Yes, Indeed, Monsieur Rostand - And Vice Versa!!!

Fig. 1. Anonymous - Portrait of Prince Friedrich Ludwig von Württemberg, c. 1699


'Beauty in art is often nothing but ugliness subdued.'

Jean Rostand

Addendum: Katie (thanks!) and ESVM's poetry corner ...

Prince FLVW might have a hint of subdued ugliness, but that rug is sure stunning. I'll have to remember this regal interior in case I ever live in a place where I can decorate a room fit for a Queen.

FLVW meet poor old ESVM, who just couldn't let beauty be beauty for beauty's sake:

Spring

To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

Eugene and Caspar Jump Through Plato's Window

Fig. 1. Caspar David Friedrich - Sunrise over the Sea, c. 1826


EDMUND: You've just told me some high spots in your memories. Want to hear mine? They're all connected with the sea. Here's one. When I was on the Squarehead square rigger, bound for Buenos Aires. Full moon in the Trades. The old hooker driving fourteen knots. I lay on the bowsprit, facing astern, with the water foaming into spume under me, the masts with every sail white in the moonlight, towering high above me. I became drunk with the beauty and singing rhythm of it, and for a moment I lost myself - actually lost my life. I was set free! I dissolved in the sea, became white sails and flying spray, became beauty and rhythm, became moonlight and the ship and the high dim-starred sky! I belonged, without past or future, within peace and unity and a wild joy, within something greater than my own life, or the life of Man, to Life itself! ... Then another time, on the American line, when I was lookout on the crow's nest in the dawn watch. A clam sea, that time. Only a lazy groundswell and a slow drowsy roll of the ship. The passengers asleep and none of the crew in sight. No sound of man. Black smoke pouring from the funnels behind and beneath me. Dreaming, not keeping lookout, feeling alone, and above, and apart, watching the dawn creep like a painted dream over the sky and sea which sleep together. Then the moment of ecstatic freedom came, the peace, the end of the quest, the last harbour, the joy of belonging to a fulfilment beyond men's lousy, pitiful, greedy fears and hopes and dreams! And several other times in my life, when I was swimming far out, or lying alone on a beach, I have had the same experience. Became the sun, the hot sand, green seaweed anchored to a rock, swaying in the tide. Like a saint's vision of beatitude. Like the veil of things as they seem drawn back by an unseen hand. For a second you see - and seeing the secret, are the secret. For a second there is meaning! Then the hand lets the veil fall and you are alone, lost in the fog again, and you stumble on toward nowhere, for no good reason! (He grins wryly.) It was a great mistake, my being born a man. I would have been much more successful as a sea-gull or fish. As it is, I will always be a stranger who never feels at home, who does not really want and is not really wanted, who can never belong, who must always be a little in love with death!

From Long Day's Journey Into Night by Eugene O'Neill

The Sunday Six: Bill Viola - Ocean Without A Shore, 2007 (video installation)

Fig. 2a. & 2b.

Addendum #1:

Interview with Bill Viola at the Venice Biennale, 2007 (TateShots)

Addendum #2: Katie (thanks!) and ESVM's poetry corner...

Even though I live close to the Pacific ocean, seeing this Friedrich and reading the O'Neill passage (I so need to re-read Long Day's Journey!) make me think of the Atlantic ocean, and how much the sea meant to my Grandfather. I'm sure he had a similar sense of a bigger belonging when out at sea.

I'll lay off the ESVM for a while as I'm sure you're tiring of her, but she had such strong feelings about her beloved Maine coast, and I think she and Edmund would have been a good match:

Inland

People that build their houses inland,
People that buy a plot of ground
Shaped like a house, and build a house there,
Far from the sea-board, far from the sound

Of water sucking the hollow ledges,
Tons of water striking the shore, -
What do they long for, as I long for
One salt smell of the sea once more?

People the waves have not awakened,
Spanking the boats at the harbour's head,
What do they long for, as I long for, -
Starting up in my inland bed,

Beating the narrow walls, and finding
Neither a window nor a door,
Screaming to God for death by drowning, -
One salt taste of the sea once more?

