THE MODIGLIANI HOAX (a 55-word story)


Leghorn, 1984, the local Council dredged a canal for Modigliani’s “lost heads”, sculptures that the artist had apparently thrown into the canal frustrated by his lack of success.

And the local Council found them.

Eminent Art critics deemed them masterpieces.

But students released a videotape of them sculpting the heads.

And the critics fell silent.



Alberico Collina

THE TOUR (a 55-word story)


Pedro was not liked by his neighbours.

He showed tourists where murders had occurred in Mexico City, telling them each victim’s story.

After a tour, a neighbour followed Pedro.

She spied Pedro knocking on a door.

An old man opened it, and Pedro gave him money.

Above them, over the door, she read “Orfanato” (Orphanage).



Alberico Collina

SHOOT (a 55-word story)


Henri Cartier Bresson’s father took his son hunting from an early age.

The boy was a phenomenal shot.

Both fast and accurate.

Henri’s father gave him a camera.

The young man took pictures the like of which the world had never seen.

He shot pictures of people.

And he could never again shoot living creatures.



Alberico Collina

A Space and a Time all of their Own


This is an excerpt from "Letter II" from "Letters from a Stoic" by Seneca (translated by Robin Campbell).

Seneca's use of figurative language is exemplary.

The abstract becomes concrete through metaphor in Seneca's writing.

Seneca clarifies by carrying over meaning from one word to another.

That's part of his style.

There is no waste in Seneca.

Each word is made to work inside tight sentences.

Sentences so tight they leave no room to doubt.

Seneca's thoughts and writing are magically current.

Maybe it's because he's addressing universal issues, which plague us as much today as they did yesterday.

Or maybe it's the language he employs.

Whatever it is, you feel he is talking to you.

And only you.

It is as if he knows you, and, out of friendship, he decides to share his avuncular wisdom with you.

Someone once defined a classic as something that always appears contemporary, irrespective of when it was written.

Although Seneca was born at around the same time as Christ, his writing has not aged.

His words seem to exist in a space and a time all of their own.


Alberico Collina


"Judging from what you tell me and from what I hear, I feel that you show great promise. You do not tear from place to place and unsettle yourself with one move after another. Restlessness of that sort is symptomatic of a sick mind. Nothing, to my way of thinking, is a better proof of a well ordered mind than a man's ability to stop just where he is and pass some time in his own company.

Be careful, however, that there is no element of discursiveness and inconsistency about this reading you refer to, this reading of many different authors and books of every description. You should be extending your stay among writers whose genius is unquestionable, deriving constant nourishment from them if you wish to gain anything from your reading that will find a lasting place in your mind. To be everywhere is to be nowhere. People who spend their whole life traveling abroad end up having plenty of places where they can find hospitality but no real friendships. The same is necessarily the case with people who never set about acquiring an intimate acquaintanceship with any one great writer, but skip from one to another, paying flying visits to them all. Food that is vomited up as soon as it is eaten is not assimilated into the body and does not do one any good; nothing hinders a cure so much as frequent changes of treatment; a wound will not heal over if it is being made the subject of experiments with different ointments; a plant which is frequently moved never grows strong. Nothing is so useful that it can be of any service in the mere passing. A multitude of books only gets in one's way. So if you are unable to read all the books in your possession, you have enough when you have read all the books you are able to read.

And if you say, 'But I feel like opening different books at different times,' my answer will be this: tasting one dish after another is the sign of a fussy stomach, and where the foods are dissimilar and diverse in range they lead to contamination of the system, not nutrition. So always read well-tried authors, and if at any moment you find yourself wanting a change from a particular author, go back to ones you have read before.

Each day, too, acquire something which will help you to face poverty, or death, and other ills as well. After running over a lot of different thoughts, pick out one to be digested thoroughly that day. This is what I do myself; out of the many bits I have been reading I lay hold of one."

They Echo Inside Me


The following canto is part of a poem written by Alfred, lord Tennyson, and dedicated to the memory of his friend Arthur Henry Hallam, who died of brain haemorrhage at a young age in 1833.

The imagery of these verses is shocking.

"Time" is "a maniac scattering dust".

"Life" is "a Fury slinging flame".

Tennyson works magic through his words.

Faith acquires the physical properties of water in the lines: "Be near me when my faith is dry," so that we may feel what it means to lose it.

While "Men are "the flies of latter spring" and their fate is laid out for us in a vivid and raw analogy.

There is something immortal about these lines.

Eespecially those of the final verse.

Each time I read them, I find a new depth to them.

And they echo inside me for hours.


Alberico Collina

In Memoriam
L
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Be near me when my light is low,
      When the blood creeps, and the nerves prick
      And tingle; and the heart is sick,
And all the wheels of Being slow.

Be near me when the sensuous frame
      Is rack'd with pangs that conquer trust;
      And Time, a maniac scattering dust,
And Life, a Fury slinging flame.

Be near me when my faith is dry,
      And men the flies of latter spring,
      That lay their eggs, and sting and sing
And weave their petty cells and die.

