--- DICTIONARIES (in Dictionaries, in Quotes, in Chapters)

metamorphoses ::: pl. --> of Metamorphosis

metamorphoses ::: pl. --> of Metamorphosis

--- QUOTES [0 / 0 - 65 / 65] (in Dictionaries, in Quotes, in Chapters)

KEYS (10k)


NEW FULL DB (2.4M)

   4 Ovid

   3 Jean Paul Sartre

   2 Thomas Ligotti

   2 Pablo Picasso

   2 Octavio Paz

   2 Friedrich Nietzsche

   2 Elizabeth Speller

   2 Anonymous

   2 Alexander Pope

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1:I intend to speak of metamorphoses ~ Ovid

2:I intend to speak of metamorphoses. ~ Ovid

3:I am compelled to speak of metamorphoses ~ Ovid

4:I would be a fool to put my feet down in a position where I can't accommodate metamorphoses. ~ Jack Kemp

5:Metamorphoses" he said, "are our way of showing, in riddles, that we know we are part of the animal world ~ A S Byatt

6:Cura pii Dis sunt, & qui coluere coluntur. ~ Heaven rewards the pious; those who cherish God ~ Themselves are cherished. ~ Ovid, Metamorphoses, VIIL, 725

7:Three metamorphoses of the spirit I relate to you: how the spirit becomes a camel; and the camel, a lion; and the lion, finally, a child. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

8:The magician stood erect, menacing the attackers with demons, metamorphoses, paralyzing ailments, and secret judo holds. Molly picked up a rock. ~ Peter S Beagle

9:We live in permanent oblivionof our metamorphoses ~ we are born everywherewhere we are limitless ~ Paul Éluard ~ The hard desire to lastFoto: Alexandra Bochkareva

10:Three metamorphoses of the spirit have I designated to you: how the spirit became a camel, the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

11:The more a man can forget, the greater the number of metamorphoses which his life can undergo; the more he can remember, the more divine his life becomes. ~ Soren Kierkegaard

12:..when in the fast embrace their limbs were knit, they two were two no more, nor man, nor woman – one body then that neither seemed and both.   - Ovid, Metamorphoses. ~ L H Cosway

13:To have a solid foundation of skepticism, -that is to say, the faculty of changing at any moment, of turning back, of facing successively the metamorphoses of life. ~ R my de Gourmont

14:The thing is that I rarely think; a crowd of small metamorphoses accumulate in me without my noticing it, and then, one fine day, a veritable revolution takes place. ~ Jean Paul Sartre

15:At bottom there is but one subject of study: the forms and metamorphoses of mind. All other subjects may be reduced to that; all other studies bring us back to this study. ~ Henri Frederic Amiel

16:It would be very interesting to preserve photographically not the stages, but the metamorphoses of a picture. Possibly one might then discover the path followed by the brain in materializing a dream. ~ Pablo Picasso

17:High Romanticism shows you nature in all its harsh and lovely metamorphoses. Flood, fire and quake fling us back to the primal struggle for survival and reveal our gross dependency on mammoth, still mysterious forces. ~ Camille Paglia

18:Chalmers, thanks to Baudelaire, knew all about Taffreuse Juive, opium, absinthe, negresses, Lesbos and the metamorphoses of the vampire ... Needless to say, Chalmers and myself were both virgins, in every possible meaning of the word. ~ Christopher Isherwood

19:But I must finally realize that I am subject to these sudden transformations. The thing is that I rarely think; a crowd of small metamorphoses accumulate in me without my noticing it, and then, one fine day, a veritable revolution takes place. ~ Jean Paul Sartre

20:An individual maggot and the adult fly into which it finally develops must have the same genetic code. It’s not as if a maggot can request a new genome as it metamorphoses. So, the maggot and the fly use the same genome in completely different ways. The ~ Nessa Carey

21:My soul would sing of metamorphoses. But since, o gods, you were the source of these bodies becoming other bodies, breathe your breath into my book of changes: may the song I sing be seamless as its way weaves from the world's beginning to our day. ~ Ovid

22:I think there might even come a time when I would read Virgil again. Ovid's Metamorphoses, perhaps, not because the music goes round and round and never comes out, but because it's an extraordinary picture of ceaseless change that never comes to an end. ~ William Golding

23:In the Roman world, Ovid’s Metamorphoses – that extraordinary mythological epic about people changing shape (and probably the most influential work of literature on Western art after the Bible) – repeatedly returns to the idea of the silencing of women in the process of their transformation. ~ Mary Beard

24:Nobody really metamorphoses. Cinderella is always Cinderella, just in a nicer dress. The Ugly Duckling was always a swan, just a smaller version. And I bet the tadpole and the caterpillar still feel the same, even when they're jumping and flying, swimming and floating. Just like I am now. ~ Holly Smale

25:Mandelstam was, one is tempted to say, a modern Orpheus: sent to hell, he never returned, while his widow dodged across one-sixth of the earth's surface, clutching the saucepan with his songs rolled up inside, memorizing them by night in the event they were found by Furies with a search warrant. These are our metamorphoses, our myths. ~ Joseph Brodsky

26:Ovid tells us, in his Metamorphoses, that the young girls who were gathering flowers with Proserpina that fatal day were turned into the Sirens—the bird-bodied golden-feathered singers with female faces of the Homeric tradition—and then went wandering about over land and sea, crying out in search of their vanished playmate. ~ Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

27:I have always been fascinated by the life cycle, the way skin metamorphoses over time. I am mesmerized by skin and that's why I've been attracted to the nude. I do think people show their soul when they are stripped down psychically. There is something wondrous that happens when we relate on that level - and I am interested in that depth. ~ Joyce Tenneson

28:The anxious wait lasted four years, and the alert ears never despaired of hearing, at any moment, the voice of the great conch shell which would bellow through the hills to announce to all that Macandal had completed the cycle of his metamorphoses, and stood poised once more, sinewy and hard, with testicles like rocks, on his own human legs" (36-37). ~ Alejo Carpentier

29:My 'awakened dreams' are about shifts. Thought shifts, reality shifts, gender shifts: one person metamorphoses into another in a world where people fly through the air, heal from mortal wounds. I am playing with my Self, I am playing with the world's soul, I am the dialogue between my Self, and el espirítu del mundo. I change myself, I change the world. ~ Gloria E Anzaldua

30:We know that modern art tends to realise these conditions: in this sense it becomes a veritable theatre of metamorphoses and permutations. A theatre where nothing is fixed, a labyrinth without a thread (Ariadne has hung herself). The work of art leaves the domain of representation in order to become 'experience', transcendental empiricism or science of the sensible. ~ Anonymous

31:It would be very curious to record by means of photographs, not the stage of the picture, but its metamorphoses. Perhaps one would perceive the path taken by the mind in order to put its dreams into a concrete form. But what is really very curious is to observe that fundamentally the picture does not change, that despite appearances the initial vision remains almost intact. ~ Pablo Picasso

32:God helps those who help themselves. ~ Algernon Sidney, Discourse Concerning Government, Chapter II. Ovid—Metamorphoses. X. 586. Pliny the Elder, viewing the Eruption of Vesuvius, Aug., 79. Friedrich Schiller, William Tell, I. 2. Simonides is quoted as author by Claudian. Sophocles, Fragments. Terence, Phormio. I. 4. Vergil, Æneid (29-19 BC), X, 284. Quoted as a proverb by old and modern writers

33:It is an abstract change without object. Am I the one who has changed? (...) I must finally realize that I am subject to these sudden transformations. The thing is that I rarely think; a crowd of small metamorphoses accumulate in me without my noticing it, and then, one fine day, a veritable revolution takes place. This is what has given my life such a jerky, incoherent aspect. ~ Jean Paul Sartre

