Canción de cuna

A Cradle Song

Sweet dreams form a shade,

O'er my lovely infants head.

Sweet dreams of pleasant streams,

By happy silent moony beams

Sweet sleep with soft down.
Weave thy brows an infant crown.
Sweet sleep Angel mild,
Hover o'er my happy child.

Sweet smiles in the night,
Hover over my delight.
Sweet smiles Mothers smiles,
All the livelong night beguiles.

Sweet moans, dovelike sighs,
Chase not slumber from thy eyes,
Sweet moans, sweeter smiles,
All the dovelike moans beguiles.

Sleep sleep happy child,
All creation slept and smil'd.
Sleep sleep, happy sleep.
While o'er thee thy mother weep

Sweet babe in thy face,
Holy image I can trace.
Sweet babe once like thee.
Thy maker lay and wept for me

Wept for me for thee for all,
When he was an infant small.
Thou his image ever see.
Heavenly face that smiles on thee,

Smiles on thee on me on all,
Who became an infant small,
Infant smiles are His own smiles,
Heaven & earth to peace beguiles.

William Blake

William Blake fue un escritor y artista inglés que nació en Londres el 28 de noviembre de 1757 y que falleció en la misma ciudad el 12 de agosto de 1827. La escritura de Blake se vincula siempre con sus ilustraciones y grabados, que solía realizar para sus propios poemas o para clásicos literarios. Admirador de los escultores y pintores renacentistas, su obra pictórica muestra influencias de Miguel Ángel, Rafael o Durero, desarrollando una técnica de grabado que le permitía crear imágenes luminosas y expresivas basadas en las visiones que afirmaba haber tenido desde pequeño. Apoyado por sus padres, desde joven se educó como grabador y trabajó para varias imprentas, llegando incluso a montar la suya propia. En constante búsqueda de la inocencia en el ser humano, sus primeros poemas, llenos de entusiasmo e ingenuidad, fueron viéndose reemplazados por otros versos en contraposición llenos de desengaño, como puedo observarse al leer de manera conjunta Canciones de Inocencia (1789) y Canciones Profanas (1794), donde el poeta acepta una inocencia distinta, que puede adquirirse sólo a través de la experiencia. Aunque fue estudiante de la Royal Academy, detestaba su sistema de enseñanza y valores estéticos, instituidos por su presidente, Joshua Reynolds, ya que la búsqueda de Blake de verdad y belleza se hallaba centrada en la imaginación y el espíritu, a diferencia de los preceptos racionalistas y neoclasicistas de Reynolds. Además, Blake creía en la igualdad racial y sexual, y predicaba una libertad de pensamiento que chocaba frontalmente con la Iglesia católica, razón por la que fue objeto de numerosas críticas y que le acarreó frecuentes problemas. En 1782 se casó con Catherine Boucher, quien sería su compañera y ayudante hasta el fin de sus días

http://www.lecturalia.com/autor/4196/william-blake

Dedicated to him

“I really don't see anything romantic in proposing. It is very romantic to be in love. But there is nothing romantic about a definite proposal. Why, one may be accepted. One usually is, I believe. Then the excitement is all over. The very essence of romance is uncertainty. If ever I get married, I'll certainly try to forget the fact.”
~ Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

On this day in 1895 Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest opened in London. Wilde called his play a "Trivial Comedy for Serious People."

taken from "English Literature: A Community".

...una nueva canción de u2...

U2 filtra esta imagen a 5 días de lanzar "Invisible". ¿puede ser el escenario donde se grabó el vídeo? pronto lo sabremos..., los días 2-3 de febrero

Poe nació un día como hoy en 1809

“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door —
Only this, and nothing more."

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; — vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow — sorrow for the lost Lenore —
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore —
Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me — filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating,
Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door —
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; —
This it is, and nothing more."

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you"— here I opened wide the door; —
Darkness there, and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore?"
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore!" —
Merely this, and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window lattice:
Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore —
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; —
'Tis the wind and nothing more."

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore;
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door —
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door —
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore.
Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly shore —
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!"
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

Much I marveled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning— little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blest with seeing bird above his chamber door —
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as "Nevermore.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven

