Paranoia

 

Millet’s L’Angélus, beautiful like the fortuitous encounter on a dissecting table of a sewing machine and an umbrella.

‘It is quite evident that the “illustrative fact” could not in any way restrain the course of my delirious ideas, but that, on the contrary, it makes them flourish. Therefore, it could not concern me, of course, other than as paranoiac illustrations, and I must excuse myself here for the crude neoplasm that this implies. Indeed, as I have often had the pleasure and patience to explain to my readers, the paranoiac phenomenon is not only one on which are preeminently summed up all the “systematic-associative” factors, but also the one embodying a “psychic-interpretative” illustration that is more “identical.” Paranoia doesn’t limit itself to being always “illustration”; it also constitutes the true and “literal illustration” that we know, that is to say, the “interpretative-delirious illustration” – the identity manifesting itself always a posteriori as a factor following the “interpretative association.”’

Salvador Dali (1938), Millet’s L’Angélus

Ice

 

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Robert Frost 1920

'love amid empty eyes'

 

The chorus:

'She hath left among her people a noise of shield and sword,
A tramp of men armed where the long ships are moored;
She hath ta'en in her goings Desolation as a dower;
She hath stept, stept quickly, through the great gated Tower,
    And the thing that could not be, it hath been!
And the Seers they saw visions, and they spoke of strange ill:
  "A Palace, a Palace; and a great King thereof:
  A bed, a bed empty, that was once pressed in love:
And thou, thou, what art thou? Let us be, thou so still,
  Beyond wrath, beyond beseeching, to the lips reft of thee!"
  For she whom he desireth is beyond the deep sea,
    And a ghost in his castle shall be queen.

Images in sweet guise
  Carven shall move him never,
Where is Love amid empty eyes?
  Gone, gone for ever!'

Agamemnon by Aeschylus (525 - 456 BC), 

translated into English by Gilbert Murray

Tricksters

 

‘Plato thought not only that Hermes invented language but that he did so in relation to “bargaining,” which implies that a prime site of linguistic invention is the marketplace, another place where we are likely to meet strangers with strange goods, and, crossroads-wise, find ourselves forced to articulate newly.

Moreover the market at the crossroads may be a metaphor for metaphor itself, or for any original speech, the linguistic flowers that sprout at the crossroads of the mind. The mind articulates newly where there is a true coincidence, where roads parallel and roads contrary suddenly converge. This world is suffused with time and space, and therefore fresh speech is always appearing, always being invented. The world is teeming, so mind is teeming, so speech is teeming. There is no end to contingency, and so no end to language.'

'The Hebrew story of the Tower of Babel is about the loss of an original unitary and divine language, and it is background for much discussion of both translation and prophecy. Some say both translator and prophet hope to recover that original language and so get to a real sense of things behind the current noise. The standard prophetic tradition imagines a kind of bard who is able actually to enter again the Golden Age and speak without interference from the noise of time, uttering essential truths in an essential language. […] The prophetic trickster points towards what is actually happening: the muddiness, the ambiguity, the noise. They are part of the real, not something to be filtered out. Many messages arrive simultaneously, each in a different tongue. Inexhaustible meaning, inexhaustible language, inexhaustible world, it’s all the same.' 

Lewis Hyde (2008), Trickster makes this world: how disruptive imagination creates culture. Edinburgh, London, New York, Melbourne: Canongate, p.299/300

'warm blood for the souls'

 

'And he shall come to the dark plain of the departed and shall seek the ancient seer of the dead, who knows the mating of men and women. He shall pour in a trench warm blood for the souls, and, brandishing before him his sword to terrify the dead, he shall there hear the thin voice of the ghosts, uttered from shadowy lips.'

from ALEXANDRA, in Callimachus, Hymns and Epigrams. Lycophron. Aratus. Translated by Mair, A. W. & G. R. Loeb Classical Library Volume 129. London: William Heinemann, 1921. LYCOPHRON of Chalcis was a Greek poet and scholar of the Library of Alexandria who flourished in the C3rd BC. His cryptic poem, the Alexandra, tells the stories of the heroes of the Trojan War in the riddling, prophetic words of the Trojan princess Cassandra.