Be near me when I fade away,
      To point the term of human strife,
      And on the low dark verge of life
The twilight of eternal day.

Farther than Anybody Dares to Dream


In The Shawshank Redemption, a film based on a Stephen King story, there is a scene where Andy, the protagonist, broadcasts a duet from Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro” to the whole prison by connecting the record player to the PA system.

This is how Frank Darabont, the film's screenwriter, has Red, the narrator, recall that scene:

Red: [narrating] "I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don't want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I'd like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can't be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free."

It’s no accident that The Shawshank Redemption is one of the most popular films of all time.

With writing of this quality, it is difficult to think how it could be anything else.

Alberico Collina

No Space for Ambiguity


The following is a koan, or short parable, written by the Japanese Zen teacher Muju (the "non-dweller").

It is known as A Cup of Tea.

It says all it needs to say.

It is a prayer to brevity and tolerance.

And it leaves no space for ambiguity.


Alberico Collina


Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912), received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen.

Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor's cup full, and then kept on pouring.

The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. "It is overfull. No more will go in!"

"Like this cup," Nan-in said, "you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?"

source: http://www.ashidakim.com/zenkoans/zenindex.html

Write Better To Think Better


In the opening lines of Politics and the English Language, George Orwell explains why the quality of the language we employ is so important.

And why we must not see its dire state as irreversible.

He describes language as a tool that needs to be maintained, sharpened, and well-oiled in order to do its job properly.

To further reinforce his point of view, he uses a powerful analogy, which aims to show how an effect can become a cause, setting off a dangerous downward spiral.

If we improve our language, he maintains, we improve the way we think, not just the way we express ourselves.

And few things are more important to our future.


Alberico Collina


"Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent, and our language – so the argument runs – must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes. Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influences of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step towards political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers."

from Politics and the English Language by George Orwell

Starry Eyes and Dreamy Songs


Ardella (or Quiet Girl), a poem by Langston Hughes, has a deceptively effortless feel to it.

And that's what makes it effective.

The night is starless without our lover's eyes.

And sleep is dreamless without our lover's songs.

Few words but the right ones.

Simply superb.


Alberico Collina


Ardella (or "Quiet Girl')

I would liken you
To a night without stars
Were it not for your eyes.
I would liken you
To a sleep without dreams
Were it not for your songs.


Langston Hughes

You Belong to Me Now


This is a brief excerpt from the opening pages of A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway.

It's about a stunning muse, who, on a rainy day, enters a Parisian cafe' to mesmerise a writer in full flow.

It's about where writing comes from, how it grows, and where it goes to die.

A girl comes into a cafe' when Hemingway is writing a story. She has "smooth flesh with rain-freshened skin"; the "sh" alliteration onomatopeically reminding us of water. The girl's hair is "black as a crow's wing", and this image is further reinforced by the description of her haircut.

He notices that she's waiting for someone, so he carries on writing, and thinks about putting her in his story. But it's the story that's in control of the writer, not the other way round. The following lines seem to say it all, and I never tire of reading them:

"I've seen you, beauty, and you belong to me now, whoever you are waiting for and if I never see you again, I thought. You belong to me and all Paris belongs to me and I belong to this notebook and this pencil."

This mystery girl is imagination personified. She comes from water, which is life, and her hair is the colour of the crow, an omen of death. She appears out of nowhere, she seduces with her beauty, and she will soon disappear. When Hemingway finishes writing his story, and looks up, he won't find her in the cafe'. And he will feel an inexplicable sadness. Not because he has finished the story, but because imagination has fled.

"A girl came in the café and sat by herself at a table near the window. She was very pretty with a face fresh as a newly minted coin if they minted coins in smooth flesh with rain-freshened skin, and her hair was black as a crow's wing and cut sharply and diagonally across her cheek.

I looked at her and she disturbed me and made me very excited. I wished I could put her in the story, or anywhere, but she had placed herself so she could watch the street and the entry and I knew she was waiting for someone. So I went on writing.

The story was writing itself and I was having a hard time keeping up with it. I ordered another rum St. James and I watched the girl whenever I looked up, or when I sharpened the pencil with a pencil sharpener with the shavings curling into the saucer under my drink.

I've seen you, beauty, and you belong to me now, whoever you are waiting for and if I never see you again, I thought. You belong to me and all Paris belongs to me and I belong to this notebook and this pencil.

Then I went back to writing and I entered far into the story and was lost in it. I was writing it now and it was not writing itself and I did not look up nor know anything about the time nor think where I was nor order any more rum St. James. I was tired of rum St. James without thinking about it. Then the story was finished and I was very tired. I read the last paragraph and then I looked up and looked for the girl and she had gone. I hope she's gone with a good man, I thought. But I felt sad.

I closed up the story in the notebook and put it in my inside pocket and I asked the waiter for a dozen portugaises and a half-carafe of the dry white wine they had there. After writing a story I was always empty and both sad and happy, as though I had made love, and I was sure this was a very good story although I would not know truly how good until I read it over the next day."