Tag: english literature

Rhyme vs reason

Restif de la Bretonne goes one step beyond Shakespeare and says that poetry is the language of Gods and beasts, and that reason speaks in prose.

Macbitch in Paris

CC says that Telva says that Jaume Plensa is simply panting to design some sets for Verdi’s Macbetch. I blame Telva’s legions of copy editors this time–they get Toulouse wrong too–but there’s no reason why not: “So this is the story of Lady Macbitch and her husband. The Queen stimulates herself with the props of…

Here’s looking at you, lunch

I think it’s actually a slow worm, but here’s Thomas Decker’s Honest whore anyway: Lord Hippolito. Scarce can I read the stories on your brow, Which age hath writ there: you look youthful still. Orlando Friscobaldo. I eat snakes, my Lord, I eat snakes. My heart shall never have a wrinkle in it, so long…

I met man who almost killed Orwell

Sez No Good Boyo: “If you’d known who he was, would you have killed him?” “Of course. He was fifth-columnist, Trotsky-Maxtonite traitor to worker class. My boys would have tattooed hammer and sickle on his head with bullets. We had many. Soviet economy strong.”

Some more sun goddesses

The other day I did a libertarian Raval tour with a particularly dangerous Californian sociologist, and we got onto Orwell’s apparent incapacity to see the most recent civil war as anything but a class conflict betrayed. This despite ethnic-based stuff like the vicious mini-civil war between Catalan fascists associated with Estat Català and self-described communist…

The demon barber of Calais, a 17th century Sweeney Todd

I believe the current early chronology of versions containing all the basic motifs is as follows: Joseph Fouché was a politician and administrator, and the delightfully wicked creator under Bonaparte of something vaguely resembling the modern police service. According to PBS, he wrote in something called Archives of the police of a series of murders…