On 23-Jan-12, at 10:09 PM, Judith Evans wrote:
For lust of knowing what should not be known... Did you know this is on the SAS tower in Hereford? "We are the Pilgrims, master; we shall go Always a little further; it may be Beyond that last blue mountain barred with snow Across that angry or that glimmering sea."
Yes I had read somewhere that there was a quotation from Flecker's "The Golden Journey To Samarkand" on an SAS tower.
I also have learned that Flecker died of tuberculosis at Davos in 1915 (and that this was seen by some as the greatest loss to English literature through early death since Keats).
Assuming that Flecker's stay at Davos was for more than six months, this would have made his presence there at least briefly contemporaneous with the fictitious Hans Castorp, protagonist of Thomas Mann's _Der Zauberberg_ [The Magic Mountain - one of the central works in my literary canon]. If Flecker's residence was longer than 3 years (or he had made previous convalescent visits) his time there would have indeed overlapped with Thomas Mann's presence in Davos in 1912 (which provided the inspiration for _DZ_). Given the cosmopolitan nature of the clientele at the sanatoria there, it could then be possible that they met.
Does anyone know further? Chris Bruce, whose 86 year-old neighbour Frau L. still drives her mid-60's Mercedes down to Davos yearly for a visit to friends who reside in the hotel which was once the sanatorium in which Der Zauberberg was set, in Kiel, Germany -- ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html