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lannistertwinz · 1 year ago

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"You loved me then what right had you to leave me?" - the parallels between Jaime/Cersei and Wuthering Heights

"There's a dialogue that goes on through the years and over the centuries where you read someone else's work and you're inspired by it, sometimes infuriated by it, and you say 'No, that's not quite right, here's the way it would be' and then you write your own twist on it, your own answer to it! There is this conscious playing with tropes, replying to other authors and making a reference or an homage in some cases… but there's also unconsciousness. Those are are rife, sometimes you read a book and you haven't looked at it for twenty years, but it's still there buried inside and suddenly someone points out 'this seems just like this' and you go 'Oh my god! It's right, I forgot about that!'. So it works both ways." - George R.R. Martin, Trinity College Dublin

“The first books I read besides comic books were cheap paperbacks which cost 35 cents back then. There were no bookstores in Bayonne so I got my paperbacks from a spinner rack and all the books in that were mixed up. There were science fiction books and fantasy books, which I liked, but there were also mystery novels, romance novels, nurse novels, gothics, spy novels and, of course, there were classics of literature mixed in with that: Shakespeare, Dostoiévski, the Brontë sisters, Jane Austen, etc.” – George R.R. Martin, Gamer’s Haven Podcast

As pointed out above, George has (whether conscious or unconsciously) taken inspiration from other works to create his own characters, and with this post I’d like to explain as to why I believe A Song Of Ice And Fire specifically plays with Heathcliff and Catherine’s relationship from Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights through Jaime and Cersei’s dynamic.

To briefly explain it to those who have not read it, Wuthering Heights is essentially the story of Heathcliff’s revenge on the Earnshaws and the Lintons for the discrimination suffered at their hands and their involvement in his estrangement from his friend and lover Catherine Earnshaw (aka Cathy) and, at it’s core, it is a novel about intergenerational abuse and family dysfunction.

Shaped by these circumstances, we have at the forefront of the book the toxic romance between the foster siblings Heathcliff and Catherine who, like Jaime and Cersei, develop a very intimate bond early on in their childhood:

She was much too fond of Heathcliff. The greatest punishment we could invent for her was to keep her separate from him. – Nelly, Chapter V He could never bear to be long apart from his twin. – Jaime, ASOS

‘I was a child; my father was just buried, and my misery arose from the separation that Hindley had ordered between me and Heathcliff. I was laid alone, for the first time; and, rousing from a dismal doze after a night of weeping, I lifted my hand to push the panels aside: it struck the tabletop!’ – Catherine, Chapter XII Though Cersei often slept alone, she had never liked it. Her oldest memories were of sharing a bed with Jaime, when they had still been so young that no one could tell the two of them apart. Later, after they were separated, she'd had a string of bedmaids and companions, most of them girls of an age with her, the daughters of her father's household knights and bannermen. – Cersei, AFFC

We made ourselves as snug as our means allowed in the arch of the dresser. I had just fastened our pinafores together, and hung them up for a curtain, when in comes Joseph, on an errand from the stables. He tears down my handiwork, boxes my ears, and croaks. – Catherine, Chapter III "Sometimes as a lark we would dress in each other's clothes and spend a whole day each as the other." – Cersei, ACOK

I took my dingy volume by the scroop, and hurled it into the dogkennel, vowing I hated a good book. Heathcliff kicked his to the same place. – Catherine, Chapter III The dank and dismal fortnight Cersei spent at Greenstone, the seat of House Estermont, was the longest of her young life. Jaime dubbed the castle "Greenshit" at first sight, and soon had Cersei doing it too. – Cersei, AFFC

Miss Cathy had been sick, and that made her still; she leant against her father’s knee, and Heathcliff was lying on the floor with his head in her lap. – Nelly, Chapter V "Care for a bath, Brienne?" He laughed. "You're a maiden and there's the pool. I'll wash your back." He used to scrub Cersei's back, when they were children together at Casterly Rock. – Jaime, ASOS

Additionally, in both cases, the female characters have, from early on, a clear influence over their male counterparts:

His peevish reproofs wakened in her a naughty delight to provoke him: she was never so happy as when we were all scolding her at once, and she defying us with her bold, saucy look, and her ready words; turning Joseph’s religious curses into ridicule, baiting me, and doing just what her father hated most showing how her pretended insolence, which he thought real, had more power over Heathcliff than his kindness: how the boy would do her bidding in anything, and his only when it suited his own inclination. – Nelly, Chapter V “Father will never consent,” Jaime objected. […] “Is it a rock you want? Or me?” He remembered that night as if it were yesterday. […] By morning Casterly Rock seemed a small price to pay to be near her always. He gave his consent, and Cersei promised to do the rest. – Jaime, ASOS

‘He’s considering he’d rather I’d come to him! Find a way, then! not through that kirkyard. You are slow! Be content, you always followed me!’ – Catherine, Chapter XII She rose, her eyes brimming with tears. “Is it truly you?” She did not come to him, however. She has never come to me, he thought. She has always waited, letting me come to her. – Jaime, ASOS