Addendum #3: Anonymous' (thanks!) poetry corner...

L'Homme et la mer

Homme libre, toujours tu chériras la mer!
La mer est ton miroir; tu contemples ton âme
Dans le déroument infini de sa lame,
Et ton esprit n'est pas un gouffre moins amer

Tu te plais à plonger au sein de ton image;
Tu l'embrasses des yeux et des bras, et ton coeur
Se distrait quelquefois de sa propre rumeur
Au bruit de cette plainte indomptable et sauvage.

Vous êtes tous les deux ténébreux et discrets:
Homme, nul n'a sondé le fond de tes abimes;
O mer, nul ne connait tes richesses intimes,
Tant vous êtes jaloux de garder vos secrets!

Et cependant voilà des siècles innombrables
Que vous vous combattez sans pitié ni remord,
Tellement vous aimez le carnage et la mort,
O lutteurs éternels, ô frères implacables!

Charles Baudelaire (Les Fleurs du Mal)

Topic: No One Can Teach You How To Paint The Rain

Fig . 1. Vincent van Gogh - Rain, Auvers, 1890


'The emotions are sometimes so strong that I work without knowing it. The strokes come like speech.'

Vincent van Gogh

Your Ears Will Orgasm #52: Singing The Rain - Mix (MixPod Player)

1. Rain - The Beatles
2. The Rain - K-Os
3. Tears In The Rain - Zomby
4. I'm Only Happy When It Rains - Garbage
5. The Rain Knows - The Wentletraps
6. No Rain - Blind Melon (THDP Remix)
7. Green Rain - Shugo Tokumaru
8. Singin' In The Rain - D.O.A.

Addendum: Katie and ESVM's poetry corner...

I've never seen this van Gogh; now I won't feel so bad that it's supposed to rain all weekend as I can look at this painting and be uplifted. Thanks for the soundtrack too!

Would van Gogh and ESVM have hit it off?

Eel-Grass

No matter what I say,
All that I really love
Is the rain that flattens on the bay,
And the eel-grass in the cove;
The jingle-shells that lie and bleach
At the tide-line, and the trace
Of higher tides along the beach:
Nothing in this place.

If There Is No Light In Your Tunnel, Switch Tunnels!

Fig. 1. Jenny Holzer - Monument, 2008


'And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.'

Abraham Lincoln

Addendum: Katie (thanks!) and ESVM's (thanks!) poetry corner...

What a neat-o Holzer! It would be very trippy to hang out in this tunnel. I saw a Holzer exhibit at the Walker in Minneapolis in the early 90s, and I'm really bummed I didn't keep the set of Holzer ink stamps that I bought. My favorite said, "A lot happened before you were born".

Lincoln, meet ESVM:

Midnight Oil

Cut if you will, with Sleep's dull knife,
Each day to half its length, my friend,—
The years that Time takes off my life,
He'll take from off the other end!

Hail The Season Of Mists And Mellow Fruitfulness*

Fig. 1. Jacob Cats - Autumn Landscape with Rainbow, 1779


'Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.'

Albert Camus

* From Ode to Autumn by John Keats

Addendum: Katie and ESVM's poetry corner...

I still have a hard time wrapping my mind around the fact that you're heading into Autumn, and I'm eagerly awaiting Spring. ESVM and I can deal with two seasons at the same time though:

Autumn Daybreak

Cold wind of autumn, blowing loud
At dawn, a fortnight overdue,
Jostling the doors, and tearing through
My bedroom to rejoin the cloud,

I know−for I can hear the hiss
And scrape of leaves along the floor−
How many boughs, lashed bare by this,
Will rake the cluttered sky once more.

Tardy, and somewhat south of east,
The sun will rise at length, made known
More by the meagre light increased
Than by a disk in splendour shown;

When, having but to turn my head,
Through the stripped maple I shall see,
Bleak and remembered, patched with red,
The hill all summer hid from me.

Eldritch Traces, Left By Future Dust In Ancient Dust

Fig. 1. Footprint left during NASA's Apollo 11 mission (July 1969), when astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked the lunar surface.


