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 wOrDsMiThS
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Solemn Hour
- by Rainer
Maria Rilke
Whoever cries now somewhere in the world,
without reason cries in the world,
cries about me.
Whoever laughs now somewhere in the night,
without reason laughs in the night,
laughs at me.
Whoever goes now somewhere in the world,
without reason goes in the world,
comes to me.
Whoever dies now somewhere in the world,
without reason dies in the world:
looks at me.
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I Heard a Fly Buzz
by Emily Dickinson
I heard a Fly buzz -- when I died --
The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air --
Between the Heaves of Storm --
The Eyes around -- had wrung them dry --
And Breaths were gathering firm
For that last Onset -- when the King
Be witnessed -- in the Room --
I willed my Keepsakes -- Signed away
What portion of me be
Assignable -- and then it was
There interposed a Fly --
With Blue -- uncertain stumbling Buzz --
Between the light -- and me --
And then the Windows failed -- and then
I could not see to see --
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Sonnet on his Blindness
- by John Milton
When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide,
Lodged with me useless, thouh my soul more bent
To serve therewith my maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide,
Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?
I fondly ask; but Patience to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts, who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best, his state
Is kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o'er land and ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait.
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Proverbs of Hell
by William Blake
In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.
Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead.
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
Prudence is a rich ugly old maid courted by Incapacity.
He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence.
The cut worm forgives the plow.
Dip him in the river who loves water.
A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.
He whose face gives no light, shall never become a star.
Eternity is in love with the productions of time.
The busy bee has no time for sorrow.
The hours of folly are measur'd by the clock, but of wisdom: no
clock can measure.
All wholsom food is caught without a net or a trap.
Bring out number weight & measure in a year of dearth.
No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings.
A dead body revenges not injuries.
The most sublime act is to set another before you.
If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.
Folly is the cloke of knavery.
Shame is Prides cloke.
- Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of
Religion.
The pride of the peacock is the glory of God.
The lust of the goat is the bounty of God.
The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.
The nakedness of woman is the work of God.
Excess of sorrow laughs. Excess of joy weeps.
The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of the
stormy sea,
and the destructive sword, are portions of eternity too
great for the eye of man.
The fox condemns the trap, not himself.
Joys impregnate. Sorrows bring forth.
Let man wear the fell of the lion. woman the fleece of the sheep.
The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.
The selfish smiling fool, & the sullen frowning fool shall be both
thought wise, that they may be a rod.
What is now proved was once only imagin'd.
The rat, the mouse, the fox, the rabbet; watch the roots; the lion,
the tyger, the horse, the elephant, watch the fruits.
The cistern contains: the fountain overflows.
One thought fills immensity.
Always be ready to speak your mind, and a base man will avoid you.
Every thing possible to be believ'd is an image of truth.
The eagle never lost so much time, as when he submitted to learn of
the crow. The fox provides for himself. but God provides for the
lion.
Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in
the night.
He who has suffer'd you to impose on him knows you.
As the plow follows words, so God rewards prayers.
The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.
Expect poison from the standing water.
You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than
enough.
Listen to the fools reproach! it is a kingly title!
The eyes of fire, the nostrils of air, the mouth of water, the beard
of earth.
The weak in courage is strong in cunning.
The apple tree never asks the beech how he shall grow; nor the lion,
the horse, how he shall take his prey.
The thankful reciever bears a plentiful harvest.
If others bad not been foolish, we should be so.
The soul of sweet delight can never be defil'd.
When thou seest an Eagle, thou seest a portion of Genius. lift up
thy head!
As the catterpiller chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs, so
the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys.
To create a little flower is the labour of ages.
Damn braces: Bless relaxes.
The best wine is the oldest, the best water the newest.
Prayers plow not! Praises reap not!
Joys laugh not! Sorrows weep not! The head Sublime, the heart
Pathos, the genitals Beauty, the hands & feet Proportion.
As the air to a bird or the sea to a fish, so is contempt to the
contemptible.
The crow wish'd every thing was black, the owl, that every thing was
white.
Exuberance is Beauty.
If the lion was advised by the fox. he would be cunning.
Improvement makes strait roads, but the crooked roads without
Improvement, are roads of Genius.
Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.
Where man is not, nature is barren.
Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd.
Enough! or Too much.
I myself spent nine years in
an insane asylum and I never had the obsession of suicide, but I know
that each conversation with a psychiatrist, every morning at the time of
his visit, made me want to hang myself, realizing
that I would not be able to cut his throat.
Antonin Artaud
Antonin Artaud shortly before he
died
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MANIFESTO
IN A CLEAR LANGUAGE
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by Antonin Artaud
If I believe neither
in Evil nor in Good, if I feel such a strong inclination to
destroy, if there is nothing in the order of principles to which
I can reasonably accede, the underlying reason is in my flesh.
I destroy because for
me everything that proceeds from reason is untrustworthy.I
believe only in the evidence of what stirs my marrow, not in the
evidence of what addresses itself to my reason. I have found
levels in the realm of the nerve.
I now feel capable of
evaluating the evidence. There is for me an evidence in the
realm of pure flesh which has nothing to do with the evidence of
reason. The eternal conflict between reason and the heart is
decided in my very flesh, but in my flesh irrigated by nerves.
In the realm of the affective imponderable, the image provided
by my nerves takes the form of the highest intellectuality,
which I refuse to strip of its quality of intellectuality. And
so it is that I watch the formation of a concept which carries
within it the actual fulguration of things, a concept which
arrives upon me with a sound of creation. No image satisfies me
unless it is at the same time Knowledge, unless it carries with
it its substance as well as its lucidity. My mind, exausted by
discursive reason, wants to be caught up in the wheels of a new,
an absolute gravitation. For me it is like a supreme
reorganization in which only the laws of illogic participate,
and in which there triumphs the discovery of a new Meaning. This
Meaning which has been lost in the disorder of drugs and which
presents the appearance of a profound intelligence to the
contradictory phantasms of the sleep. This Meaning is a victory
of the mind over itself, and although it is irreducible by
reason, it exists, but only inside the mind. It is order, it is
intelligence, it is the signification of chaos. But it does not
accept this chaos as such, it interprets it, and because it
interprets it, it loses it. It is the logic of illogic. And this
is all one can say. My lucid unreason is not afraid of chaos.
I renounce nothing of
that which is the Mind. I want only to transport my mind
elsewhere with its laws and organs. I do not surrender myself to
the sexual mechanism of the mind, but on the contrary within
this mechanism I seek to isolate those discoveries which lucid
reason does not provide. I surrender to the fever of dreams, but
only in order to derive from them new laws. I seek
multiplication, subtlety, the intellectual eye in delirium, not
rash vaticination. There is a knife which I do not forget.
But it is a knife
which is halfway into dreams, which I keep inside myself, which
I do not allow to come to the frontier of the lucid senses.
That which belongs to
the realm of the image is irreducible by reason and must remain
within the image or be annihilated.
Nevertheless, there is
a reason in images, there are images which are clearer in the
world of image-filled vitality.
There is in the
immediate teeming of the mind a multiform and dazzling
insinuation of animals. This insensible and thinking dust is
organized according to laws which it derives from within itself,
outside the domain of clear reason or of thwarted consciousness
or reason.
In the exalted realm
of images, illusion properly speaking, or material error, does
not exist, much less the illusion of knowledge: but this is all
the more reason why the meaning of a new knowledge can and must
descend into the reality of life.
The truth of life lies
in the impulsiveness of matter. The mind of man has been
poisoned by concepts. Do not ask him to be content, ask him only
to be calm, to believe that he has found his place. But only
the madman is really calm.
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