And there’s an element of adoration as well. In Wuthering Heights, at the end of Heathcliff’s life, Nelly refers to Catherine as his “departed idol” and Heathcliff describes Cathy as “so immeasurably superior to everybody on earth”. On the other hand, in A Song Of Ice And Fire, Jaime puts Cersei on a pedestal as the figure of “The Maiden” and describes Cersei’s flame in his weirwood dream as “the only light in the world”. Furthermore, the two claim to have suffered through hardships solely for the sake of these women and that their love is the ultimate factor that drives them:

‘I’ve fought through a bitter life since I last heard your voice; and you must forgive me, for I struggled only for you!’ – Heathcliff, Chapter X When morning came, he made himself eat. They fed him a mush of oats, horse food, but he forced down every spoon. He ate again at evenfall, and the next day. Live, he told himself harshly, live for Cersei. – Jaime, ASOS

‘Be with me always - take any form - drive me mad! Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!’ – Heathcliff, Chapter XVI Beside Lord Tywin stood his sister, pale and beautiful, a torch burning in her hand. Her torch was the only light in the cavern. She turned to go. “Stay with me,” Jaime pleaded. “Don't leave me here alone. Don't leave me in the dark!” – Jaime, ASOS

However, the most striking similarities arise from the way that Catherine and Cersei perceive their relationships with Heathcliff and Jaime respectively. Catherine, though far from being the worst person out of the cast of characters present in the novel (certainly Hindley and Joseph and even Heathcliff himself are more morally reprehensible), is the one that possesses the most traits stereotypically ascribed to narcissism: she’s very duplicitous and self-absorbed, she has a completely delusional opinion of herself and consistently projects her own flaws onto others, she’s often contemptuous of the weaknesses of those around her, she has a very explosive temper and reacts with aggression when crossed, she flips situations on their head to make herself look like the victim and she certainly sees her relationships as transactional, including her relationship with Heathcliff:

‘And should I always be sitting with you? What good do I get? What do you talk about? You might be dumb, or a baby, for anything you say to amuse me, or for anything you do, either!’ – Catherine, Chapter VIII

It is also frequently mentioned that Catherine enjoys being in control and does not take well to being contradicted:

It was nothing less than murder in her eyes for anyone to presume to stand up and contradict her. – Nelly, Chapter IX Cersei is as gentle as King Maegor, as selfless as Aegon the Unworthy, as wise as Mad Aerys. She never forgets a slight, real or imagined. She takes caution for cowardice and dissent for defiance. – Tyrion, ADWD

I observed that Mr. Edgar had a deep-rooted fear of ruffling her humour. He concealed it from her; but if ever he heard me answer sharply, or saw any other servant grow cloudy at some imperious order of hers, he would show his trouble by a frown of displeasure that never darkened on his own account. He many a time spoke sternly to me about my pertness; and averred that the stab of a knife could not inflict a worse pang than he suffered at seeing his lady vexed. Not to grieve a kind master, I learned to be less touchy; and, for the space of half a year, the gunpowder lay as harmless as sand, because no fire came near to explode it. – Nelly, Chapter X His sister liked to think of herself as Lord Tywin with teats, but she was wrong. Their father had been as relentless and implacable as a glacier, where Cersei was all wildfire, especially when thwarted. – Jaime, AFFC

And this leads to a point of contention when Heathcliff returns a changed man from his time away:

‘Don’t vex me. Why have you disregarded my request?’ – Catherine, Chapter XI Why does he insist on vexing me? – Cersei, AFFC

‘Oh, you see, Nelly, he would not relent a moment to keep me out of the grave. That is how I’m loved!’ – Catherine, Chapter XV “You swore that you would always love me. It is not loving to make me beg.” – Cersei, AFFC

All of this, combined with the particular way in which Catherine describes her feelings for Heathcliff, led critics of the book to accuse Catherine of perceiving and thus loving Heathcliff as an extension of herself. And, surely, most of these things she privately confesses to Nelly could have easily come out of Cersei’s mouth, who has been confirmed by the author to being written as highly narcissistic.

In chapter IX, Catherine says that her love for Heathcliff is a necessity and throughout the series Cersei’s sentiments for Jaime are frequently displayed through that same lens:

The wench had the right of it. He could not die. Cersei was waiting for him. She would have need of him. – Jaime, ASOS They rode hard the next day, at Jaime's insistence. His son was dead, and his sister needed him. – Jaime, ASOS “Jaime, you're my shining knight. You cannot abandon me when I need you most!” – Cersei, ASOS “I need you with me. In me. Please, Jaime. Please.” – Cersei, AFFC “Why would Cersei need the Warrior? She has me.” – Jaime, AFFC She licked her lips, shivering. “Come at once. Help me. Save me. I need you now as I have never needed you before. I love you. I love you. I love you. Come at once.” – Cersei, AFFC Jaime, I need Jaime. – Cersei, ADWD

Of course, in Cersei’s case, she “needs” Jaime because he is, in her mind, the brawn to her brain (“He was meant to be my sword and shield, my strong right arm.”), her protector, her agency in a patriarchal society… but she also needs him because she does not feel like a self-realized autonomous human being without him as she believes her own personhood has been split into two entities. And the same goes for Catherine:

