830 lines
38 KiB
Markdown
830 lines
38 KiB
Markdown
---
|
||
layout: post
|
||
title: "Snippets"
|
||
date: 2020-12-07 20:47:00
|
||
permalink: snippets/
|
||
categories: snippets
|
||
author: Mahdi
|
||
---
|
||
|
||
Short snippets of thought. Ramblings. Random shite.
|
||
|
||
----
|
||
|
||
Was thinking about what is creativity: connection of seemingly irrelevant concepts. Puns are creative because they make a non-obvious connection. The connection is not nonsensical, but not obvious either.
|
||
|
||
----
|
||
|
||
On Neurodiversity: Dyslexia is not a disorder if society doesn’t depend on reading so much. Reading new invention. What about people who have trouble using technology? Is that a disorder? Is it a bug of the reading and writing systems or humans? What if it was on a computer screen? Would we think of it still as a disease or would we fix the program?
|
||
|
||
----
|
||
|
||
Pieces from Austerlitz:
|
||
“As I think of how little we can hold in mind, how everything is constantly lapsing into oblivion with every extinguished life, how the world is, as it were, draining itself, in that the history of countless places and objects which themselves have no power of memory is never heard, never described or passed on”
|
||
|
||
“All I could think was that such a sentence only appears to mean something, but in truth is at best a makeshift expedient, a kind of unhealthy growth issuing from our ignorance, something which we use, in the same was many sea plants and animals use their tentacles, to grope blindly through the darkness enveloping us. The very thing which may usually convey a sense of purposeful intelligence- the exposition of an idea by means of a certain stylistic facility-now seemed to me nothing but an entirely arbitrary or deluded enterprise.”
|
||
|
||
“I sensed that in truth, I had neither memory nor the power of thought, nor even any existence, that all my life had been a constant process of obliteration, a turning away from myself and the world. If someone had come then to lead me away to a place of execution I would have gone meekly, without a word, without so much as opening my eyes.”
|
||
|
||
“In this dreadful state of mind I sat for hours, for days on end with my face to the <i>wall</i>, tormenting myself and gradually discovering the horror of finding that even the smallest task or duty, for instance arranging assorted objects in a drawer, can be beyond one's power.”
|
||
|
||
“At some time in the past, I thought, I must have made a mistake, and now I am living the wrong life.”
|
||
|
||
“Marie moved closer to me and asked whether I had remembered that tomorrow was my birthday. When we wake up tomorrow, she said, I shall with you every happiness, and it will be like telling a machine working by some unknown mechanism that I hope it will run well. Can't you tell me the reason, she asked, said Austerlitz, why ou remain so unapproachable? Why, she said, have you been like a pool of frozen water ever since we came here? Why do I see your lips opening as if you were about to say something, maybe even cry out loud, and then I hear not the slightest sound? Why did you never unpack when we arrived, always preferring to live out of a rucksack, as it were? We stood there a couple of paces apart, like two actors on stage. The colour of Marie's eyes changed as the light dimmed. And once again I tried to explain to her and to myself what incomprehensible feelings had been weighing on me over the last few days; how I kept thinking, like a madman, that there were mysterious signs and portents all around me here; how it even seemed to me as if the silent facades of the buildings knew something ominous about me, how I had always believed I must be alone, and in spite of my longing for her I now felt it more than ever before.”
|
||
|
||
“That evening in Marienbad, said Austerlitz, I could not admit to myself how right everything Marie said was, but today I know why I felt obliged to turn away when anyone came too close to me, I know that I thought this turning away made me safe, and that at the same time I saw myself transformed into a frightful and hideous creature, a man beyond the pale.”
|
||
|
||
“What made me uneasy at the sight of it, however, was not the question of whether the complex form of the capital, now covered with a puce-tinged encrustation, had really impressed itself on my mind when I passed through Pilsen with the children's transport in the summer of 1939, but the idea, ridiculous in itself, that this cast-iron column, which with its scaly surface seemed almost to approach the nature of a living being, might remember me and was, if I may so put it, said Austerlitz, a witness to what I could no longer recollect for myself.”
|
||
|
||
“Might it not be, continued Austerlitz, that we also have appointments to keep in the past, in what has gone before and is for the most part extinguished, and must go there in search of places and people who have some connection with us on the far side of time, so to speak?”
|
||
|
||
“No one can explain exactly what happens within us when the doors behind which our childhood terrors lurk are flung open.”
|
||
|
||
-----
|
||
|
||
"What if some day or night, a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: "This life as now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence--even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existance is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!" Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: "You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine." If this thought gained possession of you, it would change you as you are, or perhaps crush you." - Nietzsche
|
||
|
||
-----
|
||
|
||
Pieces from The Reader's Block by David Markson:
|
||
|
||
"If an ox could paint a picture, his god would look like an ox. Said Xenophanes"
|
||
|
||
"What has happened? It is life that has happened; and I am old."
|
||
|
||
"Despite decades of self analysis, Freud was so anxiety-ridden about missing trains that he would arrive at the station as much as an hour early. Freud."
