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Entries Tagged as 'England'

POETRY IN TRANSLATION (CCXLVI): Louis de BERNIÈRES (b. 1954, London), ENGLAND, “Tânărul chipeş”, “The doomed Boy”

January 26th, 2014 · Comments Off on POETRY IN TRANSLATION (CCXLVI): Louis de BERNIÈRES (b. 1954, London), ENGLAND, “Tânărul chipeş”, “The doomed Boy” · International Media, PEOPLE, Poetry, quotations, Translations

He was handsome as Endymion, cast about him
The scent of virile cologne, showed brilliant teeth
When he smiled, made confident conversation,
Lived well on his father’s wealth.
………….
He wasn’t detected down in the streets of the port,
With his ideal lips and his ideal limbs,
Whirling and dancing in basements, standing in shadows
On dim street corners, warmed briefly by transient joys,
Flitting and gliding, his hat pulled over his face
Like all the other doomed and beautiful boys.

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POETRY IN TRANSLATION (CCXLI): Herbert ASQUITH, (1881-1947), ENGLISH Poet, “The Fallen Subaltern”, “Soldatul-Erou”

December 23rd, 2013 · Comments Off on POETRY IN TRANSLATION (CCXLI): Herbert ASQUITH, (1881-1947), ENGLISH Poet, “The Fallen Subaltern”, “Soldatul-Erou” · International Media, PEOPLE, Poetry, quotations, Translations

The Fallen Subaltern
Hebert Asquith
(1881-1947)

The starshells float above, the bayonets glisten;
We bear our fallen friend without a sound;
Below the waiting legions lie and listen
To us, who march upon their burial-ground.
Soldatul-Erou
Herbert Asquith
(1881-1947)

În cânt de clopote şi în sclipiri de săbii
Tovaraşul de arme-l îngropăm,
Iar în ţărână suflete-adormite
Ascultă cum păşim mormântul lor.
Rendered in Romanian by: Constantin ROMAN,
© 2013, Copyright Constantin ROMAN, London

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Poetry in Translation (CCXXX): Anonymous, ENGLAND, “Tristia ex Londiniae”

November 30th, 2013 · Comments Off on Poetry in Translation (CCXXX): Anonymous, ENGLAND, “Tristia ex Londiniae” · International Media, Poetry, quotations

Poetry in Translation (CCXXX): Anonymous, ENGLAND, “Tristia ex Londiniae”

Tristia ex Londiniae

To say I think of You, for
Ever, it is True!

Am like a lion in a cage, the
More I pine for our Trysts,
Of Treasures that I missed!

Day after day,
I’m hostage in the jaws
Of Love that ever was!

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Poetry in Translation (CXCVII): D. H. LAWRENCE (1885 – 1930), ENGLAND, “December Night”, “Noapte de iarnă”

June 23rd, 2013 · No Comments · PEOPLE, Poetry, quotations, Translations

Poetry in Translation (CXCVII): D. H. LAWRENCE (1885 – 1930), ENGLAND, “December Night”, “Noapte de iarnă”

December Night
D. H. Lawrence (1885 – 1930)

Take off your cloak and your hat
And your shoes, and draw up at my hearth
Where never woman sat.
I have made the fire up bright;
Let us leave the rest in the dark
And sit by firelight.
The wine is warm in the hearth;
The flickers come and go.
I will warm your feet with kisses
Until they glow.

Noapte de iarnă
D. H. Lawrence (1885 – 1930)

Scoate- ţi paltonul, pălăria
Şi incălţările şi vino lângă sobă,
Acolo unde nimeni n-a pierdut mândria.
Şi-acuma să lăsăm totul în umbră,
În timp ce voi aprinde focul aprig,
Strângându-te la pieptu-mi, în penumbră;
Licoarea nopţii a pătruns în suflet,
Iar flăcările se rotesc în joacă.
Îţi voi cuprinde corpul cu săruturi
Până îţi voi încinge fiinţa toată.

(Rendered in Romanian by Constantin ROMAN, London,

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Poetry in Translation (CXCI): Ernest DAWSON, England, (1867-1900), “Vitae suma brevis spem nos vetat incohare longam”, “Sum of life”, “Crâmpei de viaţă”

May 28th, 2013 · Comments Off on Poetry in Translation (CXCI): Ernest DAWSON, England, (1867-1900), “Vitae suma brevis spem nos vetat incohare longam”, “Sum of life”, “Crâmpei de viaţă” · International Media, PEOPLE, Poetry, quotations, Translations

Poetry in Translation (CXCI): Ernest DAWSON, England, (1867-1900), “Vitae suma brevis spem nos vetat incohare longam”, “Sum of life”, “Crâmpei de viaţă”

Crâmpei de viaţă
ERNEST DAWSON (1867 – 1900)

Nu au ecou, nici râsul dela masă,
Nici plânsul din trecut, pribeagul.
Din inimă nu ne-am clădit o casă,
Când trecem pragul.

Căci zilele-nsorite şi de visuri
De mult s-au stins.
Un drum se pierde prin hătişuri
De dor cuprins.