‘I cannot express it; but surely you and everybody have a notion that there is or should be an existence of yours beyond you. What were the use of my creation, if I were entirely contained here?’ – Catherine, Chapter IX “Jaime and I are more than brother and sister. We are one person in two bodies.” – Cersei, AGOT

‘Supposing at twelve years old I had been wrenched from the Heights, and every early association, and my all in all, as Heathcliff was at that time, and been converted at a stroke into Mrs. Linton, the lady of Thrushcross Grange, and the wife of a stranger: an exile, and outcast, thenceforth, from what had been my world. You may fancy a glimpse of the abyss where I grovelled!’ – Catherine, Chapter XII “I was lost without you, Jaime. I was afraid the Starks would send me your head. I could not have borne that. I am not whole without you.” – Cersei, ASOS

In fact, both women go as far as claiming their partners’ identities as their own:

‘Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He’s always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being.’ – Catherine, Chapter IX “You are me, I am you.” – Cersei, AFFC ‘It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him: and that, not because he’s handsome, Nelly, but because he’s more myself than I am.’ – Catherine, Chapter IX

And from this idea of a shared existence and a lack of purpose when apart comes the desire for union in death and the mythologizing of these relationships:

‘If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger: I should not seem a part of it.’ – Catherine, Chapter IX “If he were dead, I would know it. We came into this world together, Uncle. He would not go without me.” – Cersei, ADWD ‘She’s dead! I’ve not waited for you to learn that’. – Heathcliff, Chapter XVI

‘We’ve braved its ghosts often together, and dared each other to stand among the graves and ask them to come. But, Heathcliff, if I dare you now, will you venture? If you do, I’ll keep you. I’ll not lie there by myself: they may bury me twelve feet deep, and throw the church down over me, but I won’t rest till you are with me. I never will!’ – Catherine, Chapter XII I cannot die while Cersei lives, he told himself. We will die together as we were born together. – Jaime, ASOS ‘I wish they may shovel in the earth over us both!’ – Heathcliff, Chapter XXIX

What’s interesting about Wuthering Heights, though, is that, other than codependency, there is an inherent selfishness and possessiveness to this. In chapter XV, when Catherine is effectively dying, it is clear that she does not want Heathcliff to outlive her and she’s terrified by the idea of him moving on and finding happiness elsewhere:

‘How strong you are! How many years do you mean to live after I am gone?’ – Catherine, Chapter XV “Will you forget me? Will you be happy when I am in the earth? Will you say twenty years hence, ‘That’s the grave of Catherine Earnshaw? I loved her long ago, and was wretched to lose her; but it is past. I’ve loved many others since: my children are dearer to me than she was; and, at death, I shall not rejoice that I are going to her: I shall be sorry that I must leave them!’ Will you say so, Heathcliff?” – Catherine, Chapter XV

Indeed, Catherine goes as far as telling Heathcliff that she wishes he would just die (and suffer) alongside her:

‘I wish I could hold you till we were both dead! I shouldn’t care what you suffered. I care nothing for your sufferings. Why shouldn’t you suffer? I do!’ – Catherine, Chapter XV ‘I’m not wishing you greater torment than I have, Heathcliff. I only wish us never to be parted.’ – Catherine, Chapter XV

And Cersei does something comparable when she (in her delusion) asks Jaime to be her champion in a mortal combat knowing he is likely to lose for his handicap:

“My queen,” said Qyburn, “have you . . . forgotten? Ser Jaime has no sword hand. If he should champion you and lose . . .” We will leave this world together, as we once came into it. “He will not lose. Not Jaime. Not with my life at stake.” – Cersei, AFFC

Heathcliff and Catherine don’t die together, however, and, despite what happened in Game Of Thrones, I’m still highly sceptical that Jaime and Cersei will die together in the books either. Yet the impression that Wuthering Heights leaves is that the unhealthy nature of Heathcliff and Catherine’s bond is at the root of their own self-destruction and tragic end:

Ere long, I heard the click of the latch, and Catherine flew up-stairs, breathless and wild; too excited to show gladness: indeed, by her face, you would rather have surmised an awful calamity. – Nelly, Chapter X ‘Mrs. Linton is now just recovering,’ I said; ‘she’ll never be like she was, but her life is spared; and if you really have a regard for her, you’ll shun crossing her way again. […] Another encounter between you and the master would kill her altogether.’ – Nelly, Chapter XIV ‘You have killed me and thriven on it, I think.’ - Catherine, Chapter XV “’Nay, it’s enough that he has murdered one of you,’ I observed aloud. ‘At the Grange, everyone knows your sister would have been living now had it not been for Mr. Heathcliff. After all, it is preferable to be hated than loved by him. When I recollect how happy we were, how happy Catherine was before he came, I’m fit to curse the day.’ Most likely, Heathcliff noticed more the truth of what was said, than the spirit of the person who said it. His attention was roused, I saw, for his eyes rained down tears among the ashes, and he drew his breath in suffocating sighs.” – Isabella, Chapter XVII ‘She might have been living yet, if it had not been for him!’ was his constant bitter reflection; and, in his eyes, Heathcliff seemed a murderer. – Nelly, Chapter XXI