'If we could see ourselves as others see us, we would vanish on the spot.'

Emile M. Cioran

Addendum: Old Friends, New Words

Katie and Edna St. Vincent Millay are back, this time with a poem they refuse to dust off - and with good reason:

I vaguely remember the Apollo 11 mission. I was way too young to understand what was really happening though, so I missed my opportunity to want to be an astronaut.

ESVM wrote a little something about dust:

Autumn Chant

Now the autumn shudders
In the rose's root.
Fat and wide the ladders
Lean among the fruit.

Now the autumn clambers
Up the trellised frame,
And the rose remembers
The dust from which it came.

Brighter than the blossom
On the rose's bough
Sits the wizened, orange,
Bitter berry now;

Beauty never slumbers;
All is in her name;
But the rose remembers
The dust from which it came.

The Limits Of The World Must Always Be Sought Out*

Fig. 1. John William Waterhouse - Ulysses and the Sirens, 1891

'The artist is meant to put the objects of this world together in such a way that through them you will experience that light, that radiance which is the light of our consciousness and which all things both hide and, when properly looked upon, reveal. The hero journey is one of the universal patterns through which that radiance shows brightly. What I think is that a good life is one hero journey after another. Over and over again, you are called to the realm of adventure, you are called to new horizons. Each time, there is the same problem: do I dare? And then if you do dare, the dangers are there, and the help also, and the fulfillment or the fiasco. There's always the possibility of a fiasco. But there's also the possibility of bliss.'

Joseph Campbell

* 'Everyone takes the limits of their own vision for the limits of the world.' (Arthur Schopenhauer)

Your Ears Will Orgasm #42a: Olivier Messiaen - Oraison (MixPod Player)

Your Ears Will Orgasm #42b: Gustav Mahler - Symphony No. 2 ("Resurrection") (MixPod Player)

Addendum: How wonderful! And how apt, too! You outdid yourselves last time, ladies: now, amazingly, you have outdone your outdoing!

I will set my sails to take full advantage of the breezes blown by your inspirational words.

Thank you, Katie (and Edna):

Today is as good as any other day (!) to set yourself free to embark on a hero journey. The possibility of bliss is definitely worth danger and fiasco.

ESVM also thinks it's time for you to test your limits:

On Thought in Harness

My falcon to my wrist
Returns
From no high air.
I sent her toward the sun that burns
Above the mist;
But she has not been there.

Her talons are not cold; her beak
Is closed upon no wonder;
Her head stinks of its hood, her feathers reek
Of me, that quake at the thunder.

Degraded bird, I give you back your eyes forever, ascent now wither you are tossed;
Forsake this wrist, forsake this rhyme;
Soar, eat ether, see what has never been seen; depart, be lost,
But climb.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

In Giddy, Blissful Praise Of The Last Great Mysteries

Fig. 1. William Eggleston - Untitled, 1975

'Only by cancelling, or at least neutralising every operation of knowledge within ourselves are we in the moment, without fleeing it. ... Deeply rhythmed movements of poetry, of music, of love, of dance, have the power to capture and endlessly recapture the moment that counts, the moment of rupture, of fissure. As if we were trying to arrest the moment and freeze it in the constantly renewed gasps of our laughter or our sobs. The miraculous moment when anticipation dissolves into NOTHING, detaching us from the ground on which we were grovelling, in the concatenation of useful activity.'

Georges Bataille

Your Ears Will Orgasm #39: Michael Nyman - Water Dances: Synchronising (MixPod Player)

Addendum: Katie and Edna St. Vincent Millay strike again! Thanks, ladies!

ESVM has something to say. It's a bit long, but it's so shockingly apropos I just have to share it.

Journey

Ah, could I lay me down in this long grass
And close my eyes, and let the quiet wind
Blow over me - I am so tired, so tired
Of passing pleasant places! All my life,
Following Care along the dusty road,
Have I looked back at loveliness and sighed;
Yet at my hand an unrelenting hand
Tugged ever, and I passed. All my life long
Over my shoulder have I looked at peace;
And now I fain would lie in this long grass
And close my eyes.