The speaker is a slave appointed to watch Cassandra and report her prophecies. He addresses Priam.

Islands of light

Alors ces globes d'or, ces îles de lumière,
Que cherche par instinct la rêveuse paupière,
Jaillissent par milliers de l'ombre qui s'enfuit
Comme une poudre d'or sur les pas de la nuit;
Et le souffle du soir qui vole sur sa trace,
Les sème en tourbillons dans le brillant espace.

[...]

Tout ce que nous cherchons, l'amour, la vérité,
Ces fruits tombés du ciel dont la terre a goûté,
Dans vos brillants climats que le regard envie
Nourrissent à jamais les enfants de la vie,
Et l'homme, un jour peut-être à ses destins rendu,
Retrouvera chez vous tout ce qu'il a perdu?

Thus all these globes of gold, these islands of light, 

Sought instinctively by the dreaming eye,

Flash up by the thousands from fugitive shadow,

Like glittering dust on the tracks of night;

And the breath of the evening that flies in its wake

Sends them swirling through the radiance of space.

[...]

All that we seek - love, truth,

These fruits of the sky, fallen on earth's palate,

Throughout our brilliant climes we long to see -

Nourish forever the children of life;

And one day man perhaps, his destiny fulfilled,

Will recover in you all the things he has lost.

from:
Alphonse de Lamartine (1790 - 1869), Les étoiles

Listen

 

‘Listen to presences inside poem,

Let them take you where you will.

Follow those private hints,

and never leave the premises.’

Rumi (1207 – 1273)

Rumi: the essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks with John Moyne, A.J. Arberry & Reynold Nicholson, 1999. London: Penguin Books, p.99

Flowers

CASSANDRA.

O Mother, fill mine hair with happy flowers,
And speed me forth. Yea, if my spirit cowers,
Drive me with wrath! So liveth Loxias,
A bloodier bride than ever Helen was
Go I to Agamemnon, Lord most high
Of Hellas!... I shall kill him, mother; I
Shall kill him, and lay waste his house with fire
As he laid ours. 

Euripides, The Trojan Women 

'Ever and everywhere'

EVER AND EVERYWHERE.

FAR explore the mountain hollow,
High in air the clouds then follow!

To each brook and vale the Muse

Thousand times her call renews.

Soon as a flow'ret blooms in spring,
It wakens many a strain;

And when Time spreads his fleeting wing,

The seasons come again.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,  1820.

The glow

 

‘I dreamed that night, after so many desolate nights without dreams. I saw colours, red and black, life and death. They interpenetrated, they did not fight each other as I would have expected even in a dream.  They changed form continually, they continually produced new patterns, which could be unbelievably beautiful. They were like waters, like a sea. In the middle of the sea I saw a bright island, which I was approaching rapidly in my dream - for I was flying; yes, I was flying! What was there on the island? What kind of creature? A human being? An animal? It glowed the way only Aeneas glows at night. What joy. Then headlong fall, breeze, darkness, awakening.’ 

Wolf, Christa, 1984.  Conditions of a narrative. in Wolf, Christa, 1984. Cassandra: a novel and four essays.  Translated from the German by Jan van Heurck. London: Virago

p. 124

'as tear on tear make salt the warm last kiss he gave'

 

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Cassandra

I

REND, rend thine hair, Cassandra: he will go.
Yea, rend thy garments, wring thine hands, and cry
From Troy still towered to the unreddened sky.
See, all but she that bore thee mock thy woe:—
He most whom that fair woman arms, with show
Of wrath on her bent brows; for in this place
This hour thou bad'st all men in Helen's face
The ravished ravishing prize of Death to know.
What eyes, what ears hath sweet Andromache,
Save for her Hector's form and step; as tear
On tear make salt the warm last kiss he gave?
He goes. Cassandra's words beat heavily
Like crows above his crest, and at his ear
Ring hollow in the shield that shall not save.

