INTERMISSION - WE WILL BE BACK IN OCTOBER

"Never Give In, Never, Never, Never"
Winton Churchill (1941)

INTERMISSION
WE WILL BE BACK IN OCTOBER

in the meantime: "Never Give In, Never, Never, Never"

Portrait of George Rodenbach by Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer (1896)

Portrait of George Rodenbach, Belgian symbolist poet and novelist (1855-1898)
by Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer (1865-1953)
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Nissim Ezekiel (1924-2004), an Indian poet

There is a way
Emerging from the heart of things,
A man may follow it
Through works to poetry,
From works to poetry
Or from poetry to something else.
The end does not matter,
The way is everything,
And guidance comes.

In Something to Pursue
Nissim Ezekiel, poet and scholar (1924-2004), belonged to the Mumbai Bene Israel Jewish community.

On his death, Lawrence Joffe, in The Guardian, paid tribute to the poet:

"Ezekiel's poetry described love, loneliness, lust, creativity and political pomposity, human foibles and the "kindred clamour" of urban dissonance. He echoed England's postwar Movement (Philip Larkin, DJ Enright and Ted Hughes) but honed a distinct, ironic voice, moving from strict metre to free verse.

Over the course of his career, his attitude changed, too. The young man, "who shopped around for dreams", demanded truth and lambasted corruption. By the 1970s, he accepted "the ordinariness of most events"; laughed at "lofty expectations totally deflated"; and acknowledged that "The darkness has its secrets/ Which light does not know.""

"He acted as a mentor to younger poets, such as Dom Moraes, Adil Jussawalla and Gieve Patel. Many of his poems, such as The Night Of The Scorpion, and that supreme antidote to jingoism, The Patriot, are set-works in Indian and British schools."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/india/story/0,12559,1165150,00.html

Baruch Lopes Leão de Laguna, the “Portuguese” painter who died at Auschwitz

Baruch Lopes Leão de Laguna was a notable representative of late 19th, early 20th century Dutch portrait painting. He was born in Amsterdam on 16 February 1864, to a Portuguese sephardic family. His early life was marred by tragedy, as would his later life be. His parents, Salomão Lopes de Leão Laguna and Sara Kroese, died when he was 11, and he was raised in the orphanage of the Portuguese Jewish community in Amsterdam. Teachers in the community were supportive and he trained at the Quellinus Art School and then at the National Academy of Fine Arts. To earn a living, Leão Laguna worked in the studio of painter Jacob Meijer de Haan.

Gradually, he became successful and was able to devote himself entirely to his own painting. His first exhibition was held in 1885 at Arti et Amicitiae, a cultural association. His work was well received by both critics and fellow artists. He married Rose Asscher, the daughter of a diamond cutter.

Baruch Lopes de Leão Laguna spent the first years of the Nazi occupation in hiding in a remote farm in Laren, and it is believed that painted the above self-portrait then. As a sign of gratitude, he offered it and several other paintings to the family that was, at great risk, helping him.

Eventually, Baruch Lopes de Leão Laguna was caught and taken to the Auschwitz extermination camp, where he was murdered on 19 November 1943. He was 79.

Posted at Rua da Judiaria, Nuno Guerreiro Josué's blog
http://ruadajudiaria.com/?p=566
Translated and adapted by Philosemite
http://www.jhm.nl/nieuws.aspx?ID=64

Christian Delacampagne worried about increasing hostility towards Israel among the French elite

“I am neither an Orientalist nor any kind of expert on the issue of Islamism. But I have spent years in the Middle East, as well as in other Muslim countries, and I know that the situation in the Islamic world corresponds very little to the wishful thinking of so many French scholars, journalists, and political leaders. A quick look at a world map—from Chechnya to Israel and the Palestinian Authority, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, Somalia, Kashmir, southern Thailand, and the southern Philippines—reveals that the planet’s most devastating wars are now of the jihadist type. All are fuelled by Islamism. I also know that the growing anti-Semitism one encounters in France, combined with the increasing tendency of the country’s elite to speak of Israel as a “temporary” state, is not only dangerous in itself but bad for France. A republic founded on principles of freedom and equality cannot easily accommodate such noxious ideas. Corruption is difficult to confine, and the moral and intellectual compromises that allow educated people to deny the nature and reality of today’s struggle against Islamism—a struggle facing the West as whole—soon find their way into other aspects of public life.” The Redeker Affair, by Christian Delacampagne Commentary Magazine Online, January 2007 Christian Delacampagne died in 2007. He was a professor of French literature and philosophy at Johns Hopkins University. http://www.commentarymagazine.com/cm/main/viewArticle.html?id=10813&page=all