34:it is the Mediterranean, specifically Italy, that gave us the poet Ovid, who in the Metamorphoses deplored the eating of animals, and the vegetarian Leonardo da Vinci, who envisioned a day when the life of an animal would be valued as highly as that of a person, and Saint Francis, who once petitioned the Holy Roman Emperor to scatter grain on fields on Christmas Day and give the crested larks a feast. ~ Mary Roach

35:When anger is not trampling roughshod through our nervous system, it is sitting sullenly in some unspecified internal organ. "She's got a lot of anger in her," people will say (it nestles, presumably, somewhere in the gut), or, "He's a deeply angry man" (as opposed, presumably, to a superficially angry one). If anger isn't released, it "turns inward" and metamorphoses into another creature altogether. ~ Carol Tavris

36:With the years and convulsions of history, the word-as reductionist as the dictionary itself-has undergone absurd metamorphoses. In some countries, they prefer the word "destabilization." Poor" countries no longer exist, just "disadvantaged" or "underprivileged" ones. We say "brainwashing" instead of "propaganda." And now we refer to revolutions in fashion, music and electronics, where ink flows but not blood. The point is profit, not truth ~ Elie Wiesel

37:The store of fairy tales, that blue chamber where stories lie waiting to be rediscovered, holds out the promise of just those creative enchantments, not only for its own characters caught in its own plotlines; it offers magical metamorphoses to the one who opens the door, who passes on what was found there, and to those who hear what the storyteller brings. The faculty of wonder, like curiosity can make things happen; it is time for wishful thinking to have its due. ~ Marina Warner

38:The hour between dog and wolf, that is, dusk, when the two can’t be distinguished from each other, suggests a lot of other things besides the time of day…The hour in which…every being becomes his own shadow, and thus something other than himself. The hour of metamorphoses, when people half hope, half fear that a dog will become a wolf. The hour that comes down to us from at least as far back as the early Middle Ages, when country people believed that transformation might happen at any moment. ~ Jean Genet

39:For many feverish years he was burdened with the sensation, an ancient one to be sure, that the incredible sprawl of human history was no more than a pathetically partial record of an infinitely vast and shadowed chronicle of universal metamorphoses. How much greater, then, was the feeling that his own pathetic history formed a practically invisible fragment of what itself was merely an obscure splinter of the infinite. Somehow he needed to liberate himself from the dungeon cell of his life. ~ Thomas Ligotti

40:The slow stone metamorphoses filled him with longing—longing for what? Simplicity? Was simplicity the true nature of homegoing? The simple harmonies, earth order and abundance. In this churchyard in a woodland meadow at the end of a white road, he missed what he had never known, the peace of living one day then another in communion with others of one’s blood and at the end, at the close of one’s works and days, to draw that last breath and come to rest in earth where one’s bones belonged. ~ Peter Matthiessen

41:Eva is a story of repetition. It is a story where our protagonist faces the same situation many times over and determinedly picks himself back up again. It is a story of the will to move forward, even if only a little. It is a story of the resolve to want to be together, even though it is frightening to have contact with others and endure ambiguous loneliness. I would be most gratified if you found enjoyment in these four parts as it takes the same story and metamorphoses it into something different. ~ Hideaki Anno

42:We pursue modernity in her incessant metamorphoses yet we never manage to trap her. She always escapes: each encounter ends in flight. We embrace her and she disappears immediately: it was just a little air. It is the instant, that bird that is everywhere and nowhere. We want to trap it alive but it flaps its wings and vanishes in the form of a handful of syllables. We are left empty-handed. Then the doors of perception open slightly and the other time appears, the real one we were searching for without knowing it: the present, the presence. ~ Octavio Paz

43:Our direct experience is necessarily subjective, necessarily relative to our own position or place in the midst of things, to our particular desires, tastes, and concerns. The everyday world in which we hunger and make love is hardly the mathematically determined “object” toward which the sciences direct themselves. Despite all the mechanical artifacts that now surround us, the world in which we find ourselves before we set out to calculate and measure it is not an inert or mechanical object but a living field, an open and dynamic landscape subject to its own moods and metamorphoses. ~ David Abram

44:Zero-sum thinking is a name for envy. Ovid, in his Metamorphoses, gives an apt description of the “House of Envy” (as a poet in that most zero-sum of political systems, the Roman empire, might): “Envy within, busy at the meal of snake’s flesh... her tongue dripped venom. Only the sight of suffering could bring a smile to her lips. She never knew the comfort of sleep, but... looked with dismay on men’s good fortune... She could hardly refrain from weeping when she saw no cause for tears.” I didn’t know Hillary Clinton’s involvement in politics dated back to the reign of Augustus. Then ~ P J O Rourke

45:Like a helpless maiden from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Antinous, pursued by a proto-god – Hadrian – slipped into a river and was transformed. His life became incidental; his death in the waters of the Nile and his resurrection as a god, as a star, as (possibly) saviour of Hadrian, as the inspiration of a city, was his whole story. He gazed out implacably over the empire; still gazes, passively, in art collections throughout the Western world, a Galatea turned to stone. The mystery of Antinous will always be more powerful in his absence than it could ever have been in his presence. But if one attempts to examine the story more closely, to move behind the placid beauty, behind the unforgettable image, Antinous starts to slip away. ~ Elizabeth Speller

46:They stood in silence for a few moments with Ryan watching him carefully. He was fiddling with his t-shirt and scuffing his sneaker against the floor as he appeared to turn something over in his mind. His expression went through a variety of metamorphoses before he finally sighed and shook his head. "Y'know, I'm not a big expert on this stuff. I've never even been in a real relationship and I'm twenty-five, but like..." He trailed off for a minute, bit his lip and then shrugged before pressing on. "But I saw the way both of you guys were at the start of this whole thing, and if you two could have that kind of intense fire stuff considering the way you both were... I dunno, I wouldn't give up so easy. But then again, maybe I read too much fanfic. ~ Santino Hassell

47:For many feverish years he was burdened with the sensation, an ancient one to be sure, that the incredible sprawl of human history was no more than a pathetically partial record of an infinitely vast and shadowed chronicle of universal metamorphoses. How much greater, then, was the feeling that his own pathetic history formed a practically invisible fragment of what itself was merely an obscure splinter of the infinite. Somehow he needed to excarcerate himself from the claustral dungeon cell of his life. In the end, however, he broke beneath the weight of his aspiration. And as the years passed, the only mystery which seemed worthy of his interest, and his amazement, was that unknown day which would inaugurate his personal eternity, that incredible day on which the sun simply would not rise, and forever would begin. ~ Thomas Ligotti

48:Metamorphoses by 'Death Posture' (by 'Zeno of Elea') Powers of visualization, self-discipline and concentration are the qualities necessary. All magical practice, to be effective, needs great courage. By means of the Death Posture, total transportation of consciousness into the sex-centre occurs. This brings about pure aesthesis and the creation of a new sexuality by autotelic concept: the subsequent ecstasy is a sublimation. Because every other sense is brought to nullity by sex-intoxication, it is called the 'Death Posture'. Everything is 'a priori' to the act. The 'a posteriori' illumination reveals the inter-sexual correspondences of all things, and great emotiveness becomes... My desires have made a sentient soul, an obsession, a vampire, an insatiable negress of pendulous breasts and fatted thighs riding me into the abysses of the quadriga sexualis... ~ Anonymous

49:…It was this white garment of mourning which he still wore, the white mourning of surgical gowns so much more significant than black, since white is the colour of obliteration whereas black, far from being the colour of emptiness and nothingness, is much more the active shade which makes the deep and therefore dark substance of all things stand out, from the flight of despair whose magical blackness animates the blank parchment of the soul, to the supposedly sinister flight of the raven, whose croakings and cadaverous meals are but the joyful signs of physical metamorphoses, black as congelead blood or charred wood, but much less lugubrious than the deathly restfulness of white. Yet this desert whiteness did not rule out all subsequent possibilities, when it too would coagulate to form directions in blood and when it too would know the three congruences of putrefaction. ~ Michel Leiris

