Growing in Mabeuf's Garden

~Vive la Vie et la mort!~ Soilrockslove's blog for Les Miserables, the Romantics, Tolkien, and possibly other old things (like Medieval Europe & Middle East, Mesopotamia & Mexico). Basically a blog for all the old-ish stuff that might otherwise take over our main tumblr. (header image based on photo by serraangel)

[thelandoflittlecubesandtea]

Just posting this as a reminder again - this blog mostly exists as a pointer to help people figure it out when i've switched blog titles. so basically "Landoflittlecubesandtea" -> @landofspaceandrainbows !

Technically it's been Cactusreadingoldthings -> Landoflittlecubesandtea -> Landofspaceandrainbows .

anyway, that last one is my most current or most used blog (for vaguely writing related and fandom stuff at least) !

Thanks for your time!

[beatricethestrange]

for every note this post gets i'll read a page of les mis

(1500 and i'll finish it)

🇫🇷🇫🇷🇫🇷

[gwiazdzisko]

Oh and also! as my contribution for the barricade day, I’ve created an animatic!

It’s, well, fine? I’m really proud of it so I would love it if you folks checked it out? idk, that’s as far as my self promo abilities go shdjxhz

https://youtu.be/9LB7VprMct8

[weisbrot]

Ferre and Jehan holding hands like in the book!!

Or alternately Joly&Bossuet&Chetta!!

as it is 1 am i’ll stop fiddling with this but it is surely getting a glossier remake later!! Hope you enjoy anon ☺️

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

People who don’t want to read The Martian in case the science is too complicated should be informed that it contains the lines “The best way to store the ingredients of water is to make them be water”, “It is of course dangerous to set off an explosive device on a spacecraft”, and “If I cut a hole in the wall of the hab, the air won’t stay inside any more”.

[neilarmstrong]

I love this fucking book

[osheamobile]

“I’ve said the words kilowatt-hours-per-sol so many times they’ve lost all meaning so I’m going to call them pirate-ninjas.

“So I need to generate nine hundred pirate-ninjas…”

[magnificentbane-deactivated2019]

there’s an entire chapter dedicated to him wondering how the cubs are doing while he’s stuck on mars, dying

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

I like the part where the guys on Earth are like “He thinks we all gave up on him, and that he’s completely alone. I wonder what he’s thinking about right now.” And he’s like “How come Aquaman can control whales?”

[thebaconsandwichofregret]

Mark Watney is such a great example of how to teach to laymen. Andy Weir wrote a book about a man who basically gives the reader a 369 page science lesson and it’s literally never boring or too complicated or patronising. He uses language that is accessible to the reader, removes technical jargon, adds in humour and all without belittling the reader or making them feel stupid for being given the simplified explanation.

[cactusreadingforeignthings]

although, for anyone who would be interested in reading a book like The Martian, but wouldn’t mind the science being “that complicated”…. there’s Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson, whichdoes include a few science digressions that would give Les Mis’s “the sewers” digression a run for it’s money,  but also breathtaking descriptions of scenery, interesting characters and drama, explorations of the different world religions as they adjust to mars, canon lgbtq+ and neurodivergence and disability,  have i mentioned the descriptions?  

[cactusreadingoldthings]

oh, and a revolution.

[why-bless-your-heart]

[fawnvelveteen]

George Sand

[cactusreadingforeignthings]

omg they actually used hir right/preferred name!

[henryclervals]

Masterpost of Free Romantic Literature & Theory (European) (Gothic Literature)

British Romanticism

Songs of Innocence & Songs of Experience by William Blake Poems and Songs of Robert Burns Don Juan & Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage by Baron George Gordon Byron Collected Poetry of Lord Byron The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge Lyrical Ballads, With a Few Other Poems by Coleridge and Wordsworth Collected Poetry by John Keats Ivanhoe; Waverly & The Lady of the Lake by Walter Scott The Complete Poetical Works by Percy Bysshe Shelley

French Romanticism

The Count of Monte Cristo; The Three Musketeers & The Man in the Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas One of Cleopatra’s Nights and Other Fantastic Romances by Théophile Gautier Notre Dame de Paris & Les Misérables by Victor Hugo Collected Prose and Essays of Victor Hugo Poems by Victor Hugo Carmen by Prosper Mérimée The Red and the Black by Stendhal Cinq Mars by Alfred de Vigny

