#239 - What I found in Amsterdam

An episode from 9/7/26: Tonight, I talk about a recent trip to Amsterdam. At the great art museums there I suddenly found myself wondering if the overcrowding in them didn’t suggest what I’ve been saying for a long time on this podcast: that great meaning and intensity is usually found in private experiences. In this case, in the memory of having seen so many great works in person, or actually just in reproduction, even on postcards or t-shirts.

The paintings I mention are: Vermeer’s MilkmaidandLittle Street, Rembrandt’s Jewish Bride and Old Woman Reading, Henrik Avercamp’s Winter Landscape with Ice Skaters, Van Gogh’s Yellow House and Wheatfield Under Thunderclouds, and Rembrandt’sAnatomy Lesson of Dr. Deijman. Finally, I mention visiting the Esnoga, or Portuguese Synagogue.

I close the episode reading part of a letter that the American poet, Hart Crane, wrote when he was twenty four years old. It was written in response to his father’s offer of a job in the family business, and you can read more of it here, or in O My Land, My Friends: The Selected Letters of Hart Crane.

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