Yet onward!
Cat-birds call
Through the long afternoon, and creeks at dusk
Are guttural. Whip-poor-wills wake and cry,
Drawing the twilight close about their throats.
Only my heart makes answer. Eager vines
Go up the rocks and wait; flushed apple-trees
Pause in their dance and break the ring for me;
Dim, shady wood-roads, redolent of fern
And bayberry, that through sweet bevies thread
Of round-faced roses, pink and petulant,
Look and beckon ere they disappear.
Only my heart, only my heart responds.

Yet, ah, my path is sweet on either side
All through the dragging day, - sharp underfoot
And hot, and like dead mist the dry dust hangs -
But far, oh, far as passionate eye can reach,
And long, ah, long as rapturous eye can cling,
The world is mine: blue hill, still silver lake,
Broad field, bright flower, and the long white road;
A gateless garden, and an open path;
My feet to follow, and my heart to hold.

The Lever Of Your Suffering Can Also Be A Passport

Fig. 1. Giovanni Bellini - Dead Christ Supported by Angels (Pietà), c. 1474

'The poetic work is sacred in that it is a ... "communication" experienced as nakedness. It is self-violation, baring, communication to others of a reason for living, and this reason for living "shifts".'

Colette Peignot (aka Laure)

Your Ears Will Orgasm #30: Not Simply Blood (MixPod Player)

1. Josquin des Prez - Miserere mei Deus, c. 1503-4

Addendum: Katie's Gift and Our Good Fortune

The gifts that come to us from far away, and which arrive without our expecting them, touch us far more deeply, and inexplicably, than those bought locally and with our foreknowledge. This one has been sent to us by our esteemed friends Katie and E.S.V. Millay:

I'm not sure if the Miserere mei Deus is helping to keep your atrabiliousness at bay, but it sure is a pretty piece.

While I'm not a religious person, the Bellini painting is quite powerful. And it leads me, of course, to an ESVM poem:

Song of the Nations

Out of
Night and alarm,
Out of
Darkness and dread,
Out of old hate,
Grudge and distrust,
Sin and remorse,
Passion and blindness;
Shall come
Dawn and the birds,
Shall come
Slacking of greed,
Snapping of fear -
Love shall fold warm like a cloak
Round the shuddering earth
Till the sound of its woe cease.

After
Terrible dreams,
After
Crying in sleep,
Grief beyond thought,
Twisting of hands,
Tears from shut lids
Wetting the pillow;
Shall come
Sun on the wall,
Shall come
Sounds from the street
Children at play -
Bubbles too big blown, and dreams
Filled too heavy with horror
Will burst and in mist fall.

Sing then,
You who were dumb,
Shout then
Into the dark;
Are we not one?
Are not our hearts
Hot from one fire,
and in one mold cast?
Out of
Night and alarm,
Out of
Terrible dreams,
Reach me your hand,
This is the meaning of all that we
Suffered in sleep, - the white peace
Of the waking.

E.S.V. Millay

Why I Still Forage For You - Even When You Are Here

Fig. 1. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec - L'abandon (Les deux amies), n.d.

'And I realised the impossibility which love comes up against. We imagine that it has as its object a being that can be laid down in front of us, enclosed in a body. Alas, it is the extension of that being to all the points in space and time that it has occupied and will occupy. If we do not possess its contact with this or that place, this or that hour, we do not possess that being. But we cannot touch all those points. If only they were indicated to us, we might contrive perhaps to reach out to them. But we grope for them without finding them. Hence mistrust, jealousy, persecutions. We waste precious time on absurd clues and pass by the truth without suspecting it.'

Marcel Proust (from A la recherche du temps perdu: La prisonnière)

Addendum:

Katie and ESVM (aka PFAO) have come to visit us again, and this - with heartfelt thanks - is their contribution:

Poor old Proust - such amazing insight, but he was sick in bed most of the time. I do think I've found him an ESVM companion though.

Departure

It's little I care what path I take,
And where it leads it's little I care;
But out of this house, lest my heart break,
I must go, and off somewhere.

It's little I know what's in my heart,
What's in my mind it's little I know,
But there's that in me must up and start,
And it's little I care where my feet go.

