classes ::: adjective,
children ::: Epic Poetry (by alpha), Epic Poetry (ranked)
branches ::: Epic, epics

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object:Epic
word class:adjective


--- NOTES
  There seems
    Epic Poetry
    Epic Fiction?
    Epic Science Fiction?

  Epic is an adjective, such that anything important could come in an epic form.

  and so could be considered a grade or status perhaps?

  even an episode could be epic potentially.

see also :::

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now begins generated list of local instances, definitions, quotes, instances in chapters, wordnet info if available and instances among weblinks


OBJECT INSTANCES [0] - TOPICS - AUTHORS - BOOKS - CHAPTERS - CLASSES - SEE ALSO - SIMILAR TITLES

TOPICS
SEE ALSO


AUTH

BOOKS
City_of_God
Enchiridion
Enchiridion_text
Epigrams_from_Savitri
Evolution_II
Full_Circle
General_Principles_of_Kabbalah
Heart_of_Matter
Infinite_Library
Letters_On_Poetry_And_Art
Plotinus_-_Complete_Works_Vol_01
Poetics
Savitri
Spiral_Dynamics
The_Art_of_Living__The_Classical_Manual_on_Virtue
The_Book_of_Gates
The_Divine_Milieu
The_Epic_of_Gilgamesh
The_Essential_Epicurus
The_Essential_Writings
The_Handbook
The_Heros_Journey
The_Republic
The_Use_and_Abuse_of_History
The_Way_of_Perfection
The_Wit_and_Wisdom_of_Alfred_North_Whitehead
Toward_the_Future

IN CHAPTERS TITLE
1.23_-_Epic_Poetry.
1.24_-_(Epic_Poetry_continued.)_Further_points_of_agreement_with_Tragedy.
1.anon_-_The_Epic_of_Gilgamesh_Tablet_II
1.anon_-_The_Epic_of_Gilgamesh_Tablet_III
1.anon_-_The_Epic_of_Gilgamesh_Tablet_IV
1.anon_-_The_Epic_of_Gilgamesh_TabletIX
1.anon_-_The_Epic_of_Gilgamesh_Tablet_VII
1.anon_-_The_Epic_of_Gilgamesh_Tablet_VIII
1.anon_-_The_Epic_of_Gilgamesh_Tablet_X
1.anon_-_The_Epic_of_Gilgamesh_Tablet_XI_The_Story_of_the_Flood
2.3.1.54_-_An_Epic_Line

