November 2009
19 posts
Sleep on the stones of Delphi dare the ledges of Pallas but keep me foremost, keep me before you, after you, with you never forget when you start for the Delphic precipice, never forget when you seek Pallas and meet in thought yourself drawn out of yourself like the holy serpent, never forget in thought or mysterious trance, I am greatest and least.
—H.D.
“I have grown used to loving the same man forever.” That capacity to love forever was her death sentence; it destroyed any hope of escaping from her obsessive circle, her resplendent crown.
—Roberto Calasso
All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again. Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth? Wherefore I perceive that there is nothing better, than that a man should rejoice in his own works; for that is his portion: for who shall bring him to see what shall be after him?
—Ecclesiastes 3:20-22, King...
If memories could be canned, would they have expiry dates?
—Wong Kar-Wai, Chungking Express
If you looked upon my beloved and were not broken by desire, you are totally god or totally stone.
—Hellenistic, from the Palatine Anthology Trans. Anne Carson, 1998
The fact that Hekateia were set up at the crossing of three roads and that these places were held especially sacred to Hekate does not militate against the Hesiodic or cosmic conception of the number three: all crossings of three roads point clearly and obviously enough to the possibility of dividing the world into three parts.
—Karl Kerényi, The Kore Essays on a Science of Mythology p.112
Your death was your greatest opportunity and magnificently you took it.
—Euripides, Alcestis Trans. Ted Hughes, 1999
So he spoke, and with his own arms reached for him, but could not take him, but the spirit went underground, like vapour, with a thin cry, and Achilleus started awake, staring, and drove his hands together, and spoke, and his words were sorrowful: ‘Oh, wonder! Even in the house of Hades there is left something, a soul and an image, but there is no real heart of life left in it.’
...
When I was seven I was an arrhephoros and then ground grain for the archegetes. When I was ten I shed my saffron garment at the Brauronia and then I became a kannephoros.
—Aristophanes, Lysistrata (641-647)
