Ny udgivelse: Forord til nyoversættelse af Arthur Machen

 Stephen King og H.P. Lovecraft har begge beskrevet ham som en af de bedste inden for horrorgenren, og skønt det ikke er mange, der i dag er bekendt med Arthur Machen og hans univers af gru og fortryllelse, gennemtrænger hans ideer den moderne fiktion. Den der først har stiftet bekendtskab med ham, vil ofte kunne genfinde hans indflydelse inden for en lang række af genrer og genkende hans åndfulde aftryk på film og litteratur, myter og musik. At læse Machens fortællinger er at lade sig synke ned i en anden verden, hvor hver detalje er betydningsfuld, hvor skoven ånder og noget uendeligt og gammelt venter, dirrende og utålmodigt, hvor vi ikke kan se det – på godt, og på ondt...

Kan bl.a. købes her.

The Forbidden History

A Break in the Doing of the Art. Felicia Brown.

Looking for a safe place to hide and focus, little climbers everywhere, sneaking in, needing me. 

 

By Felica. A Present. 

Questionable Tense

I am: 

static noise on repeat

25 angry, drowsy bees as it is getting cold

tension in a bowstring drawn a little weakly 

a mostly unopened bottle of 8-year old sirup

a rock you brought home from the beach 

the collective consciousness of a colony of flour moths

a cake baked with the webbed home

a sun-bleached book behind glass

staring up into the sky, slowly getting warn down by the waves, becoming less and less like glass. 

Replanting scorpion grasses

She calls me, with a voice full of whispers,

and lays claim to my reality, 

I get angry, I've worked hard for it. 

A small thing, a memory re-written, 

"you never did any yardwork". 

Whatever. It's not like you were really there. 

"Shall I dance them again, the nightlong dances?

Dance again with bare feet in the dew?

Shall I toss my head and skip through the penn fields

as a fawn slipped free of the hunt and the hunters,

leaping their nets, out-running their hounds?

She runs like a gale runs over the plain

near the river, each bound

and plunge like a gust of joy, taking her

dancing, deep through the forest

where no one can find her, and the dark

is free and its heart is the darkest green?"

- Robin Robertson's translation of the 'Bacchae' 

Painting by Arthur B. Davies.

Chalk

Why is it, when I attempt anything important to me, I must undergo metamorphosis?
Seeing my own reflection in the screen instead of ideas,
that at all other times, will sprout as spiteful as cornflowers,
I find a neon-blinded foul thing troubling to tolerate, 
and still, I can't look away.
As if it were Medusa, not Narcissus, enraptured by their own image,
horrified or full of pity for it, and in either instance,
unable to stop the process
as it slowly but surely turns to chalk. 

French turn-of-the-century Bicycle commercials

The long 19th century was a tumultuous time for the French. The great outcry of the 1789 revolution had been followed by war, economical instability, changing constitutions, a second revolution, and a complete reorganization of the city. With the arrival of la belle époque, the people wanted beauty and freedom, the promised rewards of all that they'd been through. So, it can be no coincidence that when the improved bicycle was marketed to the French public, it was with great emphasis on its revolutionary potential. Interestingly, it seems to have been especially the women's emancipation that inspired much of the symbolism.