IN CHAPTERS CLASSNAME

IN CHAPTERS TEXT
0_0.01_-_Introduction
00.01_-_The_Mother_on_Savitri
0.00_-_INTRODUCTION
0.00_-_THE_GOSPEL_PREFACE
0.01f_-_FOREWARD
0.03_-_The_Threefold_Life
01.02_-_Sri_Aurobindo_-_Ahana_and_Other_Poems
01.03_-_Mystic_Poetry
01.03_-_The_Yoga_of_the_King_-_The_Yoga_of_the_Souls_Release
01.04_-_The_Secret_Knowledge
01.07_-_Blaise_Pascal_(1623-1662)
0_1960-10-30
0_1961-04-29
0_1961-07-28
0_1961-11-05
0_1963-03-09
0_1964-08-11
0_1965-04-07
0_1966-08-19
0_1967-10-30
02.02_-_Rishi_Dirghatama
02.03_-_The_Shakespearean_Word
02.07_-_The_Descent_into_Night
02.08_-_The_World_of_Falsehood,_the_Mother_of_Evil_and_the_Sons_of_Darkness
02.09_-_Two_Mystic_Poems_in_Modern_French
03.08_-_The_Spiritual_Outlook
03.09_-_Art_and_Katharsis
04.01_-_The_March_of_Civilisation
04.02_-_The_Growth_of_the_Flame
04.03_-_The_Call_to_the_Quest
06.02_-_The_Way_of_Fate_and_the_Problem_of_Pain
07.02_-_The_Parable_of_the_Search_for_the_Soul
10.01_-_Cycles_of_Creation
10.02_-_Beyond_Vedanta
10.04_-_Lord_of_Time
1.00_-_Introduction_to_Alchemy_of_Happiness
1.00_-_The_way_of_what_is_to_come
1.01_-_A_NOTE_ON_PROGRESS
1.01_-_Foreward
1.01_-_'Imitation'_the_common_principle_of_the_Arts_of_Poetry.
1.01_-_Newtonian_and_Bergsonian_Time
1.01_-_Principles_of_Practical_Psycho_therapy
1.01_-_The_Highest_Meaning_of_the_Holy_Truths
1.01_-_THE_STUFF_OF_THE_UNIVERSE
1.020_-_The_World_and_Our_World
10.24_-_Savitri
1.02_-_MAPS_OF_MEANING_-_THREE_LEVELS_OF_ANALYSIS
1.02_-_The_Concept_of_the_Collective_Unconscious
1.02_-_The_Divine_Teacher
1.02_-_The_Doctrine_of_the_Mystics
1.02_-_The_Objects_of_Imitation.
1.02_-_The_Three_European_Worlds
1.037_-_Preventing_the_Fall_in_Yoga
1.03_-_APPRENTICESHIP_AND_ENCULTURATION_-_ADOPTION_OF_A_SHARED_MAP
1.03_-_PERSONALITY,_SANCTITY,_DIVINE_INCARNATION
1.03_-_The_House_Of_The_Lord
1.03_-_The_Human_Disciple
1.03_-_The_Manner_of_Imitation.
1.03_-_THE_ORPHAN,_THE_WIDOW,_AND_THE_MOON
1.03_-_The_Phenomenon_of_Man
1.03_-_The_Sephiros
1.03_-_The_Tale_of_the_Alchemist_Who_Sold_His_Soul
1.045_-_Piercing_the_Structure_of_the_Object
1.04_-_The_First_Circle,_Limbo__Virtuous_Pagans_and_the_Unbaptized._The_Four_Poets,_Homer,_Horace,_Ovid,_and_Lucan._The_Noble_Castle_of_Philosophy.
1.04_-_The_Origin_and_Development_of_Poetry.
1.04_-_The_Paths
1.04_-_The_Self
1.04_-_What_Arjuna_Saw_-_the_Dark_Side_of_the_Force
1.05_-_2010_and_1956_-_Doomsday?
1.053_-_A_Very_Important_Sadhana
1.05_-_Christ,_A_Symbol_of_the_Self
1.05_-_Definition_of_the_Ludicrous,_and_a_brief_sketch_of_the_rise_of_Comedy.
1.05_-_Splitting_of_the_Spirit
1.05_-_THE_HOSTILE_BROTHERS_-_ARCHETYPES_OF_RESPONSE_TO_THE_UNKNOWN
1.05_-_THE_NEW_SPIRIT
1.05_-_War_And_Politics
1.06_-_LIFE_AND_THE_PLANETS
1.06_-_On_remembrance_of_death.
1.06_-_The_Sign_of_the_Fishes
1.06_-_The_Three_Schools_of_Magick_1
1.07_-_Hui_Ch'ao_Asks_about_Buddha
1.07_-_Savitri
1.07_-_The_Literal_Qabalah_(continued)
1.08_-_Attendants
1.08_-_RELIGION_AND_TEMPERAMENT
1.08_-_The_Gods_of_the_Veda_-_The_Secret_of_the_Veda
1.09_-_SKIRMISHES_IN_A_WAY_WITH_THE_AGE
1.09_-_Sri_Aurobindo_and_the_Big_Bang
1.09_-_The_Worship_of_Trees
1.107_-_The_Bestowal_of_a_Divine_Gift
1.10_-_Farinata_and_Cavalcante_de'_Cavalcanti._Discourse_on_the_Knowledge_of_the_Damned.
1.10_-_Theodicy_-_Nature_Makes_No_Mistakes
1.1.1.06_-_Inspiration_and_Effort
1.11_-_GOOD_AND_EVIL
1.11_-_On_talkativeness_and_silence.
1.11_-_The_Kalki_Avatar
1.12_-_The_Superconscient
1.12_-_TIME_AND_ETERNITY
1.13_-_Gnostic_Symbols_of_the_Self
1.13_-_Under_the_Auspices_of_the_Gods
1.14_-_Bibliography
1.14_-_The_Structure_and_Dynamics_of_the_Self
1.15_-_Index
1.16_-_Man,_A_Transitional_Being
1.16_-_The_Suprarational_Ultimate_of_Life
1.17_-_DOES_MANKIND_MOVE_BIOLOGICALLY_UPON_ITSELF?
1.17_-_Geryon._The_Violent_against_Art._Usurers._Descent_into_the_Abyss_of_Malebolge.
1.17_-_Practical_rules_for_the_Tragic_Poet.
1.17_-_The_Transformation
1.18_-_Further_rules_for_the_Tragic_Poet.
1.19_-_Equality
12.01_-_This_Great_Earth_Our_Mother
12.04_-_Love_and_Death
1.21_-_FROM_THE_PRE-HUMAN_TO_THE_ULTRA-HUMAN,_THE_PHASES_OF_A_LIVING_PLANET
1.21_-_The_Spiritual_Aim_and_Life
1.22_-_(Poetic_Diction_continued.)_How_Poetry_combines_elevation_of_language_with_perspicuity.
1.23_-_Epic_Poetry.
1.24_-_(Epic_Poetry_continued.)_Further_points_of_agreement_with_Tragedy.
1.24_-_RITUAL,_SYMBOL,_SACRAMENT
1.34_-_The_Myth_and_Ritual_of_Attis
1.39_-_The_Ritual_of_Osiris
14.05_-_The_Golden_Rule
1.40_-_The_Nature_of_Osiris
1.43_-_Dionysus
1.49_-_Ancient_Deities_of_Vegetation_as_Animals
1.58_-_Human_Scapegoats_in_Classical_Antiquity
1.72_-_Education
1958-09-24_-_Living_the_truth_-_Words_and_experience
1969_11_08?
1969_12_01
1969_12_03
1.A_-_ANTHROPOLOGY,_THE_SOUL
1.anon_-_Enuma_Elish_(When_on_high)
1.anon_-_If_this_were_a_world
1.anon_-_Less_profitable
1.anon_-_Others_have_told_me
1.anon_-_The_Epic_of_Gilgamesh_Tablet_II
1.anon_-_The_Epic_of_Gilgamesh_Tablet_III
1.anon_-_The_Epic_of_Gilgamesh_Tablet_IV
1.anon_-_The_Epic_of_Gilgamesh_TabletIX
1.anon_-_The_Epic_of_Gilgamesh_Tablet_VII
1.anon_-_The_Epic_of_Gilgamesh_Tablet_VIII
1.anon_-_The_Epic_of_Gilgamesh_Tablet_X
1.anon_-_The_Epic_of_Gilgamesh_Tablet_XI_The_Story_of_the_Flood
1.anon_-_The_Seven_Evil_Spirits
1f.lovecraft_-_At_the_Mountains_of_Madness
1f.lovecraft_-_Dagon
1f.lovecraft_-_Pickmans_Model
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Battle_that_Ended_the_Century
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Call_of_Cthulhu
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Case_of_Charles_Dexter_Ward
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Curse_of_Yig
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Dream-Quest_of_Unknown_Kadath
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Dreams_in_the_Witch_House
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Haunter_of_the_Dark
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Horror_at_Red_Hook
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Horror_in_the_Museum
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Mound
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Nameless_City
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Night_Ocean
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Picture_in_the_House
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Rats_in_the_Walls
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Unnamable
1f.lovecraft_-_Till_A_the_Seas
1.fs_-_Genius
1.fs_-_The_Walk
1.fs_-_Written_In_A_Young_Lady's_Album
1.jk_-_To_Charles_Cowden_Clarke
1.jwvg_-_The_Muses_Mirror
1.jwvg_-_The_Visit
1.lovecraft_-_The_Poe-ets_Nightmare
1.pbs_-_Ode_To_Naples
1.pbs_-_Peter_Bell_The_Third
1.poe_-_Eureka_-_A_Prose_Poem
1.raa_-_A_Holy_Tabernacle_in_the_Heart_(from_Life_of_the_Future_World)
1.rb_-_Caliban_upon_Setebos_or,_Natural_Theology_in_the_Island
1.rb_-_Pippa_Passes_-_Part_I_-_Morning
1.rt_-_Brahm,_Viu,_iva
1.rt_-_Compensation
1.rt_-_The_Gardener_XXXVIII_-_My_Love,_Once_Upon_A_Time
1.rwe_-_Beauty
1.rwe_-_The_Humble_Bee
1.whitman_-_As_A_Strong_Bird_On_Pinious_Free
1.whitman_-_Passage_To_India
1.whitman_-_Song_Of_The_Exposition
1.whitman_-_To_The_East_And_To_The_West
1.ww_-_An_Evening_Walk
1.ww_-_Book_First_[Introduction-Childhood_and_School_Time]
1.ww_-_The_Excursion-_IV-_Book_Third-_Despondency
1.ww_-_The_Prelude,_Book_1-_Childhood_And_School-Time
2.01_-_AT_THE_STAR_THEATRE
2.01_-_On_Books
2.01_-_The_Sefirot
2.02_-_Meeting_With_the_Goddess
2.02_-_THE_EXPANSION_OF_LIFE
2.02_-_The_Ishavasyopanishad_with_a_commentary_in_English
2.02_-_THE_SCINTILLA
2.03_-_Karmayogin__A_Commentary_on_the_Isha_Upanishad
2.04_-_The_Divine_and_the_Undivine
2.05_-_Apotheosis
2.05_-_On_Poetry
2.05_-_The_Tale_of_the_Vampires_Kingdom
2.07_-_I_Also_Try_to_Tell_My_Tale
2.08_-_The_Sword
2.0_-_Reincarnation_and_Karma
2.0_-_THE_ANTICHRIST
2.1.1.04_-_Reading,_Yogic_Force_and_the_Development_of_Style
2.1.7.07_-_On_the_Verse_and_Structure_of_the_Poem
2.24_-_The_Evolution_of_the_Spiritual_Man
2.25_-_List_of_Topics_in_Each_Talk
2.25_-_Mercies_and_Judgements_of_Knowledge
2.3.1.54_-_An_Epic_Line
30.01_-_World-Literature
3.00.2_-_Introduction
30.03_-_Spirituality_in_Art
30.04_-_Intuition_and_Inspiration_in_Art
30.05_-_Rhythm_in_Poetry
30.07_-_The_Poet_and_the_Yogi
30.12_-_The_Obscene_and_the_Ugly_-_Form_and_Essence
30.13_-_Rabindranath_the_Artist
30.17_-_Rabindranath,_Traveller_of_the_Infinite
3.01_-_Hymn_to_Matter
3.01_-_The_Mercurial_Fountain
3.02_-_King_and_Queen
3.02_-_The_Great_Secret
3.02_-_The_Practice_Use_of_Dream-Analysis
3.02_-_The_Psychology_of_Rebirth
3.03_-_The_Spirit_Land
3.04_-_LUNA
3.05_-_Cerberus_And_Furies,_And_That_Lack_Of_Light
3.05_-_SAL
3.05_-_The_Formula_of_I.A.O.
3.06_-_Death
3.07_-_The_Ascent_of_the_Soul
3.09_-_The_Return_of_the_Soul
31.04_-_Sri_Ramakrishna
3.10_-_Of_the_Gestures
31.10_-_East_and_West
3.1.24_-_In_the_Moonlight
32.04_-_The_Human_Body
3.2.4_-_Sex
33.01_-_The_Initiation_of_Swadeshi
33.06_-_Alipore_Court
3.4.1.05_-_Fiction-Writing_and_Sadhana
3.6.01_-_Heraclitus
3.7.2.04_-_The_Higher_Lines_of_Karma
38.04_-_Great_Time
3_-_Commentaries_and_Annotated_Translations
4.02_-_The_Psychology_of_the_Child_Archetype
4.03_-_THE_TRANSFORMATION_OF_THE_KING
4.04_-_THE_REGENERATION_OF_THE_KING
4.06_-_THE_KING_AS_ANTHROPOS
4.07_-_THE_RELATION_OF_THE_KING-SYMBOL_TO_CONSCIOUSNESS
4.0_-_NOTES_TO_ZARATHUSTRA
4.1_-_Jnana
4.2_-_Karma
5.01_-_EPILOGUE
5.03_-_ADAM_AS_THE_FIRST_ADEPT
5.06_-_THE_TRANSFORMATION
5.1.01.1_-_The_Book_of_the_Herald
5.1.02_-_Ahana
5.3.04_-_Roots_in_M
5.4.01_-_Occult_Knowledge
5_-_The_Phenomenology_of_the_Spirit_in_Fairytales
6.01_-_THE_ALCHEMICAL_VIEW_OF_THE_UNION_OF_OPPOSITES
6.05_-_THE_PSYCHOLOGICAL_INTERPRETATION_OF_THE_PROCEDURE
6.08_-_THE_CONTENT_AND_MEANING_OF_THE_FIRST_TWO_STAGES
6.0_-_Conscious,_Unconscious,_and_Individuation
7.05_-_Patience_and_Perseverance
7.5.28_-_The_Greater_Plan
9.99_-_Glossary
Aeneid
Apology
Blazing_P1_-_Preconventional_consciousness
BOOK_I._-_Augustine_censures_the_pagans,_who_attributed_the_calamities_of_the_world,_and_especially_the_sack_of_Rome_by_the_Goths,_to_the_Christian_religion_and_its_prohibition_of_the_worship_of_the_gods
BOOK_II._--_PART_I._ANTHROPOGENESIS.
BOOK_II._--_PART_II._THE_ARCHAIC_SYMBOLISM_OF_THE_WORLD-RELIGIONS
BOOK_I._--_PART_I._COSMIC_EVOLUTION
BOOK_I._--_PART_III._SCIENCE_AND_THE_SECRET_DOCTRINE_CONTRASTED
BOOK_IX._-_Of_those_who_allege_a_distinction_among_demons,_some_being_good_and_others_evil
Book_of_Genesis
Book_of_Imaginary_Beings_(text)
BOOK_VIII._-_Some_account_of_the_Socratic_and_Platonic_philosophy,_and_a_refutation_of_the_doctrine_of_Apuleius_that_the_demons_should_be_worshipped_as_mediators_between_gods_and_men
BOOK_VI._-_Of_Varros_threefold_division_of_theology,_and_of_the_inability_of_the_gods_to_contri_bute_anything_to_the_happiness_of_the_future_life
BOOK_V._-_Of_fate,_freewill,_and_God's_prescience,_and_of_the_source_of_the_virtues_of_the_ancient_Romans
BOOK_XI._-_Augustine_passes_to_the_second_part_of_the_work,_in_which_the_origin,_progress,_and_destinies_of_the_earthly_and_heavenly_cities_are_discussed.Speculations_regarding_the_creation_of_the_world
BOOK_XIII._-_That_death_is_penal,_and_had_its_origin_in_Adam's_sin
BOOK_XIV._-_Of_the_punishment_and_results_of_mans_first_sin,_and_of_the_propagation_of_man_without_lust
BOOK_XIX._-_A_review_of_the_philosophical_opinions_regarding_the_Supreme_Good,_and_a_comparison_of_these_opinions_with_the_Christian_belief_regarding_happiness
BOOK_XVIII._-_A_parallel_history_of_the_earthly_and_heavenly_cities_from_the_time_of_Abraham_to_the_end_of_the_world
BOOK_XVI._-_The_history_of_the_city_of_God_from_Noah_to_the_time_of_the_kings_of_Israel
BOOK_XV._-_The_progress_of_the_earthly_and_heavenly_cities_traced_by_the_sacred_history
BOOK_XX._-_Of_the_last_judgment,_and_the_declarations_regarding_it_in_the_Old_and_New_Testaments
Conversations_with_Sri_Aurobindo
COSA_-_BOOK_VI
Cratylus
ENNEAD_01.03_-_Of_Dialectic,_or_the_Means_of_Raising_the_Soul_to_the_Intelligible_World.
ENNEAD_01.04_-_Whether_Animals_May_Be_Termed_Happy.
ENNEAD_02.01_-_Of_the_Heaven.
ENNEAD_02.08_-_Of_Sight,_or_of_Why_Distant_Objects_Seem_Small.
ENNEAD_02.09_-_Against_the_Gnostics;_or,_That_the_Creator_and_the_World_are_Not_Evil.
ENNEAD_03.01_-_Concerning_Fate.
ENNEAD_03.02_-_Of_Providence.
ENNEAD_03.07_-_Of_Time_and_Eternity.
ENNEAD_04.05_-_Psychological_Questions_III._-_About_the_Process_of_Vision_and_Hearing.
ENNEAD_04.07_-_Of_the_Immortality_of_the_Soul:_Polemic_Against_Materialism.
ENNEAD_06.05_-_The_One_and_Identical_Being_is_Everywhere_Present_In_Its_Entirety.345
ENNEAD_06.09_-_Of_the_Good_and_the_One.
Gorgias
Ion
IS_-_Chapter_1
Liber_46_-_The_Key_of_the_Mysteries
r1909_06_19
r1912_02_07
r1912_07_24
r1913_01_09
r1913_04_01
r1917_02_13
Sayings_of_Sri_Ramakrishna_(text)
Sophist
Symposium_translated_by_B_Jowett
Tablet_1_-
Tablets_of_Baha_u_llah_text
Talks_With_Sri_Aurobindo_1
Talks_With_Sri_Aurobindo_2
The_Act_of_Creation_text
Theaetetus
The_Aleph
The_Divine_Names_Text_(Dionysis)
The_Dwellings_of_the_Philosophers
the_Eternal_Wisdom
The_Garden_of_Forking_Paths_1
The_Garden_of_Forking_Paths_2
The_Gold_Bug
The_Gospel_According_to_John
The_Logomachy_of_Zos
The_Riddle_of_this_World
The_Zahir
Timaeus
Verses_of_Vemana

PRIMARY CLASS

epic
list
reading_list
SIMILAR TITLES
1.26 - A general estimate of the comparative worth of Epic Poetry and Tragedy.
Epic
Epic Poetry (by alpha)
Epic Poetry (ranked)
epics
Epictetus
The Epic of Gilgamesh
The Essential Epicurus

DEFINITIONS


TERMS STARTING WITH

Epicheirema: (Gr. epicheirema) In Aristotle's logic a dialectical as distinct from an apodictic or an eristic syllogism.

