quoth the madman

"Existence is a party. You join after its started and you leave before its finished."
~Elsa Maxwell 

quoth the madman

“We who proudly make unto ourselves every graven image,
shall have great copulations and are allowed to love our Gods,
for we know the Sacred Alignments.”
~Austin Osman Spare

from the phantasmal library

"Well! Good-morning then... Or shall I say 'Good-Afternoon'? What's this? It appears your usually overwhelming scent of absence has now all but wholly vanished, yet it seems to have had a most disagreeable effect on your nimbus. Oh dear, but no matter, at least now I can see you more clearly across the breakfast table without the use of my tinted glasses..."

Avoir le Vin Triste (Non esattamente)

"Beware those who seek constant crowds; they are nothing alone."

~Charles Bukowski

Literacki

I’m tired of monotheism.
I, for one, for many, prefer the cockroach
emerging from the ivy, reading
the night with quivering antennae,
the fat rattlesnake that turned me back
out of the canyon’s rocky throat,
presences in a hallway of willows.
Yesterday we scrubbed slippery, clayish mud
from the season’s first potatoes, their irregular
roundnesses all the psalms my palms ever wanted.
I traveled more than half a life
to get here—just don’t ask me how.
I left the cat sleeping beneath the morning table
and walked out along the dry rain ditch that runs
behind neighborhoods stunned by heat, past grass banks
burnt the color of hay, faltering cinder-block walls,
waves of orange trumpet and grape vines
breaking over fences, a tree house rotting
in the green branches of the mulberry, its tenant
having long since descended.
I walk toward mountains I will not reach,
toward my death, but the mourning doves
and sumacs walk their own stories.
One minute I’m alone, and the next
belongs to leaves and ghosts. How many voices
have frequented that catalpa? Who is wandering
my blood? I build a shrine in my feet
for worlds to come through. I let the wind
arrange the windows.
~Jay Udall ~ Pilgrimage

Avoir le Vin Triste (Non esattamente)

“There comes a time when you look into the mirror and you realize that what you see is all that you will ever be. And then you accept it. Or you kill yourself. Or you stop looking in mirrors.”
~Tennessee Williams

quoth the madman

“It is precisely because our present life is so inseparably linked with desire that we must make use of desire’s tremendous energy if we wish to transform our life into something transcendental."

—Lama Thubten Yeshe

literacki

“Life is a question of nerves, and fibres, and slowly built-up cells in which thought hides itself and passion has its dreams. You may fancy yourself safe and think yourself strong. But a chance tone of colour in a room or a morning sky, a particular perfume that you had once loved and that brings subtle memories with it, a line from a forgotten poem that you had come across again, a cadence from a piece of music that you had ceased to play… I tell you, that it is on things like these that our lives depend."

—Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

literacki

“I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our more stupid melancholy propensities, for is there anything more stupid than to be eager to go on carrying a burden which one would gladly throw away, to loathe one’s very being and yet to hold it fast, to fondle the snake that devours us until it has eaten our hearts away?”
― Voltaire  -  Candide: or, Optimism

quoth the madman

Be as a tower firmly set; Shakes not its top for any blast that blows.
~Dante Alighieri

quoth the madman

"I am a born antinomian. I am one of those who are made for exceptions, not for laws. But while I see that there is nothing wrong in what one does, I see that there is something wrong in what one becomes."

~Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

Quoth the madman

But I am not perfect in my way of putting things because I lack the divine simplicity of being only what I appear to be.

—Fernando Pessoa

quoth the madman

“What can I expect from myself? My sensation in all their horrible acuity, and a profound awareness of feeling. A sharp mind that only destroys me, and an unusual capacity for dreaming to keep me entertained. A dead will and a reflection that cradles it, like a living child."

~Fernando Pessoa

ars poetica

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,

There is a rapture on the lonely shore,

There is society, where none intrudes,

By the deep sea, and music in its roar:

I love not man the less, but Nature more,

From these our interviews, in which I steal

From all I may be, or have been before,

To mingle with the Universe, and feel

What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.