|
||
|
||
Sylvia Plath: Horder prescribed her an anti-depressant, a monoamine oxidase inhibitor, a few days before her suicide. Knowing she was at risk alone with two young children, he says he visited her daily and made strenuous efforts to have her admitted to a hospital; when that failed, he arranged for a live-in nurse. Commentators have argued that because anti-depressants may take up to three weeks to take effect, her prescription from Horder would not have taken full effect.
|
||
The nurse was due to arrive at nine on the morning of February 11, 1963, to help Plath with the care of her children. Upon arrival, she could not get into the flat but eventually gained access with the help of a workman, Charles Langridge. They found Plath dead of carbon monoxide poisoning with her head in the oven, having sealed the rooms between her and her sleeping children with tape, towels and cloths. At approximately 4:30 a.m. Plath had placed her head in the oven, with the gas turned on. She was 30 years old. She left bread and butter and milk in the bedroom for her two children who were sleeping.
|
||
|
||
"John Donne posed for a painting in his own shroud. And kept it beside his bed during a long final illness."
|
||
|
||
"Manet was so vituperatively condemned by critics that for a time he was too embarrassed to ask anyone to pose for him.
|
||
Before Cezanne had gained any recognition he once burst into tears when someone sincerely admired his work"
|
||
|
||
"The Persians deployed so many bowmen at Thermopylae that it was said their arrows would blot out the sun.
|
||
To which a Spartan commander: all the better, then we will be fighting in the shade
|
||
In fact only two Spartans survived Thermopylae. One was killed in a battle elsewhere. The other hanged himself in disgrace."
|
||
|
||
"At twenty, Bach made a pilgrimage of more than two hundred miles, on foot, to hear Buxtehude play the organ."
|
||
|
||
"Aesop was a slave. Terence was a slave. Epictetus was a slave."
|
||
|
||
"I am weary, Ananda, and wish to lie down."
|
||
|
||
Galileo’s Abjuration 1633 ...I abjure with sincere heart and unfeigned faith, I curse and detest the said errors and heresies, and generally all and every error and sect contrary to the Holy Catholic Church. And I swear that for the future I will neither say nor assert in speaking or writing such things as may bring upon me similar suspicion; and if I know any heretic, or one suspected of heresy, I will denounce him to this Holy Office, or to the Inquisitor and Ordinary of the place in which I may be. I also swear and promise to adopt and observe entirely all the penances which have been or may be by this Holy Office imposed on me. And if I contravene any of these said promises, protests, or oaths, (which God forbid!) I submit myself to all the pains and penalties which by the Sacred Canons and other Decrees general and particular are against such offenders imposed and promulgated. So help me God and the Holy Gospels, which I touch with my own hands. I Galileo Galilei aforesaid have abjured, sworn, and promised, and hold myself bound as above; and in token of the truth, with my own hand have subscribed the present schedule of my abjuration, and have recited it word by word. In Rome, at the Convent della Minerva, this 22nd day of June, 1633. I, Galileo Galilei, have abjured as above, with my own ha
|
||
|
||
["Eppur si muove"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_yet_it_moves)
|
||
|
||
"Petrarch sometimes wrote letters to long-dead authors. He was also a dedicated hunter of classic manuscripts. Once, after discovering some previously unknown works of Cicero, he wrote Cicero the news."
|
||
|
||
"Poe was expelled from West Point for refusing to obey military orders. Later, James McNeill Whistler would fail there academically."
|
||
|
||
"im westen nichts neues: nothing new in the west"
|
||
|
||
"Impoverished and freezing, Gerard de Nerval hanged himself near a cheap Paris doss-house after no one responded to his late-night knock"
|
||
|
||
"Walter Benjamin committed suicide at the border between France and Spain in 1940. Fleeing the Nazis, he had been turned back by Spanish authorities."
|
||
|
||
"The vocabulary in Shakespeare's plays includes 29,066 different words. There are 29,899 different words in Ulysses."
|
||
|
||
Jarndyce and Jarndyce
|
||
|
||
Occam’s razor
|
||
|
||
"Life is a long preparation for something that never happens" -Yeats
|
||
|
||
"Mark Rothko committed suicide by slashing the inside of his arms at the elbows with a double-edged razor blade. First folding Kleenex over one edge of the blade to keep from cutting his fingers"
|
||
|
||
"Jacques Louis David's _Death of Socrates_ shows Plato seated at the scene in despair. In the _Phaedo_, Plato says he was sick and not there."
|
||
|
||
[Maya Lin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_Lin?wprov=sfti1)
|
||
|
||
"Horace dictated that a writer should set aside a finished poem for nine years. And only then decide if it is worth publishing."
|
||
|
||
"Unquestionably it would have been Mary Magdalen who did the dishes at the Last Supper. Concluded Marguerite Yourcenar."
|
||
|
||
[Bohemianism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohemianism)
|
||
|
||
[Lully](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Baptiste_Lully?wprov=sfti1) died from gangrene, having struck his foot with his long conducting staff during a performance of his Te Deum to celebrate Louis XIV's recovery from surgery. He refused to have his leg amputated so he could still dance.
|
||
|
||
"The tyranny of the ignoramuses is insurmountable and assured for all time. Said Einstein."
