Tout Doucement Sans Faire de Bruit

A poem from Esther Jansma from her book 'Waaigat' (1993). Original in Dutch and translation into English (made by google translate):

Source poem:  here.

Title is a line from Yves Montands song, 'Les feuilles mortes' (1946): here. Translation into English: here.

Decalogo Del Perfetto

Did you ever write down your own list of 10 commandments? I never did and I guess I didn't because I feel I don't really need them (read: vanity).

Here the commandments of the bible (source), the mafia (source: Italian and English), and the paratroopers (source: German and English). As you can read all three are different. 

My summary of the commandments:

• Bible: honor god, sabbath, parents, life, relations, property of others, and truth.
• Mafia: honor our friends ('cosa nostra'), our wives, duty, appointments, and truth.
• Paratroopers: seek combat, comrades, acting, offensive, munition, good weapons, grasping an operation, being agile, and though.

Observations:

• What strikes me is that the commandments of the bible and the mafia exhale the same atmosphere. To honor god or our friends and make sure that no bottleneck pops up and prevent "us" to honor. 
• The paratroopers' commandments are at another level. They limit themselves to the battlefield or preparing for it. For them battlefield behavior is key.
• English version of the paratroopers is slightly different from the German original. English 1 = German 1, 3 and 2;  2 = 4; 3 = 5; 4 = 6; 5 = 7 ; 6 = not in German; 7 = 8; 8 = first part of 9; 9 = second part of 9; 10 = 10. Why did the Allied forces in 1942 feel the need to add: "Never surrender. Your honor lies in Victory or Death"? That's not a commandment that appears in the German original. Did that make the Germans look more dumb; like a headless chicken? Did that promote the fighting spirit of the Allies? Was someone playing a psychological game? And did it work?

Sem Esperança

A poem from Filipa Leal. Translated into English by Juliana Brina:

P.S.  Source poem: here.

Anna from the North

She was named after her grandmother and because grandma was still alive when Anna grew up, she was called "little Anna". The library was the room she liked best in the house. A room where it was always quiet and the sounds of the house and its inhabitants were muffled. She loved its smell and the way the sunlight played with the covers of the books. A strange mixture of overexposure and shadows of light. Above all little Anna loved what was inside the books. She loves reading.

Snow had fallen. Another winter day in the North. All quiet in the little village with the falu red painted houses. The smell of wood stoves and the cold wind that bites a little on the cheeks. Today little Anna picked a book with the title 'The secret garden' and read only the first three pages. She was curious for "the secret". (She didn't know it yet but this book would change her young life. It was one of the few books that would have a lasting impact on the way she would treat Others. In time her eldest daughter Mary would be named after the main character of this book.) Her other two sisters were helping mom set the table for daddy's namnsdag. In 10 minutes they would eat some cake and drink tea. In the afternoon they would all go sledding up on the mountain - daddy promised it yesterday! - and drink hot chocolate from themed bottles.

Little Anna didn't know for sure what she liked best: sledding with hot chocolate, reading, the stunning red flowers in the vase in the corner of the kitchen, or the apples in grandma's beautiful glass bowl. "I like all of them actually", she thought. "Why should I have to choose? There's no one who says I have to, right! Yes!"

P.S. Sources of the art used: here.

P.P.S. This post has nothing to do with Anna Lotterud (artistname 'Anna of the North'). She makes soft, soul-baring electro-pop music. Our paths cross by accident.

Sources Art

 The sources of the art used in the blog 'Anna from the North':

Harriet Backer (Norwegian, 1845-1932), 'The Library of Thorvald Boeck' (1902): source.

 

  Peder Severin Krøyer (Danish, 1851-1909), 'From Skagen Sønderstrand' (1883): source.

 Peder Mørk Mønsted (Danish, 1859-1941), 'Winterscene from Vignaes' (1916): source.

 

  Johann Gudmundsen-Holmgreen (Danish, 1858-1912), 'A little girl reading (Læsende lille pige)' (1900): source.

 

 Carl Holsøe (Danish, 1863-1935), 'Sunlit Interior' (?year?): source.

 

 Cajsastina Åkerström (Swedish, born 1967), 'Indian cress' (2021): source.

 

Cajsastina Åkerström (Swedish, born 1967), 'September blues' (2020): source.

 

Fanny Brate (Swedish, 1862-1940), 'Namnsdag A Day of Celebration' (1902): source. 

 

 Peder Mørk Mønsted (Danish, 1859-1941), 'Sunlit winter landscape' (1919): source.