 

From Childe Harold

Canto IV, Verse 178

Lord Byron

ars poetica

SLEEP IS NOT, DEATH IS NOT;
WHO SEEM TO DIE LIVE.
HOUSE YOU WERE BORN IN,
FRIENDS OF YOUR SPRING-TIME,
OLD MAN AND YOUNG MAID,
DAY’S TOIL AND ITS GUERDON,
THEY ARE ALL VANISHING,
FLEEING TO FABLES,
CANNOT BE MOORED.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

quoth the madman

“Why is it we want so badly to memorialize ourselves? Even while we’re still alive. We wish to assert our existence, like dogs peeing on fire hydrants. We put on display our framed photographs, our parchment diplomas, our silver-plated cups; we monogram our linen, we carve our names on trees, we scrawl them on washroom walls. It’s all the same impulse. What do we get from it? Applause, envy, respect? Or simply attention, of any kind we can get?

At the very least we want a witness. We can’t stand the idea of our own voices falling silent finally, like a radio winding down."

—Margaret Atwood

literaki

“(You have ghosts?)
(Of course I have ghosts.)
(What are your ghosts like?)
(They are on the inside of the lids of my eyes.)
(This is also where my ghosts reside.)
(You have ghosts?)
(Of course I have ghosts.)
(But you are a child.)
(I am not a child.)
(But you have not known love.)
(These are my ghosts, the spaces amid love.)"

—Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated

literaki

"A prayer for the wild at heart, kept in cages."

—Tennessee Williams

quoth the madman

“Ninety-nine percent of the world’s lovers are not with their first choice. That’s what makes the jukebox play."

—Willie Nelson

Literacki

“I discovered that my obsession for having each thing in the right place, each subject at the right time, each word in the right style, was not the well-deserved reward of an ordered mind but just the opposite: a complete system of pretense invented by me to hide the disorder of my nature. I discovered that I am not disciplined out of virtue but as a reaction to my negligence, that I appear generous in order to conceal my meanness, that I pass myself off as prudent because I am evil-minded, that I am conciliatory in order not to succumb to my repressed rage, that I am punctual only to hide how little I care about other people’s time. I learned, in short, that love is not a condition of the spirit but a sign of the zodiac."

—Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, Memories of My Melancholy Whores

Deuteronomy 14:21

Do not eat anything you find already dead. You may give it to an alien living in any of your towns, and he may eat it, or you may sell it to a foreigner. But you are a people holy to the LORD your God. Do not cook a young goat in its mother's milk. (NIV)

literacki

“I am dreaming of tornadoes again, too many for the sky to contain. I have checked eight websites and the dictionary on my nightstand. I did not need technology or a writer to tell me there is chaos in my heart. I don’t tell people sometimes my dreams come true. I fear some parts are not metaphor. In the mornings I check the horizon. I am relieved when there is some whisper of light. On the way home from camping, a large storm made the highway a blur of brake lights, my fingers killers to my steering wheel. I kept searching for funnels, their willowy bodies twisting their way to the ground. Mapped out escape routes and viaducts to pull beneath. Today I fell asleep on the couch again. The wind rustled me awake, and parts of the sky were dark again. I can’t shake that something is coming. I don’t do well with worry. My mother built me to fix things.”

”Like the Rain, Smell it Coming,” ~Aricka Foreman

Shall I quote you?

"A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one’s suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother."

—Herman Hesse

quoth the madman

 

“Your love should never be offered to the mouth of a stranger,
Only to someone
Who has the valor and daring
To cut pieces of their soul off with a knife
Then weave them into a blanket
To protect you."

—Hafiz

 

and I quote. . .

 “The trouble is, you think you have time. ”
~Buddha

Flow, my tears

Flow, my tears, fall from your springs!
Exiled for ever, let me mourn;
Where night's black bird her sad infamy sings,
There let me live forlorn.

Down vain lights, shine you no more!
No nights are dark enough for those
That in despair their lost fortunes deplore.
Light doth but shame disclose.

Never may my woes be relieved,
Since pity is fled;
And tears and sighs and groans my weary days
Of all joys have deprived.

From the highest spire of contentment
My fortune is thrown;
And fear and grief and pain for my deserts
Are my hopes, since hope is gone.