Epictetus: (c. 60-110 A.D.) A Stoic philosopher and freed slave, who established his School in Nicopolis, Epirus; his Discourses were published by Arrian, his learned disciple, they contain sharp observations of human behavior and pithy sayings on ethical matters. -- R.B.W.

Epictetus Greek Stoic philosopher, a freed slave who taught philosophy in Rome until 90 AD, when Domitian expelled all philosophers. He left no writings, and his philosophy is known through the Discourses and Enchiridion of his pupil Flavius Arrian. Like other Stoics, he held that each person has at the root of his or her being a spark of the Logos, so that all people are brothers and relationships with others must be respected. Inner harmony could be attained by correct perceptions and attitudes, differentiating between what is “ours” and thus under our control, and what is “not ours” and therefore beyond our control. He encouraged making new habits of thought and action through constant practice and self-discipline and by acting deliberately.

Epicureanism ::: While often considered to be the philosophy of pleasure seeking, in fact refers to a middle-path philosophy defining happiness as success in avoiding pain, in the form of both mental worry and physical discomfort, in order to produce a state of tranquility.

Epicurean Philosophy School founded by Epicurus (b. 341 BC), an atomist philosopher popularly associated with later travesties of his teachings. His actual teachings and way of living prove that his chief aim and good was happiness rather than pleasure; for he taught and practiced abstemiousness of living. In this he reacted to the travestied forms of Platonism which existed in his time, moving away from a barren idealism towards a concrete practicality, trying to substitute realities for empty abstractions, both in philosophy and ethics. For this reason he lays the chief stress on ethics, to the comparative neglect of logic and philosophy.

Epicurean School: Founded by Epicurus in Athens in the year 306 B.C. Epicureanism gave expression to the desire for a refined type of happiness which is the reward of the cultured man who can take pleasure in the joys of the mind over which he can have greater control than over those of a material or sensuous nature. The friendship of gifted and noble men, the peace and contentment that comes from fair conduct, good morals and aesthetic enjoyments are the ideals of the Epicurean who refuses to be perturbed by any metaphysical or religious doctrines which impose duties and thus hinder the freedom of pure enjoyment. Epicurus adopted the atomism of Democritus (q.v.) but modified its determinism by permitting chance to cause a swerve (clinamen) in the fall of the atoms. See C. W. Bailey, Epicurus. However, physics was not to be the main concern of the philosopher. See Apathia, Ataraxia, Hedonism. -- M.F.

Epicurus: (341-270 B.C.) A native of Samos, founded his School in Athens about 306 B.C., where he instructed his disciples and admirers in the art of rational living. He taught that pleasure and happiness are the natural end of life. But, contrary to later misconceptions, he did not advocate the pursuit of all or any pleasures, but only of those which are consistent with intelligence and moderation. Joys of the mind are superior to pleasures of the body. In his interpretation of nature, he accepted Democritus' atomism, but contended that the element of chance enters into atoms' motions and makes them deviate from their course. -- R.B.W.

epic ::: adj. 1. An extended narrative poem in elevated or dignified language, celebrating the feats of a legendary or traditional hero. 2. Resembling or suggesting such poetry. 3. Heroic; majestic; impressively great. 4. Of unusually great size or extent. n. 5. An epic poem. 6. Any composition resembling an epic. epics.

epical ::: a. --> Epic.

epic ::: a. --> Narrated in a grand style; pertaining to or designating a kind of narrative poem, usually called an heroic poem, in which real or fictitious events, usually the achievements of some hero, are narrated in an elevated style. ::: n. --> An epic or heroic poem. See Epic, a.

epicardiac ::: a. --> Of or relating to the epicardium.

epicardium ::: n. --> That of the pericardium which forms the outer surface of the heart; the cardiac pericardium.

epicarican ::: n. --> An isopod crustacean, parasitic on shrimps.

epicarp ::: --> The external or outermost layer of a fructified or ripened ovary. See Illust. under Endocarp.

epicede ::: n. --> A funeral song or discourse; an elegy.

epicedial ::: a. --> Elegiac; funereal.

epicedian ::: a. --> Epicedial. ::: n. --> An epicede.

epicedium ::: n. --> An epicede.

epicene ::: a. & n. --> Common to both sexes; -- a term applied, in grammar, to such nouns as have but one form of gender, either the masculine or feminine, to indicate animals of both sexes; as boy^s, bos, for the ox and cow; sometimes applied to eunuchs and hermaphrodites.
Fig.: Sexless; neither one thing nor the other.


epicentral ::: a. --> Arising from the centrum of a vertebra.

epicerastic ::: a. --> Lenient; assuaging.

epichirema ::: n. --> A syllogism in which the proof of the major or minor premise, or both, is introduced with the premises themselves, and the conclusion is derived in the ordinary manner.

epichiremata ::: pl. --> of Epichirema

epichordal ::: a. --> Upon or above the notochord; -- applied esp. to a vertebral column which develops upon the dorsal side of the notochord, as distinguished from a perichordal column, which develops around it.

epichorial ::: a. --> In or of the country.

epicleidium ::: n. --> A projection, formed by a separate ossification, at the scapular end of the clavicle of many birds.

epiclinal ::: a. --> Situated on the receptacle or disk of a flower.

epicoele ::: n. --> A cavity formed by the invagination of the outer wall of the body, as the atrium of an amphioxus and possibly the body cavity of vertebrates.

epicoene ::: a. --> Epicene.

epicolic ::: a. --> Situated upon or over the colon; -- applied to the region of the abdomen adjacent to the colon.

epicondylar ::: n. --> Pertaining to, or resembling, an epicondyle.

epicondyle ::: n. --> A projection on the inner side of the distal end of the numerus; the internal condyle.

epicoracoid ::: n. --> A ventral cartilaginous or bony element of the coracoid in the shoulder girdle of some vertebrates.

epicranial ::: a. --> Pertaining to the epicranium; as epicranial muscles.

epicranium ::: n. --> The upper and superficial part of the head, including the scalp, muscles, etc.
The dorsal wall of the head of insects.


epic simile: While taking a simile form, it is a very detailed comparison and can be many lines long.

epictetain ::: a. --> Pertaining to Epictetus, the Roman Stoic philosopher, whose conception of life was to be passionless under whatever circumstances.

epic: This is a type of classical poetry, generally recounting heroic achievements. It is a poem that is a long narrative about a serious subject, told in an elevated styleof language. Epics generally focus on the exploits of a hero or demi-god who represents the cultural values of a race, nation, or religious group. John Milton’sParadise lost is an example of a famous epic. See classic.

epicurean ::: a. --> Pertaining to Epicurus, or following his philosophy.
Given to luxury; adapted to luxurious tastes; luxurious; pertaining to good eating. ::: n. --> A follower or Epicurus.
One given to epicurean indulgence.


epicureanism: A philosophy derived from the writing of Epicurus who believed the seeking of pleasure to be good but with an emphasis on simplicity of life.

epicureanism ::: n. --> Attachment to the doctrines of Epicurus; the principles or belief of Epicurus.

epicure ::: a person who cultivates a refined taste; connoisseur.

epicurely ::: adv. --> Luxuriously.

epicure ::: n. --> A follower of Epicurus; an Epicurean.
One devoted to dainty or luxurious sensual enjoyments, esp. to the luxuries of the table.


epicureous ::: a. --> Epicurean.

epicurism ::: n. --> The doctrines of Epicurus.
Epicurean habits of living; luxury.


epicurize ::: v. i. --> To profess or tend towards the doctrines of Epicurus.
To feed or indulge like an epicure.


epicycle ::: n. --> A circle, whose center moves round in the circumference of a greater circle; or a small circle, whose center, being fixed in the deferent of a planet, is carried along with the deferent, and yet, by its own peculiar motion, carries the body of the planet fastened to it round its proper center.
A circle which rolls on the circumference of another circle, either externally or internally.


epicycle: The outer circle in producing the locus in an epicycloid.

epicyclic ::: a. --> Pertaining to, resembling, or having the motion of, an epicycle.

epicyclic: Of or related to an epicycloid.

epicycloidal ::: a. --> Pertaining to the epicycloid, or having its properties.

epicycloid ::: n. --> A curve traced by a point in the circumference of a circle which rolls on the convex side of a fixed circle.

epicycloid: The locus of the point fixed on the circumference of a circle which rolls around (wthout slipping) the outside of another, fixed circle.


TERMS ANYWHERE

abhayamudrA. (T. mi 'jigs pa'i phyag rgya; C. shiwuwei yin; J. semuiin; K. simuoe in 施無畏印). In Sanskrit, "the gesture of fearlessness" or "gesture of protection"; also sometimes called the gesture of granting refuge. This gesture (MUDRA) is typically formed with the palm of the right hand facing outward at shoulder height and the fingers pointing up, although both hands may simultaneously be raised in this posture in a double abhayamudrA. Occasionally, the index, second, or third finger touches the thumb, with the remaining fingers extended upward. This gesture is associated with sAKYAMUNI Buddha immediately following his enlightenment, and standing buddha images will often be depicted with this mudrA, portraying a sense of the security, serenity, and compassion that derive from enlightenment. This gesture is also commonly associated with AMOGHASIDDHI.

abhirati. (T. mngon dga'; C. miaoxi/abiluoti; J. myoki/abiradai; K. myohŭi/abiraje 妙喜/阿比羅提). In Sanskrit, "delight," "repose," or "wondrous joy"; the world system (LOKADHATU) and buddha-field (BUDDHAKsETRA) of the buddha AKsOBHYA, which is said to be located in the east. Abhirati is one of the earliest of the buddha-fields to appear in Buddhist literature and is depicted as an idealized form of our ordinary SAHA world. As its name implies, abhirati is a land of delight, the antithesis of the suffering that plagues our world, and its pleasures are the by-products of Aksobhya's immense merit and compassion. In his land, Aksobhya sits on a platform sheltered by a huge BODHI TREE, which is surrounded by row after row of palm trees and jasmine bushes. The soil is golden in color and as soft as cotton. Although abhirati, like our world, has a sun and moon, both pale next to the radiance of Aksobhya himself. In abhirati, there are gender distinctions, as in our world, but no physical sexuality. A man who entertains sexual thoughts toward a woman would instantly see this desire transformed into a DHYANA that derives from the meditation on impurity (AsUBHABHAVANA), while a woman can become pregnant by a man's glance (even though women do not experience menstruation). Food and drink appear spontaneously whenever a person is hungry or thirsty. Abhirati is designed to provide the optimal environment for Buddhist practice, and rebirth there is a direct result of an adept having planted meritorious roots (KUsALAMuLA), engaging in salutary actions, and then dedicating any merit deriving from those actions to his future rebirth in that land. Aksobhya will eventually attain PARINIRVAnA in abhirati through a final act of self-immolation (see SHESHEN). Abhirati is described in the AKsOBHYATATHAGATASYAVYuHA, an important precursor to the more famous SUKHAVATĪVYuHA that describes SUKHAVATĪ, the buddha-field of AMITABHA.

acalAsana. (T. mi g.yo ba'i 'dug stangs; C. budongzuo; J. fudoza; K. pudongjwa 不動坐). In Sanskrit, the "immovable posture"; a semi-kneeling position, where the left knee touches the ground, but the right knee is raised off the ground. This posture is commonly seen in figures bearing gifts, where the hands are clasped in front of the donor's chest in ANJALI. This pose is also characteristic of the wrathful deity ACALANATHA-VIDYARAJA, whose hands instead hold a snare (pAsa) in the left and a raised sword in the right. Bodhisattvas are also sometimes depicted in this posture.

