Lars Iyer's Blog, page 46

What I suffer from this continuous idleness I am quite un...

What I suffer from this continuous idleness I am quite unable to describe. I would like most to hang myself on the nearest branch of the cheery trees standing now in full bloom. This wonderful spring with its secret life and movement troubles me unspeakably. These eternal blue skies, lasting for weeks, this continuous sprouting and budding in nature, these coaxing breezes impregnated with spring sunlight and fragrances of flowers … make me frantic. Everywhere this bewildering urge for life, fruitfulness, creation – and only I, although like the humblest grass of the fields of one of God’s creatures, may not take part in this festival of resurrection, at any rate not except as a spectator with grief and envy.

Hugo Wolf

There will never be any summer any more, and I am weary o...

There will never be any summer any more, and I am weary of everything. I stay because I am too weak to go. I crawl on because it is easier than to stop. I put my face to the window. There is nothing out there but the blackness and the sound of rain. Neither when I shut my eyes can I see anything. I am alone…. There is nothing else in my world but my dead heart and brain within me and the rain without.

Edward Thomas

But it is always a question of whether I wish to avoid th...

But it is always a question of whether I wish to avoid these glooms…. These 9 weeks give one a plunge into deep waters; which is a little alarming, but full of interest…. There is an edge to it which I feel is of great importance…. One goes down into the well & nothing protects one from the assault of truth.

Virginia Woolf

The more I am spent, ill, a broken pitcher, by so much mo...

The more I am spent, ill, a broken pitcher, by so much more am I an artist – a creative artist… this green shoot springing from the roots of an old felled trunk, these are such abstract things that a kind of melancholy remains within us when we think that one could have created life at less cost than creating art

Van Gogh

I am so ill – so terribly, hopelessly ILL in body and min...

I am so ill – so terribly, hopelessly ILL in body and mind, that I feel I CANNOT live … until I subdue this fearful agitation, which if continued, will either destroy my life, or, drive me hopelessly mad.

Edgar Allan Poe

I roll on like a ball, with this exception, that contrary...

I roll on like a ball, with this exception, that contrary to the usual laws of motion I have no friction to content with in my mind, and of course have some difficulty in stopping myself when there is nothing else to stop me…. I am almost sick and giddy with the quantity of things in my head – trains of thought beginning and branching to infinity, crossing each other, and all tempting and wanting to be worked out.

John Ruskin

She talked almost without stopping for two or three days,...

She talked almost without stopping for two or three days, paying no attention to anyone in the room or anything said to her. For about a day what she said was coherent; the sentences meant something, though it was nearly all wildly insane. Then gradually it became completely incoherent, a mere jumble of dissociated words.

Leonard Woolf on Virginia

Karl McDonald reviews Wittgenstein Jr for the Independent.

Karl McDonald reviews Wittgenstein Jr for the Independent.

Wittgenstein Jr featured is one of the books to look out ...

Wittgenstein Jr featured is one of the books to look out for in September, according to Flavorwire and Ask Men.

M. A. Orthofer on Wittgenstein Jr at the Complete Review.

M. A. Orthofer on Wittgenstein Jr at the Complete Review.