Nemi 📚🎶

#TolstoyReadalong

„Als ob ich nicht selbst wüsste, wie schlecht ich gehandelt habe! Aber wer ist schuld, dass ich so handeln musste?“
[Wronskij]

Leo N. Tolstoi
Anna Karenina 2.7
Aus dem Russischen übertragen von Fred Ottow.

#tolstoyreadalong

Very happy, too, Christina and band !
🙏👋

Shakespeare quest continues 2025 What a great year- we read about one play per month, a comfort and/or distraction from current events, a reminder that we too shall persevere.

Wow we read 12 plays in 2025! Thanks, everyone, for reading with my mom and me!
#TheBard_ProblemPlays #Shakespeare

open.substack.com/pub/allthele...

We'll finish up the Problem Plays with All's Well That Ends Well.
#AllsWell_2026 to start 2/23/26 . Thanks for thinking ahead!

For #MelvilleMonday 🐳 :

His impression of British Columbia was akin to a series of postcards: whales leaping out of blue water, green shorelines, boats.

Emily St. John Mandel
The Glass Hotel

“See how elastic our prejudices grow when once love comes to bend them.”

Herman Melville

#MelvilleMonday

Ahoy, Shipmates & Friends!

Happy #MelvilleMonday ! 🐳

“. . . like Rio Janeiro fountain, fed from the Cocovarde mountains, which is ever overflowing with strange waters . . .”

from The Confidence Man

“The thoughts of men are each a soul.”

(Babbalanja in Mardi)

#MelvilleMonday 🐳

PANDARUS

Would I were as deep under the earth as I am above!

#Troilus_2026
Act IV s2 (80)
#TheBard_ProblemPlays

#TolstoyReadalong

„In der Oper schlafe ich ein, aber im Bouffes sitze ich bis zum letzten Augenblick und amüsiere mich köstlich. Heute …“

Leo N. Tolstoi
Anna Karenina II,6
Aus dem Russischen übertragen von Fred Ottow.

#tolstoyreadalong

ÆNEAS

Good, good, my lord: the secrets of nature
Have not more gift in taciturnity.

#Troilus_2026
IV,2,74-75
#TheBard_ProblemPlays

The whale at the Natural History Museum in Fribourg stranded in Le Havre on October 11, 1852. The dead animal was embalmed, stuffed, and then sent on a long journey: on a spacious wagon with a tent roof, pulled by six horses, the whale was displayed at fairs. In 1881, it arrived in Fribourg.

Happy #MelvilleMonday 🐳 !

„A whale! Think of it! whales close to me, Wellingborough; —would my own brother believe it?“

Herman Melville
REDBURN C20

A whale finn in front of an icy shore

Nothing tempts him beyond common limit; in himself he has nothing to restrain. By constitution he is exempted from all moral harm. Acquiescent and calm from the cradle to the grave, he obviously slides through the crowd.

Melville. The Fiddler.

Happy #MelvilleMonday, dear friends!

Forget nostalgia, it's a trap, not a strategy. Through the haunting lens of Jean Bart’s Europolis, this is a warning: Europe’s greatness lies in its openness. To turn inward is to silt up and vanish. Worth reading:

AENEAS
Troilus would rather Troy were borne to Greece
Than Cressid borne from Troy.

PARIS
There is no help:
The bitter disposition of the time
Will have it so.

#Troilus_2026
Act IV s1 (48-50)
#TheBard_ProblemPlays

#TolstoyReadalong

„Der Regimentskommandeur hatte Wronskij zu sich gebeten, weil er ihn als Gentleman und gescheiten Menschen schätzte; vor allem aber war er gewiss, dass ihm die Ehre des Regiments am Herzen lag.“

Anna Karenina
II,5
Übersetzung von Fred Ottow.

#tolstoyreadalong

(reading from left to right) Menelaus, Paris, Diomedes, Ulysses, Nestor, Achilles and Agamemnon.
British Museum

#Troilus_2026
IV,1,31-34
#TheBard_ProblemPlays

ANEAS
We know each other well.

DIOMEDES
We do, and long to know each other worse.

PARIS
This is the most despiteful gentle greeting,
The noblest hateful love, that e'er I heard of.

Wilhelm Tischbein
Seven heads of heroes from Homer's Iliad

Ik kijk ernaar uit om het te lezen! 😊

#Troilus_2026

Ulysses:
perseverance, dear my lord,
Keeps honour bright: to have done is to hang
Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail
In monumental mockery.

(III.3.161-164)

Photo of a church in early morning light with gravestones in the foreground

Gray morning for a churchyard stroll but at least the rain has stopped for a while

#tolstoyreadalong

Reading Notes, 2/5/26 Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, part 1 Do you remember the sitcom Soap? It’s the story of two families, both with a ton of secrets and much comedy-drama. Each episode would begin with a “…

Reading Notes, 2/5/26

📚 Thoughts on part 1 of Anna Karenina.

katenread.wordpress.com/2026/02/06/r...

ULYSSES

For time is like a fashionable host
That slightly shakes his parting guest by th’ hand,
And with his arms outstretched, as he would fly,
Grasps in the comer. The welcome ever smiles,
And farewell goes out sighing.

#Troilus_2026
Act III s3 (165-169)
#TheBard_ProblemPlays

Even his name was forgotten, his pride but a legend . . . —his dream and his pride now dust with the lost dust of his anonymous bones, his legend but the stubborn tale of the money he buried somewhere . . .

Faulkner / The Hamlet, Book I, C1

“My childhood bends beside me. Too far for me to lay a hand there once or lightly. Mine is far and his secret as our eyes. Secrets, silent, stony sit in the dark palaces of both our hearts: secrets weary of their tyranny: tyrants willing to be dethroned.”

— James Joyce, Ulysses