Virginia Woolf: To The Lighthouse (1927)

Virginia Woolf: To the Lighthouse (1927)

"It partook, she felt, carefully helping Mr Bankes to a specially tender piece, of eternity."

"Academic Journals Doing Crime"

Johann Strauss: Unter Donner und Blitz

Listening to the Czech Philharmonic’s New Year's Gala Concert reminded me of my favourite light-hearted piece. Manfred Honeck conducted it quite similarly to this version from Kleiber, which is my favourite.

I will show this to the next person who tells me that the conductor is not so important because he just “waves his hands in front of the orchestra”.

Bohumil Hrabal: Bambini di Praga 1947

“there are stains which cannot be cleaned without disrupting the structure of the fabric”

This quote demonstrates Hrabal’s art of aestheticization of banal phrases. The phrase is a a quote from an advertisement for a laundry detergent, but he gives it a completely different context and revives latent meanings in it, thus allowing it to come alive.

Jan Skácel: Podobný sýkorkám; čtyřverší XVIII