Bobo Stenson Trio - El Mayor

God revealed the whole history of mankind to him.

"Like all creatures formed on the six days of creation, Adam came from the hands of the Creator fully and completely developed. He was not like a child, but like a man of twenty years of age. The dimensions of his body were gigantic, reaching from heaven to earth, or, what amounts to the same, from east to west. Among later generations of men, there were but few who in a measure resembled Adam in his extraordinary size and physical perfections. Samson possessed his strength, Saul his neck, Absalom his hair, Asahel his fleetness of foot, Uzziah his forehead, Josiah his nostrils, Zedekiah his eyes, and Zerubbabel his voice. History shows that these physical excellencies were no blessings to many of their possessors; they invited the ruin of almost all. Samson's extraordinary strength caused his death; Saul killed himself by cutting his neck with his own sword; while speeding swiftly, Asahel was pierced by Abner's spear; Absalom was caught up by his hair in an oak, and thus suspended met his death; Uzziah was smitten with leprosy upon his forehead; the darts that killed Josiah entered through his nostrils, and Zedekiah's eyes were blinded. The generality of men inherited as little of the beauty as of the portentous size of their first father. The fairest women compared with Sarah are as apes compared with a human being. Sarah's relation to Eve is the same, and, again, Eve was but as an ape compared with Adam. His person was so handsome that the very sole of his foot obscured the splendor of the sun. His spiritual qualities kept pace with his personal charm, for God had fashioned his soul with particular care. She is the image of God, and as God fills the world, so the soul fills the human body; as God sees all things, and is seen by none, so the soul sees, but cannot be seen; as God guides the world, so the soul guides the body; as God in His holiness is pure, so is the soul; and as God dwells in secret, so doth the soul. When God was about to put a soul into Adam's clod-like body, He said: "At which point shall I breathe the soul into him? Into the mouth? Nay, for he will use it to speak ill of his fellow-man. Into the eyes? With them he will wink lustfully. Into the ears? They will hearken to slander and blasphemy. I will breathe her into his nostrils; as they discern the unclean and reject it, and take in the fragrant, so the pious will shun sin, and will cleave to the words of the Torah" The perfections of Adam's soul showed themselves as soon as he received her, indeed, while he was still without life. In the hour that intervened between breathing a soul into the first man and his becoming alive, God revealed the whole history of mankind to him. He showed him each generation and its leaders; each generation and its prophets; each generation and its teachers; each generation and its scholars; each generation and its statesmen; each generation and its judges; each generation and its pious members; each generation and its average, commonplace members; and each generation and its impious members. The tale of their years, the number of their days, the reckoning of their hours, and the measure of their steps, all were made known unto him."

             "A Friend of Kafka", in The Collected Stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer, Loc. 5608-26.        

Morreu ontem, aos 110 anos, a mais velha sobrevivente do holocausto

"Sofre duma espécie de derramamento da lucidez"

"O que é a educação para Kafka? Em primeiro lugar, é um pacto secreto com o destino; o destino ao qual se oferece toda a espécie de iguarias, como a do talento bem aproveitado.  A inteligência é, para Kafka, uma maneira de ser poupado por essa terrível força que sacode e destrói tudo quanto é vivo. A voz do pai, incluída no tremendo ruído do mundo em acção, é parte dessa força que é preciso adular, convencer, talvez iludir. A educação é uma arte de demorar a morte, de a tornar convencional em vez de fatal.

Kafka é um homem educado; o personagem central  de O Processo é um homem educado. Vejamos como ele procede: «Ainda fatigado dos seus cuidados precedentes e já lasso daqueles que viriam, ele levantou-se para receber o primeiro dos seus visitantes.» Kafka sabe quanto é importante a mesura. Ela aplaca a cólera que se traduz pelo mais fugaz dos gestos humanos. Ele sabe imensamente dessa rede obscura em que se debatem os pensamentos reservados e que não é possível domesticar. Então a inteligência desponta, cresce, cobre o horizonte humano, não como uma luz brilhante, mas com um véu prodigioso. A inteligência desconcerta o destino; não sabemos se, de certa maneira o provoca."

