January 6, 2025 12:28 pm

Meeting Bench

WHEN THE MUSIC BECOMES POETRY: Infant Holy, Infant Lowly – Polish song, by Kamila Klein

INFANT HOLY, INFANT LOWLY Infant holy, for His bed a cattle stall. Oxen lowing, little knowing Christ the Babe is Lord of all. Swift are winging angels singing, Nowells ringing, tidings bringing, Christ the Babe is Lord of all. Flocks were sleeping, shepherds keeping, vigil till the morning new. Saw the glory, heard the story,tidings of a Gospel true. Thus …

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CHRISTOFFER WILHELM ECKERSBERG (1783/1853), DANISH PAINTER: The daily life observations and harmonious principles of composition

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SHADOWS: Poetry, by Henrik Nordbrandt

SHADOWS So I thought of you, and I have written so much about you, not to know who you were. In so many rooms I slept, without you by my side, and many are the houses in which I lived, without you. Many are the cities where I met you. There are many things that I need, or lost on …

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TIMELESS BOOKS: Out of Africa, novel by Karen Blixen

OUT OF AFRICA Reading this novel, like watching a fresco, you can find the beauty of African nature – and the human soul – but with all its colors, with all its strengths and weaknesses. An autobiographical book, covers the years in which the writer lived on a farm in Kenya with her husband. Flipping through pages that have been …

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NILS VON DARDEL (1888/1943), SWEDISH PAINTER: The traveler of different countries, made by lands, styles, emotions and colours

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TIMELESS BOOKS: For the love of the truth, novel by Torgny Lindgren

FORE THE LOVE OF THE TRUTH His characters conceal unsuspected depths, they are questioning the meaning of life, to carry errors and illusions, looking for a paradise on earth, where “the Case” reigns supreme. Leafing through the pages of the novel, you shall know Theodor (the only framer intellectual Sweden), reading that, to him – who lives in a lonely …

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CERTAIN THAT HURTS: Poetry, by Karin Boye

CERTAIN THAT HURTS Of course it hurts when buds open. Why otherwise should hesitate spring? Why should our whole burning nostalgia, be it related to pale and bitter frost? Yet the bud was casing all winter. What’s new, now, that affects and press? Of course it hurts when buds open, hurt that grows, and what it contains. Of course it …

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HUGO SIMBERG (1873/1917), FINNISH PAINTER: As the painter declined to explain, its paintings are left to each individual, to fly up with own personal explanation

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I AM NOT A WOMAN: Poetry, by Edith Södergran

I AM NOT A WOMAN   I’m not a woman. I’m a neutral thing. I am a child, a pageboy and a bold decision, am a ray of sunshine laughing scarlet. I am a fishing net for all the voracious fish, I am a glass in honor of all women, I am a step towards the case and ruin, am …

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WHEN THE MUSIC BECOMES POETRY: The Swan of Tuonela, by Jean Sibelius

THE SWAN OF TUONELA A segment for a 1940 film, Fantasia. A piece used as introductory music to the BBC radio production of Lost Horizon. The Swan of Tuonela, it is an 1895 tone poem (part of the Lemminkäinen Suite). The music paints a gossamer image of an animal – a swan – swimming around Tuonela, the island of the …

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