Accidentalism: The theory that some events are undetermined, or that the incidence of series of determined events is unpredictable (Aristotle, Cournot). In Epicureanism (q.v.) such indeterminism was applied to mental events and specifically to acts of will. The doctrine then assumes the special form: Some acts of will are unmotivated. See Indeterminism. A striking example of a more general accidentalism is Charles Peirce's Tychism (q.v.). See Chance, Contingency. -- C.A.B.

A chapter of the Desatir, “The Book of Shet the Prophet Tahmuras,” consists of a hymn addressed to the sun, which is depicted as being “stationed in the fourth heaven” (v. 31).

aeneid ::: n. --> The great epic poem of Virgil, of which the hero is Aeneas.

Again, Epicurus based everything on sensation in order to bring people back to actual experience, as opposed to vain outlooking speculation, as a solid foundation for an ethic. He was not an atheist in the modern sense, for he explicitly says that there are gods, but not the gods of the anthropomorphic religionists. In the same way, he did not teach a selfish individualism, but that the way to final freedom is within oneself; and when he depreciates the State and sundry social or political theories, he was merely opposing the futile abstractions then prevalent under these names.

Agama: (Skr.) One of a number of Indian treatises composed since the 1st cent. A.D. which are outside the Vedic (q.v.) tradition, but are regarded authoritative by the followers of Vishnuism, Shivaism, and Shaktism. Amid mythology, epic and ritualistic matter they contain much that is philosophical. -- K.F.L.

Agni. (T. Me lha; C. Huoshen; J. Kashin; K. Hwasin 火神). The Vedic fire deity adopted into the Buddhist pantheon as the guardian of the southeast. In the MAHAVAIROCANABHISAMBODHISŮTRA, he is identified as an incarnation of VAIROCANA; in Tibet, he is associated with HEVAJRA. Agni is depicted riding a goat, with one face and two hands, the right holding a rosary, the left a vase full of the nectar of immortality (AMṚTA). The term also refers to a class of pre-Buddhist fire deities absorbed into the Tibetan Buddhist pantheon.

Aithihya (Sanskrit) Aitihya [from iti thus, in this manner + ha emphatic particle] Thus indeed it was; traditional instructions, tradition. Closely similar to itihasa, a name applied to semi-legendary and epic accounts; also to the Mahabharata and Ramayana. As the instructors of certain schools in handing on teaching (especially oral teaching delivered with “mouth to ear”) invariably commenced an installment with the phrase “iti maya srutam” or “iti ha maya srutam” (truly thus have I heard), such instruction came to be called aitihya or aitiha. The adjectival form aitihasika also means what is communicated or derived from tradition, ancient legend, or heroic history.

AjantA. A complex of some thirty caves and subsidiary structures in India, renowned for its exemplary Buddhist artwork. Named after a neighboring village, the caves are carved from the granite cliffs at a bend in the Wagurna River valley, northeast of AURANGABAD, in the modern Indian state of Maharashtra. The grottoes were excavated in two phases, the first of which lasted from approximately 100 BCE to 100 CE, the second from c. 462 to 480, and consist primarily of monastic cave residences (VIHARA) and sanctuaries (CAITYA). The sanctuaries include four large, pillared STuPA halls, each enshrining a central monumental buddha image, which renders the hall both a site for worship and a buddha's dwelling (GANDHAKUtĪ), where he presides over the activities of the monks in residence. The murals and sculpture located at AjantA include some of the best-preserved examples of ancient Buddhist art. Paintings throughout the complex are especially noted for their depiction of accounts from the Buddha's previous lives (JATAKA). Despite the presence of some AVALOKITEsVARA images at the site, it is Sanskrit texts of mainstream Buddhism, and especially the MuLASARVASTIVADA school, that are the source and inspiration for the paintings of AjantA. Indeed, almost all of AjantA's narrative paintings are based on accounts appearing in the MuLASARVASTIVADA VINAYA, as well as the poems of Aryasura and AsVAGHOsA. On the other hand, the most common type of sculptural image at AjantA (e.g., Cave 4) is a seated buddha making a variant of the gesture of turning the wheel of the dharma (DHARMACAKRAMUDRA), flanked by the two bodhisattvas AVALOKITEsVARA and VAJRAPAnI. The deployment of this mudrA and the two flanking bodhisattvas indicates that these buddha images are of VAIROCANA and suggests that tantric elements that appear in the MAHAVAIROCANABHISAMBODHISuTRA and the MANJUsRĪMuLAKALPA, both of which postdate the AjantA images, developed over an extended period of time and had precursors that influenced the iconography at AjantA. Inscriptions on the walls of the earliest part of the complex, primarily in Indian Prakrits, attest to an eclectic, even syncretic, pattern of religious observance and patronage. Later epigraphs found at the site associate various patrons with Harisena (r. 460-477), the last known monarch of the VAkAtaka royal family. VarAhadeva, for example, who patronized Cave 16, was one of Harisena's courtiers, while Cave 1 was donated by Harisena himself, and Cave 2 may have been patronized by a close relative, perhaps one of Harisena's wives. Cave 16's central image, a buddha seated on a royal throne with legs pendant (BHADRASANA), is the first stone sculpture in this iconographic form found in western India. Introduced to India through the tradition of KUSHAN royal portraiture, the bhadrAsana has been interpreted as a position associated with royalty and worldly action. This sculpture may thus have functioned as a portrait sculpture; it may even allegorize Harisena as the Buddha. In fact, it is possible that VarAhadeva may have originally intended to enshrine a buddha seated in the cross-legged lotus position (VAJRAPARYAnKA) but changed his plan midway in the wake of a regional war that placed Harisena's control over the AjantA region in jeopardy. Around 480, the constructions at AjantA came to a halt with the destruction of the VAkAtaka family. The caves were subsequently abandoned and became overgrown, only to be discovered in 1819 by a British officer hunting a tiger. They quickly became the object of great archaeological and art historical interest, and were designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983.

Ajita. (T. Ma pham pa; C. Ayiduo; J. Aitta; K. Ailta 阿逸多). In Sanskrit and PAli, "Invincible"; proper name of several different figures in Buddhist literature. In the PAli tradition, Ajita is said to have been one of the sixteen mendicant disciples of the brAhmana ascetic BAvarĪ who visited the Buddha at the request of their teacher. Upon meeting the Buddha, Ajita saw that he was endowed with the thirty-two marks of a great man (MAHAPURUsALAKsAnA) and gained assurance that the Buddha's renown was well deserved. Starting with Ajita, all sixteen of the mendicants asked the Buddha questions. Ajita's question is preserved as the AjitamAnavapucchA in the ParAyanavagga of the SUTTANIPATA. At the end of the Buddha's explanations, Ajita and sixteen thousand followers are said to have become worthy ones (ARHAT) and entered the SAMGHA. Ajita returned to his old teacher BAvarī and recounted to him what happened. BAvarī himself converted and later became a nonreturner (ANAGAMIN). ¶ Another Ajita is Ajita-Kesakambala (Ajita of the Hair Blanket), a prominent leader of the LOKAYATA (Naturalist) school of Indian wandering religious (sRAMAnA) during the Buddha's time, who is mentioned occasionally in Buddhist scriptures. His doctrine is recounted in the PAli SAMANNAPHALASUTTA, where he is claimed to have denied the efficacy of moral cause and effect because of his materialist rejection of any prospect of transmigration or rebirth. ¶ An Ajita also traditionally appears as the fifteenth on the list of the sixteen ARHAT elders (sOdAsASTHAVIRA), who were charged by the Buddha with protecting his dispensation until the advent of the next buddha, MAITREYA. Ajita is said to reside on Mt. GṚDHRAKutA (Vulture Peak) with 1,500 disciples. He is known in Chinese as the "long-eyebrowed arhat" (changmei luohan) because he is said to have been born with long white eyebrows. In CHANYUE GUANXIU's standard Chinese depiction, Ajita is shown sitting on a rock, with both hands holding his right knee; his mouth is open, with his tongue and teeth exposed. East Asian images also sometimes show him leaning on a staff. In Tibetan iconography, he holds his two hands in his lap in DHYANAMUDRA. ¶ Ajita is finally a common epithet of the bodhisattva MAITREYA, used mostly when he is invoked in direct address.

AkAsagarbha. (T. Nam mkha'i snying po; C. Xukongzang pusa; J. Kokuzo bosatsu; K. Hogongjang posal 空藏菩薩). In Sanskrit, "Storehouse/Womb of Space"; a BODHISATTVA who is one of the MAHOPAPUTRA, whose position is the north; also known as CakrapAni. He is usually considered to be a form of AKsOBHYA, although sometimes he is instead said to be the emanation of VAIROCANA. He is depicted in bodhisattva form, with one face and two hands in various MUDRAS; his most common attribute is a sun disc. His consort is MAlA, and he is the counterpart to KsItIGARBHA, the "Womb of the Earth." The sutra that describes his attributes, the AkAsagarbhasutra, was first translated into Chinese by BUDDHAYAsAS at the beginning of the fifth century and again by Dharmamitra a few decades later.

