Ofterdingen and Kropotkin

Before her, in overly luxuriant rows, was a host, so to speak, of golden pharmaceuticals, plus a few technically less indigenous whatnots. The shelves bore iodine, Mercurochrome, vitamin capsules, dental floss, aspirin, anacin, Bufferin, Argyrol, Musterole, Ex-Lax, Milk of Magnesia, Sal Hepatica, Aspergum, two Gillete razors, one Schick Injector razor, two tubes of shaving cream, a bent and somewhat torn snapshot of a fat black-and-white cat asleep on a porch railing, a bottle of Fitch Dandruff Remover, a small unlabelled box of glycerine suppositories, Vicks Nose Drops, Vicks VapoRub, six bars of castile soap, the stubs of three tickets to a 1946 musical comedy ('Call Me Mister'), a tube of depilatory cream, a box of Kleenex, two seashells, an assortment of used-looking emery boards, two jars of cleansing cream, three pairs of scissors, a nail file, an unclouded blue marble (known to marble shooters, at least in the twenties, as a 'purey'), a cream for contracting enlarged pores, a pair of tweezers, the strap less chassis of a girl's or woman's gold wristwatch, a box of bicarbonate of soda, a girl's boarding-school class ring with a chipped onyx stone, a bottle of Stopette - and, inconceivably or no, quite a good deal more.

Als siebenunddreißigjähriges Mädchen hatte sie den durch seinen exzentrischen Antisemitismus bekannten Dr. Bernhard Förster geheiratet, um als seine Gattin, gefolgt von einer Schar deutscher Kolonisten, der von Förster in Paraguay gegründeten deutschen Kolonie Nueva Germania vorzustehen. Beide kamen bei ihrer Abreise nach Amerika, Ostern 1886 nach Berlin, Förster im strengen Inkognito, da er allerlei Beleidigungen gegen Minister und andere staatliche Würdenträger auf dem Kerbholz hatte. Die Kolonie nahm einen glänzenden Anfang; Eli Förster-Nietzsches Briefe, welche, wenn ich die Mutter in Naumburg besuchte, vorgelesen wurden, wußten nicht genug zu erzählen von der arbeitsreichen, aber hoffnungsvollen Kolonie, von deren Mitgliedern sie und ihr Gatte wie König und Königin verehrt wurden. Ich freute mich dann dieser Nachrichten, mußte aber im stillen diese Kolonie mit einem Pflänzchen vergleichen, welches in einen fremden Boden versetzt wird, und von dem man mit teilnehmender Spannung abwartet, ob es emporblühen oder hinwelken und zugrunde gehen wird. Leider war nach kaum drei Jahren das letztere eingetreten. Dr. Förster, überaus rührig und energisch wie er war, hatte, von einem anstrengenden Ritte erhitzt, ein Bad im Flusse genommen, wobei ein Herzschlag seinem Leben ein Ende machte. Mit getäuschten Hoffnungen, wie eine Schiffbrüchige, kehrte Eli in die Heimat zurück, gerade um die Zeit, wo der Bruder einer unheilbaren Geisteskrankheit verfallen war.

Deussen, Mein Leben, S. 264.

As a girl of 37 she married Dr. Bernhard Förster, known for his eccentric antisemitism, and shared the command of the colony Nueva Germania, which Förster had founded in Paraguay. ... The colony had an impressive beginning. Eli Förster-Nietzsche's letters, which were read out aloud when I visited Nietzsche's mother in Naumburg, were full of the hard-working, high-hoping colony, whose members worshipped her and her husband like king and queen. I was glad about these news, but had a quiet suspicion whether this sapling would flourish in a foreign soil. After hardly three years it sadly proved true.
Dr. Förster, active and energetic as was his nature, had taken a bath in the river after a long, hot ride on his horse. He suffered a hear attack and Eli returned to her home country, her hopes shipwrecked, just at the time when her brother fell into incurable madness.

Karl Nikolajev: a "biocommunicator" who sits in a room trying to "see" what kind of object is placed on a table in a room two floors up.

"It is either metal or ... If it's metal, it is painted... Cold surface. It is either metal (painted), or, maybe, plastic. Colored. There is... Bright. Looks like... Maybe, it's a toy? The surface is smooth, but here are some projections. Finger sticks. Maybe it is... Some kind of dents... or... or it is letters... or just projections... Looks like a toy. Multicolored metal or plastic, painted metal. That's it. Stop."

Paul Barker, "Mince Pies and a cane", TLS September 5 2008, p.5

H. Williams, "Freelance", TLS July 4 2008, p.16

The Bloomsbury Rhyming Dictionary is "an essential research tool" that no "poet or lyricist" should be without. The main pleasure is derived from the found poems which emerge from the lists of rhyming words. Try this one, which we call "Night on the Town":

[...] We close the Bloomsbury Rhyming Dictionary (£8.99) with a cautionary tale of the casting-couch:

J.C., "NB", TLS, March 28 2008, p. 36