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Robert Alor

@robertalor.bsky.social
253 followers 39 following 131 posts

'I can't get over how it all works in together' – J.

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Hans Balmes @hans596.bsky.social · 6h
Herman De Vries had it all laid out for us - entering the Skulpture garden of Kröller-Müller-Museum: „my poetry is the world...“
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Robert Alor @robertalor.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
In memory of György Litván
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Robert Alor @robertalor.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Budapest
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Robert Alor @robertalor.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Budapest
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Robert Alor @robertalor.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Buda
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Robert Alor @robertalor.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Buda
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Anna Iltnere @sealibrary.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
this spring the Sea Library received one hundred books that belonged to an old sailor who once visited me and we spent a long evening talking. after he died, his daughter contacted me and brought me his sea collection. this photo is mesmerising.
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Simon Kővesi @kovesi.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Colin Burrow, defining literary criticism, brilliantly, in the LRB: @lrb.co.uk
In the LRB, Colin Burrow writes: 

But to return to the point of it all. Literary criticism is primarily about learning to read very complex creations and situations carefully. That requires a willingness to think and rethink, to take a thought and run with it until it either ceases to be viable or (ideally) generates its own internal impetus. It requires accepting that sometimes you get it wrong and that sometimes other people get it wrong. It makes you pull together a whole range of messy human bits and pieces, from autobiography to philology to counting lines and underlining letters and seeing almost invisible patterns, through histories of individuals and of peoples. All of this can go towards understanding the way a poem might cohere or interestingly not cohere. You’ve got to be bold sometimes in pushing a point and sometimes you’ve got to be humble about things you can’t see or haven’t seen. There’s a dash of politics, or more than a dash if you want that, and there could be a dash of religion too, if that’s your thing. But there has to be a great measure of self-awareness, about where you stand or sit or the corners into which you have been pushed by where you come from. Literary criticism is a supremely occasional skill, where you have to be bold enough to operate where there aren’t any clear rules and make up your own, and decide for yourself what you think, and maybe set that beside what other cleverer people have thought. Someone else might come along and see it differently, but if you’ve made them argue with you then you’ve done something worthwhile. If that doesn’t have a point to it, just in itself, then probably living doesn’t have a point to it either, because making ad hoc judgments on the basis of a mosaic of information and misinformation about people and about what you should say on a particular occasion, even a difficult one, is what we all need to do every day. Literary criticism is like the mess of life, an exercise in tact and understanding.
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Tibor M. Kalman @kalmantibs.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
What a powerful moment. World-renowned Hungarian-British classical pianist and conductor Sir András Schiff returned to his homeland after a 16-year self-imposed exile, having fiercely boycotted performing during nearly two decades of the Orbán regime. 🙏🏼🌍🕊️ 📷 Prime Minister Péter Magyar
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alix e. harrow @alixeharrow.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
this is perhaps the best piece of journalism i have ever been involved with
How long have you known Alix Harrow?

Wait, that’s her name? 

Yep.
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Philip Hoare @philiphoare.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
funny how a person so short should have bookshelves so tall; perhaps he climbed up them... or perhaps he reclined on his sofa and waited for some handsome lackey to do it for him
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Anna Iltnere @sealibrary.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Truman Capote died a few hours before I was born, it always feels weird to think about that and how much I adore his summer house and so many other things.
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Tibor M. Kalman @kalmantibs.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Congratulations to Swiss-Hungarian photographer Vincent Baumgartner; an exhibit opened today featuring his work. Many of the architectural photos I share come straight from his portfolio at buildingstelltales.com. Thank you, Vincent, for capturing the essence of this beautiful, timeless city! 🙏🏼🌍🕊️
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Alona Ferber @aloner.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
What a beautiful letter about the way that “our intelligence is embodied, evolved and biological, and inseparable from our bodies”
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John Latta @lattaj.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
I keep thinking about this Ashbery-owned Jan Matulka painting, its all-over intricacy and liveliness (the emphatic regular brushstrokes of the vegetation), and the brilliant heart-rending red punctum of the chimney.
Jan Matulka, “Untitled,” mid-1920s
Watercolor and opaque watercolor over black chalk