50:The River God circled around me as I stood shrouded in darkness and, not knowing what had happened, searched all around the hollow cloud. Twice, unwittingly, he walked around the place where the goddess had hidden me and twice he called: ‘Ho there, Arethusa! Hallo, Arethusa!’ Alas what feelings did I have then! Assuredly I was like a lamb when it hears the wolves howling around the high sheepfold, or like a hare, hiding in the branches, watching the jaws of hostile hounds, and not daring to move. Still Achelous did not depart; for he did not see any footsteps leading further on. He kept watch on the spot where the mist was. A cold sweat broke out on my limbs, when I was just trapped, and dark drops fell from my whole body. Wherever I moved my foot, a pool flowed out, moisture dripped from my hair. More quickly than I can tell of, I was changed into a stream. OVID, METAMORPHOSES, BOOK 5 (TRANS. ~ Elizabeth Speller

51:An interesting question is whether symmetry with respect to translation, and indeed reflection and rotation too, is limited to the visual arts, or may be exhibited by other artistic forms, such as pieces of music. Evidently, if we refer to the sounds, rather than to the layout of the written musical score, we would have to define symmetry operations in terms other than purely geometrical, just as we did in the case of the palindromes. Once we do that, however, the answer to the question, Can we find translation-symmetric music? is a resounding yes. As Russian crystal physicist G. V. Wulff wrote in 1908: "The spirit of music is rhythm. It consists of the regular, periodic repetition of parts of the musical composition...the regular repetition of identical parts in the whole constitutes the essence of symmetry." Indeed, the recurring themes that are so common in musical composition are the temporal equivalents of Morris's designs and symmetry under translation. Even more generally, compositions are often based on a fundamental motif introduced at the beginning and then undergoing various metamorphoses. ~ Mario Livio

52:When she does not find love, she may find poetry. Because she does not act, she observes, she feels, she records; a color, a smile awakens profound echoes within her; her destiny is outside her, scattered in cities already built, on the faces of men already marked by life, she makes contact, she relishes with passion and yet in a manner more detached, more free, than that of a young man. Being poorly integrated in the universe of humanity and hardly able to adapt herself therein, she, like the child, is able to see it objectively; instead of being interested solely in her grasp on things, she looks for their significance; she catches their special outlines, their unexpected metamorphoses. She rarely feels a bold creativeness, and usually she lacks the technique of self-expression; but in her conversation, her letters, her literary essays, her sketches, she manifests an original sensitivity. The young girl throws herself into things with ardor, because she is not yet deprived of her transcendence; and the fact that she accomplishes nothing, that she is nothing, will make her impulses only the more passionate. Empty and unlimited, she seeks from within her nothingness to attain All. ~ Simone de Beauvoir

53:In this pilgrimage in search of modernity I lost my way at many points only to find myself again. I returned to the source and discovered that modernity is not outside but within us. It is today and the most ancient antiquity; it is tomorrow and the beginning of the world; it is a thousand years old and yet newborn. It speaks in Nahuatl, draws Chinese ideograms from the 9th century, and appears on the television screen. This intact present, recently unearthed, shakes off the dust of centuries, smiles and suddenly starts to fly, disappearing through the window. A simultaneous plurality of time and presence: modernity breaks with the immediate past only to recover an age-old past and transform a tiny fertility figure from the neolithic into our contemporary. We pursue modernity in her incessant metamorphoses yet we never manage to trap her. She always escapes: each encounter ends in flight. We embrace her and she disappears immediately: it was just a little air. It is the instant, that bird that is everywhere and nowhere. We want to trap it alive but it flaps its wings and vanishes in the form of a handful of syllables. We are left empty-handed. Then the doors of perception open slightly and the other time appears, the real one we were searching for without knowing it: the present, the presence. ~ Octavio Paz

54:He thanked me with a smiling nod, measured out a few minims of the red tincture and added one of the powders. The mixture, which was at first of a reddish hue, began, in proportion as the crystals melted, to brighten in colour, to effervesce audibly, and to throw off small fumes of vapour. Suddenly and at the same moment, the ebullition ceased and the compound changed to a dark purple, which faded again more slowly to a watery green. My visitor, who had watched these metamorphoses with a keen eye, smiled, set down the glass upon the table, and then turned and looked upon me with an air of scrutiny. "And now," said he, "to settle what remains. Will you be wise? will you be guided? will you suffer me to take this glass in my hand and to go forth from your house without further parley? or has the greed of curiosity too much command of you? Think before you answer, for it shall be done as you decide. As you decide, you shall be left as you were before, and neither richer nor wiser, unless the sense of service rendered to a man in mortal distress may be counted as a kind of riches of the soul. Or, if you shall so prefer to choose, a new province of knowledge and new avenues to fame and power shall be laid open to you, here, in this room, upon the instant; and your sight shall be blasted by a prodigy to stagger the unbelief of Satan. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

55:The 90th Year High in the jacaranda shines the gilded thread of a small bird's curlicue of song-too high for her to see or hear. I've learned not to say, these last years, ‘O, look!-O, listen, Mother!' as I used to. (It was she who taught me to look; to name the flowers when I was still close to the ground, my face level with theirs; or to watch the sublime metamorphoses unfold and unfold over the walled back gardens of our street… It had not been given her to know the flesh as good in itself, as the flesh of a fruit is good. To her the human body has been a husk, a shell in which souls were prisoned. Yet, from within it, with how much gazing her life has paid tribute to the world's body! How tears of pleasure would choke her, when a perfect voice, deep or high, clove to its note unfaltering! She has swept the crackling seedpods, the litter of mauve blossoms, off the cement path, tipped them into the rubbish bucket. She's made her bed, washed up the breakfast dishes, wiped the hotplate. I've taken the butter and milkjug back to the fridge next door-but it's not my place, visiting here, to usurp the tasks that weave the day's pattern. Now she is leaning forward in her chair, by the lamp lit in the daylight, rereading War and Peace. When I look up 73 from her wellworn copy of The Divine Milieu, which she wants me to read, I see her hand loose on the black stem of the magnifying glass, she is dozing. ‘I am so tired,' she has written me, ‘of appreciating the gift of life.' ~ Denise Levertov

56:We have noticed that, since man’s advent, there has been a certain slowing down of the passive and somatic transformations of the organism in favour of the conscious and active metamorphoses of the individual absorbed in society. We find the artificial carrying on the work of the natural; and the transmission of an oral or written culture being superimposed on genetic forms of heredity (chromosomes). Without denying the possibility or even probability of a certain prolongation in our limbs, and still more in our nervous system, of the orthogenetic processes of the past, I am inclined to think that their influence, hardly appreciable since the emergence of Homo sapiens, is destined to dwindle still further. As thought regulated by a sort of quantum law, the energies of life seem unable to spread in one region or take on a new form except at the expense of a lowering elsewhere. Since man’s arrival, the evolutionary pressure seems to have dropped in all the non-human branches of the tree of life. And now that man has become an adult and has opened up for himself the field of mental and social transformations, bodies no longer change appreciably; they no longer need to in the human branch; or if they still change, it will only be under our industrious control. It may well be that in its individual capacities and penetration our brain has reached its organic limits. But the movement does not stop there. From west to east, evolution is henceforth occupied elsewhere, in a richer and more complex domain, constructing, with all minds joined together, mind. Beyond all nations and races, the inevitable taking-as-a-whole of mankind has already begun. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man