Hark! you shadows that in darkness dwell,
Learn to contemn light
Happy, happy they that in hell
Feel not the world's despite.

and then? yes, yes...

ars poetica

The look of the world's a lie, a face made up

 O'er graves and fiery depths; and nothing's true

 But what is horrible. If man could see

 The perils and diseases that he elbows

 Each day he walks a mile; which catch at him

 Which fall behind and graze him as he passes;

 Then would he know that life's a single pilgrim,

 Fighting unarmed amongst a thousand soldiers

 It is this infinite invisible

 Which we must learn to know, and yet to scorn,

 And, from scorn of that, regard the world

 As from the edge of a far star

Death's Jest Book, Thomas Lovell Beddoes

ars poetica

Miracles are to come.
With you I leave a remembrance
of miracles: they are by
somebody who can love
and who shall be continually reborn,
a human being.
—E.E. Cummings

vanitas

Relic of Saint Gratian ❧ ❧ ❧
Oh make the most of what we yet may spend,
Before we too into the Dust descend;
Dust under Dust and under Dust to lie,
Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and sans End.

~ The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

quoth the madman

Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves.
Lord Byron

vanitas vanitatum omnia vanitas

Amalia von Schintling was the daughter of Major Lorenz von Schintling of the General Quarters Staff and Baroness Theresia von Hacke. Over the objections of her fiancee, cousin Fritz von Schintling her father allowed her to be portrayed in the Beauty Gallery. An oriental style cape was chosen for her portrait. Their wedding never took place, as Amalia died of Tuberculosis shortly after completion of the painting.
This painting was completed by Joseph Stieler in 1831 when Amalia was 19.

literacki

Victor Hugo - What has not been named yet
Whoever you are, listen:

It is. What is it? Give up!  

The shadow is the issue, the world is the answer.

It is. This is the living, the vast radiant! That looks into the distance the sun dazzled is he. Heaven, you, us, stars, dust! It is the eye the abyss, opened the bottom of the light seen by all the torches, felt by all the nests, which the universe sprang into infinite radius. He looks, and that's it. Just see the sublime. He created a world just by seeing an abyss And this being who sees, having always been, has always created everything for all eternity.When the mouth down to this name key Supreme Test of praise is almost blasphemy. So no explanation! Do kneel your mind, and become a glance, like us. Why look for the words which are no longer matters? The vile human language does not have an apotheosis. He is, is hardly a glimpse of the tomb. He escapes the words black shade. It would make a beautiful verse with the eternal breeze, And to bask in the perfume and the two wings, put the sun in one and the next flower, and mix all the blue in their splendid scale, were God will not paint. Pensive, that the coating noise and north wind, lightning and storm Let shown awake, it is shown sleeping, breathing gently lifting all the depths of the full extent, moving comet lost in the depths of the heavens, the wind on his horse, the death of his flash, and the rocking of the sea monster, We do not paint. Him! Him! the inalienable, the eternal, uncreated, the unexpected, the impossible, it is.The mole digs and excavations, and see, The shadow told the Mole: Are you sure it is? The Mole meets God! God of the eagle is the prey.Assumes that a single person on earth believes in God, this being, if ever the sun was eclipsed, would replace the dawn. And do you know what it's like the wild hurricane and thundering great? It is in the depths of the abyss unaffordable, Infinity murmuring I love it! in a low voice, When the star shines, she said, I see! All art, all the noise and all the anthem of abortion rights say God! The kiss only the name. I like!                                                      

Victor Hugo - Ce qui n'a pas encore de nom

Qui que tu sois, écoute : Il est.

Qu'est-il ? Renonce ! L'ombre est la question, le monde est la réponse. Il est. C'est le vivant, le vaste épanoui ! Ce que contemple au loin le soleil ébloui, C'est lui. Les cieux, vous, nous, les étoiles, poussière ! Il est l'oeil gouffre, ouvert au fond de la lumière, Vu par tous les flambeaux, senti par tous les nids, D'où l'univers jaillit en rayons infinis. Il regarde, et c'est tout. Voir suffit au sublime. Il crée un monde rien qu'en voyant un abîme ; Et cet être qui voit, ayant toujours été, A toujours tout créé de toute éternité. Quand la bouche d'en bas touche à ce nom suprême, L'essai de la louange est presque lé blasphème. Pas d'explication donc ! Fais mettre à genoux Ta pensée, et deviens un regard, comme nous. Pourquoi chercher les mots où ne sont plus les choses ? Le vil langage humain n'a pas d'apothéoses. Ce qu'Il est, est à peine entrevu du tombeau. Il échappe aux mots noirs de l'ombre. On aurait beau Faire une strophe avec les brises éternelles, Et, pour en parfumer et dorer les deux ailes,Mettre l'astre dans l'une et dans l'autre la fleur, Et mêler tout l'azur à leur splendide ampleur, On ne peindrait pas Dieu. Songeur, qu'on le revête De bruit et d'aquilon, de foudre et de tempête ; Qu'on le montre éveillé, qu'on le montre dormant, Sa respiration soulevant doucement Toutes les profondeurs de toute l'étendue, Remuant la comète au fond des cieux perdue, Le vent sur son cheval, la mort sur son éclair, Et le balancement monstrueux de la mer, On ne le peindra pas. Lui ! Lui ! l'inamissible, L'éternel, l'incréé, l'imprévu, l'impossible, Il est. La taupe fouille et creuse, et l'aperçoit ; L'ombre dit à la taupe : es-tu sûre qu'il soit ? La taupe répond : Dieu ! Dieu de l'aigle est la proie. Suppose que sur terre un seul être en Dieu croie, Cet être, si jamais le soleil s'éclipsait, Remplacerait l'aurore. Et sais-tu ce que c'est Que le fauve ouragan, tonnant et formidable ? C'est, dans les profondeurs du gouffre inabordable, L'infini murmurant : je l'aime ! à demi-voix ; Quand l'étoile rayonne, elle dit : je le vois ! Tout le cri, tout le bruit et tout l'hymne de l'homme Avorte à dire Dieu ! Le baiser seul le nomme. J'aime ! -

