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T.H. White, in his 1958 retelling of the Arthurian legend in Once and Future King

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Egon Schiele

Portrait of the Artist’s Sister-in-Law (or Edith Schiele?) Covering Mouth with Hand

Private Collection

1917

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I bought this book called A Short Treatise Inviting the Reader to Discover the Subtle Art of Go, which is a translation of a book that was written by three French guys in the 1960's who learned Goban (aka Weiqi aka Baduk) and then wanted to make it a huge phenomenon in France.

And it's hysterical.

Behold, section 0.6: Chess —

We will, over the course of this modest work, in order to better understand certain principles of the game, have occasion to speak of chess.

Please understand that it is just a crutch, imposed by the deplorable popularity of this pathetic game in France.

So it is important to let this idea sink in: GO is anti-chess.

The game of GO is not Japanese chess. There is in fact a Japanese chess that goes by the name of Shogi. Never has a GO player been known to play Shogi.

Let us here sum up everything we feel to be wrong about Chess:

1. It is a feudal game, founded upon the Exaltation of the Tournament and social inequality.

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2. It is a game whose rules change every three centuries.

3. It is a game whose antiquity is debatable (just about contemporary with Canasta!)

4. It is a game that (like Checkers!) has only three outcomes, all lacking in nuance: victory, defeat, or a tie. One can certainly win or lose, but it is impossible to win by one point, which is one of the great refinements of GO!

5. Even worse, it is not a game that breeds polite behavior.

6. Two players with different skill sets cannot play together and maintain the interest of the stronger player.

7. A chess match lasts thirty moves at the most.

8. It is an unclear game in which no two pieces do the same thing

9. We do not know how to play chess.

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Woman on the stairs (1825) by Caspar David Friedrich

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Vilhelm Hammershøi - Interior, Sunlight on the Floor 1906

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Diego Velázquez, View of the Gardens of the Villa Medici, Rome, Ca. 1630, Museo Nacional del Prado

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‘The river mist deepens. The fields are cold.

It is not your shadow alone that follows you

darkening the reeds at the edge of the pond …

Herons rise like ghosts

above the flooded fields.’

John Ash, ‘Bespalko’s Devotions’, The Branching Stairs (Manchester, 1984)

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Fra Angelico (1395-1455)

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genuinely insane how difficult it is to participate in your own life

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Frank Auerbach - "Self-Portrait", 1958

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“Critics, as ‘barking dogs,’ on this view, are of two sorts: those who merely relieve themselves against the flower of beauty, and those, less continent, who after-wards scratch it up. I myself, I must confess, aspire to the second of these classes; unexplained beauty arouses an air of irritation in me, a sense that this would be a good place to scratch; the reasons that make a line of verse likely to give pleasure, I believe, are like the reasons for everything else; one can reason about them; and while it may be true that the roots of beauty ought not to be violated, it seems to me very arrogant of the appreciative critic to think that he could do this, if he chose, by a little scratching.”

— william empson, seven types of ambiguity 

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Pyramid of needs of the week

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“I have performed the necessary butchery. Here is the bleeding corpse.”

— Henry James, after a request by the Times Literary Supplement to cut three lines from a 5,000 word article (via annadevries)

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- In your day the Circus ran itself by regions… each region was commanded by its own Juju man, Control sat in heaven and pulled the strings. Remember?

- It strikes a distant chord.

- Today, everything operational is under one hand. Called London Station.

- Who’s station commander?

- Bill Haydon. His number two is Roy Bland. Toby Esterhase runs between them like a poodle.

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The Trees

by Philip Larkin

The trees are coming into leaf Like something almost being said; The recent buds relax and spread, Their greenness is a kind of grief. Is it that they are born again And we grow old? No, they die too, Their yearly trick of looking new Is written down in rings of grain. Yet still the unresting castles thresh In fullgrown thickness every May. Last year is dead, they seem to say, Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.