|
||
|
||
"Mithridates. Who as Housman says took poison in small doses, to build an immunity. And was run through by a sword."
|
||
|
||
[Heinrich von Kleist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_von_Kleist?wprov=sfti1): On November 21, 1811, the two traveled from Berlin to Wannsee. Prior to their departure, they both penned farewell letters, which along with an account of the final night they spent at the inn Gasthof Stimming, are now part of world literature. Upon their arrival in the vicinity of the Wannsee in Potsdam, Kleist first shot Henriette and then turned the gun on himself. They were buried together in a common grave at Kleine Wannsee (Bismarckstrasse), which has become a tourist attraction.
|
||
|
||
"Bertrand Russell, _re_ having contemplated suicide at sixteen: I did not, however, commit suicide, because I wished to know more about mathematics."
|
||
|
||
"During his interlude with George Sand, Alfred de Musset more than once woke up not long after exhausting sex to find her gone from bed. Intently at work on a novel."
|
||
|
||
"Et Verbum caro factum est: And the Word was made flesh"
|
||
|
||
"Our life is but a warfare and a stranger’s sojourn -Marcus Aurelius"
|
||
|
||
"'[Come Back to the Raft Ag'in, Huck Honey!](http://www.artandpopularculture.com/Come_Back_to_the_Raft_Ag%27in%2C_Huck_Honey%21)' argued a recurrent theme in American literature was an unspoken or implied homoerotic relationship between men, famously using Huckleberry Finn and Jim as examples. Pairs of men flee for wilderness rather than remain in the civilizing and domesticated world of women."
|
||
|
||
"Michelangelo finished _The Last Judgement_ in 1541. Fourteen years later Pope Paul IV ordered Daniele da Volterra to drape forty of the naked figures. Which Salvator Rosa would subsequently suggest made the whole wall look like a public bath."
|
||
|
||
"Sweet the nails, sweet the wood
|
||
<br/>
|
||
Which bore so sweet a burden"
|
||
|
||
"Then we will have Homer and _Don Quixote_, and then we will have saunter and chat, and one more laugh before we die. Said William Cowper, who was mad through most of his life."
|
||
|
||
"One does not finish a poem, one only abandons it."
|
||
|
||
[Jacqueline du Pré](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_yxtaeFuEQ&feature=youtu.be)
|
||
|
||
Verweile doch, du bist so schön: Stay a while, you are so beautiful
|
||
|
||
[Longinus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longinus) is the name given to the _unnamed_ Roman soldier who pierced the side of Jesus with a lance and who in medieval and some modern Christian traditions is described as a convert to Christianity.
|
||
|
||
[Tasso](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerusalem_Delivered?wprov=sfti1) suffered from mental illness and died a few days before he was due to be crowned on the Capitoline Hill as the king of poets by the Pope.
|
||
|
||
All of Plato came down from antiquity in less maimed form than any other writings, an undeniable sign of the esteem in which it was held.
|
||
Nonetheless when Aquinas and other medieval thinkers referred to _the_ philosopher, with no additional identification, it was universally understood that Aristotle was meant.
|
||
|
||
il maestro di color che sanno: the master of those who know
|
||
|
||
Within a few days of his death, Akhmatova wrote:
|
||
<br/>
|
||
Terror fingers all things in the dark,
|
||
<br/>
|
||
Leads moonlight to the axe.
|
||
<br/>
|
||
There's an ominous knock behind the wall:
|
||
<br/>
|
||
A ghost, a thief or a rat...
|
||
<br/>
|
||
|
||
As Nietzsche saw it, the last Christian died on the Cross. (Mahdi: Christianity was not a thing until after Christ’s death though)
|
||
|
||
[Tecumseh](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tecumseh)
|
||
|
||
Mary Shelley was nineteen when she finished Frankenstein
|
||
|
||
Je finis par trouver sacre le desordre de mon esprit: I end up finding sacred the disorder of my mind
|
||
|
||
[Simeon Stylites](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simeon_Stylites), who spent thirty-six years on top of a sixty-foot pillar in the Syrian desert. For most of that time his body a mass of maggot-infested sores.
|
||
The maggots no more than eating what God had intended for them, he said.
|
||
|
||
In 65 AD, Gaius Calpurnius Piso, a Roman statesman, organized a conspiracy against Nero with the help of Subrius Flavus and Sulpicius Asper, a tribune and a centurion of the Praetorian Guard. According to Tacitus, many conspirators wished to "rescue the state" from the emperor and restore the Republic. The freedman Milichus discovered the conspiracy and reported it to Nero's secretary, Epaphroditos. As a result, the conspiracy failed and its members were executed including Lucan, the poet. Nero's previous advisor Seneca was accused by Natalis; he denied the charges but was still ordered to commit suicide as by this point he had fallen out of favor with Nero. Also Petronius. Lucan was 25 and recited his own verses as he bled to death.
|
||
|
||
Three years later Nero would be a suicide on his own part.
|
||
|
||
Lorenzo Ghiberti worked for 21 years on the eastern gates of the [Florence Baptistery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Baptistery). Michelangelo dubbed them the [Gates of Paradise](https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/renaissance-reformation/early-renaissance1/sculpture-architecture-florence/v/ghiberti-gates-paradise).
