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MICROSTORY OF ART
ONLINE JOURNAL FOR ART, CONNOISSEURSHIP AND CULTURAL JOURNALISM

Review

It did cost me 18 Swiss francs, back then, in June of 1996 (a lot of money for a student). And if I had to look back upon my career as I reader, and if I had to pick the most beautiful cultural magazine ever that I have come across during my now several decades long career as a reader, I had not to think for long…
This is my pick. The Vladimir Nabokov issue of the Swiss cultural magazine called du (subtitle back then: Die Zeitschrift der Kultur). The issue was called Vladimir Nabokov. Das Leben erfinden. And this is not exactly going to be a review. It is a review, but the judgment, if there has to be one, has already been spoken. This is the ideal, the ideal of a cultural magazine, cultural journalism at its best, and this is why we come back to this one issue, to this one moment from the history of a classic printed cultural journal here… because this is the spirit. This is the ideal to follow (here, with our own Online Journal, or anywhere else).
It is everything in there, in this one issue, brilliant writing (by Nabokov and by Nabokov connoisseurs, and therefore Nabokov connoisseurship), carefully done graphic design, profound knowledge as to literature and the arts, and all this, as can be felt, being the result of a deep passion and insatiable curiosity.
The one essay by Dieter E. Zimmer, about Nabokov as a lepidopterologist, was followed by a short section that juxtaposed an excerpt from one Nabokov interview and one excerpt from one Nabokov novel wherein the novelist reflected about the butterflies in the Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch, and someone researched the appropriate image. We miss such magazines, and if we don’t produce them ourselves, we won’t have them anymore.
And no, this is not exactly a review. It is a vitrine. For a gem (take a look inside here: http://retro.seals.ch/digbib/view?pid=dkm-003:1996:56::499 ).

(Picture: ricardo.ch; background picture: DS)

MICROSTORY OF ART
ONLINE JOURNAL FOR ART, CONNOISSEURSHIP AND CULTURAL JOURNALISM

Review

MICROSTORY OF ART
ONLINE JOURNAL FOR ART, CONNOISSEURSHIP AND CULTURAL JOURNALISM
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