Nescio – Amsterdam Stories (LRB review 23 May 2013) : Fritz Gronloh (1881 – 1961) is added to the Wordstall pantheon:
… along with emblematic modernists such as
Van Gogh, Pessoa, and especially… (given their similar office lives spent in 3-piece business suits with crisp white handkerchiefs in their breast pockets)
Wallace Stevens.
I am looking forward to reading the translation from the unreliable text of the Netherlands (their written language being apparently under constant review). The painting of Orpheus which made such a lasting impression on me may well have been painted in the Low Countries too – the northern style and novelistic detail suggests. The painting is to be found at the far end of the Museo di Castelvecchio in Verona on one of the false floors constructed there within the castle, and, I don’t know why, I too find in my desire to read Gronloh’s text a sense of the end of Orpheus: the choice between being headless or bodyless.