|
||
|
||
[Salomé's Dance](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvshzV591Gg&feature=youtu.be)
|
||
|
||
"I tell you before God, and as an honest man, your son is the greatest composer known to me by person and repute, he has taste and what is more the greatest skill in composition". Joseph Haydn told Mozart's father.
|
||
|
||
Children depart, miscellaneous relationships wither. Friends move to distant places. Friends die.
|
||
|
||
Non amo te
|
||
|
||
Sempre libera
|
||
|
||
The question of truth versus legend in Alexander's having razed Persepolis at the bidding of Thais. The fair certainty that excessive wine played a part.
|
||
|
||
In Las Meninas, [Maria Bárbola](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_B%C3%A1rbola?wprov=sfti1) is depicted in an unusual way for a person in her position at the time. While people with dwarfism normally did not enjoy much respect in the 17th century and were often depicted in an insulting fashion, Maria Bárbola is depicted in a dignified position, standing upright beside the princess, with a thoughtful and controlled expression, meeting the eyes of the viewer.
|
||
|
||
Cento: patchwork composition of quotations
|
||
|
||
In Canto IV of the _Inferno_, which is to say with 96 percent of his chief work yet unwritten, Dante has the temerity to rank himself sixth in the company of Homer, Virgil, Horace, Ovid and Lucan. Underestimating.
|
||
|
||
Sir John Denham once saved George Wither from being hanged by pleading that so long as Wither was alive, he, Denham, could never be the worst poet in England.
|
||
|
||
Except for Aquinas and the Bible, Descartes almost never read a word. He called the classics a waste of time.
|
||
|
||
[Animula vagula blandula](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animula_vagula_blandula)
|
||
|
||
Bentham defined as the "fundamental axiom" of his philosophy the principle that "it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong."
|
||
|
||
“Caddy held me. She smelled like trees”
|
||
|
||
Freud had thirty-three operations for cancer on his mouth and throat. Joyce had twenty-five operations on his eyes.
|
||
|
||
On mourra seul: we will die alone.
|
||
|
||
Philosopher: lover of knowledge
|
||
|
||
[Djuna Barnes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Djuna_Barnes) had no formal education whatsoever.
|
||
|
||
Caxton me fieri fecit: Caxton caused me to be made.
|
||
|
||
Ah, what a dusty answer gets the soul <br/>
|
||
When hot for certainties in this our life
|
||
|
||
"Art will remain the most astonishing activity of mankind born out of struggle between wisdom and madness, between dream and reality in our mind." -Magdalena Abakanowicz
|
||
|
||
God is dead, everything is permitted.
|
||
|
||
Preoccupied, Beethoven was known to lather his face and then forget to shave. He also possessed an unstrung piano, adequate in his deafness.
|
||
|
||
From Rabelais's will: I have nothing. I owe much. The rest I leave to the poor.
|
||
|
||
[Nadezhda von Meck](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadezhda_von_Meck): She is best known today for her artistic relationship with Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, supporting him financially for thirteen years, so that he could devote himself full-time to composition, while stipulating that they were never to meet. Tchaikovsky dedicated his Symphony No. 4 in F minor to her. She also gave financial support to several other musicians, including Nikolai Rubinstein and Claude Debussy.
|
||
|
||
I do not believe in God, though I believe in Picasso, said Diego Rivera.
|
||
|
||
Thy necessity is greater than mine. Said Philip Sidney, in passing a drink to a dying soldier while dying himself.
|
||
|
||
No needle marks on your Annunciation's arm now.
|
||
|
||
We do not come to thoughts. They come to us.
|
||
|
||
I am! yet what I am who cares, or knows? <br/>
|
||
My friends forsake me like a memory lost. <br/>
|
||
I am the self-consumer of my woes.
|
||
|
||
Wallace Steven's wife Elsie was the model for the face on the United States dime and half-dollar.<br />
|
||
Wallace Steven's wife Elsie and Wallace Stevens had separate bedrooms.
|
||
|
||
When I could have used a wife, I could not support one; when I could support one, I no longer needed any. Said Kant.
|
||
|
||
[Percy Williams Bridgman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percy_Williams_Bridgman?wprov=sfti1), who received the 1946 Nobel Prize in Physics committed suicide.
|
||
|
||
By the early Middle Ages, every third church in Europe claimed to possess splinters from the True Cross. Or the nails. Or thorns from the Crown of Thorns. Several heads of John the Baptist existed, at least as many corpses of Mary Magdalen. Not to add Christ's foreskin.
|
||
|
||
Nietzsche lost his reason because he thought too much. I do not think and therefore cannot go mad. Said Nijinsky, mad.
|
||
|
||
When Dickens, at twelve, worked from 8 A.M. until 8 P.M., six days a week, at the blacking factory, he also walked an hour each way to and from his family's Camden Town slum. And spent Sunday visiting his father in debtor's prison.