II

“O HECTOR, gone, gone, gone! O Hector, thee
Two chariots wait, in Troy long bless'd and curs'd;
And Grecian spear and Phrygian sand athirst
Crave from thy veins the blood of victory.
Lo! long upon our hearth the brand had we,
Lit for the roof-tree's ruin: and to-day
The ground-stone quits the wall,—the wind hath way,—
And higher and higher the wings of fire are free.
“O Paris, Paris! O thou burning brand,
Thou beacon of the sea whence Venus rose,
Lighting thy race to shipwreck! Even that hand
Wherewith she took thine apple let her close
Within thy curls at last, and while Troy glows
Lift thee her trophy to the sea and land.”

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

(1828 - 1882)

Crimson waves

 

Where hast thou been since round the walls of Troy

The sons of God fought in that great emprise?

Why dost thou walk our common earth again?

Hast thou forgotten that impassioned boy,

His purple galley and his Tyrian men

And treacherous Aphrodite’s mocking eyes?

For surely it was thou, who, like a star

Hung in the silver silence of the night,

Didst lure the Old World’s chivalry and might

Into the clamorous crimson waves of war!

Oscar Wilde, The new Helen

in : The complete illustrated stories, plays & poems of Oscar Wilde, London: Chancellor Press 1986, p. 702

Remembrance

 

'Solomon saith: There is no new thing upon the earth. So that as Plato had an imagination, that all knowledge was but remembrance; so Solomon given his sentence, that all novelty is but oblivion.'

Francis Bacon, Essays, LVIII

Imagine

 

‘To verify images kills them, and it is always more enriching to imagine than to experience.’ 

Bachelard, Gaston, 1958/994. The poetics of space. Translated from French by Maria Jolas. Boston: Beacon Press, p. 88

'words die before pictures'

‘I have always been caught by images more than by words.  Probably that is strange, and incompatible with my vocation; but I can no longer pursue my vocation. The last thing in my life will be a picture, not a word. Words die before pictures.’ 

Wolf, Christa, 1984.  Conditions of a narrative. in Wolf, Christa, 1984. Cassandra: a novel and four essays.  Translated from the German by Jan van Heurck. London: Virago, p.21

 

Vessels

Story water

 

Story water

A story is like water

that you heat for your bath.

It takes messages between the fire

and your skin. it lets them meet,

and it cleans you!

Very few can sit down

in the middle of the fire itself

like a salamander or Abraham.

We need intermediaries.

A feeling of fullness comes

but usually it takes some bread

to bring it.

Beauty surrounds us,

but usually we need to be walking

in a garden to know it.

The body itself is a screen

to shield and partially reveal

the light that’s blazing

inside your presence.

Water, stories, the body,

all the things we do, are mediums

that hide and show what’s hidden.

Study them,

and enjoy this being washed

with a secret we sometimes know,

and then not.

Rumi (1207 – 1273)

Rumi: the essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks with John Moyne, A.J. Arberry & Reynold Nicholson, 1999. London: Penguin Books, p. 171/2

White soul

 Hecuba: 

... O my child, whose white
Soul laughed amid the laughter of God's light,
Cassandra, what hands and how strange a day
Have loosed thy zone! And thou, Polyxena,
Where art thou? And my sons? Not any seed
Of man nor woman now shall help my need.
  Why raise me any more? What hope have I
To hold me? Take this slave that once trod high
In Ilion; cast her on her bed of clay
Rock-pillowed, to lie down, and pass away
Wasted with tears. And whatso man they call
Happy, believe not ere the last day fall! 

 Euripides (480 – 406 BC) 
The Trojan Women 

Thunder cloud

Alle Götter fliehn davon,

Und des Donners Wolken hangen

Schwer herab auf Ilion. 

All the gods are quickly gone,

And the thunder cloud oppresses

Heavy over Ilion.

 

Friedrich von Schiller (1802):

Kassandra

The bath

'Clytaemnestra greeted her travel-worn husband with every appearance of delight, unrolled a purple carpet for him, and led him to the bath-house, where slave-girls had prepared a warm bath; but Cassandra remained outside the palace, caught in a prophetic trance, refusing to enter, and crying that she smelt blood, and that the curse of Thyestes was heavy upon the dining-hall. When Agamemnon had washed himself and set one foot out of the bath, eager to partake of the rich banquet now already set on the tables, Clytaemnestra came forward, as if to wrap a towel about him, but instead threw over his head a garment of net, woven by herself, without either neck or sleeve-holes. Entangled in this, like a fish, Agamemnon perished at the hands of Aegisthus, who struck him twice with a two-edged sword. He fell hard, into the silver-sided bath, where Clytaemnestra avenged her wrongs by beheading him with an axe. She then ran out to kill Cassandra with the same weapon, not troubling first to close her husband’s eyelids or mouth; but wiped off on his hair the blood which had splashed her, to signify that he had brought about his own death.'