German Romanticism

Were I a Little Bird; The Mountaineer; As Many as Sand-grains in the Sea; The Swiss Deserter; The Tailor in Hell & The Reaper by Ludwig Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano The Broken Ring by Joseph von Eichendorff Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Collected Poetry by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Fairytales by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm The Prose Writings of Heinrich Heine by Heinrich Heine Hegel’s Philosophy of Mind by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel The Golden Pot; The Sandman & The Devil’s Elixir by Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann Undine (Selections) by Friedrich Baron de la Motte-Fouqué Henry of Ofterdingen: A Romance by Novalis The Iron Idol by Jakob Schaffner The Robbers & Mary Stuart: A Tragedy by Friedrich Schiller Tales from the “Phantasus,” etc. by Ludwig Tieck

Polish Romanticism

Moja Beatrice by Zygmunt Krasiński Pan Tadeusz by Adam Mickiewicz Anhelli by Juliusz Słowacki

Russian Romanticism

A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Iurevich Lermontov Poems by Alexander Pushkin Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin Collected Works of Alexander Pushkin Collected Poetry by Fyodor Tyutchev Poems by Vasily Zhukovsky

Spanish Romanticism

Cantares gallegos by Rosalía de Castro El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections by José de Espronceda The Cid Campeador: A Historical Romance by Antonio de Trueba

Historical Theory and Background 

Literary and Philosophical Essays: French, German and Italian The French Revolution of 1789 by John S. C. Abbott Rousseau and Romanticism by Irving Babbitt A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century by Henry A. Beers Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature - The Romantic School in Germany by Georg Brandes On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History by Thomas Carlyle The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism by T. S. Eliot The Destiny of Man by Johann Gottlieb Fichte The Faust Legend from Marlowe to Goethe by Kuno Francke The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature by W. F. Kirby Romantic Ireland by M. F. Mansfield and Blanche McManus The Diary of Dr. John William Polidori, 1816, Relating to Byron, Shelley, etc. Romance: Two Lectures by Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh The Social Contract & Discourses by Jean-Jacques Rousseau A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays by Percy Bysshe Shelley On Liberty by John Stuart Mill The Legend of Sir Lancelot du Lac by Jessie L. Weston

Academic Theory

Introduction: Replicating Bodies in Nineteenth-Century Science and Culture by Will Abberley Walter Scott’s works perception by his russian contemporaries by O. G. Anossova Theories of Space and the Nineteenth-Century Novel by Isobel Armstrong The Romantic subject as an absolutely autonomous individual by  Miljana Cunta Russian-German Connections in the Editing Practice in the Mid-19th Century: Vasiliy Zhukovsky and Justinus Kerner by Natalia Egorovna Nikonova and Maria Vladimirovna Dubenko Fichte as a Post-Kantian Philosopher and His Political Theory: A Return to Romanticism by Özgür Olgun Erden Negotiating boundaries: Encyclopédie, romanticism, and the construction of science by Marcelo Fetz Wandering Motive and Its Appeal on Reluctantly Wandering Franz Schubert by  Dragana Jeremić-Molnar The Caucasian Motif in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s ‘House of the Dead’ in the Light of the Polemic with Lermontov by Xuyang Mi The Core of Romanticism by Monika Milosavljević Romantic worldview as a narcissistic construct’by Branko Mitrović Topographic Transmissions and How To Talk About Them: The Case of the Southern Spa in Nineteenth-Century Russian Fiction by Benjamin Morgan Lermontov’s Romanticism and Jena School by Liudmila G. Shakirova The Self in a Crystal Sphere: Juliusz Słowacki’s Concept of the Subject (in his works from the 1830) by Marek Stanisz The Many Faces of Nature: An Ecocritical Reading of the Concepts of Wilderness and the Sublime in John Keats’ Selected Poems by Morteza Emamgholi Tabar Malakshah & Behzad Pourqarib

[athenenoctua9]

Help

I would like to start reading Shakespeare. But I don’t know what play I should start with…. Any recommendations?