                                        Agustina Bessa-Luís, Kafkiana, Babel, 2012, p. 50-51                           

Ron Carter - Saguaro

a Wandervolk driven from place to place

"By far the worst off were the Betteljuden (beggar Jews). Since they had no money to buy any kind of "protection", they were homeless or vagrant. Religious strictures did not permit them to become  mercenaries, as did the poorest runaways serfs. As one observer noted in 1783, these Jews had no alternatives but to "roam through life as beggars or be rogues."  Many were lifelong nomads, descended apparently from several generations of beggars. Born on the road, they depended on theft or charity. Accompanied by their ragged families, they traveled the contryside in swarms, a Wandervolk driven from place to place and, like the Gypsies, regarded as outlaws, or Gauner, that is, scamps, parasites, rogues, and thieves. in 1712, a traveler reported: "The begging hordes at times make the highways disgusting, particularly when one reaches their encampments where they are sunning themselves in a wood or behind a fence." A rare document from 1773 concerns a fifteen-year-old Jewish girl named Frommet who had been sold by her vagrant parents as a housemaid. She was standing trial in Frankfurt for murdering her employer with a hatchet. The plea submitted in her "defense" stated: "Who does not remember seeing such a horde of wretched creatures, vagrant Landjuden [country Jews] with their children, carrying their entire possessions on their humps? And seeing them pass by, who has not promptly noticed the scant difference between them and cattle?"

The cities usually denied the vagrants access; some were admitted for one night only but required to stay in poorhouses maintained by a local Jewish community. Jewish almsgiving afforded some material help. Hospitality was occasionally made available to the needy, especially on the Sabbath. The tradition of solidarity was deeply ingrained among Jews, but the huge increase in homelessness and vagrancy during the eighteenth century was bringing about its collapse."

   

                               Amos Elon, The Pity Of It All - A portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch 1743 -1933, Picador, 2002, pp. 29-30.                                    

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi - criatividade, realização e Fluir

klaus barbie - sur les traces d'un criminal nazi

Jacob Glatstein on Yiddish poetry after the Holocaust

Ben Webster meets Oscar Peterson (Hannover, 1972)

dexter gordon - one flight up

Human All Too Human - Martin Heidegger

no more than two Jews were allowed to walk abreast

"In the eighteenth century, the independent Hanseatic port city of Hamburg had the largest number of Jews - eight thousand, or 6 percent of the population as a whole. The ghetto had been abolished in 1671. Jews were free tolive everywhere in the city. West of Hamburg, Bremen the nearest self-governing Hanseatic port city, was completely off-limits to Jews, as was Lübeck in the north. Hanover belonged to the English Crown and allowed a handful of rich Jews with princely clients to live there. The university, said to be the most liberal in Germany, banned Jewish students, as did all other German universities. Medical faculties that admitted a Jew or two were notable exceptions. The large number of German universities (compared with only two in England) reflected the political fragmentation and perhaps a more widespread cult of learning. German jews intent on acquiring a higher education had to go to Holland or farther afield to Italy. Toward the end of the eighteenth century, Kant permitted a few young Jews to attend his philosophy seminars in Königsberg as nonmatriculated students. They could graduate only if they converted.

In the eighteenth century, Frankfurt was perhapes the most oppressive place for Jews in Western Europe. Only Rome and the Papal States treated Jews as harshly. (...)

Frankfurt was one of several free imperial cities, governed by an oligarchy of patrician families. A general fear of Jewish rivalry must have been a contributing factor to the continuing harshness of the city council's restrictive measures. Jews were allowed to enter the Christian quarters only on business, never for leisure. Inside the Christian quarters, no more than two Jews were allowed to walk abreast, and for some reason they were not entitled to carry walking sticks. Nor cold they use the sidewalks. At the cry "Jud, mach mores", roughly, "Jews, pay your dues" - they would have to take off their hats, step aside, and bow. They were banned at all times from the vicinity of the cathedral and could enter the town hall only through a back entrance. Not all these restrictions were enforced and some were observed only sporadically. But until the French Revolution, all public gardens were closed to Jews (as they would be two centuries later under the nazis). An appeal to end this particular restriction, unparalleled in Germany, was dismisses in 1770 by the city council as one more proof of the "boundless arrogance of this nation.""

                              Amos Elon, The Pity Of It All - A portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch 1743 -1933, Picador, 2002, pp. 25-27.                                     

Joan Miro - "Daybreak"

Por sugestão da "realidade concreta".

Todesfuge - Paul Celan