Skylark (by Dezso Kostolanyi)
Tarot Major Arcana card, "The Moon".
This novel is said to be the story of Akos Vajkay and his wife Antonia during a week spent without their daughter Skylark, who is visiting family in the country. But it is the story of the whole town, Sarszeg, a dot on the map in the Austro-Hungarian empire on the brink of the twentieth century. Sarszeg is a musty and provincial town with only one tarmacked street, no electric light in the theatre, two stone-masons, two iron-mongers and, tellingly, three coffin makers. Cirrhosis of the liver is a big killer in Sarszeg. After an all-night session of the Panthers’ Table, a man’s drinking club, their leader, ” had so much…
Continue Reading →Tallinn
(photo by Zigomar)
P’s father, Hugo, maintained that the only good thing about being drafted by the Red Army was that being captured by any other side would be a bonus. In 1940, he was deferring his University studies, doing national service, then a requirement in free Estonia. Then the Ruskies moved in (it was ironic to see them celebrating recently the anniversary of the end of WWII, since they had a pretty big hand in starting it, along with Hitler) and simply annexed Estonia, and the rest of the Baltic States. Lots of Estonian officials were liquidated (including P’s grandfather) and all private property confiscated (including…
Continue Reading →Bays Battle On
A shame we couldn't put out the lights (photo courtesy 'The Advertiser')
Glenelg v Adelaide, 24 April 2016 The Tigers are clearly better this year; you don’t get that sinking feeling like you did for large chunks of matches last season. They were in the game nearly all the way last Sunday, did some good things, and they never lost heart. But they were up against a team with 19 AFL-listed stars, or embryonic stars, half of them bigger and faster than a Silverado. For all their gallant striving, the Bays didn’t win a quarter, had 10 less scoring shots, and lost by a comfortable 5 goals. The inclusion of Adelaide in the SANFL is…
Continue Reading →This Whiteley Business
True blue
There’s a fascinating case on in Sydney at the moment, and lots of folks seem to be treating the litigation as a dripping roast. In 2009 an artwork (“Orange Lavender Bay”) attributed to Brett Whiteley, who died in 1992, was sold to a Sydney car dealer for big money. A car dealer being hornswoggled! O, delicious irony. The contentious piece has superficial similarities with Blue Lavender Bay (the Bay was where the Whiteleys lived for some years), namely: the same offhand brush strokes, cartoonish curves, and Ken-Done-infantilism. We feel for Wendy Whiteley, the artist’s Cosima, who said at a launch of a biography of…
Continue Reading →“Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages”
(Painting of William Shakespeare attributed to John Taylor)
Commemorating the death of the Bard (April 23 (?) 1564 to April 23, 1616) today, we note that William Shakespeare mesmerised his world, and the world ever since, although recently it seemed his status had become diminished. We predict this to be a mere phase. His plays are still staged and he will persist (to some, annoyingly so) in outpointing everyone else. Here are some random tributes, old and new: Shakespeare changes the entire meaning of what it is to have created a man made out of words. [Harold Bloom, The Western Canon 1994] What is generally forgotten is that Shakespeare himself is…
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