnected to reality. But where Mandelson sees solutions, I see more trouble.

To label students as consumers sounds absolutely bonkers. Of course the more information students get about what to expect from their education, the better. But to demand a university to provide a prospective future is not making any sense to me. First of all, it would increase the idea that education is all about the result, not about the learning process. Secondly, what if a student can’t get the job he/she hoped for after completing a degree, or with the estimated salary. Are you supposed to hold you university responsible for false advertising? Of course there should be a strong feeling of responsibility towards the students to provide them with the best education possible. But not because they are paying customers, but because they are knowledge-seeking, enthused young people who, as the future of our society, deserves that investment. Why should you need money as a motivation to provide that?

I am glad they are addressing the lack of social ability in students. But you don’t increase social ability by teaching them to be demanding, picky and dissatisfied. That to me sounds like very destructive qualities for any person, student or no student. If you want to increase social ability you should infuse good work ethics, communication skills and adaptability. To make the university liable, not only for the quality of the teaching but also for the final outcome is a little bit misleading. Responsibility should be shared between the academic body and the students. Students should know their rights, but also their obligation. Students get away with so much these days, because universities are afraid of losing course fees, increasing drop-out rates and bad reputation. Demands on the student need to be higher, not the other way around. If you can’t hack it, you’re out. Seriously, weed out the week. The thing is; university is not the meaning with life, it is not the final goal of human achievement. It’s for some people but not for all. To give everyone a degree, leads to academic inflation, diminishing the value of academic studies and therefore doing society a huge disfavour because people are investing a lot of money into something that in the end of the day is not worth anything.

Which bring me to my final point. I don’t like the idea of education as part of the capitalistic system, it should stand outside of that. To raise the ceiling for student fees will, I think, result in an even more prominent hierarchy between universities. A high status university will be able to provide high employability numbers, creating high competition for the places, and of course take the highest possible fee rates. Presumably, the educational standard will be great. But what about the university with low status, poor employability prospects and low demand? Their fees will be low, the teaching will be bad (or at least not as good), and so will the students’ academic ability. This means two people with the same degree have two very different educations and that, to an employer, means two very different things. It is a complete distortion not only of university education, but of the value of knowledge. Admittedly, I know squat about funding of HE. But what I do know is that you cannot put a price on knowledge, nor should you want to. And what was that I heard about Scotland? Oh, yes, university studies are FREE.

i’m not in paris

On Woman’s Hour they are talking about Coco Chanel and now Francoise Hardy is singing about her friend the rose and also, I imagine, about withering away, decay and death (must learn French) and I’d like to be in Paris right now, more precisely with the cherubs and the nymphs on Pont Alexandre III, because over-the-top art nouveau is the perfect antidote to dreary autumn weather and that vacant feeling left by the long-gone melancholy glamour of the 60’s. And in Paris quality red wine is mandatory. Steel constructions and stone ornaments filtered through a red-wine haze is what makes it so beautiful.

But I’m not in Paris. I am sitting at home, eating lunch consisting of chai tea and riesen chocolate while wrestling with Mikhail Bakhtin. Actually it’s a bit of a triangle drama between me, Bakhtin and Milan Kundera. Francoise is cheerleading, although it’s not clear whose side she is on. Possibly on Dostoevsky’s. He is also here, standing in the corner, with his polyphonic novel, looking terribly misunderstood.

Milan Kundera says “The novelist is neither historian nor prophet: he is an explorer of existence” and “existence is not what has occurred, existence is the realm of human possibilities, everything that man can become, everything he is capable of.”

And I think, really, are we not all explorers of existence? At least our own existence. I think I’m going to put that on my business card either way. Explorer of existence and gratifier of human mankind. Charges on a pro rata basis. And Francoise sings j’ai besoin d’espoir sinon je ne suis rien which I think I will use as an advertising slogan (really, must learn French).

I clearly have nothing of importance to talk about. So bye. Au revoir, a bientot mes amis.

ps. If you google “I’m not in Paris”the first hit is Paris Hilton: I’m Not Stupid and I’m Not a Slut. My first thought is “what a strange world we live in” because you would think that Paris-the-city would be of higher importance than Paris-the-whateveritisthatsheis. And my second thought is “how lucky I am that I don’t have to point out the fact that I’m not stupid nor a slut to anyone.”

don’t tell me peace has broken out

This time it makes perfect sense why two critics’ views of a show are miles apart. You remember Phedré getting one respectively five stars from the Independent and the Guardian? This time it is The Telegraph who thinks Mother Courage and Her Children, currently running at the National Theatre, is worth one star while over at the Guardian it has been rewarded with four. Charles Spencer calls it one of the most embarrassing spectacles I have ever seen in a theatre, a desperate ploy to make Brecht, the discredited old Marxist, seem relevant and modern while Michael Billington thinks it’s one of the greatest plays of the 20^th century. As another Guardian writer points out; As a rule, the more Conservative the newspaper, the less its critic likes Mother Courage.

