#baedeker

[majestativa]

There is no Space or Time Only intensity.

— MINA LOY ⚜️ The Lost Lunar Baedeker, (1997)

[diana-andraste]

Against my thigh Touch of infinitesimal motion Scarcely perceptible Undulation Warmth moisture

...

Death Life I am knowing All about Unfolding

Mina Loy, from Parturition

[nervousladytraveler]

This nervous lady is getting ready for some international travel. Trying to channel my inner Miss Lavish.

[calyptapis]

Mina Loy, "Ignorasmus" from The Lost Lunar Baedeker

[famousdeaths]

Karl Ludwig Johannes Baedeker was a German publisher whose company, Baedeker, set the standard for authoritative guidebooks for tourists.

Link: Karl Baedeker

[lotharulsamer]

Die Wasserfälle von Allerheiligen im Nationalpark Schwarzwald sind einen Besuch wert

Die Wasserfälle von Allerheiligen im Nationalpark Schwarzwald sind einen Besuch wert

Wie vor ihm Karl Baedeker, der den modernen Reiseführer in Deutschland schuf, so trug auch Mark Twain mit seiner Beschreibung des Wasserfalls Allerheiligen zu dessen Bekanntheit im 19. Jahrhundert maßgeblich bei: „Nach dem Abendessen gingen wir die Bergschlucht hinab. Sie ist wunderschön – eine Mischung von Waldlieblichkeit und rauher Wildnis. Ein klarer Wasserlauf kommt die Schlucht herabgerauscht, windet sich an ihrem Ende durch einen engen Spalt zwischen hohen Wänden und stürzt über mehrere Stufen nacheinander hinab. Wenn man die letzte hinter sich gelassen hat, gewinnt man zurückschauend einen erfreulichen Blick auf die Wasserfälle – sie erheben sich als siebenstufige Treppe von schaumigen und glitzernden Kaskaden und geben ein Bild ab, das ebenso bezaubernd wie ungewöhnlich ist.“ Mark Twains Beschreibung aus seinem Buch ‚Bummel durch Europa‘ trifft noch heute ins Schwarze. Die Wasserfälle und die Klosterruine liegen im Nationalpark Schwarzwald, der gerne mit dem Anspruch arbeitet ‚eine Spur wilder‘ zu sein, und für die Wasserkaskaden Allerheiligen ist das auf alle Fälle zutreffend.

Mehr zum Kloster Allerheiligen finden Sie in meinem Beitrag: Kloster Allerheiligen: Abgebrannt, geplündert und verstaatlicht. Historische Orte müssen besser geschützt werden – https://deutschland-geliebte-bananenrepublik.de/kloster-allerheiligen-abgebrannt-gepluendert-und-verstaatlicht/

[twafordizzy]

Bas Heine meent: gooi die reisgidsen weg!

bron beeld: bnr.nl Schrijver, vertaler en columnist Bas Heine (1960) gaat op reis en buigt zich over het nut van de reisgids. Door een reisgids wordt het reizen onvermijdelijk tot een educatieve puzzeltocht en wie de aanwijzingen trouw opvolgt zal tijdens zijn tochten veel mede-padvinders tegen het lijf lopen. Heine komt als vanzelf bij de oorsprong van alle kwaad: de reisgidsen van de Duitser…

[archivist-dragonfly]

Book 023

Baedeker’s Egypt 1929

Karl Baedeker

David & Charles 1974

A reprint of the 1929 edition of Baedeker’s Egypt. Lots of gorgeous maps.

[victusinveritas]

Baedeker Guide maps are the best.

Bordeaux 1933

[ammonitetestpatterns]

mina loy, the lost lunar baedeker.

[majestativa]

The word made flesh and feeding upon itself with erudite fangs The sanguine introspection of the womb.

— MINA LOY ⚜️ The Lost Lunar Baedeker, (1997)

[palmtreepalmtree]

My mom and I have taken two tour-group style outings for day trips outside of Amsterdam. I haven't loved either of them, but there were still things to enjoy about each. They both reminded me of that quote from A Room With a View:

We residents sometimes pity you poor tourists not a little - handed about like a parcel of goods from Venice to Florence, from Florence to Rome, living herded together in pensions or hotels, quite unconscious of anything that is outside Baedeker, their one anxiety to get 'done' and 'through' and go somewhere else. The result is they mix up towns, rivers, palaces in one inextricable whirl.

As hard as we tried to select options with plenty of free time to explore on our own, the logistics of a group tour feel very impersonal and almost time squandering. And the tour groups by design take you to the most touristy places. Theoretically, tour guide help make the experience more interesting, but most of the information is very superficial, nothing a quick internet search wouldn't tell you.

The above photo is from our day trip to Bruges. The tourists (ourselves included) were like ants crawling all over the city. It felt like Disneyland rather than a medieval Belgian city. Hard to appreciate what a special place it is.

On both of our tours, we befriended a solo traveler. I mentioned to mom that as a person who really enjoys solo travel, I don't think I would ever go on one of these excursions alone. I was having a really hard time explaining why.

