The view from the library in Helsingør

The view from the Helsingør (Elsinore) city library, located in the beachfront Culture Yard building, is like a painting:

An interview with L.N. Tolstoy in 1905

The only known color photograph of Tolstoy. (Yasnaya Polyana, 1908).
(image by wikipedia)

In its March 5, 1905 issue, the Swedish weekly Hvar8 Dag published an interview with

Count Lev Nikolayevich (Leo) Tolstoy. The Swedish interviewer, who used the pseudonym Oleg, had met Tolstoy at his Yasnaya Polyana estate in the Tula region.

Below is a selection of Tolstoy's views, as published in the interview:

On Sweden and Swedes

”Oh, you are Swedish, I have always been interested in Sweden, and you may know that one of my sons is married to a Swede; for the time being, he is living in St. Petersburg. But do you know, what has saddened me, is that also in your country people have more and more began to spend their energy on armaments. The blame for all this goes to the insane patriotism, and the governments, which incite peoples against each other.”

On small nationalities

”I feel a deep sympathy for all these small and subdued nationalities, Poles, Finns, Armenians and others. Their cause is right, and their fate has always grieved me.”

On Maxim Gorky

”I cannot say that I admire him as much as is fashionable now. Of course, he is not without talent, but he has not built himself a stable world view, which one would like to find in a writer, no norm according to which he judges things.”

On Anton Chekhov

”As a playwright he is of minor importance, only for entertainment. However, among his short stories, there are many, which are of a very high quality.”

On classic writers

”It appears, after all, that all these modern ones in the end are so small compared with the classic writers. I have to restrain myself not to lose interest in them, when I think of the old masters, Shakespeare, Goethe, and Schopenhauer.”

On August Strindberg

”I have not read anything by him, so I know about his views only in a general way. Is he not a half mad person, even worse than Ibsen?

Three photographs of August Strindberg

Last year's August Strindberg anniversary - marking that a hundred years have passed since he died - has been celebrated widely both in Sweden and abroad. My own somewhat belated homage to the great  writer comes in the form of these portraits, which the Swedish weekly Hvar 8 Dag published in its May 19, 1912 issue, five days after the writer's death:

(Photographer: Herman Hamnqvist, Stockholm)

(Photo by unnamed photographer of the Hvar 8 Dag magazine)

(Photographer: Sandels J:or, Stockholm)

Kenneth Clark´s Civilisation

Reading Clark is like drinking champagne compared with the small beer of most art history
Jonathan Jones, The Guardian

Lord Clark was not only brilliant, witty and engaging, but he was a teacher and, surprisingly, a most charming television presence. He has become my lifetime companion
Steven M. Wolf


If you plan to buy a Christmas - or some other - present to somebody that you appreciate very much, I have an ideal suggestion for you. Buy the best television documentary series ever, "Civilisation: A Personal View" by Lord Clark. This lavish, magisterial and beautifully made personal survey by the great art historian Kenneth Clark is still as fresh and captivating as when it was transmitted for the first time in 1969. Kenneth Clark was a somewhat controversial figure, partly due to his distaste of much of so called modern art. But this suites me fine - I share his distaste. The series - available e.g. through Amazon - is one of the great achievements of the BBC.

Below is an excerpt from the series:

Clark quotes:

"People sometimes tell me that they prefer barbarism to civilisation. I doubt if they have given it a long enough trial. Like the people of Alexandria , they are bored by civilisation; but all the evidence suggests that the boredom of barbarism is infinitely greater."


"It is lack of confidence, more than anything else, that kills a civilisation. We can destroy ourselves by cynicism and disillusion, just as effectively as by bombs."


"The great achievement of the Catholic Church lay in harmonizing, civilising the deepest impulses of ordinary, ignorant people."

"It is indeed true that the history of art, like all history, is to a large extent an agreed fable"

PS

This series is now available on blu-ray, which brings fine colours and sharpness to the picture. Even if you have the dvd box, it is well worth investing a few pounds, dollars or euros in the blu-ray box!