Last Saturday began rather languidly, not stirring to life until after midday. I set to work on a new watercolour, sparked by a photograph of questionable taste that, oddly enough, captured my imagination. The session was brief—November, with its dreary skies and scarce sunlight, hardly lends itself to prolonged artistic reveries.
While I find the gloom agreeable, the brevity of the days vexes me, with dusk descending as early as four or five o’clock.
By six, I had turned my attention to Old Barny, aka November, a novel by the Estonian author Andrus Kivirähk. My reading, however, was soon interrupted by academic obligations: Elles au XXe siècle by Christiane Lavaquerie-Klein and Laurence Paix-Rusterholtz forms the crux of my semester’s work for French class—a matter I could scarcely afford to neglect, having narrowly scraped through the last test. With that in mind, I resolved to make my individual assignment as good as I could.
Monday was a chilly day
On Monday morning, I could think of nothing but creating a necklace. During my Sunday visit to the city’s flea market, ostensibly in pursuit of a pearl necklace or something of that ilk, I stumbled instead upon a most marvellous brooch. This discovery sparked the idea of fashioning a creation of my own. As it happens, sewing projects often leave me with an abundance of fabric scraps, along with braids and ribbons. I resolved to weave a series of braids, selecting fabrics that do not fray—or only do so minimally in two cases of mine out of three—combined with a handful of ribbons. The resulting braid turned out delightfully thick, much to my satisfaction, though it did pose something of a challenge when it came to fastening. For this first attempt, I opted to secure it with my splendid new brooch.
My Quotation book
The assignment for our World Literature course this semester was deceptively simple: to compile a quotation book from the texts we explored in seminars. The selection spanned the most emblematic works of Romanticism, a movement we devoted three and a half months to unravelling. Among the texts were Ode to the West Wind by Percy Bysshe Shelley, Hoffmann’s whimsical The Golden Pot, Thomas Gray’s poignant Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, Coleridge’s eerie The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Lord Byron’s sweeping Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Lermontov’s brooding Demon, Pushkin’s vibrant The Gypsies, and Poe’s melancholic The Raven.
Romanticism, as a whole, has never been my favoured literary period, and I find Edgar Allan Poe particularly irksome. To my mind, his writing bears a peculiar artificiality. His tone often feels unnervingly affected, which strikes me as more performative than genuine. It is too cloying, too mincing, too steeped in an almost old-maidish delicacy. There is an unnatural elongation of grief in his lines, which leaves me wondering whether he sought to enchant or merely to dazzle.
Ode to the West Wind is a sublime invocation of the West Wind as both a destroyer and preserver. A leading figure among the Romantics, Shelley was renowned for his radical ideas and tumultuous personal life. He drowned at just 29, and legend has it that his heart refused to burn during cremation—a fact later mythologized by his wife, Mary Shelley.
The Golden Pot blends fantastical elements with everyday reality; in the dual world of E.T.A. Hoffmann, there unfolds the tale of a young student, whose life transforms from bourgeoisness into a fairy tale and a captivating journey through history and the unknown as he discovers a magical realm through his love for a serpent-woman. Hoffmann was not only a writer but also a composer and jurist, a man of many talents. Intriguingly, his vivid imagination extended to his everyday life—he named his pet tomcat Murr, who served as the basis for one of his novels.
Gray, a recluse, was notoriously slow in his output, publishing just 13 poems in his lifetime. Despite his shyness, he was offered the position of Poet Laureate, which he declined.
Beyond his literary fame, Coleridge struggled with an opium addiction that deeply influenced his imagination and creative output.
Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage is a semi-autobiographical poem chronicling the travels of a disillusioned young man, this work cemented Byron’s reputation as the archetypal Romantic hero. Byron’s personal life was as dramatic as his verse—he was scandalously involved with multiple women, fathered a child with his half-sister, and had a profound, complex relationship with his daughter Ada Lovelace. Ada, a mathematical prodigy, is celebrated today as one of the first computer programmers for her work on Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine.
Business plan and strip tease
I have always harboured a desire to own a business spanning several fields: a private art school, a fashion brand, and, more recently, I’ve developed a curiosity about the inner workings of strip clubs.
This semester, I enrolled in a course on innovative entrepreneurship. Initially, I had intended to take economics, as my mother is an economist, and I seem to have unconsciously absorbed an understanding of certain macro- and microeconomic principles. Moreover, my mother has always impressed upon me that while politicians and politically inclined individuals—economists included—may say whatever they please, the laws of economics are immutable. They operate regardless of our awareness of them, and, as she likes to say, even the shelves in a shop can reveal far more, and far more truthfully, than any pundit on television.
As it happened, the economics course was cancelled due to insufficient enrolment, and I found myself on the entrepreneurship course instead. To be frank, it has been an utter waste of time. What grieves me even more, however, is that this semester we are translating socio-political texts rather than economic ones—a decision made by majority vote within our group.
For the entrepreneurship course, we were required to submit a business plan as our term project. My mother and I share a close and candid relationship, and I confided in her my frustration that my ideas and interests appear to be of little relevance to the world today. In her characteristically incisive and no-nonsense manner, she pared everything down to its essentials, advising me that each concept should complement and coexist with the others. There’s no need, she said, to create a fashion brand or house; what’s needed is a tailoring studio and a fabric shop offering stylist and designer-dressmaker services. A private art school is a fine idea, but it must appeal to a broad audience. And as for a strip club—why ever not? After all, they operate at night.
Thus, I produced a business plan encompassing an art gallery, a private art school, a tailoring studio, a fabric shop, a coffeehouse, and, of course, a strip club.
I dare say the idea is now merely awaiting its time to shine!