#NYRBWomen26
Nights
Talking about symbolism in carpets is no less puerile than talking about symbolism in fairy tales and parables, since senses and super-senses are woven together there just as tightly as warp and weft, and in them each man...will read the message destined for him and him alone.
#Hamlet_2026
Laertes:
O heat, dry up my brains! Tears seven times salt,
Burn out the sense and virtue of mine eye!
By heaven, thy madness shall be paid by weight,
Till our scale turn the beam.
(IV.5.175-178)
#NYRBWomen26 #AContinuation
...what is Proust’s poetry if not infinitely unrelenting reticular analysis, galactic thought, applied to the singular and concrete object: the metaphor, the precise, incandescent similitude?
#NYRBWomen26
“I can’t tell you how big it is,” is what he meant. He was thinking of the eternity contained in that small patch of sand and nauseating earth: the entrance to the underworld, the matrix of poetry, and the first root of a race.
2/2
#NYRBWomen26
#CristinaCampo
Les Sources de la Vivonne
“I can’t tell you how small it is,” said my friend, perplexed and ecstatic after coming back from the shore of Cumae that Virgil described so exactly, down to its “foul-smelling” gorge."
1/2
#Hamlet_2026
Horatio:
‘Twere good she were spoken with, for she may strew
Dangerous conjectures in ill-breeding minds.
(IV.5.16-17)
#NYRBWomen26
...for they are sure there is an economy that encompasses all events and surpasses their meaning the way a tapestry, a symbolic carpet, surpasses the flowers and animals that compose it.
3.
#NYRBWomen26
He who blindly, obstinately repeats “let us hope” does not trust; he is really only hoping for a lucky break in the momentarily propitious game governed by the law of necessity. Those who trust, on the other hand, do not count on particular events,...
2.
#NYRBWomen26
On Fairy Tales
Whom does a marvelous fate befall in fairy tales? He who trusts hopelessly in what is beyond hope. Hope and trust must not be confused. They are different things, as the expectation of fortune here on earth is different from the second theological virtue.
1.
#Hamlet_2026
Hamlet:
Sith I have cause and will and strength and means
To do ’t. Examples gross as earth exhort me.
(IV.4.47-48)
I agree! I was reminded of The Neutral right from the first essay.
My shopping research shows that one of the translations (Penguin) is titled A Harlot High and Low and includes the third and fourth titles on that list.
Same. I'm finding them soothing, like conversations with an old friend. And personally relevant and impactful.
#Hamlet_2026
Hamlet:
A certain
convocation of politic worms are e’en at him. Your worm
is your only emperor for diet. We fat all creatures else
to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots.
(IV.3.22-25)
#Hamlet_2026
Hamlet:
Besides,
to be demanded of a sponge! What replication should be
made by the son of a king?
(IV.2.11-13)
#Hamlet_2026
Gertrude:
Mad as the sea and wind when both contend
Which is the mightier. In his lawless fit,
Behind the arras hearing something stir,
Whips out his rapier, cries, “A rat, a rat!”
(IV.1.9-13)
Journal of a Solitude by May Sarton
#SundaySarton
Journal of a Solitude
Finis
"There is no doubt that solitude is a challenge and to maintain balance within it a precarious business."
#SundaySarton
Journal of a Solitude
"Solitude here is my life. I have chosen it and had better go on making as great riches as possible out of despair."
#SundaySarton
Journal of a Solitude
#SundaySarton
"The nostalgia comes from the longing to be taken into that world by what the French call an amitié amoureuse, recognized from the start as an attraction that will never be “realized” as a love affair, but where there is a strong echo of feeling on each side, whether uttered or not."
It will be fun to compare translations as we did with Madame Bovary.
#Hamlet_2026
Hamlet:
I’ll lug the guts into the neighbor room.
Mother, good night. Indeed this counselor
Is now most still, most secret, and most grave
Who was in life a foolish prating knave.—
Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you.
(III.4.234-238)
#Hamlet_2026
Hamlet:
Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell.
I took thee for thy better. Take thy fortune.
Thou find’st to be too busy is some danger.
(III.4.36-38)
Life Aquatic
Again, thank you @literaturesc.bsky.social for being our guide and thanks to everyone for keeping each other company through this bleak book. It was my second read, and I loved it more than the first time.
😂
#Hamlet_2026
Claudius:
Oh, my offence is rank. It smells to heaven.
It hath the primal eldest curse upon ’t,
A brother’s murder. Pray can I not.
Though inclination be as sharp as will,
My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent
(III.3.39-43)
#NYRBWomen26
"It takes a great deal of faith to discern symbols in what has already happened. It takes even more faith to discern them in what will happen later. Because it is always today: all the vanishing lines of existence depart from it - magnetic needles oscillating in every direction..."
20
Just diving in. I found In Medio Coeli dense and challenging. I had to go back and slowly read it a second time. Totally worth the effort! It reminded me of THE NEUTRAL.
#SatantangoTogether
(The Doctor)
There was no particular reason to be uneasy then, since “a higher power” had kept his observation post intact, and nothing could be done about dust or the damp for he knew that there was “no point in getting worked up” about the inevitable process of decay.