Madame Bovary through the eyes of Leon:

In the variety of her moods, by turns gay and otherworldly, garrulous and taciturn, fiery and indifferent, she provoked a thousand desires in him, appealed both to his instincts and to his memories. She was the 'woman in love' of all the novels, the heroine of all drama, the shadowy 'she' of all the poetry-books. On her shoulders he saw reproduced the amber colours of the Odalisque Bathing. She had the deep bosom of a feudal chatelaine. She bore a resemblance to the Pale Woman of Barcelona ... but she was above all Angels!

La Grande Odalisque By Jean Ingres

The Odalisque female nude is a repeated subject of the artist: there does not appear to be an Odalisque Bathing.

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (French: [ʒɑnoɡyst dɔminik ɛ̃ɡʁ]; 29 August 1780 – 14 January 1867) was a French Neoclassical painter. Although he considered himself to be a painter of history in the tradition of Nicolas Poussin and Jacques-Louis David, by the end of his life it was Ingres's portraits, both painted and drawn, that were recognized as his greatest legacy.

(Self-Potrait)


There are interesting parallels between the passage of Leon's desirous conception of Madame Bovary (Emma) and Emma's own imaginative journies in the Opera and in nostalgia for previous amorous encounters - the paralleling might be a critical focus of the narrator on Romanticism and 'love'.

Just finished Madame Bovary, Flaubert is unrelenting by the end of his novel. I am abit lost in my feelings towards its climax.

Still trying to come with to terms with the idea that every heroine (or anti-heroine) has to commit suicide. What does that mean?

I thought that there was a possibility, momentarily, in the narrative for Emma to grow and transform into a romantic heroine or something more. Her downfall felt vindictive. I think Flaubert did her a great injustice - yes, she had her faults but to be beaten into a moral set of ideas, to bring her to heel and then have that blind beggar, the most powerless male - sing to her faults during her hideous demise - was just too much.

I am sure I am being petulant and I might be reading this 'thing' upside down.

I think I will take Tolstoy's hand to Flaubert's...

Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges (Spanish: [ˈxorxe ˈlwis ˈβorxes] audio (help·info) KBE; 24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator born in Buenos Aires. His work embraces the "character of unreality in all literature".[1] His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and The Aleph (El Aleph), published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion.



In Greek mythology, the Labyrinth (Greek λαβύρινθος labyrinthos, possibly the building complex at Knossos) was an elaborate structure designed and built by the legendary artificer Daedalus for King Minos of Crete at Knossos. Its function was to hold the Minotaur, a mythical creature that was half man and half bull and was eventually killed by the Athenian hero Theseus. Daedalus had so cunningly made the Labyrinth that he could barely escape it after he built it.[1] Theseus was aided by Ariadne, who provided him with a skein of thread, literally the "clew", or "clue", so he could find his way out again.

In Greek mythology, Daedalus /di:dəlɪs/ or /dɛdəlɪs/ (Ancient Greek: Δαίδαλος or Daedalos, meaning "clever worker"; Latin: Daedalus; Etruscan: Taitale) was a skillful craftsman and artist.[1][2] He is the father of Icarus, the uncle of Perdix and possibly also the father of Iapyx although this is unclear.

Daedalus is first mentioned by Homer as the creator of a wide dancing-ground for Ariadne.[12] He also created the Labyrinth on Crete, in which the Minotaur (part man, part bull) was kept. In the story of the labyrinth as told by the Hellenes, the Athenian hero Theseus is challenged to kill the Minotaur, finding his way with the help of Ariadne's thread.


Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges
Part 1 Fictions
Part 2 Essays
Part 3 Parables


I wonder if I read through this book quickly, will it be equivalent to not chewing your food before you swallow?

Anyway I think this was a recommendation of Dubnjoy's?

March List
Silar Marner by George Eliot
Cat's Cradle by K Vonnegut
Madame Bovary by G. Flaubert
Catch-22 Joseph Heller
Stalingrad by Antony Beevor
The Catcher in the Rye J.D. Salinger
Keep the Aphidistra Flying George Orwell
The Aeneid by Virgil

Labyrinths will be the 8th book this month and the 26th for the year.
I am comfortably ahead of schedule being past 25% of the way prior to the 90th day of the year. I am off for a weekend away to meet up with a mate in Wollongong and play some golf - so I think I have to Saturday morning to get this month's reading done. Which sadly means, Shakespeare will have to wait until April.