Aksobhya. (T. Mi bskyod pa; C. Achu fo; J. Ashuku butsu; K. Ach'ok pul 阿閦佛). In Sanskrit, "Immovable" or "Imperturbable"; the name given to the buddha of the East because he is imperturbable in following his vow to proceed to buddhahood, particularly through mastering the practice of morality (sĪLA). Aksobhya is one of the PANCATATHAGATA (five tathAgatas), the buddha of the vajra family (VAJRAKULA). There are references to Aksobhya in the PRAJNAPARAMITA sutras and the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra"), suggesting that his cult dates back to the first or second century of the Common Era, and that he was popular in India and Java as well as in the HimAlayan regions. The cult of Aksobhya may have been the first to emerge after the cult of sAKYAMUNI, and before that of AMITABHA. In the Saddharmapundarīkasutra, Aksobhya is listed as the first son of the buddha MahAbhijNA JNAnAbhibhu, and his bodhisattva name is given as JNAnAkara. His cult entered China during the Han dynasty, and an early text on his worship, the AKsOBHYATATHAGATASYAVYuHA, was translated into Chinese during the second half of the second century. Although his cult was subsequently introduced into Japan, he never became as popular in East Asia as the buddhas AMITABHA or VAIROCANA, and images of Aksobhya are largely confined to MAndALAs and other depictions of the paNcatathAgata. Furthermore, because Aksobhya's buddha-field (BUDDHAKsETRA) or PURE LAND of ABHIRATI is located in the East, he is sometimes replaced in mandalas by BHAIsAJYAGURU, who also resides in that same direction. Aksobhya's most common MUDRA is the BHuMISPARsAMUDRA, and he often holds a VAJRA. His consort is either MAmakī or LocanA.

always depicted with wings, to indicate his office

Amarapura. The "Immortal City"; Burmese royal capital during the Konbaung period (1752-1885), built by King Bodawpaya (r. 1782-1819). Amarapura was one of five Burmese capitals established in Upper Burma (Myanmar) after the fall of Pagan between the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries, the others being Pinya, SAGAING, AVA (Inwa), and Mandalay. Located five miles north of the old capital of Ava (Inwa) and seven miles south of Mandalay on the southern bank of the Irrawaddy river, it served as the capital of the Burmese kingdom twice: from 1783 to 1823 and again from 1837 to 1857. The city was mapped out in the form of a perfect square, its perimeter surrounded by stout brick walls and further protected by a wide moat. The city walls were punctuated by twelve gates, three on each side, every gate crowned with a tiered wooden pavilion (B. pyatthat). Broad avenues laid out in a grid pattern led to the center of the city where stood the royal palace and ancillary buildings, all constructed of teak and raised above the ground on massive wooden pylons. Located to the north of the city was a shrine housing the colossal MAHAMUNI image of the Buddha (see ARAKAN BUDDHA), which was acquired by the Burmese as war booty in 1784 when King Bodawpaya conquered the neighboring Buddhist kingdom of Arakan. Since its relocation at the shrine, the seated image has been covered with so many layers of gold leaf that its torso is now completely obscured, leaving only the head and face visible. In 1816, Bodawpaya erected the monumental Pahtodawgyi pagoda, modeled after the Shwezigon pagoda at Pagan. Its lower terraces are adorned with carved marble plaques depicting episodes from the JATAKAs. Another major shrine is the Kyauktawgyi pagoda, located to the southeast of the city on the opposite shore of Taungthaman lake. Kyauktawgyi pagoda is reached via the U Bein Bridge, a 3,000-foot- (1,200-meter) long bridge spanning the lake, which was constructed from teakwood salvaged from the royal palace at the vanquished capital of Ava. Amarapura was site of the THUDHAMMA (P. Sudhamma) reformation begun in 1782 under the patronage of Bodawpaya, which for a time unified the Burmese sangha under a single leadership and gave rise to the modern Thudhamma NikAya, contemporary Burma's largest monastic fraternity. The Thudhamma council that Bodawpaya organized was directed to reform the Burmese sangha throughout the kingdom and bring it under Thudhamma administrative control. In 1800, the president of the council conferred higher ordination (UPASAMPADA) on a delegation of five low-caste Sinhalese ordinands who returned to Sri Lanka in 1803 and established a branch of the reformed Burmese order on the island; that fraternity was known as the AMARAPURA NIKAYA and was dedicated to opening higher ordination to all without caste distinction. In 1857, when the royal residence was shifted from Amarapura to nearby Mandalay, the city walls and palace compound of Amarapura were disassembled and used as building material for the new capital. Today, Amarapura is home to modern Burma's most famous monastic college, Mahagandayon Kyaung Taik, built during the British period and belonging to the Shwegyin NikAya.

AmitAbha. (T. 'Od dpag med/Snang ba mtha' yas; C. Amituo fo/Wuliangguang fo; J. Amida butsu/Muryoko butsu; K. Amit'a pul/Muryanggwang pul 阿彌陀佛/無量光佛). In Sanskrit, "Limitless Light," the buddha of the western PURE LAND of SUKHAVATĪ, one of the most widely worshipped buddhas in the MAHAYANA traditions. As recounted in the longer SUKHAVATĪVYuHASuTRA, numerous eons ago, a monk named DHARMAKARA vowed before the buddha LOKEsVARARAJA to follow the BODHISATTVA path to buddhahood, asking him to set forth the qualities of buddha-fields (BUDDHAKsETRA). DharmAkara then spent five KALPAS in meditation, concentrating all of the qualities of all buddha-fields into a single buddha field that he would create upon his enlightenment. He then reappeared before LokesvararAja and made forty-eight specific vows (PRAnIDHANA). Among the most famous were his vow that those who, for as few as ten times over the course of their life, resolved to be reborn in his buddha-field would be reborn there; and his vow that he would appear at the deathbed of anyone who heard his name and remembered it with trust. DharmakAra then completed the bodhisattva path, thus fulfilling all the vows he had made, and became the buddha AmitAbha in the buddha-field called sukhAvatī. Based on the larger and shorter versions of the SukhAvatīvyuhasutra as well as the apocryphal GUAN WULIANGSHOU JING (*AmitAyurdhyAnasutra), rebirth in AmitAbha's buddha-field became the goal of widespread Buddhist practice in India, East Asia, and Tibet, with the phrase "Homage to AmitAbha Buddha" (C. namo Amituo fo; J. NAMU AMIDABUTSU; K. namu Amit'a pul) being a central element of East Asian Buddhist practice. AmitAbha's Indian origins are obscure, and it has been suggested that his antecedents lie in Persian Zoroastrianism, where symbolism of light and darkness abounds. His worship dates back at least as far as the early centuries of the Common Era, as attested by the fact that the initial Chinese translation of the SukhAvatīvyuhasutra is made in the mid-second century CE, and he is listed in the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra") as the ninth son of the buddha MahAbhijNA JNAnAbhibhu. The Chinese pilgrims FAXIAN and XUANZANG make no mention of him by name in their accounts of their travels to India in the fifth and seventh centuries CE, respectively, though they do include descriptions of deities who seem certain to have been AmitAbha. Scriptures relating to AmitAbha reached Japan in the seventh century, but he did not become a popular religious figure until some three hundred years later, when his worship played a major role in finally transforming what had been previously seen as an elite and foreign tradition into a populist religion. In East Asia, the cult of AmitAbha eventually became so widespread that it transcended sectarian distinction, and AmitAbha became the most popular buddha in the region. In Tibet, AmitAbha worship dates to the early propagation of Buddhism in that country in the eighth century, although it never became as prevalent as in East Asia. In the sixteenth century, the fifth DALAI LAMA gave the title PAn CHEN LAMA to his teacher, BLO BZANG CHOS KYI RGYAL MTSHAN, and declared him to be an incarnation of AmitAbha (the Dalai Lama himself having been declared the incarnation of Avalokitesvara, AmitAbha's emanation). ¶ The names "AmitAbha" and "AmitAyus" are often interchangeable, both deriving from the Sanskrit word "amita," meaning "limitless," "boundless," or "infinite"; there are some intimations that Amita may actually have been the original name of this buddha, as evidenced, for example, by the fact that the Chinese transcription Amituo [alt. Emituo] transcribes the root word amita, not the two longer forms of the name. The distinction between the two names is preserved in the Chinese translations "Wuliangguang" ("Infinite Light") for AmitAbha and Wuliangshou ("Infinite Life") for AmitAyus, neither of which is used as often as the transcription Amituo. Both AmitAbha and AmitAyus serve as epithets of the same buddha in the longer SukhAvatīvyuhasutra and the Guan Wuliangshou jing, two of the earliest and most important of the sutras relating to his cult. In Tibet, his two alternate names were simply translated: 'Od dpag med ("Infinite Light") and Tshe dpag med ("Infinite Life"). Despite the fact that the two names originally refer to the same deity, they have developed distinctions in ritual function and iconography, and AmitAyus is now considered a separate form of AmitAbha rather than just a synonym for him. ¶ AmitAbha is almost universally shown in DHYANASANA, his hands at his lap in DHYANAMUDRA, though there are many variations, such as standing or displaying the VITARKAMUDRA or VARADAMUDRA. As one of the PANCATATHAGATA, AmitAbha is the buddha of the padma family and is situated in the west. In tantric depictions he is usually red in color and is shown in union with his consort PAndarA, and in East Asia he is commonly accompanied by his attendants AVALOKITEsVARA (Ch. GUANYIN) and MAHASTHAMAPRAPTA. See also JINGTU SANSHENG; WANGSHENG.

AmoghapAsa (Lokesvara). (T. Don yod zhags pa; C. Bukong Juansuo; J. Fuku Kenjaku; K. Pulgong Kyonsak 不空羂索). A popular tantric form of AVALOKITEsVARA, primarily distinguished by his holding of a snare (pAsa); his name is interpreted as "Lokesvara with the unfailing snare." Like Avalokitesvara, he is worshipped as a savior of beings, his snare understood to be the means by which he rescues devotees. His worship seems to have developed in India during the sixth century, as evidenced by the 587 Chinese translation of the AmoghapAsahṛdayasutra (the first chapter of the much longer AmoghapAsakalparAjasutra) by JNAnagupta. Numerous translations of scriptures relating to AmoghapAsa by BODHIRUCI, XUANZANG, and AMOGHAVAJRA and others up into the tenth century attest to the continuing popularity of the deity. The earliest extant image of AmoghapAsa seems to be in Japan, in the monastery of ToDAIJI in Nara, dating from the late seventh century. There are many extant images of the god in northwest India from the ninth and tenth centuries; some earlier images of Avalokitesvara from the eighth century, which depict him holding a snare, have been identified as AmoghapAsa, although the identification remains uncertain. Tibetan translations of the AmoghapAsahṛdayasutra and the AmoghapAsakalparAjasutra are listed in the eighth-century LDAN DKAR MA catalogue, though it is later translations that are included in the BKA' 'GYUR, where they are classified as kriyAtantras. (The Tibetan canon includes some eight tantras concerning AmoghapAsa.) Numerous images of AmoghapAsa from Java dating to the early second millennium attest to his popularity in that region; in the Javanese custom of deifying kings, King Visnuvardhana (d. 1268) was identified as an incarnation of AmoghapAsa. AmoghapAsa can appear in forms with any number of pairs of hands, although by far the most popular are the six-armed seated and eight-armed standing forms. Other than his defining snare, he often carries a three-pointed staff (tridanda) but, like other multiarmed deities, can be seen holding almost any of the tantric accoutrements. AmoghapAsa is depicted in bodhisattva guise and, like Avalokitesvara, has an image of AMITABHA in his crown and is occasionally accompanied by TARA, BHṚKUTĪ, SudhanakumAra, and HAYAGRĪVA.

Amoghasiddhi. (T. Don yod grub pa; C. Bukong Chengjiu rulai fo; J. Fuku Joju nyoraibutsu; K. Pulgong Songch'wi yorae pul 不空成就如來佛). In Sanskrit, "He Whose Accomplishments Are Not in Vain," name of one of the PANCATATHAGATA. He is the buddha of the KARMAN family (KARMAKULA) and his PURE LAND is located in the north. Amoghasiddhi is seldom worshipped individually and he appears to have been largely a creation to fill out the paNcatathAgata grouping. He is usually depicted in the guise of a buddha, green in color, and sitting in DHYANASANA with his right hand in DHYANAMUDRA or with a visvavajra in his upturned palm; his left hand is held at his chest in ABHAYAMUDRA. In Nepal, he alone of the five buddhas is shown with a NAGA above his face or coiled beside him. In East Asian representations of the paNcatathAgata, Amoghasiddhi is often replaced with sAKYAMUNI Buddha.

