BOOK BARN

#286. RILKE’S BOOK OF HOURS. I have complained elsewhere of the cloistral hush that pervades much of Rilke’s work, the whispering tone that never capers or puns or farts, the cumulative effect of which I can find a bit suffocating. And Anita Barrows’s and Joanne Macy’s translation of his Book of Hours has saddled it with a subtitle, Love Poems to God, which I find not only icky but a bit misleading. But maybe all this is inseparable from what Rilke is for; as with the fla

#285: JOAN—II. Not the Joan of history, but Bernard Shaw’s. Some years ago my circle of friends ran heavily to local amateur and semi-pro actors, who were always kicking around what roles they dreamt of playing. One of them—one of the most gifted actors I’ve ever known personally—answered the question with a promptness that showed long forethought. When she said she wanted to play Shaw’s Joan, I was surprised: she was not religious, lit no candles to the Catholic church,

#284: THE PAINTINGS IN THE PALACE. In February of 1626, Charles I ascended to the throne of Great Britain. This wasn’t supposed to happen: Charles was the spare, the younger brother of the much beloved Prince Henry, who by all reports was Charles’s superior in physicality, personality and popular affection. Henry had also cottoned on very nicely to one of the new ways of broadcasting political stature: he had shown great enthusiasm for the collecting of sculpture, tapestr