Rabindranath Tagore | Dove la mente è senza paura / Where the mind is without fear

"Dove la mente è senza paura" è una poesia scritta dal premio Nobel (1913) Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) prima dell'indipendenza dell'India.

Rappresenta la visione di Tagore di una India nuova e risvegliata.

La poesia originale fu pubblicata nel 1910 e fu inclusa nella raccolta di poesie Gitanjali del 1910.

"Dove la mente è senza paura" è la 35a poesia di Gitanjali ed una delle poesie di Tagore più antologizzate.

Rabindranath Tagore | Dove la mente è senza paura

Dove la mente non è afflitta dalla paura e il capo è tenuto alto,

Dove la conoscenza è libera.

Dove il mondo non si è infranto

in frammenti delimitati da angusti muri domestici.

René Magritte

Charles Dickens | Mr. Pickwick's Christmas

The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (also known as The Pickwick Papers, 1836) is the first novel by English author Charles Dickens.

The book became a publishing phenomenon, with bootleg copies, theatrical performances, Sam Weller joke books, and other merchandise.

The Pickwick Papers was published in 19 issues over 20 months, and it popularised serialised fiction and cliffhanger endings.

Charles Dickens | The Pickwick Papers, 1836

Chapter 28

And numerous indeed are the hearts to which Christmas brings a brief season of happiness and enjoyment.

How many families, whose members have been dispersed and scattered far and wide, in the restless struggles of life, are then reunited, and meet once again in that happy state of companionship and mutual goodwill, which is a source of such pure and unalloyed delight; and one so incompatible with the cares and sorrows of the world, that the religious belief of the most civilised nations, and the rude traditions of the roughest savages, alike number it among the first joys of a future condition of existence, provided for the blessed and happy!

How many old recollections, and how many dormant sympathies, does Christmas time awaken!

Charles Dickens illustrated by Roberto Innocenti (Italian, 1940)

Christmas with Jenny Nyström

Jenny Eugenia Nyström (1854-1946) was a painter and illustrator mainly known as the creator of the Swedish image of the jultomte on Christmas cards and magazine covers, thus linking the Swedish version of Santa Claus to the gnomes and tomtar of Scandinavian folklore.

Her father was a school teacher and piano teacher, and also the cantor of the Kalmar Castle Church.

When Jenny Nyström was eight years old, the family moved to Gothenburg, where her father had found a better paying teaching job.

Sarah Jarrett | Pop Surrealism painter

Sarah Jarrett is a collage artist and illustrator based in Norfolk, UK.

She is fascinated and inspired by the human relationship with nature and the natural world.

She loves plants, flowers, and color.

Jarrett's ladies are frequently surrounded by flowers, birds and branches, which gives them a lovely surrealistic impression.

William Shakespeare | All the world's a stage / Tutto il mondo è un palcoscenico

"All the world's a stage" is the phrase that begins a monologue from William Shakespeare's pastoral comedy As You Like It (believed to have been written in 1599 and first published in the First Folio in 1623), spoken by the melancholy Jaques in Act II Scene VII Line 139.

The speech compares the world to a stage and life to a play and catalogues the seven stages of a man's life, sometimes referred to as the Seven Ages of Man.

Nicola d'Ascenzo (1871-1954) | Seven Ages of Man, stained glass

Located at the west end of the Old Reading Room, the "Seven Ages of Man" window is by the Philadelphia stained-glass studio of Nicola d'Ascenzo.

Modeled after the stone tracery of the apse window of Stratford's Holy Trinity Church, he stained glass within the stonework depicts the "Seven Ages of Man" that Jaques describes in "As You Like It".