|
||
|
||
A small inheritance a few months later allowed his family to leave prison. Dickens was finally allowed to attend school over his mother's objections — she did not want to lose his income. School was short-lived though: At fifteen, Dickens had to return to work. Dickens never got over the time he spent at Warren's and his fierce sense of betrayal and rage at his mother's callousness stayed with him for life. Recalling that time, he said: "I never afterwards forgot, I never shall forget, I never can forget, that my mother was warm for my being sent back [to Warren's Blacking]."
|
||
|
||
Sir Thomas Browne wished that men could reproduce without intercourse. Like trees, he suggested. Fathering twelve children nevertheless.
|
||
|
||
‘Between life and death there is a library,’ she said. ‘And within that library, the shelves go on for ever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things would be if you had made other choices . . . Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets?’ -Matt Haig
|
||
|
||
October 7, 1849. At forty, in Baltimore. Filthy, starving, drunk and/or with delirium tremens, crying out at unseen creatures.
|
||
|
||
[Ruth Ann Steinhagen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Ann_Steinhagen): She told her doctors, after the incident, "I used to go to all the ball games to watch him. We used to wait for them to come out of the clubhouse after the game, and all the time I was watching I was building in my mind that idea of killing him."[5] In 1948, Steinhagen's family sent her to a psychiatrist, but her obsession didn't diminish, even after Waitkus was traded to Philadelphia.[3] After the shooting, police found extensive clippings in her suitcase and even pictures papering the ceiling of her bedroom.
|
||
|
||
[Tanaquil Le Clercq](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanaquil_Le_Clercq). Performing major roles for Balanchine at seventeen. And in a wheelchair from polio not ten years later.
|
||
|
||
An enormous dungheap, Voltaire dismissed the sum of Shakespeare as.
|
||
|
||
Le monde est fait pour aboutir à un beau livre: The world was made in order to result in a beautiful book. Stéphane Mallarmé
|
||
|
||
Oscar Wilde: "One would have to have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without dissolving into tears...of laughter".
|
||
|
||
When Hemingway committed suicide, it was by leaning to press his forehead against the barrels of a shotgun braced at the floor. Thirty-odd years earlier his father had used a revolver.
|
||
|
||
In the decade before his death, Ad Reinhardt painted nothing but black canvases.
|
||
|
||
[Edwin Arlington Robinson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Arlington_Robinson) who was nominated for Nobel Prizei in Literature four times, was working ten hours a day on the construction of a New York subway in his mid-thirties. Checking materials for twenty cents an hour.
|
||
|
||
Virgil worked on the _Aeneid_ for eleven years. And said near his death that it was not finished and should be burned.
|
||
|
||
Levi-Strauss: The invention of melody is the supreme mystery of man.
|
||
|
||
Men never do evil so completely and so cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. Said Pascal.
|
||
|
||
Jeanne Hebuterne, with child, jumped from a window on the morning after Modigliani's death.
|
||
|
||
[Enantiosis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enantiosis?wprov=sfti1):<br />
|
||
By honour and dishonour, by evil report and good report: as deceivers, and yet true; <br/>
|
||
As unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and, behold, we live; as chastened, and not killed; <br/>
|
||
As sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things. <br/>
|
||
|
||
It cost Baudelaire five years of letters and poems to coax Madame Sabatier into bed. Once. Whatever calamity occured, the affair was terminated on the same night.
|
||
|
||
[Dies irae](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dies_irae?wprov=sfti1), latin poem about judgement day.
|
||
|
||
Kafka laughed repeatedly when he was reading his own work.
|
||
|
||
Ignis fatuus: will’o the wisp
|
||
|
||
[Käthe Kollwitz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A4the_Kollwitz) dark etchings / drawings / illustrations.
|
||
|
||
Elizabeth Shaw Melville: Herman has taken to writing poetry. You need not tell anyone, for you know how such things get around.
|
||
|
||
This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen. Two years after the book's appearance Borowski committed suicide. Via gas.
|
||
|
||
"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness." ([Opening lines of Paul Clifford](https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/12/the-opening-sentences-of-paul-clifford.html))
|
||
|
||
Kant knew no music. And said that reading novels diluted the mind.
|
||
|
||
Though I never saw him, or had any personal communication with him, now that he is suddenly dead I realise that he was nearer, dearer and more important to me than anyone else. Said Tolstoy of Dostoievsky. (Mahdi: I used this method to measure how much I love someone. By imagiging how I would feel if they died.)
|
||
|
||
O yes! I am poison'd; mother, make my bed soon,<br />
|
||
For I'm sick at the heart, and I fain wald lie down.
|
||
|
||
[Key Sage artworks](https://www.wikiart.org/en/kay-sage)
|
||
|
||
[Isabel Nicholas painter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabel_Nicholas)
|
||
|
||
Trying to articulate for himself precisely why or even when it was that he commenced to fall out of touch. Not to call. Not to go. Not to do. Or was he not even that fully aware of the process until he found it to be a fait accompli?
|
||
|
||
----
|
||
|
||
"Thinking can hurt your chances, and I want to last". From the Handmaid's Tale
|
||
|
||
----
|
||
|
||
["Trees" (1913)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trees_(poem))
|
||
|
||
I think that I shall never see
|
||
<br/>
|
||
A poem lovely as a tree.