Ladies cultural awareness day

I know, Death means me!
I was never terrified so greatly!
I thought he was not in his right mind,
after all, I am young and also an empress.
I thought I had a lot of power,
I had not thought of him
or that anybody could do something against me.
Oh, let me live on, this I implore you!

And Death replies :

Empress, highly presumptuous,
methinks you have forgotten me.
Fall in! It is now time.
You thought I should let you off?
No way! And were you ever so much,
You must participate in this play,
And you others, everybody –
Hold on! Follow me, Mr Cardinal!

The Cardinal now says his piece :

Have mercy on me, Lord, [when it] shall happen.
I can in no way escape it.
[When] I look in front or behind me,
I feel Death by me at all times.
What will the high rank avail me
[the rank] that I had? I must leave it
and become more unworthy at once
than an unclean, stinking dog.

And Death replies:

You were in status equal to
an apostle of God on earth,
in order to strengthen the Christian belief
with words and other good works.
But you have, with great haughtiness,
been riding your high horse.
Therefore you most mourn so much more now!
Now step here in front you too, Mr King!

Les Danses de Mort en peintures étaient courantes dans le Moyen Age tardif, elles ont été peintes pour rappeler aux gens que peu importe riches ou pauvres ou peu importe comment ils ont été puissants, la mort saurait les prendre tous. Les épidémies, telles que la peste noire, étaient récurrentes et nombreuses qui allaient tuer des millions de personnes. Ils étaient en expressions artistiques, les craintes sur le sujet de la mort. Le caractère "mort" dans ces travaux a été considérée non pas comme un destructeur, mais comme un messager de Dieu à son peuple une convocation dans le monde, au-delà de la tombe. Traduction de certains verset de la peinture :
Je sais, la mort me signifie !Je n'ai jamais été tellement terrifiée !Je pensais qu'il n'était pas dans son bon sens,après tout, je suis jeune et aussi une impératrice.Je pensais avoir beaucoup de puissance,Je n'avais pas pensé à luiou que n'importe qui pouvait faire quelque chose contre moi.Oh, laissez-moi vivre, cela, je vous en supplie!
La réponse de la Mort :
Impératrice, très présomptueuse,il me semble que tu m'as oublié.Tombez! Il est temps maintenant.Vous pensiez que je vous laisse hors?Pas du tout! Et avez-vous été tellementVous devez participer à ce jeu,Et vous autres, tout le monde -Tenez! Suivez-moi, Monsieur le Cardinal!
Le cardinal affirme maintenant sa pièce:
Aie pitié de moi, Seigneur, quand il doit arriver.Je ne peux en aucune façon y échapper.Quand je regarde devant ou derrière moi,Je sens la mort par moi en tout temps.Quel sera le haut rang me sertRang que j'ai eu? Je dois laisseret devenir plus indigne à la foisqu'un impur, chien puant.
La Mort répond :
Vous étiez dans un statut égal àun apôtre de Dieu sur terre,afin de renforcer la croyance chrétienneavec les mots et autres bonnes œuvres.Mais vous avez, avec hauteur,été conduite de votre cheval élevé.Par conséquent, ils vous pleurent tellement plus maintenant!Maintenant étape ici, devant vous aussi, Monsieur le Roi!

ars poetica

Ah ! J’ai la nostalgie de larmes,

De larmes d’amour, douces à souffrir,

Et je crains que cette nostalgie

Ne finisse par être exaucée.

