61

G.D. [God?]

Voglio scrivere un libro ove tutte le parole sieno vive e musicali come le foglie che fremono variamente ad ogni mutazione di sofio in una giornata del mio marzo
– Gabriele d’Annunzio, Il caso Wagner.


Gabriele d’Annunzio (1863-1938). Italian poet and Nietzschean man-of-destiny. Born Abruzzi; died on the Riviera. Led a force to occupy the Dalmatian port of Fiume, 1919-20 (precursor to Mussolini’s march on Rome).

Canto nuovo (1882)
Il trionfo della morte (1894)

The ant-like detail, obsessive cross-hatched minutiae of Gustave Doré – his London cityscapes, weighty phantasmagoria of hell, sky, clouds in his Bible, Dante.

John (Giovanni?) Dee (1527-1608). Renaissance Magus, mathematician, architect, astrologer. Author (among numerous other works) of a Treatise on the Rosie Crucian Secrets. Absent from England during the two years (1583-85) of Giordano Bruno’s residence there.

GET

WET

64

Going East

That things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.
– George Eliot, Middlemarch.


Boredom I can take. I mean, I should be used to it by now. And horror – well, at least it isn’t boring. Boredom and horror combined, though, that’s a bit much.”
…
“No, not the film, that literary festival – the one I was telling you about before.”
…
“Where do I begin? No, the film, that was quite fun, I thought.”
…
“Which one? The space one or the desert one?”
…
“Hard to say, really. It’s rather an eccentric place: one man’s idea of a film festival running all year round – only all the films are crap.”
…
“You know, I’m really pleased you enjoyed it. About ten minutes in I was beginning to think that I was insane ever to have taken anyone to that place.”
…
“Actually I think it’s a friend’s house, but he stores all the old cans of Eastman Kodak in there. It must be a bit of a fire-risk, really.”
…
“No, that was just me trying to understand the dialogue.”
…
“‘Oooff’?”
…
“There were certainly plenty of things getting stuck into people.”
…
“So what was your professional opinion of the standard of the performances?”
…