Clovid-19 Really Be Changing Our Entire Lives

Clovid-19 really be changing our entire lives

Scrolling through my photos trying to clean it out and I found one of my most favourite posts of all time...

Capone is a gentleman

This is all too true...

I faintly remember the rhyme from some time ago and now I’ve finally found it again

Ten little Soldier boys went out to dine; One choked his little self and then there were nine. Nine little Soldier boys sat up very late; One overslept himself and then there were eight. Eight little Soldier boys traveling in Devon; One said he’d stay there and then there were seven. Seven little Soldier boys chopping up sticks; One chopped himself in halves and then there were six. Six little Soldier boys playing with a hive; A bumblebee stung one and then there were five. Five little Soldier boys going in for law; One got into Chancery and then there were four. Four little Soldier boys going out to sea; A red herring swallowed one and then there were three. Three little Soldier boys walking in the zoo; A big bear hugged one and then there were two. Two little Soldier boys playing with a gun; One shot the other and then there was One. One little Soldier boy left all alone; He went out and hanged himself and then there were none.

- Agatha Christie, And Then There Were None 

“Who would pioneer a new literature, at once Japanese and ‘modern’, that could speak to the change and transformation going on around them? Mori Ōgai and Natsume Sōseki… were among the first of those who stepped forward to take up this challenge. Certainly no one could have been better equipped for the task: gifted in European languages, they excelled in classical Chinese as well, and had a deep knowledge of Japan’s literary traditions. Yet the task was daunting. Writers of fiction were dismissed as frivolous and vulgar by traditional society, which language for literature, which would reflect how people actually spoke and which could be used to express exciting new concepts like ‘love’ and ‘individualism’, had to be created from scratch… This id not mean, however, that the trail blazed by Ōgai, Sōseki, and their contemporaries ran parallel to that of Western literature. These were no blind admirers of what the West had to offer - Sōseki, for one, felt that he had been somehow ‘cheated’ by English literature. Ōgai had studied in Germany, Sōseki in England, and both were acutely aware of the features of foreign culture - the language, the customs, and the sense of beauty and form - were altogether different from Japan’s. To create a new, modern Japanese literature, they had to carve new trails, not follow old ones. They had to be experimental writers. This meant that, once they felt they had taken what they could use from Western literature, they moved on. Ōgai eventually turned to traditional materials - legends like ‘Sansho the Steward’… and the lives of historical figures - while Sōseki, a brilliant theoretician, was able to anticipate developments yet to occur in the West. Through their efforts, and those of the other trail-blazers, by 1910 the Japanese short story was already established as a genre linked with, but not identical to, its counterpart in the West.”

—

Theodore W. Goossen, the Introduction to The Oxford Book of Japanese Short Stories