Murray Christmas

An Analysis to the Poems and Life of Tao Yuan-Ming (365-427)

Nansenbushu Bankoku Shoka No Zu [Outline Map of All Countries of the Universe]

http://www.swaen.com/Nansenbushu-Bankoku-Shoka-No-Zu-Buddhist-world-map.php

Whose going to make the gravy now?

The question of Rhodesia

European Front week ending 19 December 1944

John Harris

The power to tax is the power to destroy

AUTHOR: Daniel Webster (1782–1852)
QUOTATION: The power to tax is the power to destroy.
ATTRIBUTION: This quotation comes from the words of DANIEL WEBSTER and those of JOHN MARSHALL in the Supreme Court case, McCulloch v. Maryland.

Webster, in arguing the case, said: “An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy,” 17 U.S. 327 (1819).

In his decision, Chief Justice Marshall said: “That the power of taxing it [the bank] by the States may be exercised so as to destroy it, is too obvious to be denied” (p. 427), and “That the power to tax involves the power to destroy … [is] not to be denied” (p. 431).

Weapons and Tactics of the Soviet Army: David C. Isby

GALATA TOWER PROJECTION MAPPING EXPERIENCE

Nakagin Capsule Tower

Jim, Who Ran Away from His Nurse, and Was Eaten by a Lion

There was a Boy whose name was Jim;
His Friends were very good to him.
They gave him Tea, and Cakes, and Jam,
And slices of delicious Ham,
And Chocolate with pink inside,
And little Tricycles to ride,
And read him Stories through and through,
And even took him to the Zoo—
But there it was the dreadful Fate
Befell him, which I now relate.

You know—at least you ought to know.
For I have often told you so—
That Children never are allowed
To leave their Nurses in a Crowd;

Now this was Jim’s especial Foible,
He ran away when he was able,
And on this inauspicious day
He slipped his hand and ran away!
He hadn’t gone a yard when—Bang!
With open Jaws, a Lion sprang,
And hungrily began to eat
The Boy: beginning at his feet.

Now just imagine how it feels
When first your toes and then your heels,
And then by gradual degrees,
Your shins and ankles, calves and knees,
Are slowly eaten, bit by bit.

No wonder Jim detested it!
No wonder that he shouted “Hi!”
The Honest Keeper heard his cry,
Though very fat he almost ran
To help the little gentleman.
“Ponto!” he ordered as he came
(For Ponto was the Lion’s name),
“Ponto!” he cried, with angry Frown.
“Let go, Sir! Down, Sir! Put it down!”

The Lion made a sudden Stop,
He let the Dainty Morsel drop,
And slunk reluctant to his Cage,
Snarling with Disappointed Rage
But when he bent him over Jim,
The Honest Keeper’s eyes were dim.
The Lion having reached his Head,
The Miserable Boy was dead!

When Nurse informed his Parents, they
Were more Concerned than I can say:—
His Mother, as She dried her eyes,
Said, “Well—it gives me no surprise,
He would not do as he was told!”
His Father, who was self-controlled,
Bade all the children round attend
To James’ miserable end,
And always keep a-hold of Nurse
For fear of finding something worse.




--Hillaire Belloc

Population Mountains

https://pudding.cool/2018/12/3d-cities-story/

The Orangutan Story

www.packomania.com

Section 1: Packings of equal and unequal circles in fixed-sized containers with maximum packing density

Ajanta Frescoes

Sydney in 3 minutes

Japanese Commander Mitsuo Fuchida’s after-action damage assessment map of the 1941 attack, which was presented to Emperor Hirohito.

The Morning of Sedgemoor

James, Duke of Monmouth, Pretender to the throne of James II, was defeated at Sedgemoor near Bridgwater, Somerset, in 1685.

little nemo in slumberland

Kanda Bongo Man- Freres Soki 1990

Rilke in English By W.H. AUDEN September 6, 1939

Not the least interesting phenomenon of the last four years has been the growing influence of Rilke upon English poetry: indeed, Rilke is probably more read and more highly esteemed by English and Americans than by Germans, just as Byron and Poe had a greater influence upon their German and French contemporaries than upon their compatriots.

It is presumptuous to pretend that one can ever really judge poetry written in a foreign language: one can only define the impression it makes upon oneself. Witht the appearance of this translation of the “Duino Elegies,” which, with the Orpheus Sonnets, form the final flower of his work, the bulk of Rilke’s poetry is now available in English, and it is possible to attempt such a definition.Rilke’s most immediate and obvious influence has been upon diction and imagery. One of the constant problems of the poet is how to express abstract ideas in concrete terms. The Elizabethans solved it for their generation by an anthropormorphic idenitification:

That fell sergeant strait in his arrest

the Metaphysicals for theirs by an intellectual ingenuity of wit:

For in your beauty’s orient deepThese flowers, as in their causes, sleep

With the exception of Blake, the poets of the succeeding two centuries found no fitting solution: in consequence they are wekaest whenever they attempt to deal with abstractions. They were content to state the latter abstractly, with the result that their poetry too often denegrates into preaching.

