The blue of the hyacinths

The blue of the hyacinths

The poet Rilke, writing to Elisabeth Ephrussi, told her to: ‘Look into the blue of the hyacinths.  And the spring!’  Well?  What are we waiting for?  Let’s go and find a hyacinth and then inhale its heady perfume! And meet their wild cousins, the...
Like a cradle-song

Like a cradle-song

Such a comforting line this, from a letter by the German poet Hölderlin. The sky and the air embrace me like a cradle-song.May they embrace you, too.  And here is another thought of Hölderlin, on a peaceful state of work; and in another letter, his admiration for a...
Man has a long time to go

Man has a long time to go

Some wise words from Aaron Copland to a young Leonard Bernstein.  They maintained a close friendship and correspondence for decades, and I like the advice.  It reminds me of a word from a father to a daughter in an American novel: ‘Slow down, Ivy, slow...
Happiness makes one more intelligent

Happiness makes one more intelligent

While I’m not sure if this is true, I found it a striking statement, particularly given the context.  It’s from a letter written by a husband in 1920s China, who knew or sensed that he would soon lose his life due to a perilous political situation.  His...
Calm and contentment

Calm and contentment

Christian Ludwig seems to have been a wise man, able to look on things with calm and contentment.  He lived at a time no less tumultuous, and perhaps in some ways more so, than our own.  A reminder to cleave to the good and keep one’s equanimity.Your calm, the...
A scholar’s garden

A scholar’s garden

Pliny the Younger is a delightful correspondent when he isn’t berating you for not having been in touch. His letters have an immediacy and freshness which makes me regret he isn’t around for me to write to. Here he ponders how much land is adequate for the...
Living in the moment

Living in the moment

Keats is one of the Great Nuannaarpoqians. He grew up with sorrow, first nursing his mother through tuberculosis and, a few years later, his younger brother, before then succumbing himself. These and other travails did nothing to curb his capacity to grasp moments of...
Clamber through the clouds

Clamber through the clouds

What a life-affirming ambition from my third candidate for a nuannaarpoq award, John Keats. He didn’t live long but he did live, squeezing every drop of enjoyment he could out of a life that was beset and ultimately curtailed by illness – his own and...
A date with dates

A date with dates

Pliny the Younger is a favourite correspondent, warm, cantankerous, impatient of news.  He gets mad as hell with friends who claim to have no time to write, and tells them roundly not to bother him with excuses about being busy in the Senate or other such nonsense....
Don’t wait too late

Don’t wait too late

This quirky but reasonable injunction correlating wine with life and life with wine comes from a letter Ingrid Bergman received from Erich Maria Remarque, author of the searing All Quiet on the Western Front, about German soldiers in the First World War.  A gentle...

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