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I've lived out my melancholy youth. I don't give a fuck anymore what's behind me, or what's ahead of me. I'm healthy. Incurably healthy. No sorrows, no regrets. No past, no future. The present is enough for me. Day by day. Today!Le bel aujourd'hui! Henry Miller "Tropic of Cancer"

Portraits of Henry Miller by Lena Hades                                                                               莉娜閻王的亨利·米勒畫像
"When a man appears the world bears down on him and breaks his back. There are always too many rotten pillars standing, too much festering humanity for man to bloom. The superstructure is a lie and the foundation is a huge quaking fear. If at intervals of centuries there does appear a man with a desperate, hungry look in his eye, a man that would turn the world upside down in order to create a new race, the love that he brings to the world is turned to bile and he becomes a scourge. If now and then we encounter pages that explode, pages that wound and sear, that wring groans and tears and curses, know that they come from a man with his back up, a man whose only defenses left are his words and his words are always stronger than the lying, crushing weight of the world, stronger than all the racks and wheels which the cowardly invent to crush out the miracle of personality." (Henry Miller)
 
 
"I made these 3 portraits of Henry Miller because I love his books, especially the Tropic of Cancer and the Colossus of Maroussi. . I think he is one of the greatest writers of all time because of his “desperate optimism” – I love this word combination – the optimism as a belief in a better future is a bit stupid thing but it is indispensable to live! Some of Henry Miller quotes hand written by me are being on the wall of my toilet more than 20 years(!) consequently I know these quotes by heart. (By the way there is a good picture of the writer sitting on the toilet ...)))
It’s important to be unbroken and unconquered and unbacked  to be absolutely free, this is the message I receive from Henry Miller when I read his books. And I apprecciate it so much.
Besides Henry Miller's portraits I drew portraits of Ken Kesey, Friedrich Nietzsche, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, P. G. Wodehouse, Stanisław Lem - all these writers I love so much and know their books very well, I'd rather say they are already  a part of myself. I love the pencil drawing since my early childhood, always when I draw a pencil becomes a part of my hand, there's nothing more easy and effortless for my hand than drawing -- maybe I was born with a pencil in my hand..." (Lena Hades, 2nd June 2014)

 

 
 

 

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