 

 Pekka Halonen (Finnish, 1865-1933), 'Evening mood (Iltatunnelma)' (1896): source.

Who Else?

Who else would long for you the way I do?

P.S. Poem 'Lágri di Amor' is from Miguel de Senna Fernandes. Its language is Patuá, a creole language that fuses Portuguese, Malay, Konkani and Spanish. It's spoken - but nearly extinct - by the Macau people near Hong Kong.

P.P.S. Picture 'Moonshine over Macau' (2012) is made by Sinh Truong. Source: here.

Wedding Day?

 Our Song

"You would use your songs to say the words you couldn't say
And every word you said was about you and me
I loved, everything you wrote and when you would sing
I felt that my heart was falling

You're all that I want
We fuck so hard, it left me faded
For all you are
There is no other love, it's only yours

You're all that I want, all the love"

P.S. Yes and yes - you know.

P.P.S. Picture is from Alessandro Puccinelli: here. 

P.P.P.S. "But it's always your eyes that pull me under." (blogpost 9-2019).

Who Invented Liquid Soap, and Why?

The ending from 'The Sure Thing' (1985) is a little treasure. Perfect! Script was written by Steve Bloom (source).

Script of ending:
-All right. Here we go.
I've got a very pleasant surprise today.
Comes from an unlikely source.
Walter Gibson.
It is called The Sure Thing.
"'lt could be tonight,' he thought...
"as he stood in the corner, pretending to have a good time.
"He would meet her tonight.
"All his young life, he had dreamed of a girl like this.
"5'6", silky hair...
"trim, nubile body..."
"Nubile," by the way, is spelled with a "u."
"...nubile body that really knew how to move...
"and soft, deeply tanned skin.
"Now, as for personality traits, she needed only one.
"She had to love sex, and all the time.
"To arrive at this moment, he had traveled vast distances...
"enduring many hardships:
"abject poverty, starvation...
"show tunes, you name it.
"From across the room he saw her. She was perfect.
"He knew almost nothing about her, and she didn't know much more about him.
"lt was exactly how it was supposed to be. He brought her to his room.
"The lights were soft, the moment was right.
"Then she leaned over and whispered in his ear:
"'Do you love me?'
"Thoughts raced through his mind. Did she really want him?
"What had he done to deserve this bounty? Does God exist?
"Who invented liquid soap, and why?
"'Do you love me?' Staring into her eyes...
"he knew that she really needed to hear it.
"But for the first time in his life, he knew these were no longer just words.
"And if he said it, it would be a lie.
"'Do you love me?' she whispered.
'Do you love me?'
"lt would not be tonight.
"The answer was'no."'
He was a traitor!
You didn't sleep with her?
Still seeing Jason?
We broke up.
That's too bad.
You didn't sleep with her.
She wasn't my type.

P.S. Ending of The Sure Thing on Youtube: here.

P.P.S I wrote about this movie before in blogpost 'Sure' (2018). Unfortunally I can't find on The Internet a place where I can watch this movie again. I'd love to, together with you at the same time ... after watching together the whole movie, kiss you goodnight and dream away with you in an eternal us.

Always Seem to Be

On November 10th, 1944 Denise Menasce wrote, in Cairo, this love-letter to Paddy:

Transcription:

"Gloom, dep[r]ession, and still more gloom! Darling Paddy, / I always seem to be in a miserable mood when I write / to you. I am sorry, but somehow when I am gay and / full of joie de vivre, I don't feel like writing. It is / only when I am simply gorging in misery that I want to / pour it out of me. [D]o you mind frightfully if your little / imp is[n']t madly impish in her letters? I shall make a / bold attempt to be gay amusing, and if possible / alluring, so as to make you think of me - with, "un / tan[t] soit peu de regret." Darling, it is dreadful, but I / just realized, that I am writing just to write as I have / absolutely nothing worth while to write about."

Is this a law for some lovers? In real life full of questions, attention and abundance. Full of 'joie de vivre'. And in letters a lot of silence, frugal with attention and nurturing a relationship. Like a snail that has withdrawn into its house. 

From silence I can deduce everything: depth, mystery, pain, love, too much or too little interest or ... - and everything in between. But I don't want to guess. I just want an answer or explanation from you. And yours alone. And if not ... - you know.