I wish I could walk for a day and a night,
And find me at dawn in a desolate place
With never the rut of a road in sight,
Nor the roof of a house, nor the eyes of a face.

I wish I could walk till my blood should spout,
And drop me, never to stir again,
On a shore that is wide, for the tide is out,
And the weedy rocks are bare to the rain.

But dump or dock, where the path I take
Brings up, it's little enough I care;
And it's little I'd mind the fuss they'll make,
Huddled dead in a ditch somewhere.

"Is something the matter, dear," she said,
"That you sit at your work so silently?"
"No, mother no, 'twas a knot in my thread.
There goes the kettle, I'll make the tea."

In This Painted Paradise Of Sea, Stone And Sky*

The Sunday Six #6: On Someone Else's Distant Horizon

Fig. 1. Claude Monet - Low Tide at Pourville (near Dieppe), 1882

Fig. 2. Claude Monet - The Cliff Walk (Pourville), 1882

Fig. 3. Claude Monet - The Church at Varengeville, 1882

Fig. 4. Claude Monet - The Cliff at Sunset (Étretat), 1882-83

Fig. 5. Claude Monet - Rock Arch West of Étretat (the Manneport), 1883

Fig. 6. Claude Monet - The Needle Rock and the Porte d'Aval (Étretat), 1885


'To paint the sea really well, you need to look at it every hour of every day in the same place so that you can understand its ways in that particular spot.'

Claude Monet

* 'The sea. The sea enchants, the sea kills, it moves, it frightens, it also makes you laugh sometimes, it disappears every now and then, it disguises itself as a lake, or it constructs tempests, devours ships, gives away riches, it gives no answers, it is wise, it is gentle, it is powerful, it is unpredictable. But, above all, the sea calls. You will discover this, Elisewin. All it does, basically, is this: it calls. It never stops, it gets under your skin, it is upon you, it is you it wants. You can even pretend to ignore it, but it's no use. It will still call you. The sea you are looking at and all the others that you will not see, but will always be there, lying patiently in wait for you, one step beyond your life. You will hear them calling, tirelessly. It happens in this purgatory of sand. It will happen in any paradise, and in any inferno. Without explaining anything, without telling you where, there will always be a sea, which will call you.' Alessandro Baricco (Ocean Sea)

Your Ears Will Orgasm #20: Debussy - La Mer (MixPod Player)

Addendum #1: The Katie And Edna Show


Katie (aka Katiefornia) has again graced us with her virtual presence, her wistful reflections and one of her favourite poems. I'll let her explain the connection between the Monet and Maine in a moment; but first I would like to thank her for being such a consistent and considerate reader, not to mention such a generous and genial contributor. At the risking of sounding like an ebullient "teacher's comment" on her elementary school report card, I think it's true to say that Katie is always cheerful, convivial and courteous: she knows how to give and how to take, how to share and how to thank. Indeed, she is exactly the kind of optimistic, good-humoured, intelligent and polite visitor I have been trying to attract to this blog. In short, she is always a pleasure to have in my class. And now, over to you, Katie:

Oh how I love these Monet paintings. I'm especially captivated by the Étretat ones, as I was lucky enough to spend an afternoon there in 2002. It looked just like these paintings. Amazing to think that Monet could have been sitting exactly where I sat taking in the beautiful views of the rocks.

I'm sure that it will come as no surprise that ESVM [Edna St. Vincent Millay] wrote about the sea, since she grew up on the coast of Maine. Even though I live in California and have the Pacific Ocean not that far away, I still miss the Maine coast, and spending time with my grandparents out rowing or sailing with them. I'll leave it to Edna to elaborate:

Exiled

Searching my heart for its true sorrow,
This is the thing I find to be:
That I am weary of words and people,
Sick of the city, wanting the sea;

Wanting the sticky, salty sweetness
Of the strong wind and shattered spray;
Wanting the loud sound and the soft sound
Of the big surf that breaks all day.

Always before about my dooryard,
Marking the reach of the winter sea,
Rooted in sand and dragging drift-wood,
Straggled the purple wild sweet-pea;

Always I climbed the wave at morning,
Shook the sand from my shoes at night,
That now am caught beneath great buildings,
Stricken with noise, confused with light.

