"All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered."
The Sjöfru is a kind of Rå, a keeper of a particular kind of land in Swedish folklore, and she presides over waterbodies, usually lakes or small scraps of the sea. Her name is usually translated as “Mistress of the Lake”, “Sea Woman” or “Lake Mare”. Technically, her saltwater counterpart should be called havsrå. We have at least one account of a guy who was burned at the stake for having sex with one of these spirits, and today we take a look at it on my Patreon.
From April 12 to September 15, 2025, Venice’s Peggy Guggenheim Collection hosts the richly evocative solo exhibition Maria Helena Vieira da Silva: Anatomy of Space (Anatomia di uno spazio in Italian), curated by Flavia Frigeri, an art historian from London’s National Portrait Gallery. Featuring around
As Blossoms Fall: The Poetry of Ephemeral Love in Nanshoku Ōkagami “Their sleeves were soaked with tears, not from shame, but from knowing they had only this one night. In the garden, plum blossoms were falling—each petal a sigh, each gust a farewell.”— Ihara Saikaku,
In the Courtyard at Dusk: Female Intimacy in Mughal Miniature Painting In the world of the Mughal court, the zenana was a secluded space that offered elite women both constraint and community. Mughal miniature paintings often depicted moments of leisure among women: dressing, reading poetry,
From April 12 to September 15, 2025, Venice’s Peggy Guggenheim Collection hosts the richly evocative solo exhibition Maria Helena Vieira da Silva: Anatomy of Space (Anatomia di uno spazio in Italian), curated by Flavia Frigeri, an art historian from London’s National Portrait Gallery. Featuring around
As Blossoms Fall: The Poetry of Ephemeral Love in Nanshoku Ōkagami “Their sleeves were soaked with tears, not from shame, but from knowing they had only this one night. In the garden, plum blossoms were falling—each petal a sigh, each gust a farewell.”— Ihara Saikaku,
In the Courtyard at Dusk: Female Intimacy in Mughal Miniature Painting In the world of the Mughal court, the zenana was a secluded space that offered elite women both constraint and community. Mughal miniature paintings often depicted moments of leisure among women: dressing, reading poetry,
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