57:Martin, perceiving some shelves filled with English books, said to the senator, “I fancy that a republican must be highly delighted with those books, which are most of them written with a noble spirit of freedom.” “It is noble to write as we think,” said Pococurante; “it is the privilege of humanity. Throughout Italy we write only what we do not think; and the present inhabitants of the country of the Caesars and Antonines dare not acquire a single idea without the permission of a Dominican father. I should be enamored of the spirit of the English nation, did it not utterly frustrate the good effects it would produce by passion and the spirit of party.” Candide, seeing a Milton, asked the senator if he did not think that author a great man. “Who?” said Pococurante sharply; “that barbarian who writes a tedious commentary in ten books of rumbling verse, on the first chapter of Genesis? that slovenly imitator of the Greeks, who disfigures the creation, by making the Messiah take a pair of compasses from Heaven’s armory to plan the world; whereas Moses represented the Diety as producing the whole universe by his fiat? Can I think you have any esteem for a writer who has spoiled Tasso’s Hell and the Devil; who transforms Lucifer sometimes into a toad, and at others into a pygmy; who makes him say the same thing over again a hundred times; who metamorphoses him into a school–divine; and who, by an absurdly serious imitation of Ariosto’s comic invention of firearms, represents the devils and angels cannonading each other in Heaven? Neither I nor any other Italian can possibly take pleasure in such melancholy reveries; but the marriage of Sin and Death, and snakes issuing from the womb of the former, are enough to make any person sick that is not lost to all sense of delicacy. This obscene, whimsical, and disagreeable poem met with the neglect it deserved at its first publication; and I only treat the author now as he was treated in his own country by his contemporaries. ~ Voltaire

58:We receive a fatal imprint in childhood, at the time of our greatest plasticity, of our passive impressionism, of our helplessness before suggestion. In no period has the role of the parents loomed as immense, because we have recognized the determinism, but at the same time an exaggeration in the size of the Enormous Parent does not need to be permanent and irretrievable. The time has come when, having completed the scientific study of the importance of parents, we now must re-establish our power to revoke their imprint, to reverse our patterns, to kill our fatal downward tendencies. We do not remain smaller in suture than our parents. Nature had intended them to shrink progressively in our eyes to human proportions while we reach for our own maturity. Their fallibilities, their errors, their weaknesses were intended to develop our own capacity for parenthood. We were to discover their human weakness not to overwhelm or humiliate them, but to realize the difficulty of their task and awaken our own human protectiveness toward their failures or a respect for their partial achievement. But to place all responsibilities upon them is wrong too. If they gave us handicaps, they also gave us their courage, their obstinacy, their sacrifices, their moments of strength. We cannot forever await from them the sanction to mature, to impose on them our own truths, to resist or perhaps defeat them in our necessity to gain strength. We cannot always place responsibility outside of ourselves, on parents, nations, the world, society, race, religion. Long ago it was the gods. If we accepted a part of this responsibility we would simultaneously discover our strength. A handicap is not permanent. We are permitted all the fluctuations, metamorphoses which we all so well understand in our scientific studies of psychology. Character has ceased to be a mystery and we can no longer refuse our responsibility with the excuse that this is an unformed, chaotic, eyeless, unpredictable force which drives, tosses, breaks us at will. ~ Ana s Nin

59:[the virgin birth account] occurs everywhere. When the Herod figure ( the extreme figure of misgovernment) has brought man to the nadir of spirit, the occult forces of the cycle begin to move. In an inconspicuous village, Mary is born who will maintain herself undefiled by fashionable errors of her generation. Her womb, remaining fallw as the primordial abyss, summons itself by its very readiness the original power that fertilzed the void. Mary's virgin birth story is recounted everywhere. and with such striking unity of the main contours, that early christian missionaries had to think the devil must be creating mockeries of Mary's birth wherever they testified. One missionary reports that after work was begun among Tunja and Sogamozzo South American Indians, "the demon began giving contrary doctrines. The demon sought to discredit Mary's account, declaring it had not yet come to pass; but presently, the sun would bring it to pass by taking flesh in the womb of a virgin in a small village, causing her to conceive by rays of the sun while she yet remained virgin." Hindu mythology tells of the maiden parvati who retreated to the high hills to practice austerities. Taraka had usurped mastery of the world, a tyrant. Prophecy said only a son of the high god Shiva could overthrow him. Shive however was the pattern god of yoga-alone, aloof, meditating. It was impossible Shiva could be moved to beget. Parvati tried changing the world situation by metching Shiva in meditation. Aloof, indrawn in her soul meditating, she fasted naked beneath the blazing sun, even adding to the heat by building four great fires. One day a Brahmin youth arrived and asked why anyone so beautiful should be destroying herself with such torture. "My desire," she said "is Shiva, the Highest. He is the god of solitude and concentration. I therefore imitate his meditation to move him from his balance and bring him to me in love." Shiva, the youth announced, is a god of destruction, shiva is World Annhilator. Snakes are his garlands. The virgin said: He is beyond the mind of such as you. He is terrifying but the source of grace. snake garlands or jewel garlands he can assume or put off at will. Shiva is my love. The youth thereupon put away his disguise-he was Shiva. The Buddha descended from heaven to his mother's womb in the shape of a milk white elephant. The Aztec Coatlicue was approached by a god in the form of a ball of feathers. The chapters of Ovid's Metamorphoses swarm with nymphs beset by gods in sundry masquerades: jove as a bull, a swan, a shower of gold. Any leaf, any nut, or even the breath of a breeze, may be enough to fertilize the ready virgin womb. The procreating power is everywhere. And according to whim or destiny of the hour, either a hero savior or a world--annihilating demon may be conceived-one can never know. ~ Joseph Campbell

60:What in water did Bloom, waterlover, drawer of water, watercarrier, returning to the range, admire? Its universality: its democratic equality and constancy to its nature in seeking its own level: its vastness in the ocean of Mercator's projection: its unplumbed profundity in the Sundam trench of the Pacific exceeding 8000 fathoms: the restlessness of its waves and surface particles visiting in turn all points of its seaboard: the independence of its units: the variability of states of sea: its hydrostatic quiescence in calm: its hydrokinetic turgidity in neap and spring tides: its subsidence after devastation: its sterility in the circumpolar icecaps, arctic and antarctic: its climatic and commercial significance: its preponderance of 3 to 1 over the dry land of the globe: its indisputable hegemony extending in square leagues over all the region below the subequatorial tropic of Capricorn: the multisecular stability of its primeval basin: its luteofulvous bed: its capacity to dissolve and hold in solution all soluble substances including millions of tons of the most precious metals: its slow erosions of peninsulas and islands, its persistent formation of homothetic islands, peninsulas and downwardtending promontories: its alluvial deposits: its weight and volume and density: its imperturbability in lagoons and highland tarns: its gradation of colours in the torrid and temperate and frigid zones: its vehicular ramifications in continental lakecontained streams and confluent oceanflowing rivers with their tributaries and transoceanic currents, gulfstream, north and south equatorial courses: its violence in seaquakes, waterspouts, Artesian wells, eruptions, torrents, eddies, freshets, spates, groundswells, watersheds, waterpartings, geysers, cataracts, whirlpools, maelstroms, inundations, deluges, cloudbursts: its vast circumterrestrial ahorizontal curve: its secrecy in springs and latent humidity, revealed by rhabdomantic or hygrometric instruments and exemplified by the well by the hole in the wall at Ashtown gate, saturation of air, distillation of dew: the simplicity of its composition, two constituent parts of hydrogen with one constituent part of oxygen: its healing virtues: its buoyancy in the waters of the Dead Sea: its persevering penetrativeness in runnels, gullies, inadequate dams, leaks on shipboard: its properties for cleansing, quenching thirst and fire, nourishing vegetation: its infallibility as paradigm and paragon: its metamorphoses as vapour, mist, cloud, rain, sleet, snow, hail: its strength in rigid hydrants: its variety of forms in loughs and bays and gulfs and bights and guts and lagoons and atolls and archipelagos and sounds and fjords and minches and tidal estuaries and arms of sea: its solidity in glaciers, icebergs, icefloes: its docility in working hydraulic millwheels, turbines, dynamos, electric power stations, bleachworks, tanneries, scutchmills: its utility in canals, rivers, if navigable, floating and graving docks: its potentiality derivable from harnessed tides or watercourses falling from level to level: its submarine fauna and flora (anacoustic, photophobe), numerically, if not literally, the inhabitants of the globe: its ubiquity as constituting 90 percent of the human body: the noxiousness of its effluvia in lacustrine marshes, pestilential fens, faded flowerwater, stagnant pools in the waning moon. ~ James Joyce