It's not like these places aren't beautiful or worthy of seeing just because you're traveling alone. And surely there is a convenience in having someone arrange all the transportation for you. But for me the joy of solo travel is the insane amount of freedom I have to do and see whatever I want. And you just don't have that kind of freedom on these tours.

I like taking in a city by wandering around on my own, stopping when I see something interesting and looking it up online. Or following a walking tour at my own pace. Stopping for coffee and just people watching for a while. Learning the neighborhoods and enjoying them. This is a particularly nice thing to do in cities with good public transit or small city centers where I can really roam safely at my own leisure. I like starting in the tourist centers and radiating out. Going to a park or a botanical garden, hitting the museums.

I'm glad I got to see Bruges and Giethoorn, but I probably would never travel this way again.

[yan-wo]

A silver Lucifer serves cocaine in cornucopia

To some somnambulists of adolescent thighs draped in satirical draperies

Peris in livery prepare Lethe for posthumous parvenues

Delirious Avenues lit with the chandelier souls of infusoria from Pharoah’s tombstones

lead to mercurial doomsdays Odious oasis in furrowed phosphorous

the eye-white sky-light white-light district of lunar lusts

            Stellectric signs “Wing shows on Starway” “Zodiac carrousel”

Cyclones of ecstatic dust and ashes whirl crusaders from hallucinatory citadels of shattered glass into evacuate craters

A flock of dreams   browse on Necropolis

From the shores of oval oceans in the oxidized Orient

Onyx-eyed Odalisques and ornithologists observe the flight of Eros obsolete

And “Immortality” mildews …   in the museums of the moon

“Nocturnal cyclops” “Crystal concubine”

Pocked with personification the fossil virgin of the skies waxes and wanes

Lunar Baedeker, Mina Loy 

[calyptapis]

Mina Loy, "Parturition" from The Lost Lunar Baedeker

[apokrify]

Mina Loy

"The Forrest Gump of the international avant-garde, Mina Loy had the unerring knack of being in the right place at just the right time. Born in London in 1882 to an Hungarian Jewish father and an English Protestant mother Loy caught the tail-end of the fin-de-siecle in Jugendstil infatuated Munich in 1899. She moved to Paris in 1903 and entered the circle of writers and artists centred around Gertrude Stein. 1907 saw her de-camping to Florence where she spouted Futurist aphorisms with Marinetti and his cohorts. 1916 saw Loy sail for New York where she promptly made the acquaintance of Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray.

It was in New York that she met and fell in love with the love of her life, the heavyweight champion of the Dada-verse and nephew of Oscar Wilde, the poet-boxer Arthur Cravan. They were married in Mexico City in 1918. Afterwards they intended to move to Argentina; however lack of funds and the fact that Loy was pregnant with Cravan’s child meant that only Loy took the commercial liner while Cravan set off in a small sail boat with the intention that they would met again in Buenos Aires. Cravan was never seen or heard of again; presumably the boat capsized and he drowned in the Pacific, however his disappearance has led to some wild and improbable theories, my favourite being that Arthur Cravan became the mysteriously reclusive, anarchist novelist B.Traven, famous for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre that was made into a film of the same name by John Huston and starring Humphrey Bogart.

The twenties saw Loy in the thick of modernist Paris. She published her collection of poems Lunar Baedeker and with the backing of Peggy Guggenheim opened a shop selling decorated lamp-shades. In 1933 she begin her close friendship with the German Surrealist Richard Oelze (see The Expectation) which resulted in her posthumously published Surrealist novel Insel, with its insightful (though disguised) portraits of Andre Breton, Max Ernst and Salvador Dali. Loy states that there is something ‘fundamentally black-magicky about the surrealists.’" - from cakeordeathsite.wordpress.com

[thebibi]

When Arthur sends a letter to Jack requesting him to find out what's wrong with Lucy, he sends it from the Albemarle Hotel in Piccadilly, London, not from his home in the Ring. Klinger has some interesting facts about the hotel:

At the corner of Albemarle Street, in Piccadilly.  The 1896 London “Baedeker” characterizes it as “largely patronized by royalty, the diplomatic corps, and the nobility: excellent wine and cuisine.” Oscar Wilde reportedly dined there frequently – perhaps once too often, for Edward Shelley testified in Wilde’s libel trail about a dinner there that was a prelude to an invitation to Wilde’s bedroom.  Curiously, that dinner occurred on the opening night of Wilde’s play Lady Windermere’s Fan (20 February 1892), a performance attended by Wilde’s old flame Florence Balcombe, by then married to Bram Stoker.  Wilde again stayed at the hotel from 1 to 17 January 1893, with frequent visits from young men; according to his biographer Richard Ellmann, “[Wilde’s] behavior was sufficiently dubious for the proprietor to welcome his departure” (Oscar Wilde).

To me this is an extremely interesting coincidence! I also wonder if, the name is related to the Albemarle Club, which was a progressive club at the time that Wilde was a member of.

In anyway, to anyone writing Dorian Gray/Dracula crossovers, you can now imagine Arthur Holmwood and Henry Wotton having had parties or dinners there!