Equivocation and sincerity.

I am not a huge believer in conviction when it comes to abstract ideas. I have mentioned before that it does not weight heavily when I hear a sincere expressed belief or conviction - when it comes to my own beliefs, even from people I admire.
I would like to make an exception when it comes to sentiments of regret, apologies and their ilk - to this general belief.

e.g. I was highly sceptical when I heard a blantant example of equivication and lack of conviction today. Quote:
Context the person is being asked whether he thought his conduct and actions were moral or right.

"But from my point of view, from a Christian point of view, leaving aside the legal dimension, I don't think we did deal fairly."

When you see this division of perspective - from my point of view - then - from a Christian point of view - then with a qualification - leaving aside legal dimension....

You can basically discount everything that follows.
Which is pretty good rule of thumb for sincerity in apologies, the more qualification, contextualisation or equivication ---> the less sincere the apology. There should be a simple directness and conviction in an apology. Mitigation, explanation, qualifications should be so far distant from the apology I would suggest to leave it for a completely different context and perhaps never toward the recipient of the apology.

The speaker of the statement:

About Borges, there was a lit student that once came up with this metaphor : if duality can be summarized by the reflection offered by a mirror, Borges universe is one where the reader goes through the surface of the mirror, stepping into a somewhat diametrical opposite universe...

Enjoy the read. It can be strenuous at times, but interesting.

I will do a write-up of Madame Bovary tommorrow.
I finished the first short story of Labyrinths: Fictions - Tion, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius. The reference to labyrinths within the story prompted an indistinct recollection of The Name of The Rose and the library depicted therein or perhaps some critical research I did on that text. If I recall, I found out that there were three types of labyrinths. I really should investigate and background that part to see what I make of parts of this short story but particularly the last passages of it in relation to labyrinths.


to dubnjoy: was that 'lit student' a fellow student colleague of yours? Thanks for the post.

" ex ungue leonem" p 31


tanquam ex ungue leonem

"we know the lion by his claw"

Said in 1697 by Johann Bernoulli about Isaac Newton's anonymously submitted solution to Bernoulli's challenge regarding the Brachistochrone curve.


Presumably Borges is alluding to the claims of literary research to identify authorship by pattern utilising Bernoulli's metaphor. But there might be another interpretation of that metaphor.


A brachistochrone curve (Gr. βράχιστος, brachistos - the shortest, χρόνος, chronos - time) or curve of fastest descent, is the path that will carry a point-like body from one place to another in the least amount of time. The body is released at rest from the starting point and is constrained to move without friction along the curve to the end point, while under the action of constant gravity. The brachistochrone curve is the same as the tautochrone curve for a given starting point.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brachistochrone_curve

Johann Bernoulli posed the problem of the brachistochrone to the readers of Acta Eruditorum in June, 1696. He published his solution in the journal in May of the following year, and noted that the solution is the same curve as Huygens's tautochrone curve. After deriving the differential equation for the curve by the method given above, he went on to show that it does yield a cycloid.[3][4] But his proof is marred by the fact that he uses a single constant instead of the three constants, vm, 2g and D, above. Five mathematicians responded with solutions: Isaac Newton, Jakob Bernoulli (Johann's brother), Gottfried Leibniz, Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus and Guillaume de l'Hôpital.


Johann Bernoulli by Johann Rudolf Huber, circa 1740

Johann Bernoulli (also known as Jean or John; 6 August [O.S. 27 July] 1667 – 1 January 1748) was a Swiss mathematician and was one of the many prominent mathematicians in the Bernoulli family. He is known for his contributions to infinitesimal calculus and educated Leonhard Euler in his youth.

Yes it was. I had a course on latino literature that was taught by an interesting and passionate Uruguay refugee. She would keep us mesmerized - or me, at least - by her storytelling skills, exhaustive analysis and exuberant interest in the subject at hand. Anyhow, when we had to choose our final essay subject, I made a promise to self not to go with Borges (for I knew it would be a headache to dissect). I obviously choose him.

There was only 2 of us that decided to attack Borge's work and if I am not mistaken, this quote was taken from the other student (we both had the best grades in the course).