Robert Graves (1955/1960), The Greek Myths, p.242/3

A star

'Look upward where the white gull screams.
What does it see that we do not see?
Is that a star? or the lamp that gleams
On some outward voyaging argosy,
Ah! can it be
We have lived our lives in a land of dreams!
How sad it seems.'

Oscar Wilde, Her voice

in : The complete illustrated stories, plays & poems of Oscar Wilde, London: Chancellor Press 1986, p. 777

sapere aude

'There must be something in the spirit of man - as it is not in the objects themselves - which prevents us from receiving the truth, not withstanding the brilliant light she diffuses, and from accepting her, for whatever might be her strength for producing conviction. This something was perceived and expressed by an ancient sage in this very significant maxim: Sapere aude.

Dare to be wise! A spirited courage is required to triumph over the impediments that the indolence of nature as well as the cowardice of the heart oppose to our instruction.'


Friedrich von Schiller, Aesthetical and philosophical essays. Vol. I. Edited by Nathan Haskell Dole. Boston: Francis A. Niccolls & Co, 1903.
Aesthetical letters and essays, letter VIII, p.28

beyond the gate

 

for the most part you had to remain

silent so as not to be considered

mad like Cassandra, when you prophesied

what already lies outside the gate.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1794)

Her story

 

A woman's place is in the wrong

for Gina

 

'She tells her love while half asleep,
In the dark hours,
With half-words whispered low:
As Earth stirs in her winter sleep
And puts out grass and flowers
Despite the snow,
Despite the falling snow.'

Robert Graves 

'the soul of the word'

 

'When the fires die out and only the record of flame remains the soul of the word will be carried out to sea and be born again in a raindrop. While it falls to earth in this form it perceives everything through the distorted lens of water; then as it hits the ground all these preconceptions shatter.  But soon the soul of the word is dried and warmed by the sun and feeling drowsy, falls asleep. Upon waking it recalls two dreams: the first, a dream of its future life, tells of the great height it will reach as the soul of a word highly respected by the people, upon whose tongues it will be carried into the richest courts in the world and gently whispered to the ears of noble men and beautiful women; the second dream is the story of its past life but it does not recognize itself in its previous form. Several lives later the dream recurs. Several dreams later the life recurs. ' Marian Zazeela (written 4-5 August 1963 day of fir gale/the shouts from the sea)  http://www.ubu.com/aspen/aspen9/soul.html

Answers

Listen to what the sea says

Ask the black mountains.

Taras Shevchenko (1814 – 1861)

Listening

 

'The present century, in proclaiming the advent of a new age of communication and information, and inventing recording machines to give talk immortality, forgot to deal with the great problem of talk, which is how to find someone to listen. For more and more people, merely to talk, mainly about oneself, as birds sing from tree-tops, is not enough. Humanity’s pride in being able to communicate better than any other creature is belied by most talk being greeted with silence or incomprehension. The frustrations of sex are nothing compared to the frigidity of listeners.'

Zeldin, Theodore, 1995. An intimate history of humanity. London: Minverva, p. 422

'wings to fly up into heaven'

Cassandra:

Yet I would that to me they had given

The fate of that singer so clear,

Fleet wings to fly up into heaven

Away from all mourning and fear

 

Oscar Wilde

A fragment from the Agamemnon of Aeschylos

in : The complete illustrated stories, plays & poems of Oscar Wilde, London: Chancellor Press 1986, p. 812/813

 

On the edges

'The world is turning 

me into evening.

I'm almost ready:

this time it will be far.

I move

and live on the edges

(what edges)

I live

on all the edges there are.'

Margaret Atwood, Evening trainstation before departure

in:  Atwood, Margaret, 1989. The circle game. Toronto: Anansi, p. 24