‘I forgive what you have done to me. I love my murderer but yours! How can I?’ – Heathcliff, Chapter XV ‘It was a strange way of killing: not by inches, but by fractions of hairbreadths, to beguile me with the spectre of a hope through eighteen years!’ – Heathcliff, Chapter XXIX

The intense horror of nightmare came over me: I tried to draw back my arm, but the hand clung to it, and a most melancholy voice sobbed, ‘Let me in let me in!’ ‘Who are you?’ I asked, struggling, meanwhile, to disengage myself. ‘Catherine Linton,’ it replied, shiveringly (why did I think of Linton? I had read Earnshaw twenty times for Linton) ‘I’m come home: I’d lost my way on the moor!’ As it spoke, I discerned, obscurely, a child’s face looking through the window. - Mr. Lockwood, Chapter III The following evening was very wet: indeed, it poured down till day-dawn; and, as I took my morning walk round the house, I observed the master’s window swinging open, and the rain driving straight in. […] I peeped in. Mr. Heathcliff was there laid on his back. His eyes met mine so keen and fierce, I started; and then he seemed to smile. I could not think him dead: but his face and throat were washed with rain; the bed-clothes dripped, and he was perfectly still. The lattice, flapping to and fro, had grazed one hand that rested on the sill; no blood trickled from the broken skin, and when I put my fingers to it, I could doubt no more: he was dead and stark! – Nelly, Chapter XXXVI

And I wouldn’t be surprised if A Song Of Ice And Fire were to go in the same direction:

It is raining again, he thought when he saw how wet she was. The water was trickling down her cloak to puddle round her feet. How did she get here? I never heard her enter. She was dressed like a tavern wench in a heavy roughspun cloak, badly dyed in mottled browns and fraying at the hem. A hood concealed her face, but he could see the candles dancing in the green pools of her eyes, and when she moved he knew her. – Jaime, AFFC I thought that I was the Warrior and Cersei was the Maid, but all the time she was the Stranger, hiding her true face from my gaze. – Jaime, AFFC The Stranger represents death and the unknown, and leads the dead to the other world. Whilst referred to as male, he is neither male nor female. The Stranger's face has been described as half-human, concealed beneath a hooded mantle. – A Wiki Of Ice And Fire

“Gold shall be their crowns and gold their shrouds. And when your tears have drowned you, the valonqar shall wrap his hands about your pale white throat and choke the life from you.” – Maggy The Frog, AFFC “Tyrion is the valonqar. Do you use that word in Myr? It's High Valyrian, it means little brother.” - Cersei, AFFC “He came into this world holding my foot, our old maester said”. – Cersei, AGOT “The Imp is no longer my brother, if he ever was.” – Cersei, AFFC A man stepped into the lantern light, and she saw his cloak was white. “Jaime?” I dreamt of one brother, but the other has come to wake me. – Cersei, AFFC

So, in conclusion, I find it plausible that George might have simply taken the narcissism, the violence and the “twin soul”/“other half” connection present in Wuthering Heights to it’s even more extreme by creating the chaotic mess that is the incestuous relationship between twins who are mirror images of each other... And there's a decent number of parallels to at least make a case for it!

Tag: @faintingheroine

#this is huge :o #but honestly I cut so much other stuff that I wanted to talk about #jaime lannister #cersei lannister #heathcliff #catherine earnshaw #parallels #meta #valyrianscrolls #asoiaf #wuthering heights

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burningvelvet · 10 months ago

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will never get over the fact that mr. heathcliff and mr. arthur huntington are canonically more attractive than mr. rochester.

aside from the fact that they're both described as being handsome, and mr. rochester is described as being not handsome, we can see this play out in the text. while it's a point that mr. rochester's love interests only want him for his money/status, with arthur and heathcliff that's not entirely the case (you could argue that isabella is partly concerned with heathcliff's newfound wealth, but imo if he wasn't handsome as well, she probably wouldn't bother).

like helen I Love My Bible graham sees arthur and immediately starts drawing and painting him to sublimate her very very obvious attraction that everyone (including him) is aware of. even though she's told he's horrible, she says I CAN FIX HIM!!!! JUST LOOK AT HIM!!! and annabella just openly cheats on her husband with him for years. like helen, isabella linton is told that heathcliff is horrible but she's like BUT HOW CAN THAT BE TRUE WHEN HANDSOME? HAVE YOU SEEN HIM? and as soon as mr. lockwood meets heathcliff in the very beginning he becomes obsessed with him. even after heathcliff lets him be attacked by his vicious dogs, mr. lockwood refuses to leave him alone. not to mention that even the initially biased and usually critical nelly agrees that he's handsome, and cathy literally dying because she regrets not marrying him