“. . . probably inspired by one of the New England seaport towns—Gloucester, Rockport, or Provincetown—where he regularly summered . . .”
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John Walters @johnwalterswildife.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
The Pebble Hook-tips Drepana falcataria in my 'caterpillar zoo' are now ready to pupate. They first use silk to fold a living Birch leaf. The cocoon is formed within the fold. The leaf will fall into the leaf litter where the pupa will overwinter. Time lapse over 2 hours. Buckfastleigh, Devon
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J Hoberman @jhoberman.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
www.nybooks.com/online/2026/... Amrum—a German movie about the end of WWII as experienced by a boy on the N Sea island for which the film ia titles—is both exotic & familiar. (Indeed, my own family also has WWII–era ties to Amrum & like the film, their story has elements of a German volksmärchen.)
nybooks.com
Ghosts of Amrum | J. Hoberman
The story of Amrum—a German movie about the last days and immediate aftermath of World War II as experienced by a twelve-year-old boy on the isolated
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Jeremy Noel-Tod @jntod.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
I wrote about the best travel guides to Britain that you’ve (probably) never heard of, and how their German author’s love of poetry is their secret sauce
someflowerssoon.substack.com
Flair and Care
The uses of poetry to a brilliant travel writer
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Philippe Auclair @philippeauclair.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
Amidst all the ugliness, a haven of joy and beauty: the exhibition devoted to the Benton End school at the Garden Museum next to Lambeth Palace, curated with so much love, care and imagination - when the paths of Cedric Morris, Lucian Freud, Elizabeth David and Beth Chatto intersect. A must-go.
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J Hoberman @jhoberman.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
www.villagevoice.com/stars-hype-f... Walk down memory lane: 41+ years after piece appeared in print, the vestigial Voice puts it online (and dig the cover line-up complete w Warhol). Those were the days. Thanks Bob!
villagevoice.com
Stars & Hype Forever: In 1985, Ronald Reagan’s Reelection Represented the “Triumph of the Irrational” - The Village Voice
J. Hoberman's 1985 Village Voice essay covered Ronald Reagan's propensity to comfort the rich and punch down on the needy.
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Ian Smith @iankmsmith.ft.com · 12/08/2026
Excited for later, I still remember this wonderful total eclipse from my youth www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-s8...
youtube.com
Jaffa Cakes - Total Eclipse (1999, UK)
YouTube video by The Hall of Advertising
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John Clare @johnclare.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
1825: A Newspaper lye of the first order - 'Mr Gale of Holt in the parish of Bradford Wilts has at present a Pear of the jargonel kind in his possession which was taken by himself from the tree in 1776, 49 years ago & is now as sound as at the first moment it was gathered. It is hung up by the...
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Edwin Heathcote @edwinheathcote.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
Dried out embankment. Danube. Budapest.
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Quanta Magazine @quantamagazine.org · 04/08/2026
Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős’ conjectures have long fascinated mathematicians — and now, AI companies. OpenAI and Google DeepMind are solving Erdős problems with remarkable speed. But what does this mean for the field of mathematics? www.quantamagazine.org/why-the-lege...
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Edwin Heathcote @edwinheathcote.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Couple more unfortunates holding it all up in the heat. Budapest.
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Edwin Heathcote @edwinheathcote.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Hot for this kind of thing. Budapest. 37 degrees.
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Edwin Heathcote @edwinheathcote.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
Work. Budapest.
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Edwin Heathcote @edwinheathcote.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
One of my faves in Budapest. Rózsavölgyi ház. Béla Lajta. 1910-11. Contemporary of Adolf Loos. Look at that elevation. Modernism. But nicer.
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J Hoberman @jhoberman.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
www.nytimes.com/2026/07/24/o... The NYT asked & received, H
nytimes.com
Overlooked No More: Barbara Rubin, Teenage Filmmaker at the Heart of New York’s Underground (Gift Article)
She made the landmark underground film “Christmas on Earth,” and helped bring together artists like Andy Warhol, Allen Ginsberg and Bob Dylan.
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J Hoberman @jhoberman.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
www.nytimes.com/2026/07/22/m... Dostoyevsky’s "White Nights" is a 1st-person case history of unrequited love. Visonti's daringly set-bound version transposes it from summer-solstice mid-19th C Petersburg to wintry mid-20th C Livorno—less adaptation than expression of his own unrealistic longing