[cactusreadingforeignthings]

in part it depends on what you like.  which i know is maybe a dumb obvious thing to say so apologies if it is.  there is a spectrum of more or less accessible to newbies, but there’s still a lot on the “more accessible” end.

so anyway, shakespeare generally wrote three kinds of plays, tragedies, comedies, and histories.  the histories in general can be pretty good, but more difficult to get as much out of them if you aren’t already kinda a nerd. but other than that there’s lots.

ok,so

Tragedies

a lot of ppl say start with hamlet, but from what i’ve seen it’s really a “love it or hate it” sort of play, kinda like the theatre version of bleu cheese.

so here are my suggestions

Macbeth - Short and gritty and edge of your seat.  a bit of a mystery/thriller about prophecies, backstabbing, and the place of violence in a warlike society.

Romeo & Juliet - drama and social commentary and romance. i didn’t put the romance first because it’s not just about that but it’s there. makes me sniffle every time

Julius Caesar - Politics and drama, and a lot of people read it as homoerotic and kinda gay.  Rather blunt and manly and stony imo, but some really beautiful well done speeches.

(also if that ancient (homo)eroticism sounds like your cup of tea you might also try Antony & Cleopatra or Coriolanus)

Comedies

Midsummer Night’s Dream and the Tempest - Fairy shenanigans

Much Ado About Nothing - Romantic Comedy and Social Commentary and smartass flirting

As You Like It and Twelfth Night - Romantic Comedy and Social Commentary and crossdressing.

Histories

Richard III - technically a history, but full of villainous, thriller-ish, dramatic shit similar to macbeth.  NOTE:  THE REAL RICHARD III WAS NOT LIKE THAT.  IT IS NOT HISTORICALLY ACCURATE.  IT”S BASICALLY ELIZABETHAN PROPAGANDA BECAUSE SHAKESPEARE’S PATRON CAME TO POWER BY KICKING RICHARD”S PEOPLE OFF THE THRONE. AND HE KNEW WHAT SIDE HIS BREAD WAS BUTTERED ON.  it’s still good though, maybe it’s even more interesting knowing it was a bit of a propaganda piece.

Shakespeare’s plays are written in a slightly earlier version of english called early modern english, so maybe not the english you’re used to.  but if you’re already reading lit in multiple languages, that can help.

Definitely watch them if you can, plays were written to be watched and it does make the experience a lot better.  there’s a lot of versions floating around on YouTube if nothing else.

here’s some ppl on tumblr that write interesting maybe helpful stuff about shakespeare

http://motherfuckingshakespeare.tumblr.com/post/89614764405/how-to-shakespeare

http://noshitshakespeare.tumblr.com/

http://dukeofbookingham.tumblr.com/tagged/shakespeare/

http://arisefairsun.tumblr.com/

http://shredsandpatches.tumblr.com/

also, you might want to watch the tv series Slings & Arrows which is up on YouTube, it is a drama/comedy series following a shakespeare theatre and goes well with reading the plays.

Here’s a video about Shakespeare’s english (early modern english)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s

[themonkeycabal]

The roof is gone, but the interior seems relatively undamaged, only a small part of the vault collapsed, and the alter, cross, various important relics, artworks, and such were all saved. Well done firefighters. Wonderful. 

[cactusreadingoldthings]

also

sorry if this is a bit sharp and emotional.

why do people have to be suddenly bitchy about v hugo when his wife is just out of critical condition?

(not that i mind critique, but just….. negativity?)

anyway fucking hugs to anyone who wants or needs

[cactusreadingforeignthings]

Mein herz und diese angenehm welt verbrennt

[cactusreadingoldthings]

Meine Dame, ich halte wünsche für dich in meinem herz

[spacestationtrustfund]

also, hi! if you aren’t French, please kindly stop telling us how to express our grief! I promise we can make our own decisions about how to feel when one of our greatest cathédrales is burning.

[frenchvintagegallery]

Arrow of  Notre Dame de Paris ,  1862

by  Charles Marville

[cactusreadingoldthings]

if i go, i should burn myself to the end

anything else seems like cowardice.

[cactusreadingoldthings]

i don’t deserve to live

[cactusreadingoldthings]

i want to be dead