dissolved

To Rosa the supreme wonder and delight of the scenery lay in the fact that everything was wet. Things had lately been dry and hard, unyielding to the touch, irresponsive to the cry of her heart. But here all flowed and fluctuated, the whole world was fluid. Near the shore there were patches of thin white ice that broke as she trod on them, so that she had to wade through pools of clear water. Her shoes soon got soaked; as she ran the water sprinkled over her skirt, and the sense of universal moisture intoxicated her. She felt as if, within a minute or two, she herself, and Peter with her, might melt and dissolve into some unknown, salty flow of delight, and become absorbed into the infinite, swaying, wet world. She seemed to see their two figures quite small upon the white plane. She did not know that her pale face became radiant as she ran on.

Isak Dinesen, 'Peter and Rosa' from Winter's Tales.

Photo found here.

thaw

The little boy, when he heard that they were going to see the ice break up, wanted to come with them. Rosa lifted him up. 'No, you cannot come,' she said. 'It is too far away for you. I shall tell you about it when I come back.' The child gravely put his hands to her face. 'No, you will never tell me,' he said. Eline tried to hold back the girl, and told her that it was too far away for her as well. 'Nay, I want to go far away,' said Rosa.  She put on an old cloak, and a pair of scabby furred gloves that belonged to her father, and went out with Peter.

As they came out of the house they saw that the snow was gone from the fields, but that all the same the world was lighter than before, for the air was filled with blurred, resplendent clarity. It almost blinded them. They strove to get up their eyelids against it. To all sides they heard the sound of dripping and running water. The walking was heavy, the melting snow made the road slippery. Peter set of at a quick pace, and then had to wait impatiently for the girl, who in her old shoes slid and stumbled on the path. She caught up with him, warm with the exertion, and giddy, like himself, with the air and the light.

He stood still. 'Listen,' he said, 'that is the lark.' 

Isak Dinesen, 'Peter and Rosa' from Winter's Tales.

Claude Monet: The Thaw at Vétheuil. 1880. Oil on canvas. 60 x 100 cm. Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid.

a hectic, silent, elfish bee-hive

It snowed outside. The wayfarers' footsteps were inaudible upon the thin layer of snow on the pavement; the earth was dumb and dead. But the air was intensely alive. In the dark intervals between the street lamps the falling snow made itself known to the wanderers in a multitudinous, crystalline, icy touch on eyelashes and mouth. But around the gas-lit lantern panes it sprang into sight, a whirl of little, transilluminated wings, which seemed to dance both up and down, a small white world-system, like a hectic, silent, elfish bee-hive.

Isak Dinesen, A Consolatory Tale.

I just read this yesterday and it is indeed a small white world-system outside my window today.

i have looked into the eyes of lions

Lion anatomical engravings by Hermann Dittrich for the Handbuch der Anatomie der Tiere für Künstler.

Post title: Karen Blixen.