Anton Chekhov (1860 - 1904) : "The Cherry Orchard"

 

TROFIMOV : ... Mankind is advancing toward the highest truth, the highest happiness attainable on earth, and I am in the front ranks!

LOPAKHIN :    Will you get there?

TROFIMOV :    I'll get there. [ Pause ] I'll either get there or I'll show others the way to get there.

Anton Chekhov, The Major Plays

Translated by Ann Dunnigan

Signet Classic, First Printing May 1964

Signet & Mentor Books 1948, "Good Reading for the Millions"

Ingmar Bergman (1918 - 2007) : "Hour of The Wolf"

 

- I thank you. The limit has at last been reached. The glass is shattered... but what do the splinters reflect? Can you tell me that?

Johan Borg in Bergman's film "Hour of The Wolf", 1968

Stephen Vincent Benét (1898 - 1943)

"Come, draw your steel for the right, 

for the time wears on !

It is only a little way to Jerusalem !"

"I have seen the floating swan

And the lion, bloody with dawn,

I will make pictures of them."

Selected Works of Stephen Vincent Bénét, Volume I : Poetry

From the poem: "For Those Who Are As Right As Any", 1936

New York, Farrar & Rinehart, Inc. 1942 

 

Stephen Vincent Benét

 

Now that I'm clean again ,

Now I've slept and fed ,

How shall I remember when

I was someone dead ?

Now the balm has worked its art

And the gashes dry , 

And the lizard at my heart 

Has a sleepy eye ,

How shall I remember yet

Freezing underground ,

With the wakened lizard set

To the living wound ?

Do not ponder the offence

Nor reject the sore ,

Do not tear the cerements

Flesh may need once more .

Cold comes back and rain comes back

And the lizard , too .

And the burden in the sack , 

May be meant for you .   

Do not play the risen dunce

With unrisen men .

Lazarus was risen once

But earth gaped again .

Selected Works of Stephen Vincent Benét

Volume I : Poetry  (pages 118 - 119)

New York, Farrar & Rinehart, Inc. 1942 

Josephine Preston Peabody

From "Harvest Moon", published by

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY, 1916

The Mathematicians of The Forest

a Montevideo, donde "la Tierra se confunde con el Cielo"

 

Morris West (1916 - 1999) : "The Second Victory"

 

When Sepp Kunzli had left, Hanlon changed into ski clothes and walked out alone to look at the town. His first day in Bad Quellenberg was nearly over and he needed time and privacy to ponder the experience.

The snow was still falling heavily, filling the air like blown feathers, softening the harsh contours, icing the bleak trees, coating the town from road to rooftop, deadening the footballs of the homing burghers. The mountains were hidden by a mist that swirled in from the southern defiles and drooped in ragged streamers over the pines. Yellow lights pricked out round the amphitheatre of buildings, and already the dusk was darkening into night.

From the entrance to the Sonnblick, the road wound downwards through buildings of diminishing importance, towards the centre of the old town, where the waterfall ran under the roadway, a silent ice-bound torrent, writhing fantastically from the steep crags to the valley floor.

When Hanlon moved out from the lighted doorway, the cold hit him like a knife and he twitched the hood of his parka up over his head and walked briskly down the slope. Behind him he heard the frosty tinkle of bells and he stepped aside to watch the passing of a peasant sleigh piled high with firewood and driven by an old man with Bismarck whiskers and a high green hat. The horse stepped awkwardly on its high-toed shoes and its breath made little cloud puffs among the fluttering snowflakes. Hanlon followed the silver music of the harness down the road.

The first buildings he passed were high and dark, their windows were shuttered and their balconies covered with board frames to protect them from the snow. Their doors were locked and the snow was piled high on the deserted steps.

These were the big hotels, pride of the town, source of its boom-time revenue. Now they were white elephants, eating their heads off, the interest piling up on their mortgages, the snow ruining the roof covers, the water freezing the pipes, the dank cold of winter seeping through their corridors.

'This', thought Hanlon moodily, 'is the way towns die, and empires too. Not by the sporadic cataclysms - war, earthquake, fire and flood - but by the slow recession of life from the members towards the small pumping heart, whose ventricles are the market, the shops, the beerhouse, the church. After a while the heart stops too, because when the members are dead the body is inert and useless, and life is a fruitless repetition of pulse beats - lost energy, motion that leads nowhere!'