Ah ! La douce misère de l’amour

Et de l’amour l’amer plaisir

Se glissent à nouveau, tourments divins,

Dans ma poitrine à peine guérie.

Ah! I'm nostalgic of tears,
Tears of love, sweet pain,And I fear that this nostalgia

May ultimately be answered.

Ah! The sweet misery of love
And love the bitter pleasure
Slip again torment divine
In my chest barely healed.

Nouveau printemps, XIII, 1828 Henry Heine

plath

vanitas vanitatum omnia vanitas

In omnibus operibus tuis memorare novissima tua, et in aeternum non peccabis

 "In all your actions remember your end and you will never sin"

vanité

La grande Vanité, 1641

Le quatrain en Allemand au premier de l’oeuvre :

"Kunst, Reichtum, Match und Kühnheit stirbet

Die Welt und all ihr thun verdibet

Ein Ewiges kommt nach diser Zeit

Ihr Thoren, flieht die Eitelkeit"

"Art, Richesse, Puissance et Bravoure meurent

Du monde et de ses oeuvres rien ne demeure

Après ce temps viendra l’Eternité

Ô fous! Fuyez la vanité!"

"Art, Wealth, Power and Bravery die

The world and his works nothing remains

After the time is eternity

O fools! Flee vanity!"

hermes

Tabula smaragdina Hermet Trismegisti

"Verum, sine mendacio, and Certum verissimum: quod est sicut quod est Inferius is superius, quod est superius and is sicut quod est Inferius, unius rei ad perpetranda miracula. Sicut omnes res fuerunt and ab uno, Meditations unius, sic omnes res fuerunt ab hac una nata re, adaptationist. Pater ejus is Sol, mater ejus Luna; Portavant illud Ventus in belly suo; nutrix ejus Terra. Pater omnis mundi totius telesma is rub. Vis ejus integra is so fuer versa in terram. Terram ab igne Separabis, a subtle spisso, suaviter, cum magno ingenio. Ascending in terra Coelum, iterumque down in terram, and vim superiorum recipie and inferiorum. Gloriam totius mundi Sic Habeb. Ideo fugiet a te omnis obscurities. Hic is totius Fortitudine fortitudo fortis, quia omnem rem Vincett subtilem, omnemque Solidam penetrabit. Sic mundus creatus is. Hinc ERUNT adaptationist mirabilis, quarum is modus hic. Ithaca vocatus sum Hermes Trismegistus, habens Philosophiæ totius mundi partes tres. Completum is quod dixi operatione of Solis. "

The Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus, the father of the Philosophers (translation from Hortulanus)

"It is true without lying, certain & most true: What is below is like what is above, and what is above is like what is below, to the miracles of one thing. And as all things were, and came from a, by meditation of one: so all things were born of this one thing by adaptation. The sun is the father, the moon is her mother, the wind carried it in its belly, its nurse is the Earth. The father of everyone here. Its power is entire if it is converted into earth. Separate the earth from the fire, the subtle from the gross gently, with great industry. It ascends from earth to heaven, and again it descends to earth, and receives the force of things superior and inferior. You will by this means the glory of the whole world and for that all darkness will flee from you. It is the strong force of any strength: because it overcomes every subtle thing and penetrate every solid thing. Thus the world was created. From this will come out & admirable adaptations, which the average is here. This is why I am called Hermes Trismegistus, having the three parts of the philosophy of everyone. What I said of the operation of the Sun is accomplished and completed. "

bacchanalian

dug

The treasure of Boscoreale, buried just before éruption of Vesuvius in 79 yielded a pair of gilded silver cups which have skeletons under a garland of roses. Greek inscriptions in dotted characters are legends, accompanied maxims: "Enjoy while you're alive, the future is uncertain. "

That was the meaning of these cups used by richs Romans at banquets in oratorical contests that allowed them to show their Hellenic culture. The Satyricon of Petronius, describes one of these banquets where guests compete for scholarship and for which references are Greek pretext to an invitation with pleasure. Here, the famous Greek philosophers, reduced to the state of skeletons, illustrate the fragility and vanity of life: Zeno and Epicurus still compete, but in front of two dogs mating.