Thanks to JLB Creatives for their Author Splash Featuring my Novel, CONQUEST

JLB Creatives are kind enough to run an Author Splash featuring CONQUEST.

• Visit JLB Creatives at this link.
• Follow JLB Creatives on Twitter: @JLBCreatives

A New Tweet Praising CONQUEST

It was great to see this today on Twitter!

Thanks, Kate!

“Fundamentals” Word Cloud

Via wordle.net:

Word Cloud of Posts in the "Fundamentals" category. CLICK TO ENLARGE.

This seems like a good occasion to recap the fundamentals – except, you can’t recap them. You have to see them for yourself. The thing that a work of art achieves can’t be expressed in any merely intellectual words. You can feel it but you can’t say it.  You can allude to it; you can hint at it; you can appreciate it; you can know what it is and have friends who know what it is; but you can’t say what it is in intellectual terms. That’s what we’re illustrating with the posts on this site. We’re providing many pithy, punchy, easy-to-get-with examples of what a work of art achieves, so that you can appreciate it and feel it, even though it can’t be otherwise illustrated or described.

This One Sneaks Up On You

This one sneaks up on you and then delivers a really powerful emotional insight in the last lines.  It’s by Robert Frost. It doesn’t matter what it’s called – the title’s just a fakeout so you won’t see the end of it coming. (It’s called “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”). At first it seems like it’s very tame, very calm, very quiet. He’s talking about what his horse is thinking. And then…

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Do you feel that? It’s quite powerful, is it not?

“School of Athens”

Here’s “School of Athens” by Raphael. Doesn’t it fill you with an awe and reverence and admiration for learning?

School of Athens by Raphael. Click to Enlarge.

Unforgettable Emotional Insight from Tolstoy’s “War and Peace”

WAR AND PEACE has tons of amazing, unforgettable moments in it. There’s a thread listing many of them, on Goodreads. Here’s one of my favorites. BTW, this text is from the spectacular translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.  I can’t recommend their many translations from great Russian writers, highly enough.

To the right Rostov saw the first rows of his hussars, and still further ahead he could see a dark strip, which he could not make out but thought to be the enemy. Shots were fired, but in the distance.

“Quicken the tghrot,” came the command, and Rostov felt his Little Rook kick up his rump, switching to a canter.

He guessed his movements ahead of time, and felt merrier and merrier. He noticed a solitary tree ahead. This tree was first ahead of him, in the middle of the line that seemed so terrible. But then they crossed that line, and not only was there nothing frightening, but everything became merrier and livelier. “Oh, how I’m going to slash at him,” thought Rostov, gripping the hilt of his saber.

“Hur-r-ra-a-ah!” voices droned.

“Well, now let anybody at all come along,” thought Rostov, spurring Little Rook and, outstripping the others, sending him into a full gallop. The enemy could already be seen ahead. Suddenly something lashed at the squadron as if with a broad besom. Rostov raised his sword, preparing to strike, but just then the soldier Nikitenko galloped past, leaving him behind, and Rostov felt, as in a dream, that he was still racing on with unnatural speed and at the same time was staying in place. The familiar hussar Bandarchuk galloped towards him from behind and looked at him angrily. Bandarchuk’s horse shied, and he swerved around him.

“What is it? I’m not moving ahead? I’ve fallen, I’ve been killed . . .” Rostov asked and answered in the same instant. He was alone now in the middle of the field. Instead of moving horses and hussar backs, he saw the immobile earth and stubble around him. There was warm blood under him. “No, I’m wounded, and my horse has been killed.” Little Rook tried to get up on his forelegs, but fell back, pinning his rider’s leg. Blood flowed from the horse’s head. The horse thrashed and could not get up. Rostov went to get up and also fell: his pouch caught on the saddle. Where ours were, where the French were— he did not know. There was no one around.

Having freed his leg, he got up. “Where, on which side now was that line which had so sharply separated the two armies?” he asked himself, and could not answer. “Has something bad happened to me? There are such cases, and what must be done in such cases?” he asked himself, standing up; and just then he felt that something superfluous was hanging from his numb left arm. His hand was like someone else’s. He examined the hand, vainly looking for blood on it. “Well, here are some people,” he thought joyfully, seeing several men running towards him. “They’ll help me!” In front of these people ran one in a strange shako and a blue greatcoat, dark, tanned, with a hooked nose. Two more and then many came running behind him. One of them said something strange, non-Russian. Among the men in the back, wearing the same shakos, stood a Russian hussar. He was being held by the arms; behind him they were holding his horse.

“He must be one of ours taken prisoner . . . Yes. Can it be they’ll take me, too? What men are these?” Rostov kept thinking, not believing his eyes. “Can they be Frenchmen?” He looked at the approaching Frenchmen and, though a moment before he had been galloping only in order to meet these Frenchmen and cut them to pieces, their closeness now seemed so terrible to him that he could not believe his eyes. “Who are they? Why are they running? Can it be they’re running to me? Can it be? And why? To kill me? Me, whom everybody loves so?” He remembered his mother’s love for him, his family’s, his friends’, and the enemy’s intention to kill him seemed impossible. “But maybe even—to kill me!” He stood for more than ten seconds without moving from the spot or understanding his situation. The first Frenchman with the hooked nose came so close that the expression on his face could already be seen. And the flushed alien physiognomy of this man who, with lowered bayonet, holding his breath, was running lightly towards him, frightened Rostov. He seized his pistol and, instead of firing it, threw it at the Frenchman, and ran for the bushes as fast as he could. He ran not with the feeling of doubt and conflict with which he had gone to the Enns bridge, but with the feeling of a hare escaping from hounds. One undivided feeling of fear for his young, happy life possessed his entire being.

“Me, whom everybody loves so?” That has stayed with me for years.

It’s Played at Every Wedding – But Did You Know Where it Comes From?

Did you know that the famous “Here Comes the Bride” Wedding March is from Wagner’s  Lohengrin?

Take a second to listen to it. Now, what’s making it so beautiful? We know it’s about a wedding. So the emotions of it are probably (not necessarily but probably) about weddings.  That’s about all you can say, intellectually, regarding what the music pertains to.  But emotionally, doesn’t it capture something of the feeling of beautiful destiny? How would you describe the emotions it inspires in you?