If I could hear the green piles moaning
Under the windy wooden piers,
See once again the bobbing barrels,
And the black sticks that fence the weirs,

If I could see the weedy mussels
Crusting the wrecked and rotting hulls,
Hear once again the hungry crying
Overhead, of the wheeling gulls,

Feel once again the shanty straining
Under the turning of the tide,
Fear once again the rising freshet,
Dread the bell in the fog outside,

I should be happy! - that was happy
All day long on the coast of Maine;
I have a need to hold and handle
Shells and anchors and ships again!

I should be happy . . . that am happy
Never at all since I came here.
I am too long away from water.
I have a need of water near.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Which proves the point that there are really only three gifts any of us can expect to last a lifetime: a happy childhood, good genes and the right name (one of the Irish meanings of Katie is "pure").

Love and best wishes to you and your loved ones, Katie - now, and always.

Addendum #2: And Then, A Little Later...

Your “teacher’s comments” had a somewhat familiar ring, so I dug out the “School” folder from my archives and found two report cards from when I was eleven.

My first Teacher Evaluation showed I wasn’t quite living up to Mrs. MacLaren’s expectations:

“Katie’s written work is very good when she really tries to think an idea through. Sometimes she stops before she gets really into it. I want her to achieve at a higher level in academic areas because she has more ability than she sometimes demonstrates.”

By the end of the year I had improved a bit:

“Katie’s creativeness is so evident in her written work, as well as the delightful illustrations which accompany it. Katie does all of her work, and more, enthusiastically yet has time to be friendly and happy with others.”

I have to laugh at how little has changed in 33 years. Now that I'm back in class with ISFK, I know that having a dedicated teacher will make me want to work hard so I can achieve at a higher level.

Addendum #3: And, In Between, "Old Dive" (who, via Small Glass Planet, has been to me from Norwich, England what Katie has been to me from San Francisco, California)


If you could take a different road, just for one day, where would you go? What would you explore? Robyn would go to Chicago, for reasons which make it sound as genuinely tempting as the Emerald City in Oz.

This "take a different route just this once" thing; it's a feeling I get really intensely at airports. Just to get on a random plane and see where I end up. There are so many wonderful places to explore, if only I just got on that plane … But as I cannot choose a favourite, I'll choose something simple instead … something I've done once before and, if I could find that fork in the road again, would be off down there like a shot.

In winter, I love walking our desolate local beaches in really huge storms. Like that one in Ryan's Daughter. Any chance I get, if the weather forecast sends us a big one, I'm off to see Mother Nature throw a wobbly. To stand there and let her get all shouty at me. I love it …

One of the best I ever found was at Walberswick, some years back. It was February. There was a thunderstorm … and I mean a fucking huge storm! All howling and swirling black sky and searing lightning. It tore over the marshes and up the valley like the wrath of God.

There's a wrecked concrete breakwater at the harbour mouth (it's the one under Peahen's bottom on that picture I posted of her). I clambered over the barrier and walked right out to the end. It's all twisted, rotting concrete with rusted reinforcing bars sticking out, and this HUGE sea towered over it. Every massive wave pounded and smashed into it with an enormous BOOM. The whole structure shuddered and shook. It was brilliant! (and very, very cold and wet) … It was a totally stupid thing to do but I just clamped my legs round a concrete beam and sat there for ages watching the storm, letting the waves try and knock me off while the sky tore itself to bits all around me. And it was one of the most fantastic feelings I've ever had …

Eventually I came to my senses and struggled, soaked and battered, back up the beach into the dunes, where nestles one of the very best pubs in the universe. Stone flags and high Victorian pews. Big inglenook with a massive log blaze. Wonderful local ale and fresh caught fish. The Bell at Walberswick. It's swamped by tourists in the summer, but go there in winter when there's a big old storm … I keep going back, but there's not been a storm to touch that one …

So, young Robyn. If I could choose, then let me take that road again. The cold, wet and stupid one …

Thanks for all the cynical humanity and curmudgeonly humour, Dive.

