Saturday Summary

Carl Vilhelm Holsoe
"Lady in an Interior"

 

     I have a predilection for muted palettes, not only in art but also interior design. If there is sufficient natural light in a room, I love the changing color of it during the course of the day, and its influence on the space and the objects in it.

     When a muted palette in a painting is paired with the subject of a lone woman reading or writing in a domestic interior, that painting immediately captures my attention. What I particularly like in this painting is the patch of sunlight on the wall, which gives brightness to the scene without actually adding color. The only other element of light is the gleam of the silver.

     So this painting is what I discovered this week. Also, this past week, I:

     ... wrote another new poem, a sonnet that's a bit non-traditional in the sense that while it's mostly iambic, the lines are not all pentameter; some are longer, others are shorter. And the rhyme scheme departs from the usual Shakespearean and Petrarchan. But it definitely reads like a sonnet. I'm pretty happy with it.

     ... have been listening to Persuasion, read by the excellent Juliet Stevenson (Truly, Madly, Deeply; Emma). Ms Stevenson does a splendid job, though the voice she gives Mary is borderline annoying. True to the character, I suppose. This is my first Austen audio book, actually. I'm enjoying it, but still prefer reading to listening, as reading affords the chance to savor and to read certain striking passages multiple times in succession with more ease. Nevertheless, I will probably be buying more audio books in future. If it's a book you're already well familiar with, it's rather nice to fall asleep listening to it, in lieu of an actual person reading you to sleep. You can always go back to the parts you missed after passing out.

     ... read Guard Your Daughters by Diana Tutton, a light, amusing mid-century novel that has been making the round of book bloggers lately. Very enjoyable, worth the purchase, and a definite candidate for re-reading every few years.

     ... received in the mail Christopher Morley's New York, which I fully expect to be every bit as delightful as his Philadelphia, if not more so. I really must read some of his fiction; never have, not even Parnassus on Wheels or The Haunted Bookshop. At any rate, his essays deserve to be on the shelf of every true lover of literature, maybe not beside William Hazlitt, but certainly beside Leigh Hunt.

     I also received the Hans Hotter/Gerald Moore recording of Schwanengesang, and Schnabel's recording of the Impromptus, to further my recent epiphanic reappraisal of Schubert. I'm learning to love him more and more each day. Another sure sign of middle age.