Without getting overtly in to my political views here; I am very, very fond of my Brecht. This three hour spectacle was not embarrassing at all; most of it was actually quite enjoyable.

Fiona Shaw gives her all as Mother Courage, scampering around the stage like a gypsy-cum-rock star and is noticeably exhausted in the end. Her hard-headiness and sharp-witted nature makes her a charismatic and principally likeable character. But as Brecht pits war against morality, her capitalistically driven business-sense, that not only allows her to endure the 30 Year War but also to profit from it, has fatal consequences as she loses each of her three children. There is in Mother Courage (both the character and the play as a whole) a gradual build-up of a deeply emotional dimension, which I have to say I found lacking in this production. You could argue that Brecht favoured Intelligent Thinking over Emotive Feeling but in fact he was of the opinion that the two cannot be divided. His call for an epic theatre was based on the view that it was not enough to incite emotion in the audience; those feelings also had to be examined.

So with Brecht you get a bit of a disjointed narrative, stage directions read out loud (in this case by Gore Vidal. You know, I really thought he had kicked the bucket a long time ago but apparently he is still going strong.), dressers and costume changes on-stage, musicians and random song outbursts (this role is given almost entirely to Duke Special which I think explains the hordes of screaming teenagers). Director Deborah Warner has been more than faithful to Brecht’s intentions. A barn is a barn, not because it looks like a barn but because there is a sign that tells you it is a barn, that kind of thing. But all those distancing effects need to be balanced by an engagement of the heart as well as the mind. It gets a bit like with Moulin Rouge. It’s loud (extremely loud), confident and showy and while you’re watching it does feels really impressive. But afterwards you leave feeling surprisingly unaffected with only some stupid song stuck to your brain. Nonetheless, even though Mother Courage is not all there, Brecht sure is and somehow that is more than enough.

the winner takes it all

Today is not only the day when this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature has been announced but also National Poetry Day.

T.S Eliot has been voted the Nation’s Favourite Poet in a poll at BBC’s Poetry Season. Not a bad choice. Sadly, although not very surprising, not a single female poet made it to the top 10. I voted for Christina Rossetti, but I seem to have been in minority.

As for the Nobel Prize, it was announced at noon today by Peter Englund, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy. My predictions for these kind of things are never right but I did really think it would be an American winner this year, or at least non-European. But no, Rumanian-born German writer Herta Müller is the winner with the motivation that she with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed, Apparently her first comment was I cannot believe it, I do not deserve it, I am overwhelmed. Congratulations Herta, I’m sure you deserve it!

for the times they are a-changin

Oh dear blog, I have been neglecting you terribly, haven’t I? I blame it on Don Quixote (yes, I did get trough it in the end). I also blame it on the radical change of life style I have been forced to undergo the last couple of weeks. You know, like waking up to an alarm clock in the mornings, getting in to the commuting routine from hell (London Bridge at peak hours is surely something Satan came up with) and filling up the calendar with nasty words like ‘essay deadline’. Yes, that’s right; I’m back in school. After the first day it felt like I had run a marathon or two. I’m clearly not used to using my head for anything more complicated than playing Tetris on my mobile phone. Now I need to exchange my one-syllable vocabulary (wine, film, bed) to words that I can neither pronounce correctly nor know exactly what they mean (I don’t want to give myself away here but, you know, the French stuff.)

It feels like it is about time to change that picture at the top too. No more graceful ladies lapping up the afternoon sun in floating silk gauze that looks like it’s been spun by angels. How about this one;

Hugo Simberg’s Garden of Death exists in a few different versions, the largest is one of the. now famous, frescoes he did for the Tampere Cathedral in Finland. According to Simberg, it is a place where souls go before entering Heaven. The skeletons are little helpers of Death, and the plants and flowers are people’s souls. That is so sweet, in a morbid kind of way. Read more and check out the rest of the art in Tampere Cathedral here.

