When I was at school a friend and I edited a literary magazine which drew not just on the skills of other boys, but of parents and past pupils. We were fortunate at the time in a group of considerable accomplishment. They included the poet Kathleen Raine, Charles Madge poet and co-founder of Mass Observation in the Thirties, Janet Adam Smith (Literary editor of the New Statesman), the poet and translator Michael Hamburger. It all comes back to me now as I read a recent biography of Kathleen Raine and familiar names and scenes throng my memory. Life for me was then at full of blast. I seem now to be living at least for a few minuted in the past as much as in the present. Something I don't often do.
It is quiet around here. You can can almost hear the drizzle condensing in the dark afternoon. I haven't been out but I am told that the entire world is attending the sales, a festival of Mammon which is quickly taking over in popularity and acclaim from Christmas and New Year.
7 comments:
Joyce and I love seeing Heidi's painting again, especially Dotty Woman which we don't think we have seen before.
Lovely! As though her exuberant eyes are all-seeing through time and space.
I haven't been out and about either. Mammon's festival holds no allure.
December has been a melancholic month, made all the more on receiving your sad news. I hope weiting brings a small comfort.
WRITING is the word I intended.
wrap up properly and get yourself a bit of today's winter sunshine ... its luvverly out there ... that's almost an order ! xx
Mammon rules here as well, but holds no interest
for me.
Delighting in Heidi's compelling images, which
you are so kind to share.
Good memories, or just that immediate sense of momentarily being there, need to be treasured. Michael Hamburger came up in 'The Rings of Saturn', didn't he?
We are spared sales mania until the first week of January at the earliest, by prefectural decree, something I'm always glad of.
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