Love and best wishes to you and your loved ones - now, and always.

Illusion Travels By Any, And Every, Means Available

Fig. 1. Hiraki Sawa - Dwelling (still), 2002


'One question revolves around the relationship between the anticipation of travel and its reality. I came upon a copy of J-K Huysmans's novel A Rebours, published in 1884, whose effete and misanthropic hero, the aristocratic Duc des Esseintes, anticipated a journey to London and offered in the process an extravagantly pessimistic analysis of the difference between what we imagine of a place and what can occur when we reach it.

Huysmans recounts that the Duc des Esseintes lived alone in a vast villa on the outskirts of Paris. He rarely went anywhere to avoid what he took to be the ugliness and stupidity of others. One afternoon in his youth, he had ventured into a nearby village for a few hours and had felt his detestation of people grow fierce. Since then he had chosen to spend his days alone in bed in his study, reading the classics of literature and moulding acerbic thoughts about humanity. However, early one morning, the Duc surprised himself by an intense wish to travel to London. The desire came upon him as he sat by the fire reading a volume of Dickens. The book evoked visions of English life which he contemplated at length and grew increasingly keen to see. Unable to withhold his excitement, he ordered his servants to pack his bags, dressed himself in a grey tweed suit, a pair of laced ankle boots, a little bowler hat and a flax-blue Inverness cape and took the next train to Paris. Because he had time to spare before the departure of the London train, he went to Galignani's English bookshop on the Rue de Rivoli and there bought a volume of Baedeker's Guide to London. He was thrown into delicious reveries by its terse descriptions of London's attractions. He moved on to a wine bar nearby frequented by a large English clientele. The atmosphere was out of Dickens and he thought of scenes where Little Dorrit, Dora Copperfield and Tom Pinch's sister Ruth sat in similarly cosy, bright rooms. One customer had Mr Wickfield's white hair and ruddy complexion and the sharp, expressionless features and unfeeling eyes of Mr Tulkinghorn.

Hungry, Des Esseintes went next to an English tavern in the Rue d'Amsterdam, near the Gare Saint Lazare. It was dark and smoky there, with a line of beer pulls along a counter, which was spread with hams as brown as violins and lobsters the colour of red lead. Seated at small wooden tables were robust Englishmen with boyish faces, teeth as big as palette knives, cheeks as red as apples and long hands and feet. Des Esseintes found a table and ordered some oxtail soup, a smoked haddock, a helping of roast beef and potatoes, a couple of pints of ale and a chunk of salmon.

However, as the moment to board his train approached, along with the chance to turn dreams of London into reality, Des Esseintes was abruptly overcome with lassitude. He thought how wearing it would be actually to go to London, how he would have to run to the station, fight for a porter, board the train, endure an unfamiliar bed, stand in queues, feel cold and move his fragile frame around the sights that Baedeker had so tersely described - and thus soil his dreams. 'What was the good of moving when a person could travel so wonderfully sitting in a chair? Wasn't he already in London, whose smells, weather, citizens, food, and even cutlery were all about him? What could he expect to find over there except fresh disappointments?' Still seated at his table, he reflected, 'I must have been suffering from some mental aberration to have rejected the visions of my obedient imagination and to have believed like any old ninny that it was necessary, interesting and useful to travel abroad.'

So Des Esseintes paid the bill, left the tavern and took the first train back to his villa, along with his trunks, his packages, his portmanteaux, his rugs, his umbrellas and his sticks - and never left home again.'

Alain de Botton (The Art of Travel)

Addendum: Katie has again submitted a response to one of my entries in the form of a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay, which I am happy to post.

Travel

The railroad track is miles away,
And the day is loud with voices speaking,
Yet there isn't a train goes by all day
But I hear it's whistle shrieking.

All night there isn't a train goes by,
Though the night is still for sleep and dreaming,
But I see its cinders red on the sky,
And hear its engine steaming.

My heart is warm with the friends I make,
And better friends I'll not be knowing;
Yet there isn't a train I wouldn't take,
No matter where it's going.

Edna St. Vincent Millay