15 Thu Apr 2021
Women in blue and white robes, metallic collars and headdresses, eyes rimmed with kohl, carried glowing caskets, not unlike the orb that Trump was photographed fondling in Saudi Arabia.
(Hussein A. H. Omar, Pharaohs on parade, London Review of Books, 6 Apr. 2021)
12 Mon Apr 2021
Posted in blanc
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L’émotion commande, il ne sait pas encore à quoi le scrapbook aux pages blanches va servir.
(Philippe Jaworski, En lisant George Orwell, La Nouvelle revue française, n°646)
10 Sat Apr 2021
The knowable was necessarily commensurable, for Aristotle, which meant (for him) set into relation to other known, similar things. The unlike was not unimportant, since it accounted for change. Change was the actualisation of an opposite property that a thing also contained. Brown hair turning grey was explainable by the amount of white it contained in potentiality.
(Charlotte Epstein, Birth of the State, 1)
08 Thu Apr 2021
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Plum trees have seeded wildly throughout the garden, spread mostly by sulphur-crested cockatoos that rip the trees apart as they feast. On one of these trees, outside my bedroom this morning, there sat a single blackbird, fat and still, singing among the cloud of white blossoms with their sweet hearts of stringy burgundy.
(Carmel Bird, Fair Game)
07 Wed Apr 2021
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At the ends of the bare branches there are tiny knobs of brown with a hint of fuzzy mint at the tip. In a week or so the tree will be feathered with translucent watery green. Between one of the fat-smooth grey-brown branches that are shot with blushing blotches of pale pink, I can see three small white petals twisting and dancing in the light breeze.
(Carmel Bird, Fair Game)
04 Sun Apr 2021
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She sat with her mother-in-law on a straight white-enamelled sofa with yellow cushions and a gilded lion’s head at the top.
(Thomas Mann, Buddenbrooks, 1.1)
02 Fri Apr 2021
Gouffre second : le vieil océan aux fonds sableux où continuent de rouler les boulets vert-de-grisés d’un peuple de fantómes — jadis hommes et femmes dans la fleur de leur âge dont on a, par commodité, délesté, la barque.
(Sylvie Kandé,《 Nous prenons parti pour les Indes renouvelées 》: Édouard Glissant au risque du Sud falknérien, La Nouvelle revue française, n°646)
01 Thu Apr 2021
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Le blanc et le bleu nuit cohabitent sur la dalle funéraire et sur le fresque en céramique réalisée par Victor Anicet, artiste et ami d’Édouard Glissant qui repose ainsi non loin du mémorial aux esclaves où il venait méditer et 《 repansé 》les cris étouffés.
(Eugène Ébodé, Poétique d’un 《 Double-Maître 》, La Nouvelle revue française, n°646)
31 Wed Mar 2021
Posted in blue
Against pale blue enamel, the shade
That makes every April the same,
The birch tree’s branches swayed
And evening shyly came.
(Osip Mandelstam, Stone 6, tr. Robert Tracy in Poetry, Apr. 1980)
30 Tue Mar 2021
The native butterflies of Tasmania take their palette from the oranges, browns, umber, ochre, green and black. Their habitat dictates that they won’t come flashing out in the sunlight dressed in shining tropical colour. The patterns too are humble and too subtle. However the girls in the lithograph of Alfred Ducote are flying with jewelled fairyland wings of dazzling delicacy. A soaring wealth of fantasy scarlet, Tuscan red, pink, blue, green, yellow. Sapphire, emerald, ruby, garnet, topaz, silver, gold. And pearl. Cherry pink, apple green, poppy red. They tumble and soar and float in their joyful passage across the skies, above the wash of pale blue ocean.
(Carmel Bird, ‘A commodity of women’)