(Rendered in Romanian by Constantin ROMAN, London,
© 2013 Copyright Constantin ROMAN)

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Love at the time of Swine Flu (fragment): by Constantin ROMAN

March 11th, 2013 · Comments Off on Love at the time of Swine Flu (fragment): by Constantin ROMAN · Books, OPINION, PEOPLE

‘You know, my dear boy, Catholicism is a very good religion to die in’.
She left all her millions to the Vatican, to consecrate her in a gigantic statue in the guise of Virgin Mary, no less, opposite a copy of a gigantic ‘Christ the Redeemer’, of Rio de Janeiro, only, this time, perched on an African mountain peak. In her lifetime she was no saint, to put it mildly, but she compensated by her good looks. You know? She was not unattractive and many a hopeful bachelor passed between her bed sheets, hoping for a share of the spoils. When they did not succeed to woe her, she offered them an honourable exit, which they could hardly refuse: she made suicide respectable. After she became a reformed rake, only weeks before she died, she was persuaded that she was a reincarnation of Mother Theresa, as she retired to a Convent of Dominican nuns. Her less charitable friends and relations, being frustrated of the spoils of any material windfall, spread the rumour that ‘she now tried to seduce God’….

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Romania photography by Joseph Koudelka – Paris Exhibition

November 18th, 2010 · Comments Off on Romania photography by Joseph Koudelka – Paris Exhibition · Art Exhibitions, Diaspora, PEOPLE

Romania photography by Joseph Koudelka – Paris Exhibition, Caroussel du Louvre, courtesy of Eric Franck Fine Arts, London EC1,
JOSEF KOUDELKA

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After a degree in engineering from the Technical University in Prague, Josef Koudelka (b. 1938, Boskovice, Maravia) obtained a Rolleiflex camera and began photographing stage productions for theatre magazines. After leaving the theatre, he began documenting gypsy life in Romania, Slovakia and Western Europe. In 1968, Koudelka photographed the Soviet invasion of Prague and the Czech resistance efforts. In 1969 he was anonymously awarded the Overseas Press Club’s Robert Capa Gold Medal for these photographs, only publicly acknowledging authorship following the death of his father in 1985.

Koudleka gained political asylum in England in 1970, joining Magnum Photos Agency in 1971 and continuing to travel around Europe and photograph its landscape.

For a full selection of available photographs by Josef Koudelka, please contact Eric Franck Fine Art.

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Poetry in Translation (LXXIX): Anna Vivanti Chartres (1868-1942) – “Ego”

November 1st, 2010 · 1 Comment · Diaspora, PEOPLE, Poetry, Translations

Anna Vivanti Chartres (1868-1942), born in London, the daughter of Anselmo Vivanti an Italian political exile from Mantua and of Anna Landau, coming from a German Jewish family with strong literary traditions, Anna Vivanti married Jack Smith Chartres (1862-1927), an Anglo-Irish barrister of strong Republican leanings, who negotiated together with Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith the Anglo-Irish treaty leading to the Independence of the Republic of Ireland.

Anna Vivanti Chartres was a close friend of Giosue Carducci and her poetry is regarded being part of the ‘decadent’ stream of the late Italian romantic poetry.

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A History of Geophysics At Cambridge, England – Book Review

September 9th, 2010 · No Comments · Books, OPINION, PEOPLE, Reviews

Last but not least I am bound to be nostalgic about that last chapter in Carol’s book which I witnessed at “Mad Rise” as the last PhD student of Sir Edward Bullard. Teddy, a successor of Sir Gerald’s, remained the last towering Head o the Department of Geophysics before it was diluted with Geology and Mineralogy to become the current Department of Earth Sciences. Teddy was always unconventional and enthusiastic about new ideas and steeled my resolve in querying the infallibility of Plate Tectonics dictum, such as the “rigidity” of lihospheric Plates in Persia, Tibet and Sinkiang – hence the birth, at Mad Rise, during the early 1970s, of the revolutionary concept of “non-rigid plates”, or “Buffer Plates”: four decades on this new concept gained international acceptance from an otherwise a very conservative and sometimes begrudging profession. Such iconoclastic exercise was not without its dangers in the ruthless rat race of the late 1960s – early 1970s and the chaps from Mad Rise know it too well. Carol Williams apologizes to her contemporaries for leaving out some of their seminal contribution and one must be forgiving and accept her plea in good faith, given the fact that one is compensated by huge helpings about some greats. Even Molly Wisdom is not forgotten: here the larger-than-life persona who, for twenty four years was a Departmental secretary, is afforded not less than seven entries, only to be dispatched variously as a “part-time typist”, a “former opera singer” (with a “shrill voice”…), “chairing” the Common Room table during coffee breaks… It seems as if Molly’s shrewd judgment of human frailties was too close for comfort to some who considered the Department as their sole preserve.
Dan P. Mckenzie, another of Bullard’s students, has generously produced the Preface, the Postface, his raft of scientific papers, reminiscences, his youthful portrait, and more, leaving poor Sir Isaac Newton with the consolation prize of “second best”.

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A Russian Childhood (Yalta, St. Petersburg, Moscow, London) Memoirs of Tatiana Nancy GAUBERT

June 21st, 2005 · Comments Off on A Russian Childhood (Yalta, St. Petersburg, Moscow, London) Memoirs of Tatiana Nancy GAUBERT · Books, Diaspora, PEOPLE, Reviews

Synopsis An Imperial Foundling A Russian Childhood (Yalta, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Yalta, and early Womanhood (London, Paris, Dublin) by Tatiana Nancy (“Romanovna”) GAUBERT What would a crocodile on a silver chain, taken for a walk on the streets of St. Petersburg, have in common with a kneeling British ambassador, vowing eternal love to a Russian […]

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