One of the most beautiful ceilings on Earth, the Sainte-Chapelle

Sometimes it's nice to remember that even Marcus Aurelius was like "you don't have to comment on everything bro"

Happy Feast of St Hildegard of Bingen! As I child, I didn't know I would grow up to be a German medievalist, but I was captivated by her story and by the fact she appeared in both my book of Saints' lives and my book on composers (one of only a few women in it).

Schopenhauer wrote this paragraph 150+ years ago, and it’s still true

It's pretty special to drink coffee in the same cafe as Goethe, Byron and Liszt! (though they did charge me thirty euros extra because they had a mini orchestra playing)

cambridge in autumn

Gustav Mahler in the Vienna Court (now State) Opera, of which he was the director from 1897 until 1907.

Friedrich Nietzsche's 10 rules of writing, from letters sent to Lou Andreas-Salomé in 1882

Hermann Hesse relaxing at Montagnola, where he wrote "Steppenwolf" and "The Glass Bead Game."

I took the photo of these medieval steps so many times but never used it. At last it was open to public and it was a pleasure to walk up on these worn out ancient steps that has seen so many lives to go through it. Browne’s hospital (1475) Stamford

In 1368 Petrarch and Chaucer were guests at the same wedding - that of the 13-year old Violante Visconti to Lionel Duke of Clarence. No record of whether they spoke to each other.

“Of course that’s your contention. You ‘discovered’ Nietzsche because some TikTok said ‘God is dead.’ You just skimmed your first excerpt from Beyond Good and Evil. You’re convinced he’s the deepest thinker alive until next month when you stumble onto Kierkegaard memes.”

I regret that I cannot provide an "abstract". My paper's argument is inseparable from its form and must be read in its entirety

It isn't hard at all, in fact

Whoever wrote that sounds absolutely insufferable. Uptight, no humility, absolutely closed to the possibility of being seduced (in Baudrillard’s sense). When approaching these old works I think you have to be a bit like how Baudrillard defines the schizophrenic: extremely open

A life mask of Franz Liszt taken by Bartolini in 1838, and the resulting bust now on display in Weimar. "In Liszt I found a thin, pale-looking young man, with infinitively attractive features." Wilhelm von Lenz