One Nice Thing: The Digital Library of the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica

May 27, 2020 | Filed Under Things I Think About | Comments Off

The Embassy of the Free Mind, aka the House with the Heads, houses the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica, an Amsterdam museum and library, “a place where you can find wisdom from all over the world, where images and texts will tell you centuries-old stories created by free thinkers.”

They are in the process of digitizing their library (partly supported by a government grant from the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds), and all of the manuscripts are available for free on their website as they are scanned.

The website is in English, and while the search function will let let you search for a specific author, year, or place of publication, there’s no way to order the search by any of those items, so you will get a randomly ordered list each time you pull up the page. That could be useful, however—the serendipity of discovering just the right book or just the right author awaits!

Poem: from “My Mother’s House”—Leah Goldberg

| Filed Under Poem for Hela | Comments Off

from MY MOTHER’S HOUSE
—Leah Goldberg
Translated from Hebrew by Robert Alter

My mother’s mother died
in the spring of her days. Her daughter
Would not remember her face. Her portrait inscribed
In my grandfather’s heart
Was expunged from the world of images
After his death.

Only her mirror was left in the house.
Through the passage of time it had sunk in its silver frame.
And I, her pale grand-daughter, I who do not resemble her,
Today look into it as into
A lake hiding treasures
Under the water.

Deep down, behind my face,
I see a young woman
With ruddy cheeks, smililng.
A wig on her head.
She fixes
A long earring to her earlobe, threading it
Through the tiny hole in the delicate flesh
Of the ear.

Deep down, behind my face, shines
The bright golden fleck in her eyes.
And the mirror maintains
The family tradition:
That she was very beautiful.

Black-and-white photo of an Edwardian-era woman in formal dress.