"Childhood of a Magician" by Herman Hesse

I recently read an excerpt of this autobiographical essay in a past issue of "Lapham's Quarterly," and went looking for the entire essay, which reminded me of the writings of one of my favorite authors, Walter de la Mare. It turned out to be, as far as I could tell, only available in a collection of Hesse's essays titled _Autobiographical Writings_, which has not been reprinted since 1972. As I don't see any way in which I could be depriving the author of royalties by sharing it, I have uploaded the entire essay to SendSpace so others could read it. Here is the link, though I haven't used SendSpace in awhile so tell me if I got it wrong
http://www.sendspace.com/file/2qdgbw

begin quote
Fortunately, like most children, I had learned what is most valuable, most indispensable for life before my school years began, taught by apple trees, by rain and sun, river and woods, bees and beetles, taught by the god Pan, taught by the dancing idol in my grandfather's treasure room. I knew my way around in the world, I associated fearlessly with animals and stars. I was at home in orchards and with fishes in the water, and I could already
sing a good number of songs. I could do magic too, a skill that I unfortunately soon forgot and had to relearn at a very advanced age--and I possessed all the legendary wisdom of childhood.
end of quote

Creating a feed from DreamWidth to crosspost to Facebook

Okay, I give up: where are they hiding the directions on how to do this?

You know the infamous "Spock's Brain" episode of Star Trek?

It seems that searching the galaxy for your buddy's lost brain is period, dating to at least the Renaissance.

I only found this out this week, while reading Umberto Eco's _The Infinity of Lists_ which is, surprise, a collection of literary lists.

You can read the appropriate canto from _Orlando_ here
http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/orl/orl34.htm
beginning at:

block quote begin
LXXIII. He, that with other scope had thither soared,
Pauses not all these wonder to peruse:
But led by the disciple of our Lord,
His way towards a spacious vale pursues;
A place wherein is wonderfully stored
Whatever on our earth below we lose.
end block quote

And here is a brief description of some of the lists in Eco's book:

begin block quote
The history of literature is full of obsessive collections of objects. Sometimes these are fantastic, such as the things (as Ariosto tells us) found on the moon by Astolfo, who had gone there to retrieve Orlando's brain. Sometimes they are disturbing, such as the list of malign substances used by the "witches in Shakespeare's Macbeth. Sometimes they are ecstasies of perfumes, such as the collection of flowers that Marino describes in his Adonis. Sometimes they are poor and essential, such as the collection of flotsam that enables Robinson Crusoe to survive on his island, or the poor little treasure that Mark Twain tells us Tom Sawyer put together. Sometimes they are dizzyingly normal, such as the huge collection of insignificant objects in the drawer of Leopold Bloom's kitchen sideboard in Joyce's Ulysses...
block quote end
from _The Infinity of Lists_ by Umberto Eco