Too Loud a Solitude – done. Hrabal – on my side. It’s a small book – 98 pages. It reads well and it flickers now and then with wonderful stuff. “Because thoughts come from outside and travel with us like the noodle soup we take to work”. (2) Citing from Talmud “For we are like olives – only when we are crushed do we yield what is best in us.” (14). And so it is for Hanta who, during 35 years did nothing but pressed the green and the red buttons of aa hydraulic press, making waste paper bales. Well, “did nothing” is not true – he also salvaged 3 tons of books and built an extraordinary knowledge. Philosophy and literature, poetry and physics, everything he could get his hands on. He’d spot the good books in a sea of paper saying that it was like seeing a golden fish in a polluted river. He’d gulp down their beauty like the beer he’d always drink at work. He ended up like the olives above – with his finger pointing to a verse in Novalis – “Every beloved object is the center of a garden of paradise”.
Nice. Liked it. I want more. Which one will be next? Closely Observed Trains – or – I Served the King of England? I’ll see. Now, it seems, Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities is underway. Cannot wait. What am I going to read over the weekend? Perhaps some Pessoa again? I’ll see.
Yesterday I went to the opening of Picasso – Myths, Fables and Models (thank you T!). It is pretty interesting to see that the people who came at the opening are different from the people who would usually go to Leopold, for example, at the same kind of events. But I have too little data to generalize right now. Will do that when the time is ripe. Now, back to Picasso. Graphical works. Not his best. But very good, nevertheless. The Dying Minotaur. The Owls. Minotaur Caressing a Sleeping Woman. Sculptor and His Model. What is amazing is the certainty of the line, the authority of the line. There is no trace which looks like it did not belong there. No sign is too much or too little. That’s how genius works!
Funny! I looked for “Picasso minotaur” in Google. But then, I do not know why, I typed “memory” at the end and hit Enter. That’s what came up: Picasso minotaur memory. I guess I know what other book I have to order next! But why “memory”? What did I want with it? Memory of what? Might it be that I stumbled upon this book once before but never really noticed and now a couple of synapses fired instantaneously? No idea. Let it be!
G20 – I read a dialogue on how to fence in capitalism by limiting the amount of money one person can make. I cannot help but think that, unfortunately, there is no link between the real world and the ideal world. The latter does not exist. The first is and always will be imperfect, brutal and raw. The Minotaur. That’s how it’s like. You can make a Minotaur neither a man, nor a beast. It is both. And will be both.