The Washington Post is shutting down Book World.
Brandeis University is shutting down its art museum.
"Star Class Photos" for elementary school class photos.
The superintendent of a large-city public school system thinks it appropriate to call a two-hour delay for the morning after the Super Bowl.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Monday, January 26, 2009
Through the pane
I've always like the poem by "Ch.D." included at the beginning of Natalie Zemon Davis' Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford University Press, 1975). Here is the opening stanza:
"Born abroad, she longs for you, compagnons.
She longs to shake your hand, to share your wine.
She longs for home, four hundred years away.
Through the pane she hears you but is not heard.
She deserves your pity but will not have it. "
I immediately thought of this poem last weekend when I came across this passage in Jack Finney's time-travel novel, Time and Again (Simon & Schuster, 1970):
"There--well, there they were, the people of the stiff old woodcuts, only... these moved. The swaying coats and dresses there on the walks and crossing the street before and behind us were of new-dyed cloth--maroon, bottle-green, blue, strong brown, unfaded blacks--and I saw the shimmer of light and shadow in the appearing and disappearing long folds. And the leather and rubber they walked in pressed into and marked the slush of the street crossings; and their breaths puffed out into the winter air, momentarily visible. And through the trembling, rattling glass panes of the bus we heard their living voices, and heard a girl laugh aloud. Looking out at their winter-flushed faces, I felt like shouting for joy." (121)
Historians are not time-travellers, of course, and we are professionalized to poo-poo the "antiquarian." But the desire to hear the dead when they were living-- that desire is there, I think, for almost all of us in some form or another.
"Born abroad, she longs for you, compagnons.
She longs to shake your hand, to share your wine.
She longs for home, four hundred years away.
Through the pane she hears you but is not heard.
She deserves your pity but will not have it. "
I immediately thought of this poem last weekend when I came across this passage in Jack Finney's time-travel novel, Time and Again (Simon & Schuster, 1970):
"There--well, there they were, the people of the stiff old woodcuts, only... these moved. The swaying coats and dresses there on the walks and crossing the street before and behind us were of new-dyed cloth--maroon, bottle-green, blue, strong brown, unfaded blacks--and I saw the shimmer of light and shadow in the appearing and disappearing long folds. And the leather and rubber they walked in pressed into and marked the slush of the street crossings; and their breaths puffed out into the winter air, momentarily visible. And through the trembling, rattling glass panes of the bus we heard their living voices, and heard a girl laugh aloud. Looking out at their winter-flushed faces, I felt like shouting for joy." (121)
Historians are not time-travellers, of course, and we are professionalized to poo-poo the "antiquarian." But the desire to hear the dead when they were living-- that desire is there, I think, for almost all of us in some form or another.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Eclecticism of the Year 2008
For my first post after a long absence from blogging here, I would like to award the first annual Tea-Lemon-Old Books Award for Best Statement Regarding Old Books Revealing Eclectic Interests Published in Journalism or Scholarly Outlets for 2008. The winner is:
Leon Wieseltier, The New Republic, December 31, 2008, p.48 of the print edition:
"Among the delicacies in my library alongside Sefer Hasidim, Bologna, 1538, first edition, Salman Schocken's copy, and the Collected Poems of Edward Thomas, London 1920, first edition, foreword by Walter de la Mare, is Bettie Page: The Life of a Pin-up Legend, by Karen Essex and James L. Swanson, Los Angeles, 1996, first edition, inscribed by its subject."
Mr. Wieseltier, stop by to claim your prize (a cup of hot tea with lemon) next time you are in Pittsburgh. (Just bring that copy of Sefer Hasidim with you...).
Leon Wieseltier, The New Republic, December 31, 2008, p.48 of the print edition:
"Among the delicacies in my library alongside Sefer Hasidim, Bologna, 1538, first edition, Salman Schocken's copy, and the Collected Poems of Edward Thomas, London 1920, first edition, foreword by Walter de la Mare, is Bettie Page: The Life of a Pin-up Legend, by Karen Essex and James L. Swanson, Los Angeles, 1996, first edition, inscribed by its subject."
Mr. Wieseltier, stop by to claim your prize (a cup of hot tea with lemon) next time you are in Pittsburgh. (Just bring that copy of Sefer Hasidim with you...).
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