— although cathy/heathcliff's bond is much more than skin deep / isn't about looks or regular forms of attraction (bc they have an almost twin-like, spiritual bond) i feel like seeing him healthy and handsome and "glowed up" really hurt cathy 10x more than she was hurt before his return, bc back then she could maybe try to delude herself out of missing him as much by remembering him when he was in his slovenly servant role & embarrassing her infront of the lintons — but seeing proof of his potential & that he always did have it in him to accrue & maintain wealth/education/fashion (and yes, good looks too), & that he could've/would've done so if he'd married her, is really what helped to kill her (aside from... y'know, the whole childbirth thing of course - but the narrative does heavily imply that the drama from heathcliff's return decreased her chances of surviving childbirth, so when i refer to her death, i'm looking at the more internal/emotional causes)

#i still love him maybe the best its just funny #also all of charlotte brontë's main love interests being unattractive in general #jane eyre #mr. rochester #mr rochester #arthur huntington #heathcliff #heathcliff wuthering heights #wuthering heights #the tenant of wildfell hall #the brontës #books #victorian literature #literature #english literature #analysis #my analysis #my writing #book thoughts

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justforbooks · 11 months ago

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Despite the occasionally visceral and often rebellious nature of his poetry, Benjamin Zephaniah, who has died aged 65 of a brain tumour, had such wide appeal in the UK that he became something close to a national treasure, attracting devotion among all classes and types of people, young as well as old.

With a down-to-earth mission to take poetry wherever he could – and especially to those who would not normally read it – his reach also extended to other parts of the world, where he was respected as a writer and performer who could be relied upon to speak his mind with forthrightness, honesty and self-effacing humour.

From an unpromising start to life in Birmingham, Zephaniah hauled himself into the public eye during the early 1980s by hitching himself to a post-punk caravan of streetwise performance poets such as John Cooper Clarke, Attila the Stockbroker and, at a slightly greater remove, Linton Kwesi Johnson – all of whom eschewed the abstract in favour of writing with a fierce political edge about everyday life.

Focusing initially on the debilitating effects of racism, including through his breakthrough poem Dis Policeman Keeps on Kicking Me to Death, Zephaniah later branched out to consider other topics that were close his heart, including unemployment, homelessness and, as a vegan from the age of 13, animal rights.

In addition to writing novels for adults, he also harnessed his talent for simple language to become a bestselling author for teenagers, with books such as Talking Turkeys (1994) and Windrush Child (2020) that became standard school reading material in multicultural Britain.

Zephaniah was born Benjamin Springer in the Hockley area of Birmingham to Oswald Springer, a post office worker, and Leneve (nee Wright), a nurse, who had emigrated to Britain from Barbados and Jamaica respectively. He had a twin sister, Velda, and six other siblings. Experiencing racism as a child on an almost daily basis, he also felt unhappiness at home, where his father was a distant and violent figure, especially to his mother. When he was 10, after Leneve had received an especially savage beating, she and Benjamin went on the run together.

Living a hand-to-mouth existence, the pair never returned, leaving the other children of the family in estrangement. The dislocation that followed had its effect on Zephaniah: at 13 he was expelled from Broadway school, later spending time in borstal, while in his late teens he was imprisoned for various offences, including affray and burglary.

Poetry, Rastafarianism and an iron will were his salvation. Realising that he was going to face further longer spells in jail or even an early death through gang-related violence, at the age of 22 he left Birmingham and headed for London to be a poet.

One of his first memories of composing poetry had come as a small boy while walking to the corner shop, and, though dyslexic, he had inherited from his mother a great lyrical facility. By the age of 15 he had a reputation as a wordsmith, and when the elders of his mother’s church, feeling he had a prophet-like quality with language, dubbed him Zephaniah (“treasured by God”), the name stuck.

In London he became part of the punk, reggae and alternative comedy scenes, reading his poems during breaks at gigs. His first collection of poetry, Pen Rhythm, was published in 1980 by a co-operative, after which, like Johnson, he began to turn to dub poetry, adding reggae music to his words with a debut album, Rasta (1982).

Soon in demand for radio, TV and film work, Zephaniah played Moses in the film Farendj in 1990 and had a TV play, Dread Poets Society, screened by the BBC the following year. His first novel, Face, about a young man whose life is dramatically changed by facial injuries he receives while joyriding, was published in 1999, but in the preceding years he had continued to produce a steady stream of poetry collections, including The Dread Affair (1985), Inna Liverpool (1988), City Psalms (1992) and Propa Propaganda (1996).

In addition to his 14 poetry books and seven dub poetry albums, over the years he produced further novels and children’s books, as well as seven plays. Among his more high-profile acting roles was a stint as the street preacher Jeremiah Jesus in the TV drama series Peaky Blinders.

In later life he moved from London to Lincolnshire, where he lived quietly, notwithstanding the energy he threw into countless projects. Although committed to widening access and undermining elites, Zephaniah saw this as compatible with academic work, and in 2011 accepted the post of professor of poetry and creative writing at Brunel University, where he was a regular, friendly presence in the staffroom and a committed, hardworking lecturer.

More recently he had been spending three months of the year in China, where he practised tai chi, but, despite his largely peaceable nature, he remained an angry man with a punk sensibility, identifying, he said, most easily with anarchism and observing that “when I see what people have to put up with from their governments, I’m surprised they don’t rise up more often”.