|
||
|
||
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
|
||
<br/>
|
||
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;
|
||
|
||
A tree that looks at God all day,
|
||
<br/>
|
||
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
|
||
|
||
A tree that may in Summer wear
|
||
<br/>
|
||
A nest of robins in her hair;
|
||
|
||
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
|
||
<br/>
|
||
Who intimately lives with rain.
|
||
|
||
Poems are made by fools like me,
|
||
<br/>
|
||
But only God can make a tree.
|
||
|
||
----
|
||
|
||
[In Flanders Fields (1915)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Flanders_Fields?wprov=sfti1)
|
||
|
||
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
|
||
<br/>
|
||
Between the crosses, row on row,
|
||
<br/>
|
||
That mark our place; and in the sky
|
||
<br/>
|
||
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
|
||
<br/>
|
||
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
|
||
<br/>
|
||
|
||
We are the Dead. Short days ago
|
||
<br/>
|
||
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
|
||
<br/>
|
||
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
|
||
<br/>
|
||
In Flanders fields.
|
||
<br/>
|
||
|
||
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
|
||
<br/>
|
||
To you from failing hands we throw
|
||
<br/>
|
||
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
|
||
<br/>
|
||
If ye break faith with us who die
|
||
<br/>
|
||
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
|
||
<br/>
|
||
In Flanders fields.
|
||
|
||
-----
|
||
|
||
Pieces from Sohrab Sepehri's poems:
|
||
|
||
<div class="lang-fa">
|
||
|
||
روزگاری است در این گوشه پژمرده هوا
|
||
<br />
|
||
هر نشاطی مرده است.
|
||
<br />
|
||
|
||
<br />
|
||
..
|
||
<br />
|
||
|
||
با درون سوخته دارم سخن.
|
||
<br />
|
||
کی به پایان میرسد افسانهام؟
|
||
<br />
|
||
|
||
<br />
|
||
..
|
||
<br />
|
||
|
||
گرچه میسوزم از این آتش به جان،
|
||
<br />
|
||
لیک بر این سوختن دل بستهام.
|
||
<br />
|
||
<br />
|
||
|
||
تیرگی پا میکشد از بامها:
|
||
<br />
|
||
صبح میخندد به راه شهر من.
|
||
<br />
|
||
دود می خیزد هنوز از خلوتم.
|
||
<br />
|
||
با درون سوخته دارم سخن.
|
||
<br />
|
||
|
||
<br />
|
||
..
|
||
<br />
|
||
|
||
راه فرو بسته گرچه مرغ به آوا،
|
||
<br />
|
||
قالب خاموشی او صدایی گویاست.
|
||
<br />
|
||
میگذرد لحظهها به چشمش بیدار،
|
||
<br />
|
||
پیکر او لیک سایه-روشن رویاست.
|
||
|
||
<br/>
|
||
..
|
||
<br />
|
||
|
||
تیرگی میآید.
|
||
<br/>
|
||
دشت میگیرد آرام.
|
||
<br/>
|
||
قصه رنگی روز
|
||
<br/>
|
||
میرود رو به تمام.
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
|
||
شاخهها پژمرده است.
|
||
<br/>
|
||
سنگها افسرده است.
|
||
<br/>
|
||
رود مینالد.
|
||
<br/>
|
||
جغد میخواند.
|
||
<br/>
|
||
غم بیامیخته با رنگ غروب.
|
||
<br/>
|
||
میتراود ز لبم قصه سرد:
|
||
<br/>
|
||
دلم افسرده در این تنگ غروب.
|
||
<br/>
|
||
|
||
<br/>
|
||
..
|
||
<br/>
|
||
|
||
غمی غمناک
|
||
<br/>
|
||
|
||
شب سردی است، و من افسرده.
|
||
<br/>
|
||
راه دوری است، و پایی خسته.
|
||
<br/>
|
||
تیرگی هست و چراغی مرده.
|
||
<br/>
|
||
|
||
میکنم، تنها، از جاده عبور:
|
||
<br/>
|
||
دور ماندند ز من آدمها.
|
||
<br/>
|
||
سایهای از سر دیوار گذشت،
|
||
<br/>
|
||
غمی افزود مرا بر غمها.
|
||
<br/>
|
||
|
||
فکر تاریکی و این ویرانی
|
||
<br/>
|
||
بیخبر آمد تا با دل من
|
||
<br/>
|
||
قصهها ساز کند پنهانی.
|
||
<br/>
|
||
|
||
نیست رنگی که بگوید با من
|
||
<br/>
|
||
اندکی صبر، سحر نزدیک است
|
||
<br/>
|
||
هر دم این بانگ بر آرم از دل:
|
||
<br/>
|
||
وای، این شب چقدر تاریک است.
|
||
<br/>
|
||
|
||
خندهای کو که به دل انگیزم؟
|
||
<br/>
|
||
قطرهای کو که به دریا ریزم؟
|
||
<br/>
|
||
صخرهای کو که بدان آویزم؟
|
||
<br/>
|
||
|
||
مثل این است که شب نمناک است.