On a side note, I also took a seminar course called "Lost in a Labyrinth" which was fairly interesting. The core of the course revolved mainly around Greek mythology, but we did study a variety of modern works (both books and films). One of the teacher's insights, was that the center of the labyrinth always remains vague, indistinct, and can be closely linked to madness (or that unspeakable part of life that we continuously deny...). One of his examples was the character of Jack Nicholson in The Shining that loses sanity when he finds himself alone, in the "center" of the maze that is the hotel...

For more on that relationship, see The Key to "The Name of the Rose" by Adele Haft, Jane G. White, and Robert J. White

I think I wrote a paper that maintained that the Labyrinth in the Name of the Rose was a metaphor for literary interpretation. William of Baskerville a.k.a Sherlock Holmes is a symbolic representation of the omniscient narrator searching for the lost Aristotle manuscript - Aristotle the literary critic --> within a labyrinthian library - symbolic representation of intertextuality ----> within a pre-renaissance settting.

I cannot quite recall how I thematically drew together the metaphor but I think it was all about levels of interpretation and Eco's commentary on 'intended reader'.

Sounds like a fascinating course. A wonder with respect to the idea of the center of the labyrinth...
How that interpretation holds up with respect to Homer's Theseus and the Minotaur? Isn't the repeated plot arc in the Homeric epic that of a circular-return journey - allegorising the cosomological arc of Hellenic metaphysics of Homer's time?
The labyrinth where the centre is the goal or the site of Heroic transformation but ultimately it is a return journey out the same way.

Also, from the Minotaur's POV - the labyrinth is a prison.

I took this course 16 years ago, so it remains quite vague (+ my college days were not my most sober ones). That said, my professor concluded that many of the books and movies involving labyrinths, whenever the hero is found to be in its center, there is a disconcerting lack of description, as if to encourage a dream-like, indistinct realm that is borderline insanity...

I am trying to think right now of some movies and books depicting the center of a labyrinth... but would need to look more seriously into it, which I am not curious enough to do. Frankly, I believe that such a statement - that the center of the labyrinth is linked to insanity - is highly speculative and too conclusive, like many literature analysis based on symbolism can be.

Personally, I do not like to draw prompt conclusions or even arrive to a definite solution to a problem : I prefer the process of analyzing, of stimulating my brain. That said, I would be interested in revisiting the description (or lack of) of the center of the labyrinth in The Name of the Rose (it has been 15 years since I read it)... Does anyone remember?

I think the library burns down....not sure there is a centre.

I think the difference has to do with readers' extratextual assumptions. We expect different things from different genres. The fiction/nonfiction divide seems to be about factuality: when we read a work of nonfiction we expect that the events described "really happened." If readers learn that an author embellished or flat-out lied about events, they get mad: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Million_Little_Pieces. On the other hand, readers don't expect fiction to be factual (even if it's "true").

There are plenty of other differences, I'm sure. One has to do with fiction's ability to convincingly present a character's interior state--emotions, thoughts, biases. Fiction can do this better than nonfiction, I think, since the writer of fiction is omniscient (if she wants to be) and can move from consciousness to consciousness as she see fit. The nonfiction writer isn't omniscient and can't intuit what's going on inside another person's mind. He needs to rely on quotes and observation. These aren't hard and fast rules, of course, and some experimental nonfiction does "get inside" characters' heads.

Another advantage (or "surplus"?) of fiction is what I wrote in my post above: the ability to shape and order events in a purposeful way. If a nonfiction writer has integrity, he won't change the facts of a story to make it more entertaining. The fiction writer isn't bound by these constraints.

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert.

I was incredibly disheartened by the demise of Emma and the brutal, mean spirited treatment of the author for his 'heroine'. It is an unnecessary, instrumentalisation of Emma to underline his didactic polemic against the impact of Romanticism and the Bourgeoise. Flaubert had sufficiently made these points in a number of scenes and plot developments.
Having said that, it is a wonderfully written book. Flaubert restrains his wonderful imaginative writing style to a very few priviledge moments in the plot and, yet, even in his bare realist depictions there is an artistry to his prose.

Obvious Classic.

People Digger trusts and admires.

