Ofterdingen and Kropotkin

Take, for instance, our Book of Revelation, of which we shall see that, instead of being the darkest and most mysterious, it is the simplest and clearest book of the whole New Testament [...] All this now has lost all interest, except for ignorant persons who may still try to calculate the day of the last judgment. But as an authentic picture of almost primitive Christianity, drawn by one of themselves, the book is worth more than all the rest of the New Testament put together. (F. Engels, "The Book of Revelation", 1883, link) || Nehmen wir z.B. unser Buch der Offenbarung, von dem wir sehen werden, daß es, statt das dunkelste und geheimnisvollste zu sein, das einfachste und klarste Buch des ganzen Neuen Testaments ist. [...] All dies hat jetzt jegliche Bedeutung verloren, ausgenommen für einfältige Personen, die noch immer versuchen mögen, den Tag des letzten Gerichts auszurechnen. (F. Engels, "Das Buch der Offenbarung", 1883, MEW 21)

"Montcrieff died while translating [In search of lost time], which is no wonder, and the last volume was translated by a man called Blossom who did quite well. [...] The whole is a treasure hunt where the treasure is time and the hiding place the past [...] Jean Cocteau has called the work "A giant miniature, full of mirages, of superimposed gardens, of games conducted between space and time." (V Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 207-08) | "[...] and the much-vaunted shrinking of the state has meant a hypertrophy of its repressive apparatus, a low-intensity war of the state against society on behalf of the markets." (A Toscano, "The Prejudice Against Prometheus") | He once saw a man die, he recalled, who complained bitterly in his last moments that destiny was preventing him from finishing the book he was writing. The absurdity of regret, in Montaigne's view, is best conveyed by lines from Lucretius: "But this they fail to add: that after you expire / Not one of all these things will fill you with desire." As for himself, Montaigne wrote, "I want death to find me planting my cabbages, but careless of death, and still more of my unfinished garden." (S Greenblatt, "The Answer Man", The New Yorker, Aug 8 2011, p.32) | Der schwäbische Quietismus, dem Mörike sich verschrieb, ist, wie die Biedermeierkunst überhaupt, ein von der Vorahnung des böses Endes ausgelöster Totstellreflex. - Swabian Quietism, to which Mörike was devoted, just as the entire body of work of the Biedermeier era, is a death-feigning reflex set off by a premonition of the bitter end. (WG Sebald, Logis in einem Landhaus, p.82) | In Pyrmont, einem Orte, der wegen seines Gesundbrunnens berühmt ist, lebte noch im Jahre 1756 ein Edelmann auf seinem Gute, der das Haupt einer Sekte in Deutschland war, die unter dem Namen der Quietisten oder Separatisten bekannt ist [...] Der Herr von Fleischbein, so hieß dieser Edelmann, wohnte hier von allen übrigen Einwohnern des Orts und ihrer Religion, Sitten und Gebräuchen ebenso abgesondert, wie sein Haus von den ihrigen durch eine hohe Mauer geschieden war [...] Dies Haus nun machte für sich eine kleine Republik aus, worin gewiß eine ganz andre Verfassung als rund umher im ganzen Lande herrschte. Das ganze Hauswesen bis auf den geringsten Dienstboten bestand aus lauter solchen Personen, deren Bestreben nur dahin ging oder zu gehen schien, in ihr ›Nichts‹ (wie es die Mad. Guion nennt) wieder einzugehen, alle Leidenschaften zu ›ertöten‹ und alle ›Eigenheit‹ auszurotten.

Alle diese Personen mußten sich täglich einmal in einem großen Zimmer des Hauses zu einer Art von Gottesdienst versammlen, den der Herr von Fleischbein selbst eingerichtet hatte, und welcher darin bestand, daß sie sich alle um einen Tisch setzten und mit zugeschloßnen Augen, den Kopf auf den Tisch gelegt, eine halbe Stunde warteten, ob sie etwa die Stimme Gottes oder das ›innre Wort‹ in sich vernehmen würden. Wer dann etwas vernahm, der machte es den übrigen bekannt. Der Herr von Fleischbein bestimmte auch die Lektüre seiner Leute, und wer von den Knechten oder Mägden eine müßige Viertelstunde hatte, den sahe man nicht anders als mit einer von der Mad. Guion Schriften, vom ›innern Gebet‹ oder dergleichen, in der Hand in einer nachdenkenden Stellung sitzen und lesen. (KP Moritz, Anton Reiser: ein psychologischer Roman: link)

Hannah writes sentences like these, from the story "Love Too Long": "She and the architect were having fancy drinks together at a beach lounge when his ex-wife from New Hampshire showed up naked with a single-shotgun that was used in the Franco-Prussian War - it was a quaint piece hanging on the wall in their house when he was at Dartmouth - and screaming." (A. Martin, Gonzo Guys, TLS April 15, 2011, p.20) | Bedford spent her early years with her father in a schloss near Baden, full of Renaissance art. He had lost all his money, and they lived in austere seclusion, bartering their apples for butter and using candles for light, but he liked to sketch and was fond of animals, having kept a chimpanzee in his youth. The ill-tempered family donkey was given felt slippers to wear when it came into the house. (C. Moorehead, The warm south, Ibid, p.14) | New Yorker editing is easily caricatured. The obsession with coordinate syntax and commas, the fact checking, the distaste for certain topics and products [...] and the cultivation of a particular breed of ironic detachment [...] (F. Green, Occupation: Writer, Ibid, p.3) | The notion of devoting an entire conference, and then a book, to a single painted pot is one that would only occur to Classicists [...] (AM Snodgrass, A piper at the party, TLS May 13 2011, p.4) | "The only defect of these pleasing compositions is the want of truth and common sense." Edward Gibbons victim in that particular footnote was Jerome, the author of three extremely imaginative "Lives" of hermits. (WV Harris, Time of bones, Ibid, p.5) | A few years ago, during a visit to Yalta, the director of the Chekhov museum there swore to me that Chekhov's toothbrush had disappeared from the display after a visit by a group of Japanese tourists. [...] In Yalta, Putin had paid an obligatory visit to the Chekhov museum and the director had jokingly urged the Prime Minister not to return the Kuril Islands to the Japanese unless they returned Chekhov's toothbrush to the museum in Yalta (Z Zinik, Freelance, Ibid, p.16)

The first piece of art that Karen Green made after her husband, David Foster Wallace, took his own life on 12 September 2008, was a forgiveness machine. She is standing in the neat, white studio at her house at Petaluma, north of San Francisco, explaining to me how the machine worked and how it didn't [...] "People don't understand how ill he was. It was a monster that just ate him up. And at that point everything was secondary to the illness. Not just writing. Everything else: food, love, shelter…" (The Guardian) | Sie stand am Zaun des Gartenlokals und blickte auf die Havel. Sie fühlte oft Langeweile. Sie ermüdete auch bald. (Rolf Schneider, Hanna) | [...] for in secret Quirke prized his loneliness as a mark of some distinction. (Benjamin Black, Christine Falls)