Rilke is almost the first poet since the seventeenth century to find a fresh solution. His method is the direct opposite to that of the Elizabethans but, like them and unlike the Metaphysicals, he thinks in physical rather than intellectual symbols. While Shakespeare, for example, thought of the non-human world in terms of the human, Rilke thinks of the human in terms of the non-human, of what he calls Things (Dinge), a way of thought which, as he himself pointed out, is more characteristic of the child than of the adult. To the former, tables, dolls, houses, trees, dogs, etc., have a life which is just as real as their own or that of their parents. Indeed, as a rule children think of life in terms of things and animals rather than in terms of people: a conscious interest in people does not commonly begin until adolescence.

If you can manage it, return with a portion of your weaned and grown-up feeling to any one of the things of your childhood with which you were much occupied. Consider whether there was anything at all that was closer, more intimate and necessary to you than such a Thing. . . . Was it not with a Thing that you first shared your little heart, like a piece of bread that had to suffice for two?

Thus one of Rilke’s most characteristic devices is the expression of human life in terms of landscape:

O Mädchen,
dies: das wir liebten in uns, nicht Eines, ein
Künftiges, sondern
das zahllos Brauende; nicht ein einselnes Kind,
sondern die Väter, die wie Trümmer Gebirgs
uns im Grunde beruhn; sondern das trockene Flußbett
einstiger Mütter; sondern die ganze
lautlose Landschaft unter dem wolkingen oder
reinen Verhängnis; dies kam dir, Mädchen, zuvor.

Oh, maid,
this: that we’ve loved, within us, not one, still to come, but all
the innumerable fermentation; not just a single child,
but the fathers, resting like mountain-ruins
within our depths—but the dry river-bed
of former mother—yes, and the whole of that
soundless landscape under its cloudy or
cloudless destiny: this got the start of you, maid

It is this kind of imagery which is already beginning to appear in English poetry {e.g., in Stephen Spender’s “Napoleon in 1814”) and is likely, I think, to become commoner.

But Rilke’s influence is not confined to certain technical tricks. It is, I believe, no accident that as the international crisis becomes more and more acute, the poet to whom writers are becoming increasingly drawn should be one who felt that it was pride and presumption to interfere with the lives of others (for each is unique and the apparent misfortunes of each may be his very way of salvation); one who occupied himself consistently and exclusively with his own inner life; one who wrote:

Art cannot be helpful through our trying to keep and specially concerning ourselyes with the distresses of others, but in so far as we bear our own distresses more passionately, give now and then a perhaps dearer meaning to endurance, and develop for ourselves the means of expressing the suffering within us and its conquest more precisely and clearly than is possible to those who have to apply their powers to something else.

This tendency is not to be dismissed with the cheery cry “defeatism.” It implies not a denial of the importance of political action, but rather the realization that if the writer is not to harm both others and himself, he must consider, and very much more humbly and patiently than he has been doing, what kind of person he is, and what may his real function. When the ship catches fire, it seems only natural to rush importantly to the pumps, but perhaps one is only adding to the general confusion and panic: to sit still and pray seems selfish and unheroic, but it may be the wisest and most helpful course.

A review is not the place to discuss Rilke’s ideas in detail. There are curious similarities hetween them and those of D. H. Lawrence. Both envied the undivided consciousness of the animals, both were obsessed by the idea of Death (cf. Lawrence’s “Ship of Death’ with the “Tenth Elegy’), both, to use terms common to Lawrence and Rilke’s friend Kassner, looked back to the physical aristocratic world of the Father rather than forward to the spiritual democratic world of the Son, and were consequently hostile to Christianity, both even were excited by the same Etruscan tombs. But what is important for us and future writers is not the truth or falsehood of their conclusions, but their conception of the writer’s real task and the lifelong and humble devotion which they brought to it.

What a scholar’s opinion of these translations may be I do not know and do not very much care. There is no such thing as a perfect translation; it is a job that has to be redone for every generation. But I am confident that this translation by Mr. Leishman and Mr. Spender will remain definitive for our own.

The history of ancient art : among the Greeks - Winckelmann, Johann Joachim, 1717-1768;

Bathhouse

Time in China