I read the hexameters and dreamed of the life abroad

"In my hands, I had a copy of the Iliad in the Russian hexameter of Gnyeditch; in my pocket, a passport made out in the name of Trotsky, which I wrote in it at random, without even imagining that it would become my name for the rest of my life ... Throughout the journey, the entire car full of passengers drank tea and ate cheap Siberian buns. I read the hexameters and dreamed of the life abroad. The escape proved to be quite without romantic glamour; it dissolved into nothing but an endless drinking of tea."

Leon Trotsky, from "My First Escape".

See also this review by the dreaded Christopher Hitchens, who appears to be unable to throw off those last feverish thoughts that infection with Trotskyist memes at an early age cause.

From the same review (I can't find a source for this online); to the pre-war government of Norway when they announce his deportation:

"This is your first act of surrender to Nazism in your own country. You will pay for this. You think yourselves secure and free to deal with a political exile as you please. But the day is near—remember this!—the day is near when the Nazis will drive you from your country, all of you."

Hitchens compares Trotsky to Cassandra and certainly there is something genuinely reminiscent of a Greek trgedy in the mans life. How come no-one ever based on opera on him?

Comments

Paddington

Ley Lines #1

The concept of "ley lines" is generally thought of in relation to Alfred Watkins, but the stimulus and background for the concept is attributed to the English astronomer Norman Lockyer . [3] [4] [5] On 30 June 1921, Watkins visited Blackwardine in Herefordshire , and went riding a horse near some hills in the vicinity of Bredwardine , when he noted that many of the footpaths there seemed to connect one hilltop to another in a straight line. [6] He was studying a map when he noticed places in alignment. "The whole thing came to me in a flash", he later told his son. [7] It has been suggested that Watkin's experience stemmed from faint memories of an account in September 1870 by William Henry Black given to the British Archaeological Association in Hereford titled Boundaries and Landmarks , in which he speculated that "Monuments exist marking grand geometrical lines which cover the whole of Western Europe". [8] Watkins believed that, in ancie...

Connection #4 - Averroes to Yacoub Almansour

Abū 'l-Walīd Muḥammad bin Aḥmad bin Rushd ( Arabic : أبو الوليد محمد بن احمد بن رشد ‎), better known just as Ibn Rushd ( Arabic : ابن رشد ‎), and in European literature as Averroes (pronounced /əˈvɛroʊ.iːz/ ) (1126 – December 10, 1198), was an Andalusian Muslim polymath ; a master of Aristotelian philosophy, Islamic philosophy , Islamic theology , Maliki law and jurisprudence , logic , psychology , politics , Arabic music theory, and the sciences of medicine , astronomy , geography , mathematics , physics and celestial mechanics . He was born in Córdoba , Al Andalus , modern-day Spain , and died in Marrakech , modern-day Morocco . His school of philosophy is known as Averroism . He has been described by some [1] as the founding father of secular thought in Western Europe and "one of the spiritual fathers of Europe ," [2] although other scholars oppose such claims. Wikipedia Averroes (Abonlwalid Mo'hammed ibn Abmed ibn Mo'hnmmed ibu-Roschd) was ...

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