3:11 pm, by ascendingcoherence
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Because I don’t like theories and don’t have the wisdom to design a revolution that I can incite you to start, I am going to fall back on reality. Let us go back to the people who had their revolution over cups of tea at the king’s palace in Copenhagen. The Danes. They were once a people so terrifying that the English Book of Common Prayer asks God to protect us from them. In those days they were Vikings and it was wise to ask God to be protected from them. Then they heard the gospel preached and mended their ways a little. They thought Christianity sounded pretty good, but only up to a point. They didn’t like the part about having only one wife. A prudent church obliged them with the lex danicum, which allowed the Danes only to be polygamous Christians. They also wanted, as long as the church was passing out favors, to be baptized in warm water. That concession was given them also. Thereafter the Danes have followed what seems to me to be an exemplary path toward being successful and happy human beings. They have the highest standard of living in the world as measured by money and comfort. They are universally envied, except by Germany, which thinks them pushy and a touch immoral.
9:09 pm, by ascendingcoherence
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- How To Be Sure As To What Is And What Isn’t
- The Doll’s Guide to Existentialism
- If This, Then What?
- You Are More Miserable Than You Think You Are
[This is a list of the books that Belinda the doll sees in the window of a Copenhagen bookshop, in Guy Davenport’s story “Belinda’s World Tour.” Belinda notes “the Danes are melancholy and drink lots of coffee and read only serious books.” You can page through a lovely illustrated version of this story in Duke’s Rubenstein Library.]
9:52 pm, by ascendingcoherence
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Jakob Boeskov, from Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen.
