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Steps
It is high time I drew attention here to the admirable Longbarrow Press, whose strapline is 'Poetry from the Edgelands'. I recently bought from them Steps by Mark Goodwin, one of the 'radical...
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An image of the sun
To not look at the sea, but over it.In winter, not at the tree, but through it.With art, not to look at or through but with it.- Roger Ackling (1947-2014)These lines appear in one of the short essays...
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The Wind in the Willows
I have just finished reading aloud to my son The Wind in the Willows. It was an unabridged edition, so we have been enjoying those chapters that are sometimes cut: 'Dulce Domum' on Mole's desire to...
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Plum blossom on snow
A friend in Japan normally posts photographs of deep snow around now, although not this year. Interestingly, heavy snow does not appear in the classical literature of Japan. This partly reflects the...
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The sound of wind in the pines
'The innkeeper had lent him an old Kyoto tea-kettle, skilfully inlaid in silver with flowers and birds, and from it came the sound of wind in the pines. He could make out two pine breezes, as a matter...
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The holy mount for the Festival of the Supreme Being
Pierre-Antoine Demachy, The Festival of the Supreme Being, 1794On 8 June 1794 (20 Prairial Year II) an artificial landscape was erected in the centre of Paris. This day had been chosen for the first...
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Rocks at Mouthier
Gustave Courbet, The Painter's Studio, 1855I have been reading the new anthology of John Berger's art writing, Portraits. It is arranged in approximate chronological order from the Chauvet cave...
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Where the River Goes
A while back on Caught by the River Rob St John reviewed Allan Burns' anthology Where the River Goes: The Nature Tradition in English Language Haiku (2013). He found that 'the most enjoyable bits of...
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A Ruin on the Road
Francis Towne, A Ruin on the Road to the Ponte Nomentana, 1780 Yesterday I visited the British Museum for Light, time, legacy: Francis Towne’s watercolours of Rome. The exhibition is curated by...
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Study of Rocks and Trees
The Regional Book by David Matless was reviewed back in October by Ken Worpole on his New English Landscape blog. He summarises it as 'a gazetteer of 44 Norfolk places, each described in telegraphese,...
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Tall Mountains and Flowing Waters
In an earlier post, 'Clouds over the Xiao and Xiang Rivers', I discussed landscape imagery in Song dynasty music for the qin (Wade-Giles: ch'in). The ch'in, a type of zither but sometimes confusingly...
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The Coast of Bohemia
Joseph Wright of Derby, Antigonus in the Storm, 1790-2On Tuesday we went to see The Winter's Tale at the atmospheric, candlelit Sam Wannamaker Theatre. I am sure I was not alone in looking forward to...
View ArticleRainbow Mid Life’s Willows
Ian Nairn once described the view from 'decent quiet Duquesne Heights onto the roaring heart of Pittsburgh' as the epitome of terribilità. If he were there today, half a century later, he could look...
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Utopia
Ambrosius Holbein, The Island of Utopia, 15162016 marks the five hundredth anniversary of Thomas More's Utopia. The book has little in detail to say about Utopia's topography, although we are told...
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Wanderings through the Mark Brandenburg
Reading the new translations of Walter Benjamin's radio broadcasts, made between 1929 and 1932,you are aware of how quickly the world in which they went out would disappear. The final set of...
View ArticleSong of the Forests
I have often written here about music inspired by landscape, but the Song of the Forests is an oratorio dedicated to the reshaping of landscape. It was by written by Dmitri Shostakovich in the summer...
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Blind Orion Searching for the Rising Sun
Nicholas Poussin, Blind Orion Searching for the Rising Sun, 1658I write this surrounded by piles of books with a couple of pictures propped against them. This would be pleasant except that they've all...
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The lake of Como
Francesco Gonin, View of Lake Como, 1840 (illustration for chapter 1 of Alessandro Manzoni's I Promessi Sposi) 'That branch of the lake of Como, which extends towards the south, is enclosed by two...
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The Tarn
Lars Hertervig, Borgøya Island, 1867 Yesterday I watched the first of Andrew Graham-Dixon's new three-part series on Scandinavian art. He has begun it in Norway, crunching through the snow in a parka...
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Topological loss
The building work I mentioned a fortnight ago is well underway, covering everything in layers of dirt from crumbling Victorian bricks so that any neglected surfaces begin to look like Man Ray's Dust...
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