Apropos Tampere; my aunt used to lived there when I was little. I have very vague memories of stopping there once on our way up to Lapland, where the rest of the family lives. It was really late at night and we ate potato soup that was really hot and they had a collie dog that looked just liked Lassie. As I said, very vague memories.

painting is a strange business

without your art you are nothing

Ok, I have seen it now so I can moan as much as I like. Yay, let’s go!

Not only have I been to see Dorian Gray but I have also been to a sort of panel talk with the director Oliver Parker and the writer Toby Finlay. Oh, and double bonus; the guy who painted the portrait of Dorian Gray/Ben Barnes and the painting itself was there (I might explain here that this event took place at the National Portrait Gallery). It was so much fun! Although it was a bit fawning, like, of course all the Wilde-experts that were there and had seen the film gave their approval.

Afterwards we went up to Tottenham Court Rd to see the film and, unfortunately, that’s where the fun stops. Parker was saying (when being asked about the casting of Ben Barnes…’because in the book Dorian is blond with blue eyes’…yawn) that the biggest mistake you make with a film version of Dorian Gray is to actually show Dorian himself. Because no matter how it is done, he will never live up to the version you created in your head while reading it. Paradoxical but true, of course I judge this film partly based on how well it corresponds to my reading experience. But at the same time I don’t think interpolation is a bad thing. Exclude, flesh out and re-invent all you want as long as it is motivated and makes a good film.

See, I really don’t mind that Dorian isn’t an angelic fair-haired boy (I pictured him dark anyway). I don’t mind the invention of Lord Henry’s daughter, even if it is a little bit silly and unnecessary; at least it made a role for Rebecca Hall. Turning the painting into some devilish entity breathing horror was fine too, in fact all the gothic elements worked very well indeed. What I do mind is omitting vital scenes that would explain why these people behave as they do. Darling, darling Sybil never gets the chance to kill his love with bad acting (something I am sure Rachel Hurd-Wood would have pulled off terribly well). Instead they have sex and then Dorian dumps her. Basil never gets to confess his obsession with Dorian and his fear for this showing in the portrait. Instead they have sex and then Dorian kills him. And while there’s nothing wrong with an abundance of kinky sex per se, it shouldn’t be used only to cover up the complete lack of substance  Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. I wish. The philosophy is not a part of Dorian Gray, it is Dorian Gray. And this is nothing but an intolerably flimsy film where everything feels rushed, underdeveloped and looks like it has been butchered in the editing with a chainsaw.

the future will not copy fair the past

It’s so easy to fall into the black and white nostalgia of cliche laden photographs, thinking how much better everything must have been in the good ol´days. And I might be looking at the past through rose-tinted glasses, but seriously, why are the women in old pictures always beautiful? The men extremely handsome? The clothes, the cars, the buildings, everything looks so…well-made. Elegant and stylish. What happened?

And yeah, yeah, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times but look at these pictures from The Telegraph ‘London then and now: Photographs of London streets taken 60 years apart.’

Clearly it was much better 60 years ago.

Like the ghost of a dear friend dead
Is Time long past.
A tone which is now forever fled,
A hope which is now forever past,
A love so sweet it could not last,
Was Time long past.

There were sweet dreams in the night
Of Time long past:
And, was it sadness or delight,
Each day a shadow onward cast
Which made us wish it yet might last–
That Time long past.

There is regret, almost remorse,
For Time long past.
‘Tis like a child’s belovèd corse
A father watches, till at last
Beauty is like remembrance, cast
From Time long past.

(Time Long Past by Percy Bysshe Shelley)

like the painting of a sorrow

There is lot of moaning going on about this new film adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray. Uhm, can’t everyone just chill out and wait for the film to actually be released instead of getting worked up about the trailer or the poster?

Like at the New Yorker, where they talk about Dorian Gray book-covers instead, so much more fun.

The cover of my edition, a very budget-friendly hardback copy, has gold-letters and a detail from this painting on it;

Tissot’s club portrait; La Balcon du Cercle de la Rue Royale is usually seen on books by or about Proust. The Circle of the Rue Royale was one of the many Paris clubs imitating the gentlemen clubs of London, were the social elite of the 19^th century could gather and…well, by the look of it, do nothing much. One of those men, is Charles Haas whom Proust used as a model for Charles Swann in In Search of Lost Time.

I like the idea of this cover very much:

No title, no author, no picture of Dorian Gray. From Four Corners Books who does artistic interpretations of classics or something like that.