|
||
<br/>
|
||
دیگران را هم غم هست به دل،
|
||
<br/>
|
||
غم من، لیک، غمی غمناک است.
|
||
<br/>
|
||
|
||
<br />
|
||
..
|
||
<br />
|
||
|
||
خشت میافتد از این دیوار.
|
||
<br />
|
||
رنج بیهوده نگهبانش برد.
|
||
<br />
|
||
دست باید نرود سوی کلنگ،
|
||
<br />
|
||
سیل اگر آمد آسانش برد.
|
||
<br />
|
||
|
||
باد نمناک زمان میگذرد،
|
||
<br />
|
||
رنگ میریزد از پیکر ما.
|
||
<br />
|
||
خانه را نقش فساد است به سقف،
|
||
<br />
|
||
سر نگون خواهد شد بر سر ما.
|
||
<br />
|
||
|
||
<br />
|
||
..
|
||
<br />
|
||
|
||
دره خاموش
|
||
|
||
سکوت، بند گسسته است.
|
||
<br />
|
||
کنار دره، درخت شکوه پیکر بیدی.
|
||
<br />
|
||
در آسمان شفق رنگ
|
||
<br />
|
||
عبور ابر سپیدی.
|
||
<br />
|
||
|
||
نسیم در رگ هر برگ میدود خاموش.
|
||
<br />
|
||
نشسته در پس هر صخره وحشتی به کمین.
|
||
<br />
|
||
کشیده از پس یک سنگ سوسماری سر.
|
||
<br />
|
||
ز خوف دره خاموش
|
||
<br />
|
||
نهفته جنبش پیکر.
|
||
<br />
|
||
به راه مینگرد سرد، خشک، تلخ، غمین.
|
||
<br />
|
||
|
||
چو مار روی تن کوهی میخزد راهی،
|
||
<br />
|
||
به راه، رهگذری.
|
||
<br />
|
||
خیال دره و تنهایی
|
||
<br />
|
||
دوانده در رگ او ترس.
|
||
<br />
|
||
کشیده چشم به هر گوشه نقش چشمه وهم:
|
||
<br />
|
||
ز هر شکاف تن کوه
|
||
<br />
|
||
خزیده بیرون ماری.
|
||
<br />
|
||
|
||
به خشم از پس هر سنگ
|
||
<br />
|
||
کشیده خنجر خاری.
|
||
<br />
|
||
|
||
غروب پر زده از کوه.
|
||
<br />
|
||
به چشم گم شده تصویر راه و راهگذر.
|
||
<br />
|
||
غمی بزرگ، پر از وهم
|
||
<br />
|
||
به صخره سار نشسته است.
|
||
<br />
|
||
درون دره تاریک
|
||
<br />
|
||
سکوت بند گسسته است.
|
||
<br />
|
||
|
||
<br />
|
||
دنگ...
|
||
|
||
دنگ...، دنگ...
|
||
<br />
|
||
ساعت گیچ زمان در شب عمر
|
||
<br />
|
||
میزند پی در پی زنگ.
|
||
<br />
|
||
زهر این فکر که این دم گذر است
|
||
<br />
|
||
میشود نقش به دیوار رگ هستی من.
|
||
<br />
|
||
لحظهام پر شده از اذت
|
||
<br />
|
||
پا به زنگار غمی آلوده است.
|
||
<br />
|
||
لیک چون باید این دم گذرد،
|
||
<br />
|
||
پس اگر میگریم
|
||
<br />
|
||
گریه آم بیثمر است.
|
||
<br />
|
||
و اگر میخندم
|
||
<br />
|
||
خندهام بیهوده است.
|
||
<br />
|
||
|
||
دنگ...، دنگ...
|
||
<br />
|
||
لحظهها میگذرد.
|
||
<br />
|
||
آنچه بگذشت، نمیآید باز.
|
||
<br />
|
||
قصهای هست که هرگز دیگر
|
||
<br />
|
||
نتواند شد آغاز.
|
||
<br />
|
||
مثل این است که یک پرسش بیپاسخ
|
||
<br />
|
||
بر لب سرد زمان ماسیده است.
|
||
<br />
|
||
تند برمیخیزم
|
||
<br />
|
||
تا به دیوار همین لحظه که در آن همه چیز
|
||
<br />
|
||
رنگ اذت دارد، آویزم.
|
||
<br />
|
||
|
||
آنچه میماند از این جهد به جای:
|
||
<br />
|
||
خنده لحظه پنهان شده از چشمانم.
|
||
<br />
|
||
و آنچه بر پیکر او میماند:
|
||
<br />
|
||
نقش انگشتانم.
|
||
<br />
|
||
|
||
دنگ...
|
||
<br />
|
||
فرصتی از کف رفت.
|
||
<br />
|
||
قصهای گشت تمام.
|
||
<br />
|
||
لحظه باید پی لحظه گذرد
|
||
<br />
|
||
تا که جان گیرد در فکر دوام،
|
||
<br />
|
||
این دوامی که درون رگ من ریخته زهر،
|
||
<br />
|
||
وا رهانیده از اندیشه من رشته حال
|
||
<br />
|
||
وز رهی دور و دراز
|
||
<br />
|
||
داده پیوندم با فکر زوال.
