"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."

― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

#Spooktober 22: The Silver Nose

Famed Italian author Italo Calvino, an author some intellectuals fiercely insist he never wrote fantasy or science fiction way beyond the point of the ridiculous, collected and translated 200 folktales from around the Country and published them in a vastly underrated book.
Among them, some tales will sound familiar and were already presented by Giambattista Basile in his Pentamerone, only to become famous because of Perrault or the Grimm Bros: there’s Beauty and the Beast (Bellinda and the Monster from Tuscany), Cinderella (Grattula Beddattula from Sicily), Snow White (La Bella Venezia, literally Beautiful Venice from Abruzzo), Sleeping Beauty (Sleeping Beauty and her children from Calabria), and Bluebeard (The Silver Nose from Pedimont).
Today I bring you the last one: it features the Devil, laundry and a very clever girl.
The illustration in the header comes from the fantastic project by Rebecca Yanovskaya, who illustrated the horror tabletop RolePlaying Game Bluebeard’s Wife for Magpie Games. You can see her work here.
You can read the rest on my Patreon.
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Spooktober

Spooktober 26 – The Black Monk (1)

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) was a Russian physician, short-story writer and playwright, and I’m not particularly fond of him, though he’s widely regarded as one of the greatest masters of modern short fiction and who am I to argue? His work is celebrated for its psychological

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art and fashion

Beauty and Ugliness: an exhibition

A few pictures from the recently closed exhibition on Beauty and Ugliness as an aesthetic paradigma in which what’s ideal and what’s grotesque melt together as sides of the same coin. The exhibition featured works by Brueghel (lent from the other exhibition at Palazzo Reale),

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October 25, 2026 9:00 am
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