Then he remembered that this was the purpose of his own coming: to jolt new life into the fading heart, to set the blood moving outwards again to the cold extremities, to give them warmth and articulation and a new direction. Instead he had wasted a whole day on a cynical display of power, as if one frightened a dying man back to life, instead of coaxing him slowly to desire it first, then fight for it.

Morris West "The Second Victory" (excerpt)

Published by Harper Collins, 1977

. . .

 

. . .

 

         -  Heed daughter . . . stars talk . . .

                  Can you hear it ?

Shakespeare : "Sonnet CVII"

 

Not mine own fears nor the prophetic soul

Of the wide world dreaming on things to come

Can yet the lease of my true love control,

Supposed as forfeit to a confined doom.

The mortal moon hath her eclipsed endured,

And the sad augurs mock their own presage;

Incertainties now crown themselves assured,

And peace proclaims olives of endless age.

Now with the drops of this most balmy time

My love looks fresh, and Death to me suscribes,

Since, spite of him, I'll live in this poor rhyme,

While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes;

    And thou in this shalt find thy monument

    When tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent.

.

 

I am as constant as the northern star

Of whose true-fixed and resting quality

There is no fellow in the firmament

The skies are painted with unnumbered sparks

They are all fire and every one doth shine

But there's but one in all doth hold his place

So in the world

                                               Shakespeare

Shakespeare : "Sonnet CXVI"

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds

Or bends with the remover to remove.

O, no, it is an ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken,

It is the star to every wand'ring bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

      If this be error, and upon me proved,

      I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Shakespeare's Sonnets

. . .

 

Me! Come! My dazzled face

In such a shining place!

Me! Hear! My foreign ear

The sounds of welcome near!

The saints shall meet

Our bashful feet.

My holiday shall be 

That they remember me;

My paradise, the fame

That  they pronounce my name.

 

EMILY Dickinson - SELECTED POEMS

A Tor Book, First Edition February 1993

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc -  New York

The Cross : Love Handbook

 

Reverend John Robinson in 1620

 

Remember, God has yet more Truth and Light to break forth from the Holy Word.

Rev. John Robinson to his congregation as they sailed for the New World in 1620

Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 - Klaus Mäkelä - Oslo Philharmonic

Paul Grabbe on Beethoven's Symphony No. 9

 SYMPHONY  9

In D Minor, with Final Chorus on Schiller's "Ode To Joy" Op. 125 (Popularly Known as the Choral Symphony)  FIRST PERFORMANCE: VIENNA, MAY 7, 1824

Beethoven had a habit of noting down musical ideas in sketchbooks which he carried around with him; of re-working these ideas, again and again, sometimes over a period of years, until, finally satisfied with their content, he would give them their final expression. Most of Beethoven's works passed through this exacting process, and the Ninth Symphony was no exception-- a fact rather upsetting to the "stroke of genius" view of the creative endeavor.

Notations and melodies intended for the Ninth Symphony date as far back as 1817. They make clear that Beethoven had the work in mind at least six years, thinking about it and tightening its ideas even while attending to the execution of other, lesser works. 

When the symphony was finally ready, its initial performance drew an enthusiastic  response. To this, Beethoven at first did not respond. Stone deaf, completely unaware of the ovation he was receiving, he stood there on the conductor's stand, his back to the audience, until one of the soloists took him by the sleeve and pushed him gently around. This incident, touching and rather pitiful, seems to have electrified the audience, for in it were many of Beethoven's friends and admirers; but it may be doubted if many of those present really perceived the greatness of this unprecedented symphony with voices in it. 

Not until the latter part of the nineteenth century did the work-- perhaps the most monumental work in all music-- make any appreciable headway, and then largely through  the ministrations of Richard Wagner who took it upon  himself, through repeated performances, to make the Symphony better known to the public at large.

GUIDE TO LISTENING

First Movement: The work opens with a mysterious rustling in the strings through which we hear the voices of different instruments, as if propounding questions. These are scarcely over when we begin to sense, dimly at first but with increasing certainty, that we are in the presence of something that has depth and width and titanic power. In accents subdued but more and more agitated the movement unfolds, its first theme appropriately likened by some to the pounding of a giant anvil. Suspense hangs over this music, and stress, and its occasional oases of relative tranquility are quickly swallowed by stormy outbursts from the entire orchestra .

