The Livraria Lello in Porto is one of the most beautiful bookstores in the world. NO WONDER J.K. ROWLING IS SAID TO HAVE BEEN INSPIRED TO WRITE HER HARRY POTTER BOOKS IN THIS BOOKSTORE!
The booksore itself, excluding the building that now houses it, originated in the international bookstore of Ernesto Chardron, founded in 1869 in Rua dos Clérigos.
In 1894, after several acquisitions, the bookstore reached the hands of the Lello family. The Lello brothers started looking for a space where they could build a bookstore from scratch, and in 1906 the Lello bookstore was born, precisely where it is now, at the beginning of Rua das Carmelitas. The opening of Lello bookstore was a highlight of the cultural life of twentieth century’s Porto.
The ample interior space is marked by a forked staircase connecting to a gallery on the first floor with detailed wood balusters.
Over this staircase is a large 8 by 3.5 metres (26 ft × 11 ft) stained glass window, with the central motto Decus in Labore and monogram of the owners. The building still retains the rails and wooden cart once used to move books around the store between the shelves.
“Stairs,” Valkyrie said, disappointed.
“Not just ordinary stairs,” Skulduggery told her as he led the way down. “Magic stairs.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yes.”
She followed him into the darkness. “How are they magic?”
“They just are.”
“In what way?”
“In a magicky way.”
She glared at the back of his head. “They aren’t magic at all, are they?”
“Not really.”
― Derek Landy, Mortal Coil
The stairs in the historic cacao Silo Erlenmatt Ost in Basel
Architect: Harry Gugger Studio
“What else? She is so beautiful.
You don’t get tired of looking at her.
You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is.
She is funny without ever being mean. I love her.
I am so lucky to love her, Van Houten. You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you.
I like my choices. I hope she likes hers.”
John Green – The Fault in Our Stars
[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]
BY E. E. CUMMINGS
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
“Sometimes” – Hermann Hesse
Sometimes, when a bird calls,
or a wind moves through the brush,
or a dog barks in a distant farmyard,
I must listen a long time, and hush.
My soul flies back to where,
before a thousand forgotten years begin,
the bird and the waving wind were like me,
and were my kin.
My soul becomes a tree, an animal,
a cloud woven across the sky.
Changed and unfamiliar it turns back and questions me.
How shall I reply?
“Not cry. Fly.
“I can’t fly,” Bran said. “I can’t, I can’t…”
How do you know? Have you ever tried?
The voice was high and thin. Bran looked around to see where it was coming from. A crow was spiraling down with him, just out of touch, following him as he fell. “Help me,” he said.
I’m trying, the crow replied…
The crow took to the air and flapped around Bran’s hand.
“You have wings,” Bran pointed out.
Maybe you do too.
Bran felt along his shoulders, groping for feathers.
There are different kinds of wings, the crow said…
Bran was falling faster than ever. The grey mists howled around him as he plunged toward the earth below. “What are you doing to me?” he asked the crow, tearful.
Teaching you how to fly.
“I can’t fly!”
You’re flying right now.
“I’m falling!”
Every flight begins with a fall, the crow said. Look down.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones
Comfort and Pleasure
INTO MY OWN
One of my wishes is that those dark trees,
So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze,
Were not, as ’twere, the merest mask of gloom,
But stretched away unto the edge of doom.
I should not be withheld but that some day
Into their vastness I should steal away,
Fearless of ever finding open land,
Or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand.
I do not see why I should e’er turn back,
Or those should not set forth upon my track
To overtake me, who should miss me here
And long to know if still I held them dear.
They would not find me changed from him they knew—
Only more sure of all I thought was true.”
― Robert Frost, A Boy’s Will
Black Forest
“And into the forest I go to lose my mind and find my soul.” – John Muir
The Museum of Fine Arts Bern presented samplings of artworks from the Cornelius Gurlitt legacy. The focus was on the works of “degenerate art” confiscated by the Nazis from German museums during the Third Reich.
The Gurlitt Collection is a collection assembled by the late German art dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt which was passed first to his wife, Helene, and on her death to their son, Cornelius Gurlitt, who died in 2014.
The “Gurlitt art trove” were seized in 2012 in Cornelius Gurlitt’s Munich apartment in Schwabing after tax investigations.
The public learned about the “art trove” through a report in the November 3, 2013 issue of “Focus” magazine.
With the further discovery of additional pieces in Cornelius Gurlitt’s house in Salzburg, the total number of artworks in his possession amounted to over 1500 objects.
German authorities seized the entire collection, although Gurlitt was not detained.
“Degenerate art” was a term the Nazis exploited for propaganda purposes.
During the Nazi dictatorship in Germany it was used to decry modern art and artists with Jewish backgrounds.
The Nazi regime condemned as “degenerate” all art and cultural movements that did not comply with its artistic ideals.
The new forms of art – expressionism, dada, new objectivity, surrealism, cubism, and fauvism – all fitted into this category.
The collection contains Old Masters as well as Impressionist, Cubist, and Expressionist paintings, drawings and prints by artists including Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, Eugène Delacroix, Edgar Degas, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Franz Marc, Marc Chagall, Édouard Manet, Camille Pissarro, Auguste Rodin, Otto Dix, Edvard Munch, Gustave Courbet, Max Liebermann, Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee.
I Sit Beside The Fire and Think – J. R. R. Tolkien
I sit beside the fire and think
Of all that I have seen
Of meadow flowers and butterflies
In summers that have been
Of yellow leaves and gossamer
In autumns that there were
With morning mist and silver sun
And wind upon my hair
I sit beside the fire and think
Of how the world will be
When winter comes without a spring
That I shall ever see
For still there are so many things
That I have never seen
In every wood in every spring
There is a different green
I sit beside the fire and think
Of people long ago
And people that will see a world
That I shall never know
But all the while I sit and think
Of times there were before
I listen for returning feet
And voices at the door