Happy #MelvilleMonday 🐳!

“So far gone am I in the dark side of earth, that its other side, the theoretic bright one, seems but uncertain twilight to me.“

Herman Melville
Moby-Dick
CHAPTER127. The Deck.

Gustave Le Gray
Effet de soleil dans les nuages - Océan, vers 1856
Musée d'Orsay

“If you can't get to be oncommon through going straight, you'll never get to do it through going crooked. So don't tell no more on 'em, Pip, and live well and die happy."

Charles Dickens
Great expectations C9
Illustrated by Edward Ardizzone

The young girls very often danced by moonlight in front of their dwellings. There are a great variety of these dances, in which, however, I never saw the men take part. They all consist of active, romping, mischievous evolutions, in which every limb is brought into requisition. Indeed, the Marquesan girls dance all over, as it were; not only do their feet dance, but their arms, hands, fingers, ay, their very eyes, seem to dance in their heads.

Typee. XX.

Happy #MelvilleMonday , dear friends!

Happy #MelvilleMonday 🐳!

CHOPIN'S HEART

„… she raised her skirt and showed the other ladies her leg, immobilized by a leather sleeve with whalebone, held in place by the hoops that also held up her dress.
‚Here's what crinoline's good for’, said the singer.

It was the singer's gesture … that gave Ludwika the idea …
Escorted by several carriages, Chopin's heart did ultimately make it back to Warsaw.

Olga Tokarczuk
Flights
Translated by Jennifer Croft

Ludwika Jedrzejewicz, geb. Chopin

#MelvilleMonday 🐳

L'ALBATROS

Souvent, pour s'amuser, les hommes d'équipage
Prennent des albatros, vastes oiseaux des mers,
Qui suivent, indolents compagnons de voyage,
Le navire glissant sur les gouffres amers.

A peine les ont-ils déposés sur les planches,
Que ces rois de l'azur, maladroits et honteux.
Laissent piteusement leurs grandes ailes blanches
Comme des avirons traîner à côté d'eux.

(…)

Le Poète est semblable au prince des nuées
Qui hante la tempête et se rit de l'archer;

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