Ananda Temple. A monumental THERAVADA Buddhist monastery located outside the Tharba Gate in the medieval Burmese capital of Pagan. The Ananda was built around 1105 by King Kyanzittha (r. 1084-1111), third monarch of the Pagan empire, and is dedicated to the four buddhas who have appeared during the present auspicious age: Krakucchanda (P. Kakusandha), Kanakamuni (P. KonAgamana), KAsYAPA, and GAUTAMA. In architectural style, the Ananda represents a fusion of Bengali, Burmese, and Pyu (precursors of the ethnic Burmans) elements. Legend states that eight ARHATs from Mount Gandhamadana in India visited King Kyanzittha, and he was so impressed that he constructed a monastery for them, and next to it founded the Ananda. Like all temples and pagodas of the city of Pagan, the Ananda is built of fired brick and faced with stucco. It is cruciform in plan following a Pyu prototype and crowned with a North Indian style tower, or sikhara. Its interior consists of two circumambulatory halls pierced by windows that allow a limited amount of light into the interior. The hallways are decorated with terracotta plaques depicting episodes from the PAli JATAKAs, the MahAnipAta, and NIDANAKATHA. The inner hall contains niches housing numerous seated images of the Buddha that are rendered in a distinctive Pala style. The temple is entered from four entrances facing the four cardinal directions, which lead directly to four large inner chambers, each containing a colossal standing statue of a buddha. Two of the statues are original; a third was rebuilt in the eighteenth century; and the fourth has been repaired. Three of the statues are flanked by smaller images of their chief disciples. The exception is the statue of Gautama Buddha, located in the western chamber, which is flanked by what is believed to be portrait statues of King Kyanzitha and SHIN ARAHAN, the Mon monk said to have converted Pagan to TheravAda Buddhism, who was also Kyanzittha's preceptor.

Angaja. (T. Yan lag 'byung; C. Yinjietuo; J. Inkatsuda; K. In'get'a 因陀). The Sanskrit name of the thirteenth of the sixteen ARHAT elders (sOdAsASTHAVIRA), who were charged by the Buddha with protecting his dispensation until the advent of the next buddha, MAITREYA. He is said to reside on Guangxie Mountain with thirteen hundred disciples. According to the Chinese tradition, Angaja had been a snake wrangler before he was ordained, so whenever he went into the mountains, he carried a cloth bag with him to catch snakes, which he would release after removing their fangs so they would not injure people. For this reason, he earned the nickname "Cloth-Bag Arhat" (BUDAILUOHAN/heshang). In CHANYUE GUANXIU's standard Chinese depiction, Angaja leans against a staff, with his head lowered, reading a SuTRA that he holds in his left hand, his right hand counting recitation beads (JAPAMALA).

Angel of Grief—depicted in the famous

Angkor Thom. Twelfth-century Khmer (Cambodian) temple city constructed by Jayavarman VII (r. 1181-c. 1220) and dedicated to AVALOKITEsVARA. Built shortly after the Khmer capital was sacked by invading Chams from the region of today's central Vietnam, Angkor Thom is surrounded by a hundred-meter-wide moat and an eight-meter-high wall. Arranged in the shape of a perfect rectangle oriented toward the cardinal directions, its walls are pierced at their center by gates that connect the city to the outside world via four broad avenues that bridge the moat. The avenues are flanked by massive railings in the form of a cosmic snake (NAGA) held aloft on one side by divinities (DEVA) and on the other by ASURAs, a motif recalling the Hindu creation myth of the churning of the cosmic ocean. The avenues run at right angles toward the center of the city complex, where the famous funerary temple of BAYON is located. Constructed of sandstone and in the form of a terraced pyramid, the Bayon represents among other symbols Mt. SUMERU, the axis mundi of the Hindu-Buddhist universe. The temple is entered through four doorways, one on each side, that lead through galleries richly carved with bas-reliefs depicting scenes from contemporary life and Hindu mythology. The temple is crowned with fifty-two towers, the largest of which occupies the center and pinnacle of the structure. The four sides of every tower bear colossal guardian faces that are believed to be portraits of Jayavarman VII in the guise of the bodhisattva Avalokitesvara. The Bayon is the first of Angkor's many temples dedicated to a MAHAYANA Buddhist cult; those built earlier were exclusively Hindu in affiliation. Beneath the central tower is a chamber that once housed a buddha image protected by a hooded nAga. This image was situated above a receptacle intended to receive the king's ashes at death. The Bayon thus combines the function and architectural elements of a Hindu temple and a Buddhist STuPA; and Jayavarman's identification with Avalokitesvara was but an extension of Angkor's long-standing Hindu devarAja (divine king) cult, which identified the reigning monarch as an incarnation of siva. Angkor Thom was the last of several temple cities that cover the large area known today as Angkor, each city having been built by a successive Khmer king and crowned with an elaborate funerary shrine at its center. The most famous of these is the nearby ANGKOR WAT, the largest religious structure in the world, built by Suryavarman II between 1131 and 1150.

Angkor Wat. Massive temple complex and religious monument located in northwest Cambodia; the name refers to both a specific temple and the larger archaeological site, which includes hundreds of temples, including ANGKOR THOM, an ancient capital city of the Khmer kingdom. The Angkor Wat temple was constructed under the auspices of King Suryavarman II (r. 1131-1150 CE) in honor of the Hindu god Visnu. The temple is constructed in high Khmer (Cambodian) classical style and consists of five major towers, which are said to represent the five peaks surrounding Mt. SUMERU, the axis mundi of the universe in Indian cosmology; it also includes an extensive bas-relief, the longest continuous such carving in the world, that depicts famous episodes in Hindu mythology. As the fortunes of the Khmer empire declined along with the Hindu religion it had supported, Angkor Wat was later reconceived as a Buddhist monument, and a Hall of a Thousand Buddhas added to its main entrance. In 1992, UNECSCO designated the entire complex as a World Heritage Site.

anushtubh (anushtup) ::: [the name of a class of Sanskrit metres all of which have eight syllables in each pada], the ordinary epic metre.

Apathia: (Gr. apathla, no feeling) In Epicurean (q.v.) and Stoic (q.v.) ethics: the inner equilibrium and peace of mind, freedom from emotion, that result from contemplation, for its own sake, on the ends of life. Apeiron: (Gr. apeiron) The boundless; the indeterminate; the infinite. In the philosophy of Anaximander the apeiron is the primal indeterminate matter out of which all things come to be. The apeiron appears frequently elsewhere in early Greek philosophy, notably in the dualism of the Pythagoreans, where it is opposed to the principle of the Limit (peras), or number. -- G.R.M.

apician ::: a. --> Belonging to Apicius, a notorious Roman epicure; hence applied to whatever is peculiarly refined or dainty and expensive in cookery.

apsaras. (P. accharA; T. chu skyes mo; C. tiannÜ; J. tennyo; K. ch'onnyo 天女). In Sanskrit, "celestial nymph" (lit. "between the vapors [of the clouds]"); female divinities who dwell in the sky but have the capacity to visit the earth at will and thus occupy a liminal state between the celestial and the terrestrial worlds; they are eventually incorporated into Buddhist cosmology as one of several different types of nonhuman beings who dwell in the sensuous realm (KAMADHATU). According to Indian mythology, they are married to the "celestial musicians" (GANDHARVA). The apsaras occupy an ambivalent position in Buddhist cosmology, since they are sometimes depicted as the debauched seductresses of Buddhist ascetics, at other times as the heavenly reward of leading a spiritual life. In Buddhist art, the apsaras are typically depicted as aerial beings fluttering above Buddhist deities or saints.

Apsu (Babylonian) Abzu (Sumerian) Also Ab Soo. The primordial deep; the waters of space in the Babylonian epic of creation Enuma Elish (when on high). From Apsu and Tiamat were born all the gods, man being fashioned from the clay of Apsu in a Sumerian version, and from the blood of Kingu, son and second consort of Tiamat, in Enuma Elish. The deep is the abode of Ea (wisdom) who saves humanity from destruction by Apsu, Apsu being transformed into still or stagnant subterranean waters.

Aquarius (Latin) Pertaining to water; the water-bearer, the 11th sign of the zodiac. In astrology an airy, fixed, masculine sign, the principal house of Saturn, though sometimes said to by ruled by Uranus. In about 1898, the equinoctial point passed from Pisces to Aquarius of the stellar (movable) zodiac, thus initiating a new Messianic cycle succeeding that of Pisces — the fish-man, associated with Jesus Christ. The Gnostic sun god is depicted as a man covered with breasts, having a fish on his head and a sea monster at his feet, which plainly indicates the group of three signs — Pisces, Aquarius, and Capricorn — and points to a fourfold division of the zodiac, each division embracing three signs; Taurus perhaps represented by the Egyptian bull Apis, standing for the triad of signs which preceded Aquarius.

Arachne (Greek) In Greek mythology the daughter of the dyer Idmon of Colophon, who was so skillful a weaver that she dared to challenge Athena to a competitive trial. Indignant because Arachne had presumed to depict the amours of the gods in her weaving, Athena tore her work, Arache hung herself, and Athena turned the presumptuous maiden into a spider, doomed to spin her web forever. The amours of the gods woven by Arachne signify the weaving of the marvelous web of manifested existence in all its intricate hierarchical structure.

Arcanum: An old term almost identical with occultism, its recent equivalent. Arcana were originally used to cover the sacred objects, such as the Playthings of Dionysus in the Eleusinian rites, and a cognate is ark, as in the Ark of the Covenant. Arcesilaus: (315-241 B.C.) Greek philosopher from Pitane in Aeolis. He succeeded Crates in the chair of the Platonic Academy and became the founder of the second or so-called middle academy. In opposition to both Stoicism and Epicureanism, he advocated a scepticism that was not so extreme as that of Pyrrho although he despaired of man's attaining truth. Suspended judgment was to him the best approach. -- L.E.D.

Ardhanari or Ardhanari-natesvara (Sanskrit) Ardhanārī, Ardhanārī-nāṭeśvara [from ardha half, middle + nārī woman; nāṭeśvara from nāṭa dancer + īśvara lord] Half-female; lord of dancers. The androgynous aspect of Siva cosmically, when bearing the duality of the polarized forces of nature — what is generally termed on lower planes masculine and feminine. Blavatsky depicts Ardhanari surrounded by the six-pointed star or seal of Vishnu and compares it to the wheel of Adonai of the Hebrew seer Ezekiel (IU 2:453). See also ARDHANARISA

Argeak, Argenk A mythologic giant who, according to Persian traditions, built a gallery in the mountains of Kaf, in which there are statues called Sulimans (Solomon) or the “wise kings” of the East. These statues are said to depict ancient men in all their forms.