I don't usually hold sportsman in high esteem. Which is not to say that I dislike them, it is just that I think that they are often unduly elevated in Australian culture. I make a notable exception with this woman:



Catherine Astrid Salome "Cathy" Freeman, OAM (born 16 February 1973) is a former Australian sprinter, who specialised in the 400 metres event. Her personal best of 48.63 currently ranks her as the sixth fastest woman of all time, set while finishing second to Marie-Jose Perec's number three time at the 1996 Olympics. She became the Olympic champion for the women's 400 metres at the 2000 Summer Olympics, at which she lit the Olympic Flame.[2] Freeman was the first ever Aboriginal Commonwealth Games gold medalist at age 16 in 1990.[3] 1994 was her breakthrough season. At the 1994 Commonwealth Games in Canada, Freeman won gold in both the 200 m and 400 m. She also won the silver medal in the 1996 Olympics and came first at the 1997 World Championships, both in the 400 m event. 1998 saw Freeman taking a break from running due to injury. She returned to form with a first place in the 400 m at the 1999 World Championships. She announced her retirement from athletics in 2003.


Unless you are an Australian you probably I have already forgotten her. But perhaps remember this image will prompt your recall.



Some individuals represent and unite a nation in the best possible ways. Her humility before and after success, is one of the many reasons, I trust and admire the opinion of Cathy Freeman.

Yah, if Mr Abbott insists on handing out dameships, he would do well to begin with Ms Freeman. She is a deeply impressive woman.

One thing stands out with Labyrinths: Fictions - they are written to be interpreted. They are, in effect, directly addressing discourses on literary theory through a transparently 'critical intended reader'. For some readers - it would be unreadable.
I wonder, with respect to my particular edition, who (and with what rationale) they order these short stories.


I will be absent tommorrow as I am off to stay at a friend's place for a golf day and night out. Speak to you late sunday.

You cannot turn back time.

You might have a misleading picture of me by reading this blog. I do, and increasingly so, like high culture but its not as if I have been immersed in it my whole life. So, you might ask, what did you do with the almost 40 years of your life?

I spent a good period of my life in and around pool/snooker halls. One thing I found out last night is that you cannot turn the clock back. First of all, in Wollongong it was actually very hard to find a place to play snooker at all and virtually impossible without becoming a member of a club. 20 years ago, snooker would have been much easier to find. Secondly, if you know anything about the physicality of snooker you need to have your cue running, just barely touching, the middle of your chin - see below.


Dennis Taylor circa 1985 - the wonderfully entertaining raconteur snooker player that Digger greatly admired in his youth.

Well my middle aged body could not actually get back into this position last night. I knew how I was supposed to address the ball but my back or muscle memory refused to cooperate. In that sense, snooker is not really like riding a bike. Although, you do remember the beautiful, almost profoundly, mathematical symmetry to the strategy of shot selection. Fourthly, we got a compromise pool table in a relatively quiet pub in the centre of Wollongong and played 50 or 60 games over 5 hours - some of the old touch returned after sufficient practice and lubrication. However, one cannot turn back time - and by the 4th hour the pub was teeming with people 15-20 years younger than me and apparently the short shorts are the fashion for the young Wollongong women, a fashion choice I whole heartedly endorse, yet there was only one glimmer of interest in moi from the ladies and that was pleasant but wholly poor timing as it was as my firend was demanding we had to leave - you can not stop the march of time either.


Wollongong from above.


There was the great movie The Colour of Money that influenced my love of billiard sports but more influential than that was the one hour each week Australian TV would show the iconic Snooker Show:



I will fill in the gaps on the other parts of the trip over the next couple of days....No chance to read this weekend - so will pick where I left off about 6 or 7 short stories into Labyrinths on Monday.

Nice. I was just talking about hustling pool today... I am in the Philippines and oftentimes, the wagering over a game of billiards draws more attention then the poker tables do at the Metro Club.

You mentioned The Colour of Money, I am assuming you are also a fan of The Hustler, its precursor?

The Hidden Joys of Humiliation
Of course there is no apparent joy in hitting +29 on a moderately easy 70 par golf course nor is there much joy in parading that fact in the interwebz. But when you only play once or twice a year at most, and in similiar social settings of an away trip to a friends place where a foursome of friends play and catchup, sometimes 99 can feel like shooting under par. How?

Shot of one of the holes - it is a par 5 dog legging left. There is basically an arc of high sandstone hills covered in native 'bush' across the western edge of the golf course such that it nestles into the hillsides. Dangerzone tee shot for players like Digger who has a permanent slice with his driver or 3 wood.

