“There is no frigate like a book”*…
This striking portrait of a Thai woman lost in her book is one of an extraordinary series collected by Steve McCurry at “To Light a Fire” (after Victor Hugo’s “To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.”)
Umbria, Italy
Bamiyan, Afghanistan
Many more at McCurry’s blog…
*There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!
– Emily Dickinson
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As we part the pages, we might send adventurous birthday greetings to Amantine (also “Amandine”) Lucile Aurore Dupin, later Baroness Dudevant– though best known by her pen name, George Sand; she was born on this date in 1804. A prolific novelist and memoirist, she was well known and well regarded in her time; and indeed more recently: writers from Walt Whitman to A.S. Byatt have alluded to Sand’s writing in their own work. But she was in her own time probably equally renown as a free-thinker. Married at 18, she had two children– then, at 27, embarked on a five-year period of what she called “romantic rebellion”… during which she had affairs with Frédéric Chopin, Jules Sandeau, Prosper Mérimée, Alfred de Musset, Louis-Chrysostome Michel, Pierre-François Bocage, Félicien Mallefille, Louis Blanc, and (probably) the actress actress Marie Dorval. The French took all of this in stride; it was her wearing of men’s clothing (which she justified as far sturdier and less expensive than the typical dress of a noblewoman at the time) and smoking in public that sullied her image.
“There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved.”