Muere Nelson Mandela

1. «Quedará para siempre como una acusación y como un desafío para todos los hombres y mujeres con conciencia el que hayamos tardado tanto en levantarnos para decir ¡basta!».
2. «Si deseas hacer las paces con tu enemigo, tienes que trabajar con tu enemigo. Entonces se convierte en tu compañero».
3. «Estoy preparado para pagar las consecuencias pese a que sé hasta qué punto es amarga y desesperada la situación de un africano en las prisiones de este país». (Tras ser declarado culpable en 1962).
4. «Detesto la supremacía blanca y la combatiré con cualquier arma que pueda tener entre las manos».
5. «África para los africanos no tenía una connotación racial... No pretendía decir que los blancos establecidos en África debían ser expulsados, no. Quería decir que el sistema colonial tenía que terminarse».
6. «Cuando decidimos tomar las armas fue porque la única opción restante era rendirse y someterse a la esclavitud».
7. «Aprendí que el coraje no era la ausencia de miedo, sino el triunfo sobre el miedo. Un hombre valiente no es aquel que no siente miedo, sino aquel que lo conquista».
8. «El avance nunca es el resultado del esfuerzo individual se trata siempre de un esfuerzo y de un triunfo colectivo».
9. «Sudáfrica sigue siendo un ejemplo de lo que se puede conseguir en circunstancias de conflicto si existe la voluntad y el compromiso para encontrar soluciones pacíficas».
10. «Habrá vida después de Mandela. Tenemos mucha gente joven capaz».
11. http://www.elmundo.es/especiales/internacional/nelson-mandela/palabra.html

Adios a Doris Lessing

How Writer Doris Lessing Didn't Want To Be Remembered

Many call Doris Lessing a feminist icon — a characterization the author rejected as "stupid."

Shaun Curry/AFP/Getty Images

In the course of a long and eventful life, author Doris Lessing was many things.

She was a mother — and a self-described "house mother" for a procession of starving artists, writers and political refugees. She was a refugee herself, from bourgeois respectability in 1940s Rhodesia. She was a campaigner against racism, a lover, an ardent communist, and a serial rescuer of cats.

But during an interview in Lessing's North London home one dark, cold day just shy of her 89th birthday, the writer briskly rejected the label most frequently attached to her: feminist icon — particularly when applied to her 1962 novel, The Golden Notebook.

"Oh, it's just stupid; I've seen it so often," she said. "I mean, there's nothing feminist about The Golden Notebook. The second line is: 'As far as I can see, everything is cracking up.' That is what The Golden Notebook is about!"

Author Doris Lessing died Sunday at the age of 94. Lessing won the 2007 Nobel Prize for literature for a life's work which included around 40 books and collections of essays and memoirs.

The novel follows Anna Wulf, a single mother and a writer on the verge of a nervous breakdown in post-war London. Wulf keeps different-colored notebooks to chronicle her political, social, sexual and emotional selves. Only in the golden notebook of the novel's title would all these selves finally be integrated.

The Golden Notebook has been called one of the great and most complex novels of the 20th century. Lessing herself has been called one of the century's most clear-eyed observers.

Indeed, even in the science fiction which she considered her finest work, Lessing's characters live firmly within — and are utterly the products of — history.

"I think all the time we are being manipulated by great social currents. We are not often aware of it," Lessing said. "Well, my life certainly has been. First, it's been dominated by war, right from the start. I've never been free of all that. I got married and had children because of the Second World War — as all of us did, exclaiming, 'Oh, no, we are never going to bring a child into this wicked world!' But we had children by the dozen and got married. So, no, this is how we are formed."

Lessing was raised by British parents in Zimbabwe — called Rhodesia then. She left school at 13, left home at 15 and married for the first time at 19.

By the age of 30, Lessing had married again and become disenchanted with her second husband and his communist beliefs. She moved to London with their son, and began living some of the experiences described in The Golden Notebook.

While her novels tended to attack sweeping historical and social themes, Lessing could also work in miniature. In 1999, she read from an essay called "A Week in Heidelberg." In it, she trains her powers of observation on a blackbird – "A bold, black, glossy bird," she writes, "with eyes outlined in orange." She had wooed it to her hotel windowsill with a piece of apple.

"He knew I was there — or something was making him nervous — and he kept jabbing his beak hard into the apple flesh, then stopping to look at the white screen close to him. And then there was another series of quick, downward jabs. To shrink yourself down in imagination and see that gleaming weapon just above you — what a horror! The worm's eye view..."

For all of the honors showered upon Lessing, the literary establishment seemed ambivalent about her.

"She was never a great stylist," author and critic Blake Morrison says. "No one would sit down to relish the prose. What she was was a great observer, a great joiner-in, really, engaging with the intellectual movements, the swirls and currents of the day."

It's an assessment with which Lessing would likely have agreed. "I have done quite a good job of documenting a lot of our time, I think. I mean, what is The Golden Notebook? It couldn't be written now, could it? I think that some of my books are very good. I've written some rather good short stories."

Lessing once refused to allow the Queen to declare her a dame of the British Empire, because — in the author's words — "There is no British Empire." Lessing called winning the Nobel Prize "a disaster" for her writing, but her friends say the money which came with the prize helped ease her final years, spent, by her own account, giving interviews and caring for her invalid son.

50 años sin Luis Cernuda

Hoy se cumplen 50 años de la pérdida de uno de los literatos más ilustres, Luis Cernuda