Consistently radical to the end, he refused the offer of an OBE in 2003, and 15 years later scotched any idea that he might become the poet laureate in succession to Carol Ann Duffy by explaining in poetic form: “Don’t take my word, go check the verse / Cause every laureate gets worse”.

His 1990 marriage to Amina, a theatre administrator, ended in divorce in 2001.

🔔 Benjamin Obadiah Iqbal Zephaniah, poet and author, born 15 April 1958; died 7 December 2023

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

#just for books #benjamin zephaniah #in memoriam

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louisupdates · 1 year ago

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A lucky collector will be able to purchase one of Louis’ white label vinyls through auction to benefit the Brit Trust. [Article]

The White Label Auction in Aid of The BRIT Trust – the world’s only known auction of “white label” test pressings – takes place next week on Tuesday, 6th June 2023. This year it will have more than 200 lots of highly collectible ‘white-label’ test pressings – the most offered in the four editions of the auction to date since it began in 2019.

The online/on-site auction is once again being hosted by music memorabilia and vinyl records specialists Omega Auctions from their Newton-Le-Willows (Greater Manchester) base. The full catalogue can be accessed here.

Fans and collectors can bid from a huge selection of white label test pressings that rarely come to market, with some even signed by the artists such as The Cure, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, New Order, and Wilko Johnson.

The UK’s record labels led by Universal Music UK, who founded the event with the BPI, along with BMG, Domino Recordings, Cherry Red, Sony Music Entertainment UK, Warner Records and others, each year join forces to curate a broad selection of white label auction lots to raise funds for the vital work of music industry charity The BRIT Trust – which promotes education and wellbeing through music and the creative arts to support causes that include the BRIT School and Nordoff and Robbins.

In January the BPI reported that vinyl albums had recorded a 15th year of consecutive growth in the UK, with over 5.5m LPs purchased in 2022. This rising demand for vinyl has in turn resulted in a growing archive of white label test pressings – so called because there is no sleeve artwork at this early stage – which record labels produce ahead of the full release of an album to ensure its audio quality. With only a handful produced, these first-off-the-press copies are snapped up by collectors on the rare occasions they become available, as evidenced by the huge interest in the three White Labels Auctions to date, which between them have raised around £100,000.

White label test pressings by the following artists:

Arcade Fire / Beth Gibbons, Portishead / Black Grape / Blind Faith / Blossoms / Brian Eno / Bryan Ferry / Budgie / Buzzcocks / Calvin Harris & Dua Lipa / Calvin Harris, Katy Perry & Pharrell Williams / Calvin Harris & Sam Smith / Camel / Caravan / Celeste / The Charlatans / Chemical Brothers / Christy Moore / Corinne Bailey-Rae / Cream / The Cure / Daryl Hall & John Oates / Deep Purple / Derek and The Dominoes / Dexy’s Midnight Runners / Diana Ross / Dio / Dirty Pretty Things / Donovan / Doves / Duffy / Dusty Springfield / Ed Sheeran / Emeli Sandé / Eric Carmen / Eric Clapton / The Ethiopians / Eurythmics / The Fall / Fairport Convention / Frankie Goes To Hollywood / ightened Rabbit / Gary Moore / Gaz Coombes / Genesis / George Ezra / Graham Parker / Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five / Gregory Isaacs / Helloween / Inspiral Carpets / Iggy Pop / J Hus / Jacob Collier / Jake Bugg / The Jam / Jamie T / Joe Cocker / John Martyn / John Martyn & Beverley Martyn / John Mayall / Joni Mitchell / Julian Cope / Justin Hayward and John Lodge / Karl Hyde / Kate Nash / Katie J Pearson / Kelis / Kid Creole / Kings of Convenience / Koffee / The LA’s / Laura Marling / Level 42 / Led Zeppelin / Lindisfarne / Linton Kwesi-Johnson / Louis Tomlinson / Ludovico Einaudi / The Lumineers / McAlmont & Butler / Madness / Manic Street Preachers / Marianne Faithfull / Mark Ronson & Miley Cyrus / Mark Knopfler / Meat Loaf / Melt Yourself Down / The Members / The Mighty Diamonds / Mike and The Mechanics / Mike Oldfield / MJ Cole Moby / Monty Python / The Moody Blues / Motorhead / Mott The Hoople / Nathaniel Rateliff / Nazareth / Neneh Cherry / New Order / Nicholas Briteli / Noah and The Whale / Nothing But Thieves / Nova Twins / Orchestra Manouevres in the Dark / Pale Fountains / Paloma Faith / Paul Weller/ Penguin Café Orchestra / Pete Townshend / Pete Townshend and Ronnie Lane/ PiL / Pulp / Quincy Jones / Rag ‘n’ Bone Man / Rainbow / Rhys Lewis / Richard & Linda Thompson / Rick Wakeman / Rizzle Kicks / Robbie Williams / Robyn / Roger Waters / Ronnie James / Rory Gallagher / The Ruts / Sam Cooke / Sandie Shaw / Sandie Shaw & The Smiths / Sandy Denny / Scissor Sisters / The Scorpions / Scott Walker / Selecta’s Choice Series / Sex Pistols / Shed Seven / The Silvertones / Simple Minds / The Skatalites / Sparks / The Slits / Soul II Soul / The Specials / The Spice Girls / Squeeze / Status Quo / Stereophonics / Steve Winwood / The Stone Roses / Supertramp / T-Rex / Tame Impala / Tangerine Dream / Teardrop Explodes / Tears For Fears / The Teskey Brothers / Therapy? / Thin Lizzy / Tom Speight / Travis / UB40 / The Undertones / Underworld / UNKLE / The Vaccines / The Vamps / Van Morrison / Various: Blue Note / Various Folk / Various Dance - John Morales and others / Various – Little Big Lies / Various – NOW Yearbooks 1980 - 1985 / Various – The Wanderer / Various – Soul / Various – Sound of the Suburbs / The Verve / The Wedding Present / The Who / Wilko Johnson / You Me At Six

