LEONARDO DA VINCI, Mona Lisa

Het landschap op de Mona Lisa, een topografisch onderzoek van de Arno.

In 1503 legde Leonardo da Vinci aan de Florentijnse regering een plan voor om Pisa niet te verslaan met gebruik van grof geweld, maar door de Arno om te leggen.

 

Deze rivier vormde de levensader van zowel Florence als Pisa, en door die om te leggen zou de opstandige stad beroofd worden van de mogelijkheid om met handeldrijven in haar levensonderhoud te voorzien.

 

 Het idee was niet zo bizar als het misschien lijkt.

 

 Leonardo's plan, gepresenteerd met een reeks gedetailleerde kaarten en tekeningen, won de steun van de twee belangrijkste personages binnen de Florentijnse regering : Machiavelli en gonfaloniere Piero Soderini.

 

Het topografisch onderzoek dat Leonardo in het kader van dit project verrichtte, zou van invloed zijn op zijn landschappen,

 

 waaronder het rivierdal in volgelperspectief dat de achtergrond vormt van de Mona Lisa.

 

 

(zie M.J.UNGER, Machiavelli, een biografie, uitg.Ambo, pag.173)



D.H.LAWRENCE "Lady Chatterley's Lover"

GOD AND THE SEXUAL ACT

 

 

 "Yes, this was love, this ridiculous bouncing of the buttocks,

 

 and

 

the wilting op the poor, insignificant , moist little penis.

 

This was the divine love !

 

 After all, the moderns were right

 

when the felt contempt for the performance :

 

 for it was performance.

 

 It was quite true, as some poets said,

 

 that the God

 

who created man

 

must have had a sinister sense of humour,

 

 creating him a reasonable being,

 

yet forcing him to take

 

 this ridiculous posture

 

 and driving him with blind craving

 

for this humiliating  performance.

 

 Even a Maupassant found it a humiliating anti-climax." (p.170)



JAMES FENIMORE COOPER, "The last of the Mohicans"

 

 

"The last of the Mohicans" (1830) :

 

 

 a book full of history 

 

 

 

"But I know that your safety, and that of Cora,

 is far dearer to me than could be any orchestra of Handel's music" (p.32). 

 

 

 

"But it was long before the English came into the country.

 We took wives who bore us children; we worshipped the Great Spirit.

My tribe is the grandfather of nations, but I am an unmixed man.

The blood of chiefs is in my veins, where it must stay for ever.

 The Dutch landed, and gave my people the fire-water" (p.39). 

 

 

"The less zealous English thought they conferred a sufficient honour on its unsullied fountains,

when they bestowed the name of their reigning prince,

the second of the House of Hannover" (p.16).

 

 

"It was in this scene of strife and bloodshed, that the incidents

we schall attempt to relate occurred,

during the third year of the war

which England and France las waged, for the possession of a country,

 that neither was destined to retain" (p.17)

 

 

"The daughters of the commandant,

I learn, have passed into the fort,

 since it was invested ?

We have a wise ordinance

in our Salique Laws,

 which says,

 the crown of France shall never degrade

 the lance to the distaff.

 I trust, monsieur, you come authorized

to treat for the surrender of the place ?" (p.175).

 

 

 

"The beauty and manliness of warfare has been much deformed, 

Major Heyward, by the arts of your Monsieur Vauban" (p.182)

 

 

"Ay, sir, that is a curse entailed

on Scotland,

by her unnatural Union

with a foreign and trading people" (p.180).

 

 

"The pale-faces have driven the red-skins

from their hunting grounds.

The Huron chief was tied up

before all the pale-faced warriors,

and

whipped like a dog" (p.117) 

 

 

 

HERMAN MELVILLE "Moby Dick", 1851

"MOBY DICK ABOUT GENT, ANTWERP AND THE DISCOVERY OF CAPE GOOD HOPE"

"How wildly it heightens the effect of that passage in Froissart, when, masked in the snowy symbol of their faction, the desperate White Hoods of Ghent murder their bailiff in the market-place !" (p.171)
"Detached broken fossils of pre-adamite whales, fragments of their bones and skeletons, have within thirty years passed, at various intervalls, been found  at the base of the Alps, in Lombardy, in France, in England, in Scotland... and bones disinterred in excavating the great docks of Antwerp, in Napoleon's time" (p.407)
"Besides, this idea of Jonah's weathering the Cape of Good Hope at so early a day would wrest the honor  of the discovery of that great headland from Bartholomew Diaz , its reputed discoverer, and so make modern history a liar" (p.328).

JOSEPH HELLER "Catch - 22", 1961

"Catch 22" betekent iets dat volkomen absurd is, maar wel volgens de voorschriften is.

Italy has been losing wars for centuries, and just see how splendidly we've done nonetheless. France wins wars and is in a continual state of crisis. Germany loses and prospers. Look at their own recent history. Italy won a war in Ethiopia and promptly stumbled into serious trouble. (...) I was a fascist when Mussolini was on top, and I am an anti-fascist now that he has been deposed." p.312)
"I suppose you just don't care if you lose your leg, do you ?
It's my leg.
It certainly is not your leg ! Nurse Cramer retorted. "That leg belongs to the U.S.government. It's no different than a gear or a bedpan. The Army has invested a lot of money  to make you an airplane pilot, and you've no right to disobey the doctor's orders". (p.370).
"Good God, how much reverence caan you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of creation ? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatoalogical mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements ? Why in the world did He ever create pain ?
He had to really do a job, and then look ath the stupid, ugly little mess He made of it instead, His sheer incompetence is almost staggering" (p.230).