Where was I? Oh yeah - the pleasures of golf is in the banter between golfers particularly between players who have played each other for 10+ years. Bodies that gradually fall to pieces as the afternoon progresses, aches and pains in muscles you never know are there - all that disappears with a boastful brag followed by a shot into the water or a ricochet pinball trek through a treeline. There is pleasure in every player playing so badly and not caring - a liberation from that scorecard.
Yet, there is always one player who can play - who shoots 74 and will not take a penalty drop ball for a lost ball because we will not spend another 10 minutes looking for his drive that went out of sight 80 yards further than all of us. A raised eyebrow, a shake of the head is enough - who is humiliating whom (?)- ha golf is surrious business.

Borges: Theme of the Traitor and the Hero

Begins with a quote of W.B. Yeats.

So the platonic Year
Whirls out new right and wrong,
Whirls in the old instead;
All men are dancers and their tread
Goes to the barbarous clangour of a gong.

1919
NINETEEN HUNDRED AND NINETEEN

I.
MANY ingenious lovely things are gone
That seemed sheer miracle to the multitude,
protected from the circle of the moon
That pitches common things about. There stood
Amid the ornamental bronze and stone
An ancient image made of olive wood --
And gone are Phidias' famous ivories
And all the golden grasshoppers and bees.

We too had many pretty toys when young:
A law indifferent to blame or praise,
To bribe or threat; habits that made old wrong
Melt down, as it were wax in the sun's rays;
Public opinion ripening for so long
We thought it would outlive all future days.
O what fine thought we had because we thought
That the worst rogues and rascals had died out.

All teeth were drawn, all ancient tricks unlearned,
And a great army but a showy thing;
What matter that no cannon had been turned
Into a ploughshare? Parliament and king
Thought that unless a little powder burned
The trumpeters might burst with trumpeting
And yet it lack all glory; and perchance
The guardsmen's drowsy chargers would not prance.

Now days are dragon-ridden, the nightmare
Rides upon sleep: a drunken soldiery
Can leave the mother, murdered at her door,
To crawl in her own blood, and go scot-free;
The night can sweat with terror as before
We pieced our thoughts into philosophy,
And planned to bring the world under a rule,
Who are but weasels fighting in a hole.

He who can read the signs nor sink unmanned
Into the half-deceit of some intoxicant
From shallow wits; who knows no work can stand,
Whether health, wealth or peace of mind were spent
On master-work of intellect or hand,
No honour leave its mighty monument,
Has but one comfort left: all triumph would
But break upon his ghostly solitude.

But is there any comfort to be found?
Man is in love and loves what vanishes,
What more is there to say? That country round
None dared admit, if Such a thought were his,
Incendiary or bigot could be found
To burn that stump on the Acropolis,
Or break in bits the famous ivories
Or traffic in the grasshoppers or bees.


II.
When Loie Fuller's Chinese dancers enwound
A shining web, a floating ribbon of cloth,
It seemed that a dragon of air
Had fallen among dancers, had whirled them round
Or hurried them off on its own furious path;
So the platonic Year
Whirls out new right and wrong,
Whirls in the old instead;
All men are dancers and their tread
Goes to the barbarous clangour of a gong.

III
Some moralist or mythological poet
Compares the solitary soul to a swan;
I am satisfied with that,
Satisfied if a troubled mirror show it,
Before that brief gleam of its life be gone,
An image of its state;
The wings half spread for flight,
The breast thrust out in pride
Whether to play, or to ride
Those winds that clamour of approaching night.

A man in his own secret meditation
Is lost amid the labyrinth that he has made
In art or politics;
Some Platonist affirms that in the station
Where we should cast off body and trade
The ancient habit sticks,
And that if our works could
But vanish with our breath
That were a lucky death,
For triumph can but mar our solitude.

The swan has leaped into the desolate heaven:
That image can bring wildness, bring a rage
To end all things, to end
What my laborious life imagined, even
The half-imagined, the half-written page;
O but we dreamed to mend
Whatever mischief seemed
To afflict mankind, but now
That winds of winter blow
Learn that we were crack-pated when we dreamed.


IV.
We, who seven years ago
Talked of honour and of truth,
Shriek with pleasure if we show
The weasel's twist, the weasel's tooth.


V.
Come let us mock at the great
That had such burdens on the mind
And toiled so hard and late
To leave some monument behind,
Nor thought of the levelling wind.

Come let us mock at the wise;
With all those calendars whereon
They fixed old aching eyes,
They never saw how seasons run,
And now but gape at the sun.

