M.F. Corwin

The path forward and the path back.

‘For Books are not absolutely dead things, but doe contain a potencie of life in them to be as active as that soule was whose progeny they are; nay they do preserve as in a violl the purest efficacie and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.’

‘Eating too much cabbage may be a form of gluttony, but it doesn’t carry much moral opprobrium or significance beyond that’ —Paul Freedman (‘Out of the East: Spices and the Medieval Imagination’, p. 159)

The sunlight on the trees is red gold, and the hills are veiled in smoke. There is a flash of motion and a spotted towhee settles on a nearby branch, its speckles dulled as though already covered in ash. The fire is on the other side of the mountain, but the fragility of things seems much closer.

All we like sheep. www.eudaemonist.com/22vi2026/

‘The grey early morning, when body and soul are only narrowly held together by a cup of coffee, is anyhow no time for conversation, anywhere, in any circumstance’ —Ethel Mannin, ‘An American Journey’

‘…and still / The book-club, guarded from your modern trick / Of shaking dangerous questions from the crease, / Preserved her intellectual.’ —E.B. Browning, ‘Aurora Leigh’

Meeting up with old friends.

Another walk along the river.

Thinking back over the books I’ve finished reading so far this year, and Auden’s ‘The Dyer’s Hand’ and Burton’s ‘Anatomy of Melancholy’ stand out as the best, but Natalie Bauer-Lechner’s ‘Recollections of Gustav Mahler’ is definitely the funniest (well, ‘most amusing’).

Remember the Armenians.

Hanging out with my most toxic neighbor.

‘There are types of character which are like a prism, whose various and brilliant colours are but broken reflections of a single ray of concentrated light’ —R.H. Tawney (‘Religion and the Rise of Capitalism’, p. 156)

‘Become the imitable thing’ —William James, ‘The Gospel of Relaxation’

Spell check wants to change ‘bibliometrische’ to ‘bibliomantische’.

‘Most of us continue living unnecessarily near our surface’ —William James, ‘On Vital Reserves’

‘So there’s an end to that—it’s commonplace: light goes with life, and in the winter of your years the dark comes early…’ —Tom Stoppard, ‘Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead’

‘Somehow his memory irritates me! He possessed the truth and answered to the heavenly calling, and yet always without joy and almost always without grace. His puerility, as you say, was heartrending.’ —Edmund Gosse, unimpressed with Andrew Lang in a letter to Henry James

‘Opposite to exercise is idleness (the badge of gentry) or want of exercise, the bane of body and mind, the nurse of naughtiness, stepmother of discipline, the chief author of all mischief….’ —Robert Burton (‘Anatomy of Melancholy’)

‘Of seasons of the year, the autumn is most melancholy’ —Robert Burton, ‘Anatomy of Melancholy’, 1.1.3.2

‘The natural dreariness of the place is not a little increased by the melancholy croakings of innumerable penguins with which the Shore is lined. Nature seems to have designed this Spot solely for the use of Sea Lions, Seals, penguins and Sea Fowls.’ —James Burney, Journals, 25.xii.1776

A moment’s pause while tidying.

‘As readers, most of us, to some degree, are like those urchins who pencil mustaches on the faces of girls in advertisements’ —Auden, ‘Reading’, in ‘The Dyer’s Hand’

‘There’s really no point in writing normal novels’ —Yoko Tawada, ‘Exophony’ (trans. Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda), p. 81

‘Why novels have to follow the logic of department stores is beyond me’ —Yoko Tawada, ‘Exophony’ (trans. Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda, p. 54)

If you are looking for creepy stories about ghosts, uncanny children, and other oddities, I cannot recommend M.R. James’s translation of ‘The Apocryphal New Testament: Being the Apocryphal Gospels, Acts, Epistles, and Apocalypses with Other Narratives and Fragments’ enough. Snarky notes a bonus.

‘To grow bigger every moment in your own conceit, and the world to lessen: to deify yourself at the expense of your species; to judge the world—this is the acme and supreme point of your mystery—these the true PLEASURES of SULKINESS.’ —Charles Lamb, ‘Popular Fallacies’ no. XVI