Jean Paul used for the very first time the word doppelgänger; it was in his novel Siebenkäs, in 1796. The concept was known in many cultures and ages, but it was a particularly notable motif in Romanticism literature. Sometimes, the doppelgänger is an alter ego, a double that represents the worst part of the person. Robert Louis Stevenson, our poet last week, wrote about a doppelgänger in one of his best-known novels, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; Oscar Wilde (yes, he's also among our poets) wrote another novel that deals with that subject, The Portrait of Dorian Gray. Both works, sinister and terrifying, talk about the duality of human nature.

 

 

No, it's not that Captain Obvious came to remind us that Schubert wrote songs. The title refers to an occasion, shortly after Schubert's death, when the words "song writer" were used in a contemptuous way.

In that time, when an important musician died in Vienna, his friends (often also musicians) used to organize a Requiem Mass in his memory. It was done when Gluck, Haydn, Salieri and Beethoven died. Schubert's friends wanted to perform Anselm Hüttenbrenner's Requiem (the same piece performed in Beethoven ‘s honour) in the Augustiniankirche, one of the most important churches in Vienna. They suggested the renowned singer Ludwig Tietze to sing the tenor’s part but foolishly, he refused. According to Joseph Hüttenbrenner, the  [...]

 

I'm writing this on Monday, October 2nd. I had a half-written post for this week, talking about Schubert, but I put in on the shelf. It's not easy to get the brutal images of yesterday out of my mind and to focus on something else. I wasn't even able to bring myself to join a few words as a plan B and I was about to not post for the first time in more than five years. Until the words of a friend came to help me [...]

 

This expression, "You shall not pass!", is known worldwide (and I think I'm not exaggerating with this "worldwide") as the motto of the defenders of the Republican government during the Spanish Civil War. We Catalan people also identify these words as the beginning of a poem widely spread during the war; I remember seeing in some book of History the reproduction of a pamphlet with the four verses. The poem, however, was not written during the civil war; In fact, its author, Apel·les Mestres, died at 82 precisely on July 19, 1936. The day after Franco's coup, the day after the war began. This poem, entitled La cançó dels invadits (The song of the invaded), is part of a collection called Flors de sang (Flowers of blood), that Mestres wrote after the German invasion of Belgium in World War I. Some sources attribute the origin of the expression "You shall not pass!" [...]