Aroeris, Haroiri (Greek) Heru-ur (Egyptian) Ḥeru-ur [from ḥeru he who is above + ur the aged] Horus the elder, as distinguished from Heru-pa-khart (Horus the younger) — these two gods are often confused because there are the cosmic Osiris and Isis known as Ra (the sun god) and Hathor, whose son was the Older Horus, and there are likewise the more commonly known Osiris and Isis of our own globe, whose son was the Younger Horus. Aroeris is a deity associated with the sun, and the head of a triad of deities, the other two members being his consort Ta-sent-nefert and their son P-neb-taui (the child). His principal seats of worship were at Sekhemet (Latopolis) and at Ombos where Heru-ur absorbed all the characteristics and qualities of Shu, while his consort took on the characteristics of Tefnut. Heru-ur is depicted in the form of a man (or lion) with the head of a hawk, wearing the crowns of the South and North Egypt united — meaning cosmogonically, the material and the spiritual universes — surmounted by a crown of plumes, uraei, and the disk of the sun.

As Egypt was divided into the North and South, the deity took on two aspects: Hap-Reset, the North Nile, pictured with a cluster of papyrus plants upon his head, and Hap-Meht, the South Nile, depicted with lotus plants. He was called the vivifier, creator of things which exist, father of the gods. In one aspect, Hap was identified with Osiris, especially Osiris-Apis or Serapis; thus Isis came to be regarded as his consort. Likewise he had absorbed the attributes of Nu, the primeval watery abyss from which Ra, the sun god, emerged on the first day of the new world period; therefore he was designated the father of living things, for without the waters of Hap, all living things would perish. Blavatsky points to his psychopompic role and his equivalence with the angel Gabriel (BCW 10:55-6).

Asvaghosa. (T. Rta dbyangs; C. Maming; J. Memyo; K. Mamyong 馬鳴) (c. second century CE). An Indian Buddhist poet from sRAVASTĪ, renowned for his epic kAvya poem, the BUDDHACARITA, the first complete biography of the Buddha. According to traditional accounts, Asvaghosa was born into a brAhmana family in AyodhyA during the reign of the KUSHAN king KANIsKA and was converted to Buddhism by the VAIBHAsIKA teacher PARsVA. His poetic works are esteemed for their distinguished artistic merit, considered representative of the high Sanskritic literary tradition. While the Buddhacarita is Asvaghosa's most famous work, he authored numerous other epic poems including the Saundarananda ("The Handsome Nanda," an account of NANDA's conversion) and the sAriputraprakarana ("Story of sARIPUTRA"). East Asian tradition also attributes to Asvaghosa the DASHENG QIXIN LUN (Awakening of Faith), a treatise on TATHAGATAGARBHA thought that is now widely presumed to be an indigenous Chinese treatise (see APOCRYPHA). ¶ A second tantric Asvaghosa, author of the GURUPANCAsIKA (a brief text detailing the proper worship of a tantric guru), lived in about the tenth century.

Ataraxia: The Epicurean doctrine that the complete peace of mind was a pleasurable state of equilibrium. See Epicureanism. -- E.H.

Atomism: As contrasted with synechism, the view that there are discrete irreducible elements of finite spatial or temporal span. E.g., the atomic doctrine of Democritus that the real world consists of qualitatively similar atoms of diverse shapes. Lucretius, De Natura Rerurn. See Epicurus. Cf. K. Lasswitz, Gesch. d. Atomismus. As contrasted with the view that certain elements are necessarily connected, or even related at all, the doctrine that some entities are only contingently related or are completely independent. In Russell (Scientific Method in Philosophy), Logical Atomism is the view that relations are external and that some true propositions are without simpler constituents in a given system, such propositions are "basic" with respect to that system. In political philosophy, atomism is syn. of particularism. As contrasted with the view that certain entities are analyzable, the doctrine that some entitles are ultimately simple. E.g., Russell's doctrine that there are certain simple, unanalyzable atomic propositions of which other propositions are constituted by compounding or generalization. -- C.A.B.

Atom ::: This word comes to us from the ancient Greek philosophers Democritus, Leucippus, and Epicurus, andthe hundreds of great men who followed their lead in this respect and who were therefore also atomists -such, for instance, as the two Latin poets Ennius and Lucretius. This school taught that atoms were thefoundation-bricks of the universe, for atom in the original etymological sense of the word meanssomething that cannot be cut or divided, and therefore as being equivalent to particles of whattheosophists call homogeneous substance. But modern scientists do not use the word atom in that senseany longer. Some time ago the orthodox scientific doctrine concerning the atom was basically thatenunciated by Dalton, to the general effect that physical atoms were hard little particles of matter,ultimate particles of matter, and therefore indivisible and indestructible.But modern science [1933] has a totally new view of the physical atom, for it knows now that the atom isnot such, but is composite, builded of particles still more minute, called electrons or charges of negativeelectricity, and of other particles called protons or charges of positive electricity, which protons aresupposed to form the nucleus or core of the atomic structure. A frequent picture of atomic structure isthat of an atomic solar system, the protons being the atomic sun and the electrons being its planets, thelatter in extremely rapid revolution around the central sun. This conception is purely theosophical in idea,and adumbrates what occultism teaches, though occultism goes much farther than does modern science.One of the fundamental postulates of the teachings of theosophy is that the ultimates of nature are atomson the material side and monads on the energy side. These two are respectively material and spiritualprimates or ultimates, the spiritual ones or monads being indivisibles, and the atoms being divisibles -things that can be divided into composite parts.It becomes obvious from what precedes that the philosophical idea which formed the core of the teachingof the ancient initiated atomists was that their atoms or "indivisibles" are pretty close to whattheosophical occultism calls monads; and this is what Democritus and Leucippus and others of theirschool had in mind.These monads, as is obvious, are therefore divine-spiritual life-atoms, and are actually beings living andevolving on their own planes. Rays from them are the highest parts of the constitution of beings in thematerial realms.