More Questions

It was on the cemetery of the little village I grew up in. I never told you before about this life-changing event.
On an evening in the summer of 1970 (may be some years earlier or later) a group of 6 to 8 "students" were playing a blasphemous play in the large chapel - by the way a perfect stage for plays - in the middle of the cemetery. Their play interrupted our hide and seek. I was flabergasted. Young adults (boys and girls) doing blasphemous acts on holy ground. How could they? What would our pastor think of this? The police came and arrested them. Everyone was outraged. 

And I? I had no words for what was happening before my eyes but what I understood right away was that they were deadly serious about rejecting the obvious religion in my village. The seriousness of their drama and the trite reasons why it was blasphemy gave me, then and there, more questions than answers. The beginning for me of a lifelong quest that continues to this day. Without them I would not have become the man I am today. Not without you, by the way. But that is another story.

Qualche Film

Change is in the air. My gut feeling tells me there is. I can feel it in every corner of my body. (Right, not in my hair.)

Something else. The summer turns into autumn. The leaves are falling and the green of the trees become a wonderful mixture of yellow and brown. Recognizable and not unexpected - it's the seasons, right - yet always in some mysterious way new and full of surprise.

Did I ever tell you that I don't believe in ends? Ends are always new beginnings. It's all a matter of perspective and trust. Trust that it will be okay. And if not that's okay too.

Did I ever tell you that I miss you?

P.S. The text above is the song Fine dell'Estate from band Thegiornalisti. Song: here.

Blue of Heaven and Golden Glitter of Sun

The blue stone 'lapis lazuli' was for the ancient Egyptians the real thing. Its colour combines the blue of the heaven and the golden glitter of the sun. In the ancient Egyptian language  it's called 'ḫsbḏ'. The colour of the cosmos, fertility, sustance and rebirth. But this stone was rare and expensive because it had to be imported, via Mesopotamia, from the Kokcha River valley in Afghanistan (Sar-i Sang mines).

Scarab made from lapis lazuli: 

To meet the high demand of blue the ancient Egyptians invented the pigment called Egyptian blue. The term for it in the ancient Egyptian language is 'ḫsbḏ-ỉrjt', which means 'artificial lapis lazuli'. Unknown is who invented it, where and how. By accident just like glass-making? In our time and age Egyptian blue is known as calcium copper silicate. A mixture of silica, lime, copper, and an alkali. It was first synthesized during the Fourth Dynasty (ca. 2613 BC–ca. 2494 BC) and used extensively until the end of the Roman period in Europe (400 AD). No written information exists in ancient Egyptian texts about the manufacture of Egyptian blue. It was first mentioned only in Roman literature by Vitruvius during the first century BC.

 

Egyptian blue on a fragment showing Nebamun hunting in the marshes around 1350 BC.

Recipe to make this pigment (source: NILE, september 2021):

Recipe according to Vitruvius, 'De Architectura', Book VII, Chapter 11 (here):

In the early Christian tradition lapis lazuli was regarded as the stone of the mother of Jezus, Mary. The blue of the heaven and the golden glitter of the sun. The stone of Mary.

P.S. The scarab is on display in The Met as 26.7.755: here.  The hunting scene is on display in the Michael Cohen Gallery of the British Museum: here.

I Repeat

More about being woke or wokery. In his article ‘Over het gevaar van de woke-inquisitie en de cancel culture’ (English: About the danger of the woke inquisition and the cancel culture) Floris van den Berg discusses these books:

• Haidt and Lukianoff, ‘The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation For Failure’ (2018).
• Scruton, ‘Fools, Frauds and Firebrands. Thinkers of the Left’ (2019).
• Pluckrose and Lindsay, ‘Cynical Theories. How universities made everything about race, gender, and indentity – and why this harms everybody’  (2020).
  

A reflection on the differences between science and wokery: 

How to deal with people with a woke mindset? See if you can learn something from them, reflect on history, historical heritage, the moral presuppositions in language and what science is and why it works. Be open to rational criticism and substantiated arguments. I repeat: be open, reflect and use arguments.

P.S. Source article: here.

Tudu Bong

Standard Dutch is my first language. Not the local dialect in the little village I was born in. I comprehend it with ease and sometimes use one of its words (usually the names of plants and fruit) but I don't speak it. Nevertheless, it apparently influences my choice of words and melody. My son T. always says, "You speak differently when you talk to grandpa." His observation must be true but I don't even notice it myself. This happens completely automatically.

Linguists estimate that by the end of this century 3,500 languages - half of the 7,000 languages spoken today - will fall silent. Caused by globalisation and urbanisation people all over planet Earth shift to a more prestigious majority language. Social and economic mobility at the expense of their own language.

