In Brief
Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to good things in Blogville and Beyond.
- Alex Ross noted that James Levine opted for the original orchestration of Webern's op. 6 for the Met Orchestra's Carnegie Hall concert, with parts for six trombones. Nice. [The Rest Is Noise]
- Jessica Duchen got to hear the last part of Daniel Barenboim's Beethoven sonata cycle in London. [Jessica Duchen]
- Deliciously readable words from J. M. Coetzee about the anguish of writing a novel. [Laila Lalami]
- I must know what text is being quoted in this post, which our favorite French art blogger illustrated with Delaporte's La petite collation. It is about reaching one's hand into a food-basket, how the sense of touch is related to the thought of taste. [Lunettes Rouges]
- More opinion on the New York Philharmonic's trip to North Korea. [Lorin Maazel, Matthew Guerrieri]
- We will be following Steve Smith's posts, hopefully, as he travels with the NY Phil in North Korea. [Night after Night]
- Your favorite Danish opera blogger has some thoughts on the casting at the Bayreuth Festival this summer. [Mostly Opera]
- Brian heard L.A. Opera's performance of Zemlinsky's Der Zwerg. [Out West Arts]
4 comments:
Quick reaction !
I give you a hint : this is a translation in French from another language.
Hmm, that's why it seemed vaguely familiar...
Here is the text:
"My hand stretched forward into the crack of the barely open larder door like a lover into the night. Once at home there in the darkness, it groped for sugar or almonds, sultanas or preserves. And as the lover embraces his girl before kissing her, the sense of touch had its tryst with them before the mouth tasted their sweetness. How the honey, the handfuls of currants, even the rice gave themselves caressingly to the hand. How passionate was this meeting now that both had at last escaped from the spoon. Gratefully and wildly, like a girl one has snatched from her parents' house, the strawberry jam let itself be enjoyed without bread and as it were in God's open air, and even the butter responded tenderly to the bold wooer who broke into its maiden retreat. The hand, the youthful Don Juan, had soon penetrated into every cell and fastness, with flowing strata and streaming masses in its wake: virginity, which uncomplainingly renewed itself."
It took me a while to figure it out, but it is one of the Proustian imitations by Walter Benjamin in A Berlin Childhood about 1900. Not only a fabulous tribute to Marcel Proust but a beautiful and decadent vignette.
Bravo !
A French and an English translation of a text in German.
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