|
||
<br />
|
||
|
||
پردهای میگذرد،
|
||
<br />
|
||
پردهای میآید:
|
||
<br />
|
||
میرود نقش پی نقش دگر،
|
||
<br />
|
||
رنگ میلغزد بر رنگ.
|
||
<br />
|
||
ساعت گیج زمان در شب عمر
|
||
<br />
|
||
میزند پر در پی زنگ:
|
||
<br />
|
||
دنگ...، دنگ...،
|
||
<br />
|
||
دنگ...
|
||
<br />
|
||
|
||
|
||
</div>
|
||
|
||
-----
|
||
|
||
Bill Murray: "I think if you can take care of yourself, and then maybe try to take care of someone else, that's sort of how you're supposed to live."
|
||
|
||
----
|
||
|
||
[Fatalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatalism)
|
||
|
||
----
|
||
|
||
Once upon a time there was a king, then a few dress makers offered to make him a dress that only noble and decent people could see. King really liked the idea and ordered them to make a coat for him. They start sewing their seemingly magical material, meanwhile no one actually sees anything, they look as if they are sewing on the air. They are finished with the coat at last and they carefully put it on the king. The king doesn’t see the dress himself, but because he doesn’t want to be found out to be not noble or decent, he starts praising the coat and pays them. Everyone in the palace also praised the dress in the fear of being found as not noble. Even people on street praise the coat of the king. I feel like someone once said Love and made a big deal out of his fantasy of being with someone and everyone else, in fear of being called weirdos just followed along and now we live in a world obsessed with love even though they can’t hold it together most of times
|
||
|
||
----
|
||
|
||
In 1845, the Illustrated London News reported that a Newfoundland dog had been acting less lively over a period of days before being seen "to throw himself in the water and endeavor to sink by preserving perfect stillness of the legs and feet". Every time he was rescued he attempted to do this again before he finally held his head underwater until death. [source](https://web.archive.org/web/20150326032017/http://news.discovery.com/animals/zoo-animals/animal-suicide-behavior.htm)
|
||
|
||
----
|
||
|
||
[Category: People who committed suicide](https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:People_who_committed_suicide)
|
||
|
||
----
|
||
|
||
[A Man's A Man For A' That](https://www.scotsconnection.com/t-forathat.aspx)
|
||
|
||
Is there for honest Poverty
|
||
<br />
|
||
That hings his head, an' a' that;
|
||
<br />
|
||
The coward slave-we pass him by,
|
||
<br />
|
||
We dare be poor for a' that!
|
||
<br />
|
||
For a' that, an' a' that.
|
||
<br />
|
||
Our toils obscure an' a' that,
|
||
<br />
|
||
The rank is but the guinea's stamp,
|
||
<br />
|
||
The Man's the gowd for a' that.
|
||
<br />
|
||
|
||
What though on hamely fare we dine,
|
||
<br />
|
||
Wear hoddin grey, an' a that;
|
||
<br />
|
||
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine;
|
||
<br />
|
||
A Man's a Man for a' that:
|
||
<br />
|
||
For a' that, and a' that,
|
||
<br />
|
||
Their tinsel show, an' a' that;
|
||
<br />
|
||
The honest man, tho' e'er sae poor,
|
||
<br />
|
||
Is king o' men for a' that.
|
||
<br />
|
||
|
||
Ye see yon birkie, ca'd a lord,
|
||
<br />
|
||
Wha struts, an' stares, an' a' that;
|
||
<br />
|
||
Tho' hundreds worship at his word,
|
||
<br />
|
||
He's but a coof for a' that:
|
||
<br />
|
||
For a' that, an' a' that,
|
||
<br />
|
||
His ribband, star, an' a' that:
|
||
<br />
|
||
The man o' independent mind
|
||
<br />
|
||
He looks an' laughs at a' that.
|
||
<br />
|
||
|
||
A prince can mak a belted knight,
|
||
<br />
|
||
A marquis, duke, an' a' that;
|
||
<br />
|
||
But an honest man's abon his might,
|
||
<br />
|
||
Gude faith, he maunna fa' that!
|
||
<br />
|
||
For a' that, an' a' that,
|
||
<br />
|
||
Their dignities an' a' that;
|
||
<br />
|
||
The pith o' sense, an' pride o' worth,
|
||
<br />
|
||
Are higher rank than a' that.
|
||
<br />
|
||
|
||
Then let us pray that come it may,
|
||
<br />
|
||
(As come it will for a' that,)
|
||
<br />
|
||
That Sense and Worth, o'er a' the earth,
|
||
<br />
|
||
Shall bear the gree, an' a' that.
|
||
<br />
|
||
For a' that, an' a' that,
|
||
<br />
|
||
It's comin' yet for a' that,
|
||
<br />
|
||
That Man to Man, the world o'er,
|
||
<br />
|
||
Shall brothers be for a' that.
|
||
<br />
|
||
|
||
----
|
||
|
||
Longfellow poems
|
||
Voices of the Night
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
A Psalm of Life
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Footsteps of Angels
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Flowers
|
||
|
||
|