Below a bilingual (Kristang-English) poem from Martha Fernandez. 'Kristang' is a Creole language by Eurasians of Portuguese descent that learned their language from Portuguese traders who settled in the ports of Malacca, West Malaysia, Singapore and Macau.  

A poem about using a first language that sounds like music, feels safe and was found again. A language that makes feel whole again: tudu bong (literally: all good).

P.S. Source poem: here.

P.P.S. Did you know that Cleopatra VII could speak ten languages? She spoke: Koine Greek, Egyptian, Ethiopian, language of the "Troglodytes", Hebrew (or Aramaic), Arabic, the Syrian language (perhaps Syriac), Median, Parthian, and Latin. Her first language was Koine Greek. Source: Plutarch, 'Life of Anthony', 27.3-4 (here) and wikipedia (here).

Sensible Long Term

One of the best friends of my oldest son is addicted to drugs. To be more specific, he is addicted to cocaine. His addiction becomes more and more a problem for himself, his parents and also for his environment. 

In the group of friends they both belong to, using stimulants is a common recreational drug for the weekend. Something like, "What shall we eat: pizza, french frites, sushi, shoarma, a nice sandwich or ...?" For them the buffet table of stimulants consists of: beer, wodka, tequila, weed, pills, magic mushrooms, cocaine, or ... .

My son's generation is a Western European generation of princes and princesses. A decadent generation. Too much money. Too much freedom. No restrictions within the group, by faith or whatever. If we have to believe the reports in the newspapers, the problem is easy to solve. Just ban everything and catch the crooks who offer it. But aren't we simplifying the actual problem? For me the key observations is, our human "need" for euphoria: intense feelings of well-being and happiness. Should we consider this human and natural need for 'euphoria' a constraint?

How to solve this? Epicurus recommends a policy whereby pleasures are maximized "in the long run". Some pleasures are not worth having because they lead to greater pains, and some pains are worthwhile when they lead to greater pleasures. The best strategy for attaining a maximal amount of pleasure overall is not to seek instant gratification but to work out a sensible long term policy. Cocaine is instant gratification with a high risk of addiction when used periodically. Reading or writing a book is a long term policy. In other words: find your book or other sensible long term thing(s)-to-do that gives you an intense feeling of well-being and happiness.

Memória Desses

They finally kissed! Who? Meave and Otis, of course. The two protagonist of Netflix series 'Sex Education'. Remember my post 'And Move On' (2-2020)?

Something else. I read Carlos Drummond de Andrade, 'O amor naturel' (1992) in a bilingual translation (Portuguese-Dutch). It's a collection with poetry. Most of his poems are too vulgar for my taste. Those things belong in a bedroom. Whispered in ears. Between you and me. In letters full of longing and hunger. Reminisce. Hoping for more.  

I love this poem (from 'O amor natural'):

Did you know that in Leiden, The Netherlands his poem 'Papel' is a wall poem on Middelstegracht 87 (more)? Complete list with all wall poems in Leiden: here.

P.S. Translation into English is made by Tim Kahl: source.

Important

• For Thales everything is Water.
• For Anaximenes everything is Air.
• For Empedocles everything is Earth, Air, Water, and Fire.
• For Parmenides everything is One and nothing can change.
• For Heracleitos everything is Fire and in change.
• For Plato in the real world everything is unmoveable and immortal & in our world everything is in change and mortal.
• For Epicurus everything is composed of Atoms (= indivisible units of matter).
• For du Châtelet the Total Energy remains Constant in the universe. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed;  it can only be transformed from one form to another.

And for Umberto Eco? Everything important in life is Love. What is Eco's definition of "Love"? If everything is Love, what about evil? How to explain genocide (or theodicy in general)? Is evil not-important? Is evil never love? Just don't pay attention to evil?

And for me? I love myself, my kids, you and the "groups" I belong to. Out of protection of all the aforesaid I could kill. (Killing as the ultimate step in a palette of possible actions to turn the "world" to "my" desired state of affairs.) Out of love? That's not the first word that comes to my mind. For me it is out of: to fit in or to adjust. 

Let it Go!

What a lovely, hot september 2021. The sky is perfectly blue. As if summer just started now, right after my four week summerholiday ended. I read a litte, painted my house (every year another part), went to Gouda, Roermond and Arnhem for one day and worked on a new paper.