Come let us mock at the good
That fancied goodness might be gay,
And sick of solitude
Might proclaim a holiday:
Wind shrieked -- and where are they?

Mock mockers after that
That would not lift a hand maybe
To help good, wise or great
To bar that foul storm out, for we
Traffic in mockery.


VI.
Violence upon the roads: violence of horses;
Some few have handsome riders, are garlanded
On delicate sensitive ear or tossing mane,
But wearied running round and round in their courses
All break and vanish, and evil gathers head:
Herodias' daughters have returned again,
A sudden blast of dusty wind and after
Thunder of feet, tumult of images,
Their purpose in the labyrinth of the wind;
And should some crazy hand dare touch a daughter
All turn with amorous cries, or angry cries,
According to the wind, for all are blind.
But now wind drops, dust settles; thereupon
There lurches past, his great eyes without thought
Under the shadow of stupid straw-pale locks,
That insolent fiend Robert Artisson
To whom the love-lorn Lady Kyteler brought
Bronzed peacock feathers, red combs of her *****.

WB Yeats


The Irish War of Independence (Irish: Cogadh na Saoirse)[4] or Anglo-Irish War was a guerrilla war fought between the Irish Republican Army (the army of the self-proclaimed Irish Republic) and the British Government and its forces in Ireland.

On 21 January 1919 Irish republicans, who had won a landslide victory in the December 1918 election, formed a breakaway government and declared independence from Britain. That same day, two members of the armed police force, the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), were shot dead in County Tipperary. This is often seen as the beginning of the conflict. The Irish Volunteers—later renamed the Irish Republican Army (IRA)—targeted RIC and British Army barracks and ambushed their patrols, capturing arms and forcing the closure of barracks in isolated areas. The British government bolstered the RIC with recruits from Britain—the Black and Tans and Auxiliaries—who became notorious for ill-discipline and reprisal attacks on civilians.[5] The conflict as a result is often referred to as the Black and Tan War or simply the Tan War.

While around 300 people had been killed in the conflict up to late 1920, there was a major escalation of violence in November that year. On Bloody Sunday, 21 November 1920, fourteen British intelligence operatives were assassinated in Dublin in the morning, and the RIC opened fire on a crowd at a football match in the afternoon, killing fourteen and wounding 65 others. A week later, seventeen Auxiliaries were killed by the IRA in an ambush at Kilmichael in County Cork. The British Government declared martial law in much of southern Ireland. The centre of Cork City was burnt out by British forces in December 1920. Violence continued to escalate over the next seven months, when 1,000 people were killed and 4,500 republicans interned. The fighting was heavily concentrated in Munster (particularly County Cork), Dublin and Belfast. These three locations saw over 75% of the conflict's fatalities. Violence in the north and especially Belfast was notable for its sectarian character and its high number of Catholic civilian victims.[6]

Both sides agreed to a ceasefire (or "truce") on 11 July 1921. In May, Ireland had been partitioned by an Act of the British Parliament, which created the six-county Northern Ireland polity. The post-ceasefire talks led to the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty on 6 December 1921. This treaty ended British rule in most of Ireland and, after a ten-month transitional period overseen by a provisional government, the Irish Free State was created as a self-governing state with Dominion status on 6 December 1922. However, Northern Ireland remained within the United Kingdom. After the ceasefire, political and sectarian violence between republicans (usually Catholics) and loyalists (usually Protestants) continued in Northern Ireland for many months. In June 1922, disagreement among republicans over the Anglo-Irish Treaty led to an eleven month civil war.


WB Yeats by John Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats (/ˈjeɪts/; 13 June 1865 – 28 January 1939) was an Irish poet and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years he served as an Irish Senator for two terms. Yeats was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival and, along with Lady Gregory, Edward Martyn, and others, founded the Abbey Theatre, where he served as its chief during its early years. In 1923 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature as the first Irishman so honoured[1] for what the Nobel Committee described as "inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation." Yeats is generally considered one of the few writers who completed their greatest works after being awarded the Nobel Prize; such works include The Tower (1928) and The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1929).[2] Yeats was a very good friend of American expatriate poet and Bollingen Prize laureate Ezra Pound. Yeats wrote the introduction for Rabindranath Tagore's Git******, which was published by the India Society.[3]

So inane that Yeats's everyday farmyard word for roosters get censored by 2+2 software! And of course that immediately makes one think of much worse!