61:Zarathustra's Speeches ON THE THREE METAMORPHOSES Of three metamorphoses of the spirit I tell you: how the spirit becomes a camel; and the camel, a lion; and the lion, finally, a child. There is much that is difficult for the spirit, the strong reverent spirit that would bear much: but the difficult and the most difficult are what its strength demands. 26 What is difficult? asks the spirit that would bear much, and kneels down like a camel wanting to be well loaded. What is most difficult, 0 heroes, asks the spirit that would bear much, that I may take it upon myself and exult in my strength? Is it not humbling oneself to wound one's haughtiness? Letting one's folly shine to mock one's wisdom? Or is it this: parting from our cause when it triumphs? Climbing high mountains to tempt the tempter? Or is it this: feeding on the acorns and grass of knowledge and, for the sake of the truth, suffering hunger in one's soul? Or is it this: being sick and sending home the comforters and making friends with the deaf, who never hear what you want? Or is it this: stepping into filthy waters when they are the waters of truth, and not repulsing cold frogs and hot toads? Or is it this: loving those who despise us and offering a hand to the ghost that would frighten us? All these most difficult things the spirit that would bear much takes upon itself: like the camel that, burdened, speeds into the desert, thus the spirit speeds into its desert. In the loneliest desert, however, the second metamorphosis occurs: here the spirit becomes a lion who would conquer his freedom and be master in his own desert. Here he seeks out his last master: he wants to fight him and his last god; for ultimate victory he wants to fight with the great dragon. Who is the great dragon whom the spirit will no longer call lord and god? "Thou shalt" is the name of the great dragon. But the spirit of the lion says, 'I 27 will." 'Thou shalt" lies in his way, sparkling like gold, an animal covered with scales; and on every scale shines a golden "thou shalt." Values, thousands of years old, shine on these scales; and thus speaks the mightiest of all dragons: "All value of all things shines on me. All value has long been created, and I am all created value. Verily, there shall be no more 'I will.'" Thus speaks the dragon. My brothers, why is there a need in the spirit for the lion? Why is not the beast of burden, which renounces and is reverent, enough? To create new values-that even the lion cannot do; but the creation of freedom for oneself for new creation-that is within the power of the lion. The creation of freedom for oneself and a sacred "No" even to duty-for that, my brothers, the lion is needed. To assume the right to new values-that is the most terrifying assumption for a reverent spirit that would bear much. Verily, to him it is preying, and a matter for a beast of prey. He once loved "thou shalt" as most sacred: now he must find illusion and caprice even in the most sacred, that freedom from his love may become his prey: the lion is needed for such prey. But say, my brothers, what can the child do that even the lion could not do? Why must the preying lion still become a child? The child is innocence and forgetting, a new beginning, a game, a self-propelled wheel, a first movement, a sacred "Yes." For the game of creation, my brothers, a sacred "Yes" is needed: the spirit now wills his own will, and he who had been lost to the world now conquers his own world. Of three metamorphoses of the spirit I have told you: how the spirit became a camel; and the cameL a lion; and the lion, finally, a child. Thus spoke Zarathustra. And at that time he sojourned in the town that is called The Motley Cow. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, ON THE THREE METAMORPHOSES

62:The Fable Of Dryope - Ovid's Metamorphoses Book 9, [v. 324-393] She said, and for her lost Calanthis sighs, When the fair Consort of her son replies. 'Since you a servant's ravish'd form bemoan, And kindly sigh for sorrows not your own; Let me (if tears and grief permit) relate A nearer woe, a sister's stranger fate. No Nymph of all OEchalia could compare For beauteous form with Dryope the fair, Her tender mother's only hope and pride, (Myself the offspring of a second bride) This Nymph compress'd by him who rules the day, Whom Delphi and the Delian isle obey, Andraemon lov'd; and, bless'd in all those charms That pleas'd a God, succeeded to her arms. 'A lake there was, with shelving banks around, Whose verdant summit fragrant myrtles crown'd. These shades, unknowing of the fates, she sought, And to the Naiads flow'ry garlands brought; Her smiling babe (a pleasing charge) she prest Within her arms, and nourish'd at her breast. Not distant far, a wat'ry Lotos grows, The spring was new, and all the verdant boughs Adorn'd with blossoms promis'd fruits that vie In glowing colours with the Tyrian dye: Of these she cropp'd to please her infant son, And I myself the same rash act had done: But lo! I saw, (as near her side I stood) The violated blossoms drop with blood; Upon the tree I cast a frightful look; The trembling tree with sudden horror shook. Lotis the nymph (if rural tales be true) As from Priapus' lawless lust she flew, Forsook her form; and fixing here became A flow'ry plant, which still preserves her name. 'This change unknown, astonish'd at the sight My trembling sister strove to urge her flight, And first the pardon of the nymphs implor'd, 209 And those offended sylvan powers ador'd: But when she backward would have fled, she found Her stiff'ning feet were rooted in the ground: In vain to free her fasten'd feet she strove, And as she struggles, only moves above; She feels th' encroaching bark around her grow By quick degrees, and cover all below: Surpris'd at this, her trembling hand she heaves To rend her hair, the shooting leaves are seen To rise, and shade her with a sudden green. The child Amphissus, to her bosom prest, Perceiv'd a colder and a harder breast, And found the springs, that ne'er till then deny'd Their milky moisture, on a sudden dry'd. I saw, unhappy! what I now relate, And stood the helpless witness of thy fate, Embrac'd thy boughs, thy rising bark delay'd, There wish'd to grow, and mingle shade with shade. 'Behold Andraemon and th' unhappy sire Appear, and for their Dryope enquire; A springing tree for Dryope they find, And print warm kisses on the panting rind. Prostrate, with tears their kindred plant bedew, And close embrace as to the roots they grew, The face was all that now remain'd of thee, No more a woman, nor yet quite a tree; Thy branches hung with humid pearls appear, From ev'ry leaf distils a trickling tear, And straight a voice, while yet a voice remains, Thus thro' the trembling boughs in sighs complains. ''If to the wretched any faith be giv'n, I swear by all th' unpitying pow'rs of heav'n, No wilful crime this heavy vengeance bred; In mutual innocence our lives we led: If this be false, let these new greens decay, Let sounding axes lop my limbs away, And crackling flames on all my honours prey. But from my branching arms this infant bear, Let some kind nurse supply a mother's care: And to his mother let him oft be led, Sport in her shades, and in her shades be fed; Teach him, when first his infant voice shall frame 210 Imperfect words, and lisp his mother's name, To hail this tree; and say with weeping eyes, Within this plant my hapless parent lies: And when in youth he seeks the shady woods, Oh, let him fly the crystal lakes and floods, Nor touch the fatal flow'rs; but, warn'd by me, Believe a Goddess shrin'd in ev'ry tree. My sire, my sister, and my spouse farewell! If in your breasts or love, or pity dwell, Protect your plant, nor let my branches feel The browsing cattle or the piercing steel. Farewell! and since I cannot bend to join My lips to yours, advance at least to mine. My son, thy mother's parting kiss receive, While yet thy mother has a kiss to give. I can no more; the creeping rind invades My closing lips, and hides my head in shades: Remove your hands, the bark shall soon suffice Without their aid to seal these dying eyes.' 'She ceas'd at once to speak, and ceas'd to be; And all the nymph was lost within the tree; Yet latent life thro' her new branches reign'd, And long the plant a human heat retain'd.' ~ Alexander Pope

