"I've become quite adept at fending off the loneliness that used to rob me of my feet in my early twenties. The recipe is work, casual sex and overpriced cocktails." Carley Fortune, "Five Summers with You"

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"It's hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head." Sally Kempton

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"It's easy to kill someone with the slash of a sword. It is hard to be impossible for others to cut down." Yagyu Munenori

Golden Arabesques

The Orient is largely a Western invention. Travelers in the 19th century projected their imaginations onto distant lands. What seemed like exotic allure to them was often a European fantasy. On November 4, 1849, Gustave Flaubert and Stéphane Mallarmé departed from Marseille. Egypt disappointed Flaubert; he noticed a strange simultaneity of splendor and hardship. In March 1850, the two French writers traveled down the Nile by boat.

The fascination with the Orient reflected a desire to challenge conventional European norms. Patterns repeated throughout history: every classic era was followed by Romanticism, and each Sturm und Drang phase gave way to the calmer Biedermeier.

Travelers endured hardships, diseases, and unusual living conditions. They relied on medicine and local remedies to cope with the journey. For Flaubert and Mallarmé, places like Bombay (now Mumbai) and Damascus held the same allure that Rome and Athens had held for Goethe. They were fascinated by the culture, the people, and the everyday life in these lands.

In a more modern context, Diana von Pechstein repeatedly watched visually striking films, creating a rich mental landscape. She surrounds herself with art and interesting details, combining her living space with a sense of curiosity and energy. Diana is highly active, practicing martial arts and learning self-defense techniques. Her weekends are dedicated to expanding her skills and embracing challenges. She is focused, determined, and passionate about mastering her craft.

Constructive Prose

“A pleasant smile broke across his lips.”

This is how Stephan Dedalus, the protagonist of James Joyce’sUlysses, views his friend Buck Mulligan. The two share an apartment in a former Roman defense tower. “A pleasant smile broke across Diana’s lips.”

After a brief encounter, Diana appears to the poet Branwell as someone entirely different. It matters to her that Branwell shares a name with the only brother of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë. Diana feels inspired and alive in his presence. She is energized by the attention and the exchange they share.

Branwell, in turn, offers Diana a unique form of fulfillment: his attention creates space for inspiration and creative expression. His words may be poetic, and Diana responds with her own clear, thoughtful language.

Chambers of Horror

The intricately turned handrails in the town hall of Ederthal are a sight worth seeing. They end in a sphere that is accessible to the public only by prior arrangement. Locals speak of the "Chambers of Horror." The sensationalist tone contains no exaggeration. Two town hall chambers contain the interior and equipment of a documented torture chamber. The humiliating interrogations of the Inquisition also took place in Ederthal, despite the Protestant territorial lords (since Philip the Magnanimous). Diana has known the site since her childhood. Master Masaru is seeing the stuff for the first time. I list them off: a kneeling stool, a rack, various pincers and neck irons, as well as the sword of the "Marschbach Beheader," forming an ensemble of horror (see Ederthal in the Mirror of History by Diana von Pechstein, supported by the "Global Hesse" Foundation).

The beheader is said to have been a self-operating justice fanatic of the 17th century. The official executioners of the territory came from Kassel to Ederthal to behead or hang people. More complicated transitions from life to death were carried out elsewhere before larger audiences.

Alongside the cabinet of horrors, in a small shed one also finds a monstrosity from the department of fairground curiosities. Tales of bog body discoveries are made vivid in naïve illustrations. There is a display case with brooches, fibulae, combs, and blades, and there is the chair of the Novgorod trader, bearing the year 1412, a piece of carving impossible to fully comprehend in just a few hours.

For centuries, the ballad stood in St. Mary's Church, inconveniently available to the descendants of a man of the world. Until television arrived, the memory of the community stretched far back into the past. There was an Ederthal man named Gotthilf who, while still almost a child, followed travelers as far as Stralsund. He found a livelihood at sea. He became a member of a Hansa (not the Hanseatic league of merchants and cities). Hansa is a Germanic word for community. If one lost membership, one was "verhanst," cast out.

In the Kattegat, Gotthilf harvested herring that were so abundant one could catch them with bare hands. He returned home with a bear trained to locate wild honey. The bear might also have been a large dog. Gotthilf taught hunting with blunt arrows for valuable fur animals in the Russian-Scandinavian manner. In his account, magnates appeared wearing silk of Mongolian origin, brought via Venice to Pomerania.

Gotthilf was among those who, with a letter of safe conduct from the Mecklenburg dukes, had damaged the maritime great power Denmark (and main heir of the Varangian expansion) in the Baltic Sea. The Hanseatic sailors called their warships "peace cogs."

All this and much more is told by Diana, in her capacity as a private lecturer in her lectures at the Ederthal Landgrave Philip University. She is also Ederthal's tourism coordinator.

Tenderly, Diana guides Masaru's fingers over the legendary chair relief. Their playful hands follow the contours of a man in a buttoned coat. He wears a beret and pointed shoes. His beard, reaching down to his belt, is parted and braided.