“Our fantastic civilization has fallen out of touch with many aspects of nature, and with none more completely than with night. Primitive folk, gathered at a cave mouth round a fire, do not fear night; they fear, rather, the energies and creatures to whom night gives power; we of the age of the machines, having delivered ourselves of nocturnal enemies, now have a dislike of night itself. With lights and ever more lights, we drive the holiness and beauty of night back to the forests and the sea; the little villages, the cross-roads even, will have none of it. Are modern folk, perhaps, afraid of night? Do they fear that vast serenity, the mystery of infinite space, the austerity of stars?” — Henry Beston (1888-1968), The Outermost House, 1933
Category Archives: Quotations
Night Blight
Ein Licht im Nichts
„Soweit wir erkennen können, besteht der einzige Zweck der menschlichen Existenz darin, ein Licht in der Dunkelheit des bloßen Seins zu entzünden.“ — Carl Jung (1875-1961)
• “As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.” — Carl Jung (1875-1961)
Hue Views
The fact is, we none of us enough appreciate the nobleness and sacredness of color. Nothing is more common than to hear it spoken of as a subordinate beauty, — nay, even as the mere source of a sensual pleasure; and we might almost believe that we were daily among men who
“Could strip, for aught the prospect yields
To them, their verdure from the fields;
And take the radiance from the clouds
With which the sun his setting shrouds.”
But it is not so. Such expressions are used for the most part in thoughtlessness; and if the speakers would only take the pains to imagine what the world and their own existence would become, if the blue were taken from the sky, and the gold from the sunshine, and the verdure from the leaves, and the crimson from the blood which is the life of man, the flush from the cheek, the darkness from the eye, the radiance from the hair, — if they could but see for an instant, white human creatures living in a white world, — they would soon feel what they owe to color. The fact is, that, of all God’s gifts to the sight of man, color is the holiest, the most divine, the most solemn. We speak rashly of gay color, and sad color, for color cannot at once be good and gay. All good color is in some degree pensive, the loveliest is melancholy, and the purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love color the most.
• John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice, Vol II, Chapter 5, xxx
S’éteignent, S’encroûtent, S’allument…
« Des soleils s’éteignent & s’encroûtent, des planètes périssent & se dispersent dans les plaines des airs ; d’autres soleils s’allument, de nouvelles planètes se forment pour faire leurs révolutions ou pour décrire de nouvelles routes, & l’homme, portion infiniment petite d’un globe, qui n’est lui-même qu’un point imperceptible dans l’immensité, croit que c’est pour lui que l’univers est fait, s’imagine qu’il doit être le confident de la nature, se flatte d’être éternel, se dit le roi de l’univers ! » — Baron d’Holbach, Système de la nature (1770), Partie 1, Chapitre 6
“Suns are extinguished or become corrupted, planets perish and scatter across the wastes of the sky; other suns are kindled, new planets formed to make their revolutions or describe new orbits, and man, an infinitely minute part of a globe which itself is only an imperceptible point in the immense whole, believes that the universe is made for himself, flatters himself that he is eternal, calls himself king of the universe!”
Post-Performative Post-Scriptum…
Mais… Mens Major Est Quam Materia…
R.I.pH
Here lie the bones of Henry Jones:
Alas, he is no more!
For what he thought was H2O
Was H2SO4!
• Traditional rhyme
Papillons de Papier
Tsavudz’ gvdjo
Hmorksa ržmju:
Í hmístaghjo,
Í hmůldzva lšju! — Franček Zymosjő (1883-1941)
White butterflies,
On paper wings,
Are mystagogues,
Enchanted things!
• Translation by Elena Nebotsaya in On Paper Wings: Selected Poems and Prose of Franček Zymosjő (Symban Press 1986)
Omnia e Tarot
« Une personne emprisonnée sans autre livre que le Tarot, s’il savait comment l’utiliser, pourrait dans quelques années acquérir une connaissance universelle et pourrait s’exprimer sur tous les sujets avec un savoir inégalé et une éloquence inépuisable. » – Éliphas Lévi (1810-75)
• “An imprisoned person, with no other book than the Tarot, if he knew how to use it, could in a few years acquire universal knowledge, and would be able to speak on all subjects with unequalled learning and inexhaustible eloquence.” – Éliphas Lévi
Post-Performative Post-Scriptum
I’m not sure if the above is the French original. It might be a back-translation of the English translation of the French original, because I found it here, not in any online French texts by Lévi.
Luis’ Lip
“Decíamos ayer…” — Fray Luis de León (1527-1591)
Sus biógrafos cuentan que fray Luis acostumbraba, en sus años de docencia, resumir las lecciones explicadas en la clase anterior; y que, al volver a la Universidad a su nueva cátedra, retomó sus lecciones con la frase “Decíamos ayer…” (Dicebamus hesterna die) como si sus cuatro años de prisión no hubieran transcurrido. Pero, aunque la frase tiene sello luisiano, se supone que es una invención posterior de fray Nicolaus Crusenius. — Wikipedia
• “As we were saying yesterday…” — Fray Luis de León, in the lecture hall of the University of Salamanca, December 30, 1576, after he had returned from an imprisonment of nearly five years by the Spanish Inquisition. (From Anecdotes from History: Being a Collection of 1000 Anecdotes, Epigrams, and Episodes Illustrative of English and World History, Grant Uden, 1968)
Chat Poli
« Si je préfère les chats aux chiens, c’est parce qu’il n’y a pas de chat policier. » — Jean Cocteau
• “If I prefer cats to dogs, it’s because there are no police cats.”
A Pox on Poetry
From The Ultimate Christmas Cracker (2019), compiled by John Julius Norwich:
How beautiful, I have often thought, would be the names of many of our vilest diseases, were it not for their disagreeable associations. My old friend Jenny Fraser sent me this admirable illustration of the fact by J.C. Squire:
So forth then rode Sir Erysipelas
From good Lord Goitre’s castle, with the steed
Loose on the rein: and as he rode he mused
On Knights and Ladies dead: Sir Scrofula,
Sciatica, he of Glanders, and his friend,
Stout Sir Colitis out of Aquitaine,
And Impetigo, proudest of them all,
Who lived and died for blind Queen Cholera’s sake:
Anthrax, who dwelt in the enchanted wood
With those princesses three, tall, pale and dumb,
And beautiful, whose names were Music’s self,
Anaemia, Influenza, Eczema.
And then once more the incredible dream came back,
How long ago upon the fabulous Shores
Of far Lumbago, all of a summer’s Day,
He and the maid Neuralgia, they twain,
Lay in a flower-crowned mead, and garlands wove,
Of gout and yellow hydrocephaly,
Dim palsies, and pyrrhoea, and the sweet
Myopia, bluer than the summer Sky:
Agues, both white and red, pied common cold,
Cirrhosis and that wan, faint flower
The shepherds call dyspepsia. — Gone, all gone:
There came a Knight: he cried ‘Neuralgia!’
And never a voice to answer. Only rang
O’er cliff and battlement and desolate mere
‘Neuralgia!’ in the echoes’ mockery.
Elsewhere Other-Accessible…
• J.C. Squire at Wikipedia
Post-Performative Post-Scriptum
• nosopoetic (obsolete rare) Producing or causing disease. ← noso- comb. form + ‑poetic comb. form, after Hellenistic Greek νοσοποιός causing illness; compare ancient Greek νοσοποιεῖν to cause illness. — Oxford English Dictionary
Overlord In Terms of Core Issues Around Maximal Engagement with Key Notions of the Über-Feral 