63:The world's great age begins anew,    The golden years return, The earth doth like a snake renew    Her winter weeds outworn: Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam Like wrecks of a dissolving dream. A brighter Hellas rears its mountains    From waves serener far; A new Peneus rolls his fountains    Against the morning star. Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep Young Cyclads on a sunnier deep. A loftier Argo cleaves the main,    Fraught with a later prize; Another Orpheus sings again,    And loves, and weeps, and dies. A new Ulysses leaves once more Calypso for his native shore. Oh, write no more the tale of Troy,    If earth Death's scroll must be! Nor mix with Laian rage the joy    Which dawns upon the free: Although a subtler Sphinx renew Riddles of death Thebes never knew. Another Athens shall arise,    And to remoter time Bequeath, like sunset to the skies,    The splendour of its prime; And leave, if nought so bright may live, All earth can take or Heaven can give. Saturn and Love their long repose    Shall burst, more bright and good Than all who fell, than One who rose,    Than many unsubdu'd: Not gold, not blood, their altar dowers, But votive tears and symbol flowers. Oh cease! must hate and death return?    Cease! must men kill and die? Cease! drain not to its dregs the urn    Of bitter prophecy. The world is weary of the past, Oh might it die or rest at last! NOTES Form: ababcc Composition Date: 1821 1060. Written at Pisa in the autumn of 1821 and published in 1822, Hellas is a "lyrical drama" treating of the contemporary struggle for freedom in Greece and dedicated to Prince Mavrocordato, whom Shelley met in exile at Pisa and who had returned to Greece in June 1821 to take part in the revolution against the Turks. Shelley writes in a Preface: "The Persae of Aeschylus afforded me the first model of my conception, although the decision of the glorious contest now waging in Greece being yet suspended forbids a catastrophe parallel to the return of Xerxes and the desolation of the Persians. I have, therefore, contented myself with exhibiting a series of lyric pictures ... [suggesting] the final triumph of the Greek cause as a portion of the cause of civilization and social improvement." The action takes place in the palace of the Turkish king, where he receives reports on the progress of the war from messengers and prophecies of doom from visionary visitors. The last news, however, is of a Turkish victory, to the dismay of the Greek slaves who act as chorus throughout the play. "The final chorus," according to Shelley's note, "is indistinct and obscure, as the event of the living drama whose arrival it foretells. Prophecies of wars, and rumours of wars, etc., may safely be made by poet or prophet in any age, but to anticipate however darkly a period of regeneration and happiness is a more hazardous exercise of the faculty which bards possess or feign. It will remind the reader 'magno nec proximus intervallo' of Isaiah and Virgil, whose ardent spirits overleaping the actual reign of evil which we endure and bewail, already saw the possible and perhaps approaching state of society in which the 'lion shall lie down with the lamb,' and 'omnis feret omnia tellus.' Let these great names be my authority and excuse." The world's great age: the "annus magnus" at the end of which, according to an idea of the ancients, all the heavenly bodies would return to their original positions, and when, in consequence, the history of the world would begin to repeat itself. 1068. Peneus: a river in Thessaly. 1070. Tempe: the vale through which Peneus flows. 1071. Cyclads: a group of islands in the Aegean. 1072. Argo: the vessel which bore Jason on his search for the Golden Fleece. 1072-77. See Virgil, Eclogue IV: Another Tiphys shall new seas explore; Another Argo land the chiefs upon th'Iberian shore; Another Helen other wars create, And great Achilles urge the Trojan fate (Dryden's translation). 1074. Orpheus. For the stories of Orpheus--his entrancing music, the loss of his wife Eurydice and his ultimate failure to recover her from the underworld, and his death at the hands of Maenads (worshippers of Dionysus)--see Ovid's Metamorphoses. Calypso: a sorceress on whose island Ulysses remained for seven years on the way home from Troy to Ithaca. 1080. Laian rage. Laius was King of Thebes, father of Oedipus, and head of a house whose horrors were a favourite theme of Greek tragedy. 1082. Sphinx: a monster who sat on the roadside at Thebes and slew all who could not solve a riddle it proposed. 1090-93. Shelley's note reads (in part): "Saturn and Love were among the deities of a real or imaginary state of innocence and happiness. All those who fell, or the Gods of Greece, Asia and Egypt; the One who rose, or Jesus Christ . . .; and the many unsubdued, or the monstrous objects of the idolatry of China, India, the Antarctic islands, and the native tribes of America...." ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, Chorus from Hellas

64:Vertumnus And Pomona : Ovid's Metamorphoses, Book 14 [v. 623-771] The fair Pomona flourish'd in his reign; Of all the Virgins of the sylvan train, None taught the trees a nobler race to bear, Or more improv'd the vegetable care. To her the shady grove, the flow'ry field, The streams and fountains, no delights could yield; 'Twas all her joy the ripening fruits to tend, And see the boughs with happy burthens bend. The hook she bore instead of Cynthia's spear, To lop the growth of the luxuriant year, To decent form the lawless shoots to bring, And teach th' obedient branches where to spring. Now the cleft rind inserted graffs receives, And yields an offspring more than nature gives; Now sliding streams the thirsty plants renew, And feed their fibres with reviving dew. These cares alone her virgin breast employ, Averse from Venus and the nuptial joy. Her private orchards, wall'd on ev'ry side, To lawless sylvans all access deny'd. How oft the Satyrs and the wanton Fawns, Who haunt the forests, or frequent the lawns, The God whose ensign scares the birds of prey, And old Silenus, youthful in decay, Employ'd their wiles, and unavailing care, To pass the fences, and surprise the fair. Like these, Vertumnus own'd his faithful flame, Like these, rejected by the scornful dame. To gain her sight a thousand forms he wears, And first a reaper from the field appears, Sweating he walks, while loads of golden grain O'ercharge the shoulders of the seeming swain. Oft o'er his back a crooked scythe is laid, And wreathes of hay his sun-burnt temples shade: Oft in his harden'd hand a goad he bears, Like one who late unyok'd the sweating steers. Sometimes his pruning-hook corrects the vines, 270 And the loose stragglers to their ranks confines. Now gath'ring what the bounteous year allows, He pulls ripe apples from the bending boughs. A soldier now, he with his sword appears; A fisher next, his trembling angle bears; Each shape he varies, and each art he tries, On her bright charms to feast his longing eyes. A female form at last Vertumnus wears, With all the marks of rev'rend age appears, His temples thinly spread with silver hairs; Propp'd on his staff, and stooping as he goes, A painted mitre shades his furrow'd brows. The God in this decrepit form array'd, The gardens enter'd, and the fruit survey'd, And 'Happy you!' (he thus address'd the maid) 'Whose charms as far all other nymphs out-shine, 'As other gardens are excell'd by thine!' Then kiss'd the fair; (his kisses warmer grow Than such as women on their sex bestow.) Then plac'd beside her on the flow'ry ground, Beheld the trees with autumn's bounty crown'd. An Elm was near, to whose embraces led, The curling vine her swelling clusters spread: He view'd her twining branches with delight, And prais'd the beauty of the pleasing sight. 'Yet this tall elm, but for his vine' (he said) 'Had stood neglected, and a barren shade; And this fair vine, but that her arms surround Her marry'd elm, had crept along the ground. Ah beauteous maid, let this example move Your mind, averse from all the joys of love. Deign to be lov'd, and ev'ry heart subdue! What nymph could e'er attract such crowds as you? Not she whose beauty urg'd the Centaurs' arms, Ulysses' Queen, nor Helen's fatal charms. Ev'n now, when silent scorn is all they gain, A thousand court you, tho' they court in vain, A thousand sylvans, demigods, and gods, That haunt our mountains and our Alban woods. But if you'll prosper, mark what I advise, Whom age, and long experience render wise, And one whose tender care is far above 271 All that these lovers ever felt of love, (Far more than e'er can by yourself be guess'd) Fix on Vertumnus, and reject the rest. For his firm faith I dare engage my own; Scarce to himself, himself is better known. To distant lands Vertumnus never roves; Like you contented with his native groves; Nor at first sight, like most, admires the fair; For you he lives; and you alone shall share His last affection, as his early care. Besides, he's lovely far above the rest, With youth immortal, and with beauty blest. Add, that he varies ev'ry shape with ease, And tries all forms that may Pomona please. But what should most excite a mutual flame, Your rural cares, and pleasures are the same: To him your orchard's early fruits are due, (A pleasing off'ring when 'tis made by you) He values these; but yet (alas) complains, That still the best and dearest gift remains. Not the fair fruit that on yon' branches glows With that ripe red th' autumnal sun bestows; Nor tasteful herbs that in these gardens rise, Which the kind soil with milky sap supplies; You, only you, can move the God's desire: Oh crown so constant and so pure a fire! Let soft compassion touch your gentle mind; Think, 'tis Vertumnus begs you to be kind! So may no frost, when early buds appear, Destroy the promise of the youthful year; Nor winds, when first your florid orchard blows, Shake the light blossoms from their blasted boughs!' This when the various God had urg'd in vain, He straight assum'd his native form again; Such, and so bright an aspect now he bears, As when thro' clouds th' emerging sun appears, And thence exerting his refulgent ray, Dispels the darkness, and reveals the day. Force he prepar'd, but check'd the rash design; For when, appearing in a form divine, The Nymph surveys him, and beholds the grace Of charming features, and a youthful face, 272 In her soft breast consenting passions move, And the warm maid confess'd a mutual love. ~ Alexander Pope

