nathaniel hawthorne. the scarlet letter. [invented worlds]

if you study literature there are seemingly hundreds and thousands of dramas, novels, short stories and poems that you're supposed to read. some of them are breathtakingly grand, some are unbelievably boring (or just a bit meh), some you love and some you can't stand. there are also those you don't even bother reading and you just hope your professor does not notice... the thing is, sometimes i get incredibly annoyed with a book by the mere fact that i am not reading it by choice but am forced to do so and it makes its way to some bookshelf (only some 10 pages of it read) to collect dust. the scarlet letter is one of those books that i probably should have read about three times for different seminars by now and i never got over page 25. however, i decided to really make an effort this time and just now i stumbled over a passage that reminds me why i love the written word, why i love literature with its invented worlds and why i am ultimately at the english seminar.

"The somewhat dim coal-fire has an essential influence in producing the effect which i would describe. It throws it unobtrusive tinge throughout the room, with a faint ruddiness upon the walls and ceiling, and a reflected gleam from the polish of the furniture. This warmer light mingles itself with the cold spirituality of the moonbeams, and communicates, as it were, a heart and sensibilities of human tenderness to the forms which fancy summons up. It converts them from snow-images into men and woman. Glancing at the looking-glass, we behold—deep within its haunted verge—the smouldering glow of the half-extinguished anthracite, the white moonbeams on the floor, and a repetition of all the gleam and shadow of the picture, with one remove further from the actual, and nearer to the imaginative. Then, at such an hour, and with this scene before him, if a man, sitting all alone, cannot dream strange things, and make them look like truth, he need never try to write romances. [...] At some future day, it may be, I shall remember a few scattered fragments and broken paragraphs, and write them down, and find the letters turn to gold upon the page."

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter and Other Writings. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2005.

em värslischmied sini lieder uf tschechisch II. [good things]

us emene lääre gygechaschte

ziet er sys inschtrumänt

und dr chaschte verschwindet

und er spilt ohni bogen

es lied ohni wort

und er treit e zilinder

doch drunder ke chopf

und ke hals und ke lyb

keni arme, no bei

das het er alles verloren im chrieg

und so blybt no sys lied

nume das isch no da

denn ou e zilinder

het er nie kene gha

croatia. [travels]

“traveling is like flirting with life. it’s like saying, ‘i would stay and love you, but i have to go; this is my station.’” 

lisa st. aubin de teran

em värslischmied sini lieder uf tschechisch I. [good things]

dene wos guet geit

giengs besser

gieng s dene besser

wos weniger guet geit

was aber nid geit

ohni dass’s dene

weniger guet geit

            wos guet geit

drum geit weni

für dass es dene

besser geit

wos weniger guet geit

und drum geits o

dene nid besser

            wos guet geit 

matthew and the atlas. i will remain. [songs]

because live recordings are always better than the studio version. well, or better put, if they're not it does not speak for the band. 

real musicality over quality of recording without a doubt. any time. always.

bay of kotor. [travels]

“traveling is a brutality. it forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. you are constantly off balance. nothing is yours except the essential things – air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky – all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.” 

cesare pavese

belgrade. [travels]

“your true traveler finds boredom rather agreeable than painful. it is the symbol of his liberty - his excessive freedom. he accepts his boredom, when it comes, not merely philosophically, but almost with pleasure.” 

aldous huxley