Eliezer "Elie" Wiesel KBE was a Romanian-born American Jewish writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor. Wikipedia
Born: September 30, 1928, Sighetu Marmației, Romania
Died: July 2, 2016, Upper East Side, New York City, New York, United States
We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.
The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.
There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.
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Maria Wisława Anna Szymborska was a Polish poet, essayist, translator and recipient of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature. Born in Prowent, which has since become part of Kórnik, she later resided in Kraków until the end of her life.Wikipedia
Born: July 2, 1923, Kórnik, Poland
Died: February 1, 2012, Kraków, Poland
Spouse: Adam Włodek (m. 1948–1954)
Let the people who never find true love keep saying that there's no such thing. Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die.
Any knowledge that doesn't lead to new questions quickly dies out: it fails to maintain the temperature required for sustaining life.
I cannot speak for more than an hour exclusively about poetry. At that point, life itself takes over again.
Poet Maria Wisława Anna Szymborska was born in Prowent, Poland on this day in 1923. She won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1996.
"Coloratura" by Wisława Szymborska
Poised beneath a twig-wigged tree,
she spills her sparkling vocal powder:
slippery sound slivers, silvery
like spider’s spittle, only louder.
Oh yes, she Cares (with a high C)
for Fellow Humans (you and me);
for us she’ll twitter nothing bitter;
she’ll knit her fitter, sweeter glitter;
her vocal chords mince words for us
and crumble croutons, with crisp crunch
(lunch for her little lambs to munch)
into a cream-filled demitasse.
But hark! It’s dark! Oh doom too soon!
She’s threatened by the black bassoon!
It’s hoarse and coarse, it’s grim and gruff,
it calls her dainty voice’s bluff -
Basso Profondo, end this terror,
do-re-mi mene tekel et cetera!
You want to silence her, abduct her
to our chilly life behind the scenes?
To our Siberian steppes of stopped-up sinuses,
frogs in all throats, eternal hems and haws,
where we, poor souls, gape soundlessly
like fish? And this is what you wish?
Oh nay! Oh nay! Though doom be nigh,
she’ll keep her chin and pitch up high!
Her fate is hanging by a hair
of voice so thin it sounds like air,
but that’s enough for her to take
a breath and soar, without a break,
chandelierward; and while she’s there,
her vox humana crystal-clears
the whole world up. And we’re all ears.
she spills her sparkling vocal powder:
slippery sound slivers, silvery
like spider’s spittle, only louder.
Oh yes, she Cares (with a high C)
for Fellow Humans (you and me);
for us she’ll twitter nothing bitter;
she’ll knit her fitter, sweeter glitter;
her vocal chords mince words for us
and crumble croutons, with crisp crunch
(lunch for her little lambs to munch)
into a cream-filled demitasse.
But hark! It’s dark! Oh doom too soon!
She’s threatened by the black bassoon!
It’s hoarse and coarse, it’s grim and gruff,
it calls her dainty voice’s bluff -
Basso Profondo, end this terror,
do-re-mi mene tekel et cetera!
You want to silence her, abduct her
to our chilly life behind the scenes?
To our Siberian steppes of stopped-up sinuses,
frogs in all throats, eternal hems and haws,
where we, poor souls, gape soundlessly
like fish? And this is what you wish?
Oh nay! Oh nay! Though doom be nigh,
she’ll keep her chin and pitch up high!
Her fate is hanging by a hair
of voice so thin it sounds like air,
but that’s enough for her to take
a breath and soar, without a break,
chandelierward; and while she’s there,
her vox humana crystal-clears
the whole world up. And we’re all ears.
*
------
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a Francophone Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer of the 18th century.Wikipedia
Born: June 28, 1712, Geneva, Switzerland
Died: July 2, 1778, Ermenonville, France
Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains.
People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.
What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?
#OnThisDay in 1778 Jean-Jacques Rousseau dies in France. He was a philosopher of the Age of Reason, whose ideas about society helped to shape the political events that resulted in the French Revolution.
"These hours of solitude and meditation are the only time of the day when I am completely myself." - Rousseau
Philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau died in Ermenonville, France on this day in 1778 (aged 66).
"A man who, at the age of five-and-twenty, knows nothing and wishes to learn everything, is bound to make the best use of his time. Not knowing at what point destiny or death might arrest my zeal, I desired, in any case, to get an idea of everything, in order to discover the special bent of my natural abilities, and also to judge for myself what was worthy of cultivation."
--from CONFESSIONS (1765)
--from CONFESSIONS (1765)
Rousseau's tomb sits on the Isle of Poplars in it...
The Antrim Coast and Glens
Tolstoy's grave at Yasnaya Polyana.
The Antrim Coast and Glens
Tolstoy's grave at Yasnaya Polyana.
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