65:Les Bijoux (The Jewels) La très chère était nue, et, connaissant mon coeur, Elle n'avait gardé que ses bijoux sonores, Dont le riche attirail lui donnait l'air vainqueur Qu'ont dans leurs jours heureux les esclaves des Mores. Quand il jette en dansant son bruit vif et moqueur, Ce monde rayonnant de métal et de pierre Me ravit en extase, et j'aime à la fureur Les choses où le son se mêle à la lumière. Elle était donc couchée et se laissait aimer, Et du haut du divan elle souriait d'aise À mon amour profond et doux comme la mer, Qui vers elle montait comme vers sa falaise. Les yeux fixés sur moi, comme un tigre dompté, D'un air vague et rêveur elle essayait des poses, Et la candeur unie à la lubricité Donnait un charme neuf à ses métamorphoses; Et son bras et sa jambe, et sa cuisse et ses reins, Polis comme de l'huile, onduleux comme un cygne, Passaient devant mes yeux clairvoyants et sereins; Et son ventre et ses seins, ces grappes de ma vigne, S'avançaient, plus câlins que les Anges du mal, Pour troubler le repos où mon âme était mise, Et pour la déranger du rocher de cristal Où, calme et solitaire, elle s'était assise. Je croyais voir unis par un nouveau dessin Les hanches de l'Antiope au buste d'un imberbe, Tant sa taille faisait ressortir son bassin. Sur ce teint fauve et brun, le fard était superbe! — Et la lampe s'étant résignée à mourir, Comme le foyer seul illuminait la chambre Chaque fois qu'il poussait un flamboyant soupir, Il inondait de sang cette peau couleur d'ambre! 335 The Jewels My darling was naked, and knowing my heart well, She was wearing only her sonorous jewels, Whose opulent display made her look triumphant Like Moorish concubines on their fortunate days. When it dances and flings its lively, mocking sound, This radiant world of metal and of gems Transports me with delight; I passionately love All things in which sound is mingled with light. She had lain down; and let herself be loved From the top of the couch she smiled contentedly Upon my love, deep and gentle as the sea, Which rose toward her as toward a cliff. Her eyes fixed upon me, like a tamed tigress, With a vague, dreamy air she was trying poses, And by blending candor with lechery, Her metamorphoses took on a novel charm; And her arm and her leg, and her thigh and her loins, Shiny as oil, sinuous as a swan, Passed in front of my eyes, clear-sighted and serene; And her belly, her breasts, grapes of my vine, Advanced, more cajoling than angels of evil, To trouble the quiet that had possessed my soul, To dislodge her from the crag of crystal, Where calm and alone she had taken her seat. I thought I saw blended in a novel design Antiope's haunches and the breast of a boy, Her waist set off so well the fullness of her hips. On that tawny brown skin the rouge stood out superb! — And when at last the lamp allowed itself to die, Since the fire alone lighted the room, Each time that it uttered a flaming sigh, It drenched with blood that amber colored skin! 336 — Translated by William Aggeler The Jewels My well-beloved was stripped. Knowing my whim, She wore her tinkling gems, but naught besides: And showed such pride as, while her luck betides, A sultan's favoured slave may show to him. When it lets off its lively, crackling sound, This blazing blend of metal crossed with stone, Gives me an ecstasy I've only known Where league of sound and lustre can be found. She let herself be loved: then, drowsy-eyed, Smiled down from her high couch in languid ease. My love was deep and gentle as the seas And rose to her as to a cliff the tide. My own approval of each dreamy pose, Like a tarned tiger, cunningly she sighted: And candour, with lubricity united, Gave piquancy to every one she chose, Her limbs and hips, burnished with changing lustres, Before my eyes clairvoyant and serene, Swarmed themselves, undulating in their sheen; Her breasts and belly, of my vine the clusters, Like evil angels rose, my fancy twitting, To kill the peace which over me she'd thrown, And to disturb her from the crystal throne Where, calm and solitary, she was sitting. So swerved her pelvis that, in one design, Antiope's white rump it seemed to graft To a boy's torso, merging fore and aft. The talc on her brown tan seemed half-divine. The lamp resigned its dying flame. Within, 337 The hearth alone lit up the darkened air, And every time it sighed a crimson flare It drowned in blood that amber-coloured skin. — Translated by Roy Campbell The Jewels The lovely one was naked and, knowing well my prayer, She wore her loud bright armory of jewels. They Evoked in her the savage and victorious air Of Moorish concubines upon a holiday. When it gives forth, being shaken, its gay mocking noise, This world of metal and of stone, aflare in the night, Excites me monstrously, for chiefest of my joys Is the luxurious commingling of sound and light. Relaxed among the pillows, she looked down at me And let herself be gazed upon at leisure — as if Lulled by my wordless adoration, like the sea Washing perpetually about the foot of a cliff. Slowly, regarding me like a trained leopardess, She slouched into successive poses. A certain ease, A certain candor coupled with lasciviousness, Lent a new charm to the old metamorphoses. The whole lithe harmony of loins, hips, buttocks, thighs, Tawny and sleek, and undulant as the neck of a swan, Began to move hypnotically before my eyes: And her large breasts, those fruits I have grown lean upon, I saw float toward me, tempting as the angels of hell, To win my soul in thralldom to their dark caprice Once more, and lure it down from the high citadel Where, calm and solitary, it thought to have found peace. She stretched and reared, and made herself all belly. In truth, It was as if some playful artist had joined the stout Hips of Antiope to the torso of a youth!... 338 The room grew dark, the lamp having flickered and gone out, And now the whispering fire that had begun to die, Falling in lucent embers, was all the light therein — And when it heaved at moments a flamboyant sigh It inundated as with blood her amber skin. — Translated by George Dillon The Jewels Naked was my dark love, and, knowing my heart, Adorned in but her most sonorous gems, Their high pomp decked her with the conquering art Of Moorish slave girls crowned with diadems. Dancing for me with lively, mocking sound, This world of stone and metal, brittle and bright, Fills me with rapture who have always found Excess of joy where hue and tone unite. Naked she lay, suffered love pleasurably To mould her, smiled on my desire as if, Profound and gentle as the rising sea, It rode the tide toward its appointed cliff. A tiger, tamed, her eyes on mine, intent On lust, she sought all strange ways to please: Her air, half-candid, half-lascivious, lent A new charm to her metamorphoses. In turn, her arms and limbs, her veins, her thighs, Polished as nard, undulant as a swan, Passed under my serene clairvoyant eyes As belly and breasts, grapes of my vine, moved on. Skilled in more spells than evil angels muster To break the solace which possessed my heart, Smashing the crystal rock upon whose luster My quietude sat on its own, apart, 339 Her waist, awrithe, her belly enormously Out-thrust, formed strange designs unknown to us, As if the haunches of Antiope Flowed from a body not yet Ephebus. Slowly the lamplight sank, resigned to die. Firelight pierced darkness, stud on glowing stud, Each time it heaved a sharply flaming sigh It steeped her amber flesh in pools of blood. — Translated by Jacques LeClercq The Jewels My well-beloved was stripped. Knowing my whim, She wore her tinkling gems, but naught besides: And showed such pride as, while her luck betides, A sultan's favoured slave may show to him. When it lets off its lively, crackling sound, This blazing blend of metal crossed with stone, Gives me an ecstasy I've only known Where league of sound and luster can be found. She let herself be loved: then, drowsy-eyed, Smiled down from her high couch in languid ease. My love was deep and gentle as the seas And rose to her as to a cliff the tide. My own approval of each dreamy pose, Like a tamed tiger, cunningly she sighted: And candour, with lubricity united, Gave piquancy to every one she chose. Her limbs and hips, burnished with changing lustres, Before my eyes clairvoyant and serene, Swanned themselves, undulating in their sheen; Her breasts and belly, of my vine and clusters, Like evil angels rose, my fancy twitting, 340 To kill the peace which over me she'd thrown, And to disturb her from the crystal throne Where, calm and solitary, she was sitting. So swerved her pelvis that, in one design, Antiope's white rump it seemed to graft To a boy's torso, merging fore and aft. The talc on her brown tan seemed half-divine. The lamp resigned its dying flame. Within, The hearth alone lit up the darkened air, And every time it sighed a crimson flare It drowned in blood that amber-coloured skin. Translated by Anonymous ~ Charles Baudelaire

