She lived in storm and strife, Her soul had such desire For what proud death may bring That it could not endure The common good of life, But lived as ’twere a king That packed his marriage day With banneret and pennon, Trumpet and kettledrum, And the outrageous cannon, To bundle time away That the [...]
Archive for November, 2008
That the Night Come :: W. B. Yeats
Posted in Poetry, tagged Irish Poetry, Poetry, W. B. Yeats, William Butler Yeats on November 25, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
To A Friend Whose Work Has Come To Nothing :: W. B. Yeats
Posted in Poetry, tagged Irish Poetry, Poetry, W. B. Yeats, William Butler Yeats on November 25, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Now all the truth is out, Be secret and take defeat From any brazen throat, For how can you compete, Being honour bred, with one Who, were it proved he lies, Were neither shamed in his own Nor in his neighbor’s eyes? Bred to a harder thing Than Triumph, turn away And like a laughing [...]
When You Are Old :: W. B. Yeats
Posted in Poetry on November 25, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
When you are old and grey and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read and dream of the soft look Your eyes once had and of their shadows deep. How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true; But [...]
Contra “Rule Seventeen: Omit Needless Words!”
Posted in Quotes, tagged Edwin Herbert Lewis, Grammar, locution, Quote, rhetoric, Strunk and White, wordiness on November 24, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Brevity is a great virtue [. . .] yet it may be overestimated. The reader’s mind must be permitted to eddy around the subject. . . . [Yes, brevity is a virtue,] but we must not make a fetish of it. . . . Must one never say great big dog because great equals big? [...]
Don’t forget to bring a towel . . .
Posted in Quotes, tagged Quotes on November 20, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
All great things are achieved in a light heart – Ramtha In formal logic, a formal signal is the signal of defeat: but in the evolution of real knowledge, it marks the first step in progress toward victory. – Alfred North Whitehead NASA astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell came to this conclusion on his return trip [...]
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock :: T. S. Eliot
Posted in Poetry, tagged Irony, Modernism, Poetry, T. S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock on November 18, 2008 | 1 Comment »
S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse A persona che mai tornasse al mondo, Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero, Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.1 LET us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a [...]
Refusing to make any simplifying theoretical statements :: Philosophy and/as/of Literature
Posted in Quotes, tagged Ethics, Henry James, Literature as Moral Philosophy, Moral Philosophy, Nussbaum, Philosophy of Literature on November 18, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Why should it be evident that simplicity and theoretical abstractness are desiderata in a piece of philosophical writing? Couldn’t a text be a work of moral philosophy precisely by showing the complexity and indeterminacy that is really there in human life, and by refusing to make any simplifying theoretical statements? . . . By saying [...]
Into an immensity rich with unutterable expectation
Posted in Quotes, tagged Death in Venice, Quote, Thomas Mann on November 17, 2008 | 1 Comment »
And as so often, he set out to follow him. – Thomas Mann, Death in Venice [translated by David Luke]
Ménalque’s Wildean Nietzscheanism
Posted in Quotes, tagged Andre Gide, Gide, Menalque, Quotes, The Immoralist on November 12, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
‘One has to allow people to be in the right,’ he replied to all the insults. ‘It’s some consolation for the fact that they don’t have anything else.’ * ‘Everything you once held in such high esteem you’ve thrown on the bonfire,’ he said. ‘A little late in the day, perhaps, but the flame burns [...]
Culture, which is born of life, ends up killing it.
Posted in Quotes, tagged Andre Gide, Culture, Decadence, Gide, Quote, The Immoralist on November 12, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Referring to the end of Latin civilization, I represented artistic culture as a type of secretion welling up within a people, at first indicating a plethora, an abundance of health, but later congealing, solidifying, forming a hard membrane preventing direct contact between spirit and nature, creating an appearance of vitality which disguises the decline of [...]
Kiss me, Reggy!
Posted in Quotes, tagged Bloom, James Joyce, Lestrygonians, Quotes, Ulysses on November 10, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
A warm human plumpness settled down on his brain. His brain yielded. Perfume of embraces all him assailed. With hungered flesh obscurely, he mutely craved to adore. (Ulysses, 8.637-39)
Without music life would be a mistake
Posted in Poetry, Quotes, tagged Epigraphs, Pleasures and Days, Proust, Quotes on November 8, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
My flesh is sad, alas! . . . –Stéphane Mallarmé His youth is roaring inside him, he does not hear. –Madame de Sévigné We heal as we console ourselves; the heart cannot always weep or always love. –La Bruyér, Characters, Chapter IV, The Heart The poets say that Apollo tended the flocks of Admetus; so [...]
Paulus Potter :: Marcel Proust
Posted in Poetry, Quotes, tagged Marcel Proust, Poetry, Proust on November 7, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
As crabs, goats, scorpions, the balance and the water-pot lose their meanness when hung as signs in the zodiac, so I can see my own vices without heat in . . . distant persons. –Ralph Waldo Emerson Somber grief of skies uniformly gray, Sadder for being blue during rare bright intervals, And which allow the [...]
Now, it is enough just to die
Posted in Poetry, Quotes, tagged Latin Verse, Lucan, Poetry, Quote, translation on November 6, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Blood pools in the temples; reddened rocks soaked in slaughter. Age is no help: no shame in hastening an old man’s dying day nor in cutting off a babe on the brink of life. For what crime could these young deserve death? Now, it is enough just to die. Bloodlust carries them away: a man [...]
Dissolve the engines of the broken world
Posted in Poetry, Quotes, tagged Latin Verse, Lucan, Marlow, Poetry, translation on November 6, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
So when this world’s compounded union breaks, Time ends and to old Chaos all things turn; Confused stars shall meet, celestial fire Fleet on the the floods, the earth shoulder the sea, Affording it no shore, and Phoebe’s wain Chase Phoebus and enraged affect his place, And strive to shine by day, and full of [...]
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