Unless I miraculously get better at time management, this is the rest of my semester

Courtesy of Fuck Yeah, History Major Heraldic Beast

The Violoncellist

[This post is left-over from several weeks ago. Forgot to post. Whoops!]


I feel a bit wrong updating this blog from the library (usually I am very particular these days about only using my computer in here for writing papers, doing research, or checking email, though I will occasionally deviate from that and do an online crossword or read the blogs I follow; thankfully I have left my younger self's days of library facebook/tv watching/text twist behind me), but I just finished writing a significant chunk of a paper in the last half-hour, and so this seemed to me to be at least a (vaguely) constructive break.

The paper in question is for my art history class this semester, and I've really fallen in love with the work that I'm analyzing for it. 

 Gustave Courbet, The Violoncellist, 1847, oil on canvas

My previous familiarity with Courbet, one of the foremost figures of the Realist movement in France during the mid- to late-19th century, has extended mostly to two of his most famous works, Un enterrement à Ornans (A Burial at Ornans), and the highly controversial and scandalous (click at your own risk, it is very much NSFW) L'Origine du monde (The Origin of the World).


Courbet's use of tenebrism in The Violoncellist is striking, no? I'm struck by the similarities to some Rembrandt paintings I've seen in various museums - the intense chiaroscuro, compelling figure, very painterly. What do you all think?

Rette mich

I just received a book from Interlibrary Loan that I need for my junior qual, because it's the only real in-depth textual study that has been done on the subject I'm writing about.


Its title: Untersuchungen zur Struktur des Witzepigrams bei Lukillios und Martial. Which means, unfortunately, that it is all in German. Why oh why, my parents, did you not make me keep learning German after age 4? All of those Muzzy tapes gone to waste! All I remember is "Ich bin Bob; ich bin der Gärtner" and "Ich bin die Prinzessin Sylvia." Really though this is my own damn fault since I dropped German last term because my schedule was too stressful. I can conjugate basic verbs, talk about school supplies, the weather, and numbers, but that's about it. 


If I don't pull an Oedipus and poke out my eyes by the end of the semester, I'll be quite pleased with myself.