Second Movement: Three spirited ejaculations by the orchestra-- the third preceded by a loud imitation on the kettledrums-- and the music rushes irresistible forward. Its exhilarating rhythm, wild yet somehow jolly, conjures visions of a giant skipping merrily along. A breathing spell that is gently lyrical is provided by a contrasting middle section.

Third Movement: This is the slow movement of the Symphony-- lovely, pleading, restrained in its principal melodies of which Hector Berlioz has said: "As for the beauty of these melodies, the infinite grace of the ornaments that envelop them . . . the tenderness, dreamy religious feeling they express-- if my prose could but give an approximate idea of them, music would have found a rival in written speech . . ."

Fourth Movement: The last movement starts clamorously, as though in a mood of militant defiance. This furious opening is followed immediately by brief snatches from the preceding three movements. Sir Donald F. Toby, one of the most scholarly students of Beethoven, has this to say on this subject:

. . ."Beethoven's plan is to remind us of the first three movements . . . and to reject them one by one as failing to attain the joy in which he believes. After all three have been rejected, a new theme is to appear . . . hailed and sung as the hymn of joy." 

This new theme is presently introduced, at first tentatively by the cellos and violas. These are joined by the violins, finally by the entire orchestra. Up to this point the singers have been silent, but now the baritone enters with the words: "O, friends, not these tones! Let us take up a more joyous strain." Whereupon the entire chorus joins in; and now, the triumphant accents of the Ode to Joy burst forth upon us-- music of transcendental and triumphant gladness

From THE STORY OF ONE HUNDRED SYMPHONIC FAVORITES

PAUL GRABBE (1902-1999)

PUBLISHERS GROSSET & DUNLAP, NEW YORK, 1940

Peter Pringle & The Oldest Song in The World

.

all the flowers are forms of water

the sun reminds them through a white cloud 

see how they wake without a question

even though the whole world is burning

W. S. Merwin (1927 - 2019)

From The Shadow of Sirius

"Rain Light" (excerpt)

Copper Canyon Press 2009

The Shadow of Sirius

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804 - 1864) : "The World Around Us"

A writer who every day witnesses the glory of the New England countryside would naturally be especially aware of the varied wonders of Nature. Nathaniel Hawthorne, a native  New Englander, was aware , and these excerpts from his American Notebooks reflect his deep reverence for Nature's beauty:   

I left my Sophia at five o'clock this morning, to catch some fish for dinner. On my way through the orchard, I shook our summer apple-tree, and ate the golden apple which fell from it. Methinks these early apples, which come as a golden promise before the treasures of autumnal fruit, are almost more delicious than anything that comes afterwards. We have but one of such tree in our orchard; but it supplies us with a daily abundance, and promises to do so for at least a week to come. Meantime, other trees begin to cast their ripening windfalls upon the grass; and when I taste them, and perceive their mellowed flavor and blackening seeds, I feel somewhat overwhelmed with the impending bounties of Providence. I suppose Adam, in Paradise, did not like to see his fruits decaying on the ground, after he had watched them through the sunny days of the world's first summer.

Brooks and pools of water seem to me to have a peculiar aspect, at this season.You know that the water must be cold, and you shiver a little at the sight of it; and yet the grass about the pool is of deepest verdure, and the sun may be shining into it. The withered leaves, which over-hanging trees shed into the water, contribute much to the effect of it.

    Insects have almost vanished in the fields and woods. I hear locusts yet singing in the sunny hours; and crickets have not quite finished their song. Once in a while, I see a caterpillar--this afternoon, for instance, a red hairy one, with black hair at the head and tail. They do not appear to be active; and it makes one rather melancholy to look at them.

No language can give an idea of the beauty and glory of the trees, just as this time. It would be easy, by a process of word-daubing, to set down a confused idea of  gorgeous colors, like a bunch of tangled skeins of bright silk; but there's nothing, in the reality, of the glare which would thus be conveyed. And yet the splendor both of individual trees and of whole scenes, is unsurpassable.

The trees reflected in the river--they are unconscious of a spiritual world so near to them. So are we.