See here for full Omega Auctions catalogue list of featured titles.

#brit trust #white label vinyl auction #louis tomlinson #1.6.2023

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queen-diamond-serenity · 1 year ago

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Mary Linton and Arthur Morgan

Yeah I know a lot of people do not like Mary but I actually like them together when I look at them they remind me of twin flames they are the same kind of person but fate has them living on opposite sides.

I ship them. And I ship them hard I love them together and like I said fate was so unkind to these two people that were in love. They were truly robbed.

Well I entertain Arthur with other ships I don't ship him with anyone else other than Mary. I mean I play around with the idea of other people especially when it comes to Mary Beth Or Sadie Adler. I feel like there aren't enough people who ship him amongst these women especially Mary Linton.

#red dead redemption 2 #rdr2 #arthur morgan #mary linton

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steelycunt · 2 years ago

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omg okay so… here’s the wuthering heights rant: you weren’t wrong messy for sure, it's even like. an understatement i think and ah! your mum has The Best Taste it’s deffo one of my faves too! just…cathy and heathcliff are really sirius and remus’s evil twins, them but more awful, the worst versions of them, just two people who treat everyone around them so atrociously but are soooo obsessed with each other

and then reading the way they talk to each other first off like calling each other their souls and then ‘would you like to live with your soul in the grave?’ sorry no i Cackled at that they’re sooo catty and melodramatic and arguing right till the end like yeah that’s just them innit…

it's the specific way that they’re shitty people as well like heathcliff being a bitter miserable cunt, so proud and suffering in silence but to a fault, while cathy spends her entire childhood being a menace, running around being this savage defiant kid, she's soo selfish, jealous, has a violent temper but then turns round to the lintons and is so charming and likeable when she wants to be... umm yeah

what i can't stop thinking about though is heathcliff’s rant after cathy’s death, like ‘be with me always—take any form—drive me mad!’ and then r grieving s, stuck in grimmo this crumbling gothic house with kreacher (also are he and joseph not the EXACT same character right down to the self righteous puritanical rants), just those last two years being an absolute cunt to everyone, going insane waiting for sirius to come back from the veil…

and there's no way he's rational about it either, there's no way he's all, 'oh he's with james and lily now, rip i'll just wait here and be miserable alone' umm NO? yeah, i cannot get over this, ‘may you not rest as long as i am living! you said i killed you—haunt me, then!’ because the accuracy?? the way r would literally Become heathcliff, he’d just refuse to move on or do anything after s except lose his mind in that house waiting for his ghost to pop out of the walls, like actually? actually?? what else would he be doing???

sorry this is so long and unintelligible, just imagine me, ever since i put the book down, sitting here frothing at the mouth with kate bush on repeat :/

HI OMG!! okay its coming back to me a bit now that you mention things and i think ur sooo right omg its crazy...literally insane how they're everywhere they're the Worst people in the world. especially the haunt me then quote like literally!! in both a post-81 context and a post-veil context....this is exactly why i am not interested in them moving on or coping in a healthy way after each others death this is why r could never marry tonks he didnt have time he was too busy occupying his every waking thought with his dead boyfriend...incredible

#thank you SO MUCH for this omg its making me want to read it again. wow. might have to do that!! my mother will be thrilled!!#telegram #bellasloth

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vacationbyowners0-blog · 1 year ago

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Mill Cottage

DOWNSTAIRS there is the family kitchen area, and a wetroom next to the sunny twin bedroom. The whole ground-floor area is wheelchair friendly, and is tiled throughout to create a relaxing sense of space and light. There is a TV in the downstairs bedroom.

#The kitchen is fully

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hayashiyawara · 2 years ago

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Full version of my profile pic. These are my female Vergil and Dante OCs, Vergilia (Yukimi) and Dantea (Setsuka) Linton. Yes they are twin girls that are from a different dimension than the Sparda twins. These dresses are from UnknownSpy’s Dressuptober challenges across these two years; Vergilia’s is from this year while Dantea’s is from last year, hence the two older pics attached below. A lot of my older arts are on my twitter and pixiv.