Or this illustrated Dorian Gray from Marvel;

dear blog i feel i need to talk about turner

I have been thinking a lot about Turner lately, partly because of the upcoming Tate exhibition Turner and the Masters and partly because I haven’t got much else to think about.

For years I found Turner boring. Yes, England’s maybe greatest painter; boring. Then, sometime last year, I learnt that Thomas Hardy was a great admirer of Turner and his writing was influenced by painting in general and by Turner in particular, saying of his watercolours, that each is a landscape plus a man’s soul. Now, I’m not a big Hardy-fan or anything but after that I tried to make an effort with Turner, because I wanted to find that soul.

I think my problem with Turner is Tate. I know, that sounds contradictory, but here’s my theory: Tate Britain hoards the biggest Turner collection in the world; 300 oil-paintings and 30.000 sketches and water-colours. They are all cleverly arranged around subjects, chronology and technique. In other words: Turner Heaven. The problem is that Turner is a genius who outdoes himself. It’s like Turner inflation in there. There’s so many of them, that great becomes good and good becomes boring.

Ancient Rome: Agrippina Landing with the Ashes of Germanicus (1839)

For example, after being nailed to the floor in front of this, wishing you could just step inside and stay there forever (or just long enough to feel those sunbeams on your skin and hear the water silently lapping against the quay…please just for a little while) how can you possibly be immersed in 20 early-Turner variations of the Thames? Exactly; let’s run through that corridor, ugh, that Turner is so b-o-r-i-n-g.

No, my best Turner experiences have been outside of those Turner-rooms. When you come across his paintings in a context different from ‘look how great Turner is.’ When you don’t expect to see a Turner (which I never do, because they’re all in Tate) and it takes you by surprise. Like at the National Gallery’s latest exhibition of landscape paintings, Corot to Monet, where among millions of little Barbizon-type oil-sketches they have manage to squeeze in a Turner. Or a few floors up where a long row of Constable’s* are acting as sedatives when all of a sudden you’re confronted with this:

Odysseus deriding Polyhemus (1829)

Uhm, I’m not slating Tate or anything here, I love Tate. I’m just saying, you know, how I feel about this. There, I’m done.

*Here is a little anecdote, told by Tate: Before an exhibition opened at the Royal Academy, artists came in and made final adjustments to their paintings depending on what place they had been given in the hall and to varnish them, known as the Varnishing Days. These exhibitions were highly competitive and Turner made the most to outshine his rivals, sometimes bringing half-made paintings that he finished on the wall. Constable, once placed next to him, commented as he saw the last add-ons from Turner; ‘He has been here and fired a gun.’

farewell vivid brightness of our short-lived summers

Could you feel autumn arrive today? I felt it; fresh and strong south-western winds blowing straight in from the Atlantic. Fetching leaves from the trees and  rushing them in a whirlwind onto the pavement as if the seasonal shift could not come soon enough. If I’m allowed to exaggerate a bit (ok, a lot) it was something like this:

Autumn Leaves by Tom Scott

Today I have, besides contemplating nature,  bought my first Moleskin. I never understood how the most overpriced and insignificant-looking notebook ever could monopolize the entire notebook market on the sole premise that Picasso and Hemingway used it. But today I was desperate for one and as Waterstone’s notepad assortment consisted of 500 different Moleskin versions and one (1!) blank-paged, thick and bejewelled in pink rhinestones, I really didn’t have any choice.

I have to admit, this notebook is fantastic. It lies absolutely flat on the table, it doesn’t move, the pages are lovely ivory-coloured and the print strength of the lines is perfect (you know; not too strong, not too faint). And it loves being written in. Seriously, loves it.

It’s still black and boring but I thought I could jazz it up a little bit myself. I’m not talking overambitious scrapbooking embellishment here, but pasting a nice picture or something on to it so it’s as nice to look at as it is to write in.

Uhm…I’m starting to sound like that guy in Oracle Night. He gets on extremely well with his new notebook in the beginning and then within, or out of, this notebook, complexity á la Paul Auster unravels. I think blue notebooks have given me a headache ever since I read it. Good book though.

beneath such dreamy weather

Let’s change the header from a despairing lady to a more joyful one: An Afternoon Rest by Guillaume Seignac.

On this Bank Holiday Monday that is today, I find inspiration in Seignac’s dozing lady. She makes me want to spend the last hours of summer gracefully reclined on marble (never has a stone bench looked so comfortable). Though perhaps with a not quite as see-through garment on.