Yesterday afternoon I talk a solitary walk to Walden Pond. It was a cool, north-west windy day, with heavy clouds rolling and tumbling about the sky, but still a prevalence of genial autumn sunshine. The fields are still green , and the green masses of the woods have not yet  assumed their many-colored garments; but here and there, are solitary oaks of a deep, substantial red, or maples of a more brilliant hue, or chestnuts [sic], either yellow or of a tenderer green than in summer. Some trees seem to return to their hue of May or early June, before they put on the brighter autumnal tints. In some places, along the borders of low and moist land, a whole range of trees where clothed in the perfect gorgeousness of autumn, of all shades brilliant color, looking like the palette on which Nature was arranging the tints wherewith to paint a picture.

The clouds of any one day, are material enough, alone, for the observation either of an idle man or a philosopher.   

The cave makes a fresh impression on me every time I visit it--so deep, so irregular, so gloomy, so stern--parts of its walls the pure white of the marble--others cover with a grey decomposition, and with spots of moss, and with brake growing where there is a handful of earth. Then to stand and look into its depths, at various points, under the arch or elsewhere, and to hear the roar of the stream re-echoing up. It is like a heart that has been rent asunder by a torrent of passion, which has raged and roared, and left its ineffaceable traces; though now there is but a little rill of feeling at the bottom.

A north-west windy day, cool, with a general prevalence of dull grey clouds over the sky, but with brief, quick glimpses of sunshine. The foliage having its autumn hues, Monument Mountain looks like a headless sphinx, wrapt in a rich Persian shawl. Yesterday, through a prevalent mist, with the sun shining on it, it had the aspect of burnished copper. The sun-gleams on the hills are peculiarly magnificent, just in these days.

I visited my grape vine, this afternoon, and ate the last of its clusters. This vine climbs around a young maple tree, which has now assumed the yellow leaf. The vine leaves are more decayed than those of the maple. Thence to Cow Island, a solemn and thoughtful walk. Returned from the island by another path, of the width of a pair of wagon wheels, passing through a grove of hard-wood trees, the lightsome hues of which make the walk more cheerful than among the pines. The roots of oak trees emerged from the soil, and contorted themselves across the path. The sunshine also, broke across in spots, and in other spots the shadow was deep; but still there was intermingling enough of sunshine and bright hues to keep off the gloom from the whole path.

. . .

From "Great Writings" by Nathaniel Hawthorne

L. James Morgan Jr (Compiler)

The World Around Us

Published 1971 by Hallmark Editions

Hawthorne in Salem

out for a late afternoon walk with Mr. Hawthorne

The trees reflected in the river

they are unconscious of a spiritual world so near them. 

So are we.

Great Writings by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Published 1971 by Hallmark Editions

Hawthorne in Salem

in Your faithfulness

The Song Of Songs

My beloved lifts up his voice,

he says to me,

"Come then, my love,

my lovely one, come.

For see, winter is past,

the rains are over and gone.

The flowers appear on the earth.

The season of glad songs has come,

the cooing of the turtledove is heard

           in our land.

The fig tree is forming its first figs

and the blossoming vines give out their fragrance.

Come then, my love,

my lovely one, come.

My dove, hiding in the clefts of the rock,

in the coverts of the cliff,

show me your face,

let me hear your voice,

for your voice is sweet

and your face is beautiful."

. . .

Rumi

your love has brought us to this silence,
where the only obligation
is to walk slowly through a meadow
and look

William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616) : "Sonnet CXXVIII"

How oft, when thou, my music, music play'st

Upon that blessed wood whose motion sounds

With thy sweet fingers when thou gently sway'st

The wiry concord that mine ear confounds,

Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap

To kiss the tender inward of thy hand,

While my poor lips, which should that harvest reap,

At the wood's boldness by thee blushing stand.

To be so tickled they would change their state

And situation with those dancing chips,

O'er whom [thy] fingers walk with gentle gait,

Making dead wood more blest than living lips.

     Since saucy jacks so happy are in this,

     give them [thy] fingers, me thy lips to kiss.

Emily Dickinson

My river runs to thee :
Blue sea, wilt welcome me?

My river waits reply.
Oh sea, look graciously !

I'll fetch thee brooks
From spotted nooks, - 

Say, sea,
Take me! 



The Outlet
Collected Poems of EMILY DICKINSON 

Cappella Pratensis and The Den Bosch Choirbooks

Cappella Pratensis

- wrapping up Lord

The Lord said

My Heart rests in your heart ... When on Holy Thursday I left Myself in the Blessed Sacrament, you were very much on My mind ...

+

Just as they were telling about it

Jesus himself was suddenly standing there

among them and said
                      
                                        " Peace be with you "