Last week I received my etnicity results from MyHeritageDNA: 100% North and West European. This result surprised me a litte because I was expecting some ammount of Spanish but it was 0%. One of my great-great-...-mothers from my fathers side of the family had a last name "Spaans" (English: Spanish) and was also a foundling. So I presupposed that some Spanish (fe)male left his/ her DNA in my DNA. If I am happy with the results? Well, DNA is what it is. Every result would have been OK for me. I've no idea how to interpret etnicity results. How deep are these? How about Charlemagne and Dzjengis Khan? No roman (read: italian) DNA? No azian DNA?

Yesterday evening I saw on Netflix for the first time in many many months a film I really liked: The Age of Adaline (2015). How lovely. Beautiful. "Let it go!" Yes, let it go.

I have been thinking about this quote of Umberto Eco. It makes my skin crawl but I don't know why.

Fractal Nature

 Béatrice and Nissim de Camondo in 1916.

Observation. Without the death of Nissim in WWI there would have been no Musée Nissim de Camondo. On the death of Moise, in 1935, it was announced that both the house and its collections were not inherited by his daughter Béatrice but bequeathed to the private, non-profit museum of decorative arts: Les Arts Décoratifs. Without the bequeathing all possessions of Hôtel Camondo would have been stolen during WWII. The paintings, furniture, rugs, etc would have been scattered within the nazi-empire and probably partly destroyed, partly relocated beyond recognition, partly still known as such, but in any case never the Gesamtkunstwerk as Moise left it to France. What an irony.

Relationship between some of the Inca architecture - at least four different species are recognized - and corn? Juan Casco (source): "It took me years to realize that Inca and pre-Columbian architecture is directly related to the structure of the corn kernels. In a western model of thought, one could judge the shapes as irregular, but in a universal thought, everything is a correlation of cosmos, science, art and humanity. Fractal nature."

Corinthian, 7th century BC. Slaves working in a mine.

 

Newspeak. This week I realized why woke people anoy me. I don’t approve racial prejudice, discrimination, social inequality, rape, enslavement etc. What I don't like is the tone, the universal truth they claim to have, the social laws of nature that they finally have uncovered. Finally woken. What a Newspeak. If we look back in history the definition of being politically correct changed so many times. Culturally biased. Historically biased. Planet Earth biased. ... - there must be more biases. What is 100% woke correct today is without any doubt in 2121 not anymore. 

 

P.S. For the next four weeks I'll be offline. Summerholiday. Read a lot. Write a paper. Walk a little.

That Breeze

What a lovely book is De Waal, 'Brieven aan Camondo' (2021).  Silenced. With bated breath. Sober. Like a Japanese Zen garden. 

Three quotes (translated from Dutch pages 103, 124 and 133):

 

"And I know you too. You wanted to complete things, needed to put things back together, you must have known what separation feels like, dispersion feels.
You started building this house and then your son died. The house changed. He had to come back to it, it became something to give to this mutilated homeland."  

"I noticed that your father's copy of 'Histoire de la poésie des Hébreux' is among the classics. That pleased me. And I was glad to see that you have Charles' book on Dürer, which he wrote many decades ago in his study, in the Rue de Monceau. I'm sure many collectors ordered books for their library by the metre, along with the curtains, but you loved books. "

"That's all delicious stuff and I know that in heaven caviar is eaten to the sound of trumpets, but I want to know more about the date jam sent from Cairo and about buying 'boutargue' from Martigues. That's harder calf salted, seasoned, pressed and dried. That's the taste of Constantinople, childhood, that breeze."

P.S. Father Moïse de Camondo founded  a museum for his son Nissim who died as pilot in World War I: Musée Nissim de Camondo. Moïse died in 1935. His daughter, her (ex)husband and their two children were murdered by the germans in World War II because they were jews.

P.P.S. The three pictures are from rooms of the museum: petit bureau, salon bleu and salle à manger.

P.P.P.S. I read a Dutch translation. The original title of this book: 'Letters to Camondo'.

The Devourer of All Things

What did Helen of Troy see in the mirror when she was old? Ovidius (Metamorphoses, XV, 233): "[A]nd Helen weeps, when in the glass she sees her wrinkled face, and wonders why two heroes fell in love and carried her away. — O Time, devourer of all things."

Was it a coincidence that Homer was blind? Is there a relation of his blindness and the fact that the divine name of God (YHWH) of Judaism was regarded as too sacred to be uttered? Is there a relation of his blindness and a couple of blind men in the New Testament of Christianity? Is there a relation of his blindness and the fact that in Islam it's prohibited to make a visual representation of the prophet Muhammad?