--- IN CHAPTERS (in Dictionaries, in Quotes, in Chapters)

10

   6 Psychology
   5 Mythology
   4 Christianity
   2 Science
   2 Poetry
   2 Integral Theory
   2 Fiction
   1 Philosophy
   1 Integral Yoga
   1 Alchemy


   5 Joseph Campbell
   4 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
   2 Jorge Luis Borges
   2 H P Lovecraft
   2 Friedrich Nietzsche


   5 The Hero with a Thousand Faces
   3 Thus Spoke Zarathustra
   2 The Secret Doctrine
   2 The Phenomenon of Man

01.08_-_A_Theory_of_Yoga, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga       What is the reason of this elaboration, this check and constraint upon the natural and direct outflow of the animal instincts in man? It has been said that the social life of man, the fact that he has to live and move as member of a group or aggregate has imposed upon him these restrictions. The free and unbridled indulgence of one's bare aboriginal impulses may be possible to creatures that live a separate, solitary and individual life but is disruptive of all bonds necessary for a corporate and group life. It is even a biological necessity again which has evolved in man a third and collateral primary instinct that of the herd. And it is this herd-instinct which naturally and spontaneously restrains, diverts and even Metamorphoses the other instincts of the mere animal life. However, leaving aside for the moment the question whether man's ethical and spiritual ideals are a mere dissimulation of his animal instincts or whether they correspond to certain actual realities apart from and co-existent with these latter, we will recognise the simple fact of control and try to have a glimpse into its mechanism.

1.01_-_ON_THE_THREE_METAMORPHOSES, #Thus Spoke Zarathustra, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy   object:1.01 - ON THE THREE Metamorphoses   author class:Friedrich Nietzsche   --   Zarathustra's Speeches   ON THE THREE Metamorphoses      Of three Metamorphoses of the spirit I tell you: how   the spirit becomes a camel; and the camel, a lion; and   --   lost to the world now conquers his own world.   Of three Metamorphoses of the spirit I have told   you: how the spirit became a camel; and the cameL a

1.01_-_The_Three_Metamorphoses, #Thus Spoke Zarathustra, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy   object:1.01 - The Three Metamorphoses   class:chapter   --      I.:THE THREE Metamorphoses   1:Three Metamorphoses of the spirit do I designate to you: how the spirit becometh a camel, the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child.   2:Many heavy things are there for the spirit, the strong load-bearing spirit in which reverence dwelleth: for the heavy and the heaviest longeth its strength.   --   25:Aye, for the game of creating, my brethren, there is needed a holy Yea unto life: ITS OWN will, willeth now the spirit; HIS OWN world winneth the world's outcast.   26:Three Metamorphoses of the spirit have I designated to you: how the spirit became a camel, the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child.--   27:Thus spake Zarathustra. And at that time he abode in the town which is called The Pied Cow.

1.02_-_MAPS_OF_MEANING_-_THREE_LEVELS_OF_ANALYSIS, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology   In keeping with this observation, the existentialist psycho therapist Ludwig Binswanger observes that:   All Metamorphoses of the egoistic in social instincts and thus, properly said, all Metamorphoses of   evil into good drives and dispositions, occur, according to Freud, under compulsion. Originally, i.e., in

1.02_-_SOCIAL_HEREDITY_AND_PROGRESS, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity   ment at a time when, owing to a different arrangement of the sea-   sons, or of lives or Metamorphoses, the parents knew and reared   their young, then this in fact means that the results of education fi-

1.02_-_The_Refusal_of_the_Call, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology      Ovid, Metamorphoses, I, 504-553 (translation by Frank Justus Miller, the   Loeb Classical Library).

1.03_-_Supernatural_Aid, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology   comparable to the mythological realm; and therein the metals underwent   strange Metamorphoses and transmutations, symbolical of the transfigurations   of the soul under the tutelage of the supernatural. Hermes was the master of

1.03_-_THE_EARTH_IN_ITS_EARLY_STAGES, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity   than could be imagined by the science of the ancients. Vaguely   analogous to the Metamorphoses of living creatures, there occurs   in the most solid rocks, as we now know, perpetual transforma-

1.03_-_The_Tale_of_the_Alchemist_Who_Sold_His_Soul, #The Castle of Crossed Destinies, #Italo Calvino, #Fiction   Was she a water nymph? Was she the queen of the elves of the air? An angel of the liquid fire in the earth's center?   (In The Wheel of Fortune, if you looked carefully, the bestial Metamorphoses seemed perhaps only the first step in a regression of the human to the vegetable and mineral.)   "Are you afraid our souls will fall into the Devil's hands?" those of the City must have asked.

1.04_-_The_Crossing_of_the_First_Threshold, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology   Oriental Society, April-June, 1944), p. 25.   Ovid, Metamorphoses, VII, 62; XV, 338.   Supra, p. 64..