nytimes.com
‘White Nights’: A Loner’s All-Consuming Crush (Gift Article)
Immaculately realized and restored, Luchino Visconti’s adaptation of Dostoyevsky’s short story about a chance encounter on a bridge arrives at Film Forum.
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Robert Alor @robertalor.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
... hlo.hu/zoom/sandor-...
hlo.hu
Sándor Márai: Confessions of a Bourgeois I-II. | hlo.hu - Hungarian Literature Online
'As Péter Esterházy once succinctly said, the Hungarian bourgeoisie as a class was made up of exactly one person, Márai himself.' – In our latest addition to the Starter Pack series, Hanna Zelma Horán...
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Robert Alor @robertalor.bsky.social · 07/06/2026
Buda, Gábor Áron utca
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Robert Alor @robertalor.bsky.social · 02/06/2026
Buda, on Hankóczy Jenő utca
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Robert Alor @robertalor.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
1 June 2026 a block away from where Antal Szerb wrote Journey By Moonlight (Utas és holdvilág, 1937) on Torockó utca in Buda
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Robert Alor @robertalor.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
Fillér utca in Buda
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Boris Dralyuk @bdralyuk.bsky.social · 26/05/2026
A brief tribute to my late friend Oscar Mandel (1926-2026). borisdralyuk.substack.com/p/home-goes-...
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Robert Alor @robertalor.bsky.social · 26/05/2026
Pasaréti út, Buda
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Robert Alor @robertalor.bsky.social · 24/05/2026
Interesting and true. Habits of human characters. Bohemia 1520. Castile 1620. Annapolis 1764. New Orleans 1837. Hawarden, Iowa 1932. Later, attention to Andrew Brimmer, best of all. Took a lot of soul to research and Brendan Greeley is a very, very good writer. ( On Bluesky @bhgreeley.bsky.social )
A book with a green cover showing photos of various dollars, titled _The Almighty Dollar, 500 Years of the World's Most Powerful Money_ by Brendan Greeley, being held in front of Bestsellers, a book shop on Október 6 utca in Budapest, Hungary on a sunny sky blue day.
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Robert Alor @robertalor.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
House of Music Hungary
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Robert Alor @robertalor.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
....
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Prospect Magazine @prospectmagazine.co.uk · 16/05/2026
“I think of the poet JH Prynne—who died last month at the age of 89—every time I mow my lawn,” writes Jeremy Noel-Tod
prospectmagazine.co.uk
JH Prynne, resistance fighter
The poet’s work is challenging—but in a way that illuminates our universe, from the atomic level to the cosmic
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J Hoberman @jhoberman.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
www.nytimes.com/2026/05/13/m... A deranged rom-com in the guise of a classically constructed Hollywood farce, it’s also an unclassifiable psychodrama. May acted out onscreen & behind the scenes, filing a lawsuit against Paramount after the studio shortened her original 3-hour cut by over a third.
nytimes.com
‘A New Leaf’: A Romantic Comedy, With Murder on the Mind
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Robert Alor @robertalor.bsky.social · 10/05/2026
Maïa Hruska translated by Sam Taylor, _Kafkaesque: Ten Great Writers Translate the Twentieth Century_
The most widely accepted theory is that nobody understood Kafka better than the communists, and that nobody understood the communists better than Kafka. I believe that the opposite is true: Kafka had no desire to know or understand them. And, to paraphrase the writer Sándor Márai, Kafka's first Hungarian translator, nothing irritates the authorities as much as a silence that denies their existence.
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Robert Alor @robertalor.bsky.social · 10/05/2026
10 May 2026, Buda
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Robert Alor @robertalor.bsky.social · 10/05/2026
10 May 2026, Buda
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Robert Alor @robertalor.bsky.social · 10/05/2026
10 May 2026, Buda
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Tibor M. Kalman @kalmantibs.bsky.social · 10/05/2026
Delighted to see the Hungarian nation rise to meet the moment. The joy on Budapest’s streets — on election night and at Péter Magyar’s inauguration today — has brought this soulful Brahms piece and Charlie Chaplin’s poignant quote back to life. 🙏🏼🇭🇺🕊️
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Szabolcs Panyi @szabolcspanyi.bsky.social · 09/05/2026
🇭🇺🎶 For the first time in Hungarian history, 'The forest is green / Pădure vergyé', the Hungarian Roma community's anthem — which gained that status after a 1993 civil rights protest — was played in parliament, at Prime Minister Péter Magyar's suggestion. Many MPs were in tears, and so was I.
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Robert Alor @robertalor.bsky.social · 09/05/2026
Budapest mood
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Robert Alor @robertalor.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
Magyar Péter. Budapest
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