#female vergil #vergilia linton #dantea linton #female dante #dressuptober #unknownspy #devil may cry ocs #dmc ocs #dmcoc #devil may cry #ocs #twin sisters #lolita fashion #artists on tumblr #umbrella #devil may cry au #alternate universe

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devilsskettle · 4 years ago

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me @ myself thinking about the similarities between cathy wuthering heights & laura twin peaks

#i’m not done reading wh yet but goddamn i have some thoughts #cathy earnshaw #(?)#cathy linton #(??)#laura palmer #wuthering heights #twin peaks

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papercutpix · 5 years ago

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GIF I made of my “Bessie & Bettie, the Conjoined Twins” paper puppets.

#paper puppets #stopmotion #animation #conjoined twins #siamese twins #jennifer linton

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like-sands-of-time · 2 years ago

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On the one hand I can't believe the poor boys name is berty then on the other hand his father's name is rikkard 😭

And then imagine the names of the children yet to come! These lovebirds are far too willing to get friendly for them to only have one child please. I give em like 3-6 months before the next announcement 💀

#also now would be a great time to ask if anyone remembers how her mother died... hopefully nothing medical got passed on #how likely is it they'll have twins at some point?#she comes from such a large family its only likely #lilly linton #rikkard ambrose #bertram ambrose

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soracities · 4 years ago

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Hi love!! Umm do you have any words relating to; lovers sharing the same soul/being the same/twin flame type esque? Thank you lovely!!!

“You and I have almost achieved that which is never achieved: we sit in each other’s souls.”

Edna St. Vincent Millay, to Arthur Davison Ficke

“There is no one else for me. I begin and end with you.”

Samantha Towle, Wethering The Storm

"Then if we die we die together (yes, we’ll remain one,) / If we go anywhere we’ll go together."

Walt Whitman, “Good-bye, My Fancy”

Gabriela Mistral, letter to Doris Dana

“We bow, we meet, we pass or sit opposite each other. You are my garments, and I am yours.”

Adonis, “Transformations of the Lover”

“They were two very separate beings, vitally connected, knowing nothing of each other, yet living in their separate ways from one root.”

D.H. Lawrence, The Rainbow

“What were the use of my creation, if I were entirely contained here? My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff's miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning: my great thought in living is himself. If all else perished, and HE remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger: I should not seem a part of it. - My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I AM Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being.”

Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights

Friedrich Nietzsche to Lou Salomé

"I will love you forever; whatever happens. Till I die and after I die, and when I find my way out of the land of the dead, I'll drift about forever, all my atoms, till I find you again..." "I'll be looking for you, Will, every moment, every single moment. And when we do find each other again, we'll cling together so tight that nothing and no one'll ever tear us apart. Every atom of me and every atom of you...We'll live in birds and flowers and dragonflies and pin trees and in clouds and in those little specks of light you see floating in sunbeams...And when they use our atoms to make new lives, they won't just be able to take one, they'll have to take two, one of you and one of me, we'll be joined so tight... “

Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass

One half of me is yours, the other half, yours-- Mine own, I would say. But if mine, then yours, And so all yours.

William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

Sara Eliza Johnson, “Elegy Surrounded by Water”

“I met myself in you.”

Adonis, “Transformations of the Lover”

“I love you. I feel as though we were never strangers, you and I, not even for a moment.”

Friedrich Nietzsche, letter to Mathilde Trampedach

“I won’t hide it: I’m so unused to being – well, understood, perhaps, – so unused to it, that in the very first minutes of our meeting I thought: this is a joke, a masquerade trick … But then … And there are things that are hard to talk about – you’ll rub off their marvellous pollen at the touch of a word … Yes, I need you, my fairy-tale. Because you are the only person I can talk with about the shade of a cloud, about the song of a thought – and about how, when I went out to work today and looked a tall sunflower in the face, it smiled at me with all of its seeds...”

Vladimir Nabokov, letter to his wife Véra

Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“ ...my lover was from the past a poet who came to me in dreams.”

Yu Xuanji, “Three Beautiful Sisters, Orphaned Young”

“What were we before we were we? We must’ve been standing by the shoulder of a dirt road while the city burned. We must’ve been disappearing, like we are now. Maybe in the next life we’ll meet each other for the first time—believing in everything but the harm we’re capable of.”

Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous: A Novel

Rebecca Perry, “Kintsugi”

“He heard what her eyes said to him from beneath their cowl and knew that in some dim past, whether in life or revery, he had heard their tale before.”

James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

“Fonny loved me too much, we needed each other too much. We were a part of each other, flesh of each other’s flesh—which meant that we so took each other for granted that we never thought of the flesh. He had legs, and I had legs—that wasn’t all we knew but that was all we used. They brought us up the stairs and down the stairs and, always, to each other.”

James Baldwin, If Beale Street Could Talk

Alejandra Pizarnik, “On Your Anniversary”

"Together we trace our strange journey, find each other, come on laughing. Some time we’ll cross where life ends. We’ll both look back as far as forever, that first day. I’ll touch you—a new world then. Stars will move a different way. We’ll both end. We’ll both begin.

Remind me again.

William Stafford, “Our Story”

Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

Grey’s Anatomy

#ask #anonymous #quotes about x #in this life and the next

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