What is "wrong" with the sense organ 'eyes' of the species 'homo sapiens' - and when was this born? Too enchanting? Too blinding? Too much distraction? Do they hold off from what really matters or from the truth? What does really matter? What is the truth? Do they exist in plural?

P.S. Source quote: here. Picture 'Elena' (1814) is from Pelagio Palagi: here.

A Thousand Hints

 "I Wanted to Ask

whether you missed me.
Perhaps you remembered
the smell of my fingers,
times I phoned you for small talk
and you answered
with a thousand pointless questions
but never asked:
How are you?
Do you still love me?
Would you like to go to the movies?

I wanted to say
I never knew
how to find a simple sentence
that could hold my love for you,
my pains and fears,
my shut-eyed, secret wishes
so I gossiped about myself
and all the others.
I dropped a thousand hints
instead of saying:
I love you!
I miss you!
Come!

I wanted you to see
that I am not as beautiful
as I was with you,
as I was in your life
that beauty is a mirror
hung in your hallway.
Now that you don’t know
my address, I’ve covered
my mirrors with black cloth
and laid my dreams
in the middle of the room. I said
Don’t come back!
Don’t meet me!
Don’t call me any more!

but even
as I closed the door
and put my back against it
and slid down to the door
and hoped nobody would enter,
it was you I wanted to phone
ask if there was any way
you could miss me,
if there was any chance ..."

P.S. This is a poem from Salome Benidze: here. Originally written in Georgian: here.

P.P.S. 'I love you!' is in Georgian: „მიყვარხარ!“ („miq’varkhar!“).

P.P.P.S. Mack Lajos made this vase in 1899-1900. 

A Cosmopolitan Friend of Spirit Who Understands Every Shadow of Character

Balasa to Paddy on 17-4-1970:

I have read Nabokov's Lolita. Quote: "Although I realize it is excellent writing, I disliked it intensily. (...) Nabokov has turned the world into a synonim of American coca-cola bred girl-hood. (...) To my mind he [Nabokov] is an unbalanced person and his interest in sexual abnormalisation is not that of a scientist, but that of an addict, which is most unpleasant given the subject."

On 23-4-1970:

"I have just been reading Nabokov's "Speak Memory" /
and am enchanted. I am glad to be able to change my /
mind about him and his mind. He describes in beautiful /
words his lost childhood. He is a magician who can /
evoke the most secret memories of that very young child /
Russian (but cosmopolitan) in his every day life; which /
leaves a stamp on the soft and ungraven texture of /
his mind and character. How I understand him and /
love him for all his description of country houses /
and life in them so Baleni-like and Golasei-like. /
I am so glad to be able to lay on the mound of /
hatred I had accumulated on Lolita, one pure flower of /
love - shall we say a white narcissus on a long /
stalk, smelling of spring which I've just picked. Nabokov has now become /
a friend of spirit. (I still and always shall dislike /
Lolita) one likes to change ones mind about countries or /
people or persons doesn't one? It means that one is /
still alive and a lost ???? unstuborn."

On 24-4-1970:

"I have finished "Speak Memory" by Nabokov and loved /
it. Pomme is reading it now. He describes the same /
cycle of house in the country and Biarrits + Cannes in /
the winter. It is exactly the same that of our childhood /
and as he and I were born in the same year we may have /
played together on the same beaches as I remember several /
small Russian children we played with as well as English /
and American. These last Miss Williamson rather disapproved /
of I can't think for what reason. We called them the Brownies /
because they had brown Wellingtons and Mackintoshes. We overheard /
Miss Williamson saying to Mummy: "We can't have the children /
catching their dreadful accent." It meant nothing to us of /
course, and we went on having them as play-mates for /
digging in the sand, making castles and collecting shells. /
English and Russian children with perfect governesses where /
approved of. Spaniards at Biarrits were considered, /
perfectly allright, but we found them pampered children. /
At the same time fierce and easily hot-tempered and /
also suddenly called by "ama" (nanny) to drink choclate /
and be kissed by mothers. Strange children, very beautiful /
with huge eyes and lovely hair from fair to brown to black."

"Nabokov has brought back so much of childhood. /
The same cosmopolitanism - The same uprooting. /
His complexity of feeling, his understanding of /
every shadow of character are amazing, and his /
[c]ommand of English is wonderful. Of course /
[m]uch of his vocabulary is quite out of my reach /
although I catch the meaning of it more or less./
His philosophical and scientific vocabulary are /
[b]eyond my knowledge. I read his book with great /
pleasure and wonder if I could find another rather /
like this one and unlike Lolita."