Under the title Grumpiness Is the Fifth Truth Condition, Infinite Thought has this–
Heine recalling his meeting with Hegel in Berlin. Heine, expressing his appreciation of the night-sky, was met with this response from Hegel:
‘The stars, harrumph, the stars are only a gleaming leprosy on the sky.’ – quoted in Susan Buck-Morss, Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History, p. 119.
Always the life & soul of the party.
I’m off now. If you want a quarrel with me over anything it’ll have to be next Tuesday. By then, hopefully, I’ll either have drowned in rain or be so stuffed with endorphins I won’t care what I say. Or both.
“Gleaming leprosy”? Stuff that. He should have got an eyeful of this:
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1137883380?bctid=17075685001
No animals were harmed during the whatsit, etc.
Martin – now that I’m a public sycophant, can I say once again: I LOVE your comments. Hilarious.
Hi, Lara – I thought we all needed a laugh after Michael Jackson. I tried to kick the coffin offstage and do a bit of tap-dancing (it’s what he would’ve wanted), but they cut to Stevie Wonder saying how marvellous I really am instead. Too bad it wasn’ t aired, but your comment makes up for my rancid disappointment.
Now: holidays. Back here, early August.
This reminds of a quote from the beginning of I Walked with a Zombie which I watched for the first time the other night:
“It’s easy enough to read the thoughts of a newcomer. Everything seems beautiful because you don’t understand. Those flying fish, they’re not leaping for joy, they’re jumping in terror. Bigger fish want to eat them. That luminous water, it takes its gleam from millions of tiny dead bodies. The glitter of putrescence. There is no beauty here, only death and decay. “
Dear Mr Harrison
I found your review of Thursbitch on the web today and just wanted to thank you for it. Alan Garner seems to be able to say the unspeakable – and it means so much to me, that you feel what he is saying, and can share it.
Thank you, for what you know.
Only tears
Maya
Sunday finds me reclining in the sun-dappled courtyard of a Canterbury alehouse navigating the Fantasy Masterworks edition of Viriconium – a rich banquet, despite the paucity of no preface or intro.
I am justifiably happy having uncovered, an hour or so earlier, a copy of the 1973 Panther edition of The Committed Men.
I open it at random (page 101) and read: “the clutter of something that had blackbird in its ancestory, damping the mechanical cawing of the ageless rooks”
Returning to Viriconium and “a sound like destroyed bells.” – This aside from the persistant afterburn of stories like the Incalling, New Rays and Ice Monkey.
I know, beyond all knowing that Mike Harrison is the greatest, and most criminally underrated living English writer.
It is a rich furrow that we who appreciate his writing plough.
Hi Maya. I’m glad the review was of some use to you. I wish Garner would be just a little less possessive about the landscape, but there you go. This weekend I was only two or three miles from Thursbitch, at Windgather Rocks. A synchronicity which must mean something…