Aufklärung: In general, this German word and its English equivalent Enlightenment denote the self-emancipation of man from mere authority, prejudice, convention and tradition, with an insistence on freer thinking about problems uncritically referred to these other agencies. According to Kant's famous definition "Enlightenment is the liberation of man from his self-caused state of minority, which is the incapacity of using one's understanding without the direction of another. This state of minority is caused when its source lies not in the lack of understanding, but in the lack of determination and courage to use it without the assistance of another" (Was ist Aufklärung? 1784). In its historical perspective, the Aufklärung refers to the cultural atmosphere and contrlbutions of the 18th century, especially in Germany, France and England [which affected also American thought with B. Franklin, T. Paine and the leaders of the Revolution]. It crystallized tendencies emphasized by the Renaissance, and quickened by modern scepticism and empiricism, and by the great scientific discoveries of the 17th century. This movement, which was represented by men of varying tendencies, gave an impetus to general learning, a more popular philosophy, empirical science, scriptural criticism, social and political thought. More especially, the word Aufklärung is applied to the German contributions to 18th century culture. In philosophy, its principal representatives are G. E. Lessing (1729-81) who believed in free speech and in a methodical criticism of religion, without being a free-thinker; H. S. Reimarus (1694-1768) who expounded a naturalistic philosophy and denied the supernatural origin of Christianity; Moses Mendelssohn (1729-86) who endeavoured to mitigate prejudices and developed a popular common-sense philosophy; Chr. Wolff (1679-1754), J. A. Eberhard (1739-1809) who followed the Leibnizian rationalism and criticized unsuccessfully Kant and Fichte; and J. G. Herder (1744-1803) who was best as an interpreter of others, but whose intuitional suggestions have borne fruit in the organic correlation of the sciences, and in questions of language in relation to human nature and to national character. The works of Kant and Goethe mark the culmination of the German Enlightenment. Cf. J. G. Hibben, Philosophy of the Enlightenment, 1910. --T.G. Augustinianism: The thought of St. Augustine of Hippo, and of his followers. Born in 354 at Tagaste in N. Africa, A. studied rhetoric in Carthage, taught that subject there and in Rome and Milan. Attracted successively to Manicheanism, Scepticism, and Neo-Platontsm, A. eventually found intellectual and moral peace with his conversion to Christianity in his thirty-fourth year. Returning to Africa, he established numerous monasteries, became a priest in 391, Bishop of Hippo in 395. Augustine wrote much: On Free Choice, Confessions, Literal Commentary on Genesis, On the Trinity, and City of God, are his most noted works. He died in 430.   St. Augustine's characteristic method, an inward empiricism which has little in common with later variants, starts from things without, proceeds within to the self, and moves upwards to God. These three poles of the Augustinian dialectic are polarized by his doctrine of moderate illuminism. An ontological illumination is required to explain the metaphysical structure of things. The truth of judgment demands a noetic illumination. A moral illumination is necessary in the order of willing; and so, too, an lllumination of art in the aesthetic order. Other illuminations which transcend the natural order do not come within the scope of philosophy; they provide the wisdoms of theology and mysticism. Every being is illuminated ontologically by number, form, unity and its derivatives, and order. A thing is what it is, in so far as it is more or less flooded by the light of these ontological constituents.   Sensation is necessary in order to know material substances. There is certainly an action of the external object on the body and a corresponding passion of the body, but, as the soul is superior to the body and can suffer nothing from its inferior, sensation must be an action, not a passion, of the soul. Sensation takes place only when the observing soul, dynamically on guard throughout the body, is vitally attentive to the changes suffered by the body. However, an adequate basis for the knowledge of intellectual truth is not found in sensation alone. In order to know, for example, that a body is multiple, the idea of unity must be present already, otherwise its multiplicity could not be recognized. If numbers are not drawn in by the bodily senses which perceive only the contingent and passing, is the mind the source of the unchanging and necessary truth of numbers? The mind of man is also contingent and mutable, and cannot give what it does not possess. As ideas are not innate, nor remembered from a previous existence of the soul, they can be accounted for only by an immutable source higher than the soul. In so far as man is endowed with an intellect, he is a being naturally illuminated by God, Who may be compared to an intelligible sun. The human intellect does not create the laws of thought; it finds them and submits to them. The immediate intuition of these normative rules does not carry any content, thus any trace of ontologism is avoided.   Things have forms because they have numbers, and they have being in so far as they possess form. The sufficient explanation of all formable, and hence changeable, things is an immutable and eternal form which is unrestricted in time and space. The forms or ideas of all things actually existing in the world are in the things themselves (as rationes seminales) and in the Divine Mind (as rationes aeternae). Nothing could exist without unity, for to be is no other than to be one. There is a unity proper to each level of being, a unity of the material individual and species, of the soul, and of that union of souls in the love of the same good, which union constitutes the city. Order, also, is ontologically imbibed by all beings. To tend to being is to tend to order; order secures being, disorder leads to non-being. Order is the distribution which allots things equal and unequal each to its own place and integrates an ensemble of parts in accordance with an end. Hence, peace is defined as the tranquillity of order. Just as things have their being from their forms, the order of parts, and their numerical relations, so too their beauty is not something superadded, but the shining out of all their intelligible co-ingredients.   S. Aurelii Augustini, Opera Omnia, Migne, PL 32-47; (a critical edition of some works will be found in the Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, Vienna). Gilson, E., Introd. a l'etude de s. Augustin, (Paris, 1931) contains very good bibliography up to 1927, pp. 309-331. Pope, H., St. Augustine of Hippo, (London, 1937). Chapman, E., St. Augustine's Philos. of Beauty, (N. Y., 1939). Figgis, J. N., The Political Aspects of St. Augustine's "City of God", (London, 1921). --E.C. Authenticity: In a general sense, genuineness, truth according to its title. It involves sometimes a direct and personal characteristic (Whitehead speaks of "authentic feelings").   This word also refers to problems of fundamental criticism involving title, tradition, authorship and evidence. These problems are vital in theology, and basic in scholarship with regard to the interpretation of texts and doctrines. --T.G. Authoritarianism: That theory of knowledge which maintains that the truth of any proposition is determined by the fact of its having been asserted by a certain esteemed individual or group of individuals. Cf. H. Newman, Grammar of Assent; C. S. Peirce, "Fixation of Belief," in Chance, Love and Logic, ed. M. R. Cohen. --A.C.B. Autistic thinking: Absorption in fanciful or wishful thinking without proper control by objective or factual material; day dreaming; undisciplined imagination. --A.C.B. Automaton Theory: Theory that a living organism may be considered a mere machine. See Automatism. Automatism: (Gr. automatos, self-moving) (a) In metaphysics: Theory that animal and human organisms are automata, that is to say, are machines governed by the laws of physics and mechanics. Automatism, as propounded by Descartes, considered the lower animals to be pure automata (Letter to Henry More, 1649) and man a machine controlled by a rational soul (Treatise on Man). Pure automatism for man as well as animals is advocated by La Mettrie (Man, a Machine, 1748). During the Nineteenth century, automatism, combined with epiphenomenalism, was advanced by Hodgson, Huxley and Clifford. (Cf. W. James, The Principles of Psychology, Vol. I, ch. V.) Behaviorism, of the extreme sort, is the most recent version of automatism (See Behaviorism).   (b) In psychology: Psychological automatism is the performance of apparently purposeful actions, like automatic writing without the superintendence of the conscious mind. L. C. Rosenfield, From Beast Machine to Man Machine, N. Y., 1941. --L.W. Automatism, Conscious: The automatism of Hodgson, Huxley, and Clifford which considers man a machine to which mind or consciousness is superadded; the mind of man is, however, causally ineffectual. See Automatism; Epiphenomenalism. --L.W. Autonomy: (Gr. autonomia, independence) Freedom consisting in self-determination and independence of all external constraint. See Freedom. Kant defines autonomy of the will as subjection of the will to its own law, the categorical imperative, in contrast to heteronomy, its subjection to a law or end outside the rational will. (Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals, § 2.) --L.W. Autonomy of ethics: A doctrine, usually propounded by intuitionists, that ethics is not a part of, and cannot be derived from, either metaphysics or any of the natural or social sciences. See Intuitionism, Metaphysical ethics, Naturalistic ethics. --W.K.F. Autonomy of the will: (in Kant's ethics) The freedom of the rational will to legislate to itself, which constitutes the basis for the autonomy of the moral law. --P.A.S. Autonymy: In the terminology introduced by Carnap, a word (phrase, symbol, expression) is autonymous if it is used as a name for itself --for the geometric shape, sound, etc. which it exemplifies, or for the word as a historical and grammatical unit. Autonymy is thus the same as the Scholastic suppositio matertalis (q. v.), although the viewpoint is different. --A.C. Autotelic: (from Gr. autos, self, and telos, end) Said of any absorbing activity engaged in for its own sake (cf. German Selbstzweck), such as higher mathematics, chess, etc. In aesthetics, applied to creative art and play which lack any conscious reference to the accomplishment of something useful. In the view of some, it may constitute something beneficent in itself of which the person following his art impulse (q.v.) or playing is unaware, thus approaching a heterotelic (q.v.) conception. --K.F.L. Avenarius, Richard: (1843-1896) German philosopher who expressed his thought in an elaborate and novel terminology in the hope of constructing a symbolic language for philosophy, like that of mathematics --the consequence of his Spinoza studies. As the most influential apostle of pure experience, the posltivistic motive reaches in him an extreme position. Insisting on the biologic and economic function of thought, he thought the true method of science is to cure speculative excesses by a return to pure experience devoid of all assumptions. Philosophy is the scientific effort to exclude from knowledge all ideas not included in the given. Its task is to expel all extraneous elements in the given. His uncritical use of the category of the given and the nominalistic view that logical relations are created rather than discovered by thought, leads him to banish not only animism but also all of the categories, substance, causality, etc., as inventions of the mind. Explaining the evolution and devolution of the problematization and deproblematization of numerous ideas, and aiming to give the natural history of problems, Avenarius sought to show physiologically, psychologically and historically under what conditions they emerge, are challenged and are solved. He hypothesized a System C, a bodily and central nervous system upon which consciousness depends. R-values are the stimuli received from the world of objects. E-values are the statements of experience. The brain changes that continually oscillate about an ideal point of balance are termed Vitalerhaltungsmaximum. The E-values are differentiated into elements, to which the sense-perceptions or the content of experience belong, and characters, to which belongs everything which psychology describes as feelings and attitudes. Avenarius describes in symbolic form a series of states from balance to balance, termed vital series, all describing a series of changes in System C. Inequalities in the vital balance give rise to vital differences. According to his theory there are two vital series. It assumes a series of brain changes because parallel series of conscious states can be observed. The independent vital series are physical, and the dependent vital series are psychological. The two together are practically covariants. In the case of a process as a dependent vital series three stages can be noted: first, the appearance of the problem, expressed as strain, restlessness, desire, fear, doubt, pain, repentance, delusion; the second, the continued effort and struggle to solve the problem; and finally, the appearance of the solution, characterized by abating anxiety, a feeling of triumph and enjoyment.   Corresponding to these three stages of the dependent series are three stages of the independent series: the appearance of the vital difference and a departure from balance in the System C, the continuance with an approximate vital difference, and lastly, the reduction of the vital difference to zero, the return to stability. By making room for dependent and independent experiences, he showed that physics regards experience as independent of the experiencing indlvidual, and psychology views experience as dependent upon the individual. He greatly influenced Mach and James (q.v.). See Avenarius, Empirio-criticism, Experience, pure. Main works: Kritik der reinen Erfahrung; Der menschliche Weltbegriff. --H.H. Averroes: (Mohammed ibn Roshd) Known to the Scholastics as The Commentator, and mentioned as the author of il gran commento by Dante (Inf. IV. 68) he was born 1126 at Cordova (Spain), studied theology, law, medicine, mathematics, and philosophy, became after having been judge in Sevilla and Cordova, physician to the khalifah Jaqub Jusuf, and charged with writing a commentary on the works of Aristotle. Al-mansur, Jusuf's successor, deprived him of his place because of accusations of unorthodoxy. He died 1198 in Morocco. Averroes is not so much an original philosopher as the author of a minute commentary on the whole works of Aristotle. His procedure was imitated later by Aquinas. In his interpretation of Aristotelian metaphysics Averroes teaches the coeternity of a universe created ex nihilo. This doctrine formed together with the notion of a numerical unity of the active intellect became one of the controversial points in the discussions between the followers of Albert-Thomas and the Latin Averroists. Averroes assumed that man possesses only a disposition for receiving the intellect coming from without; he identifies this disposition with the possible intellect which thus is not truly intellectual by nature. The notion of one intellect common to all men does away with the doctrine of personal immortality. Another doctrine which probably was emphasized more by the Latin Averroists (and by the adversaries among Averroes' contemporaries) is the famous statement about "two-fold truth", viz. that a proposition may be theologically true and philosophically false and vice versa. Averroes taught that religion expresses the (higher) philosophical truth by means of religious imagery; the "two-truth notion" came apparently into the Latin text through a misinterpretation on the part of the translators. The works of Averroes were one of the main sources of medieval Aristotelianlsm, before and even after the original texts had been translated. The interpretation the Latin Averroists found in their texts of the "Commentator" spread in spite of opposition and condemnation. See Averroism, Latin. Averroes, Opera, Venetiis, 1553. M. Horten, Die Metaphysik des Averroes, 1912. P. Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant et l'Averroisme Latin, 2d ed., Louvain, 1911. --R.A. Averroism, Latin: The commentaries on Aristotle written by Averroes (Ibn Roshd) in the 12th century became known to the Western scholars in translations by Michael Scottus, Hermannus Alemannus, and others at the beginning of the 13th century. Many works of Aristotle were also known first by such translations from Arabian texts, though there existed translations from the Greek originals at the same time (Grabmann). The Averroistic interpretation of Aristotle was held to be the true one by many; but already Albert the Great pointed out several notions which he felt to be incompatible with the principles of Christian philosophy, although he relied for the rest on the "Commentator" and apparently hardly used any other text. Aquinas, basing his studies mostly on a translation from the Greek texts, procured for him by William of Moerbecke, criticized the Averroistic interpretation in many points. But the teachings of the Commentator became the foundation for a whole school of philosophers, represented first by the Faculty of Arts at Paris. The most prominent of these scholars was Siger of Brabant. The philosophy of these men was condemned on March 7th, 1277 by Stephen Tempier, Bishop of Paris, after a first condemnation of Aristotelianism in 1210 had gradually come to be neglected. The 219 theses condemned in 1277, however, contain also some of Aquinas which later were generally recognized an orthodox. The Averroistic propositions which aroused the criticism of the ecclesiastic authorities and which had been opposed with great energy by Albert and Thomas refer mostly to the following points: The co-eternity of the created word; the numerical identity of the intellect in all men, the so-called two-fold-truth theory stating that a proposition may be philosophically true although theologically false. Regarding the first point Thomas argued that there is no philosophical proof, either for the co-eternity or against it; creation is an article of faith. The unity of intellect was rejected as incompatible with the true notion of person and with personal immortality. It is doubtful whether Averroes himself held the two-truths theory; it was, however, taught by the Latin Averroists who, notwithstanding the opposition of the Church and the Thomistic philosophers, gained a great influence and soon dominated many universities, especially in Italy. Thomas and his followers were convinced that they interpreted Aristotle correctly and that the Averroists were wrong; one has, however, to admit that certain passages in Aristotle allow for the Averroistic interpretation, especially in regard to the theory of intellect.   Lit.: P. Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant et l'Averroisme Latin au XIIIe Siecle, 2d. ed. Louvain, 1911; M. Grabmann, Forschungen über die lateinischen Aristotelesübersetzungen des XIII. Jahrhunderts, Münster 1916 (Beitr. z. Gesch. Phil. d. MA. Vol. 17, H. 5-6). --R.A. Avesta: See Zendavesta. Avicehron: (or Avencebrol, Salomon ibn Gabirol) The first Jewish philosopher in Spain, born in Malaga 1020, died about 1070, poet, philosopher, and moralist. His main work, Fons vitae, became influential and was much quoted by the Scholastics. It has been preserved only in the Latin translation by Gundissalinus. His doctrine of a spiritual substance individualizing also the pure spirits or separate forms was opposed by Aquinas already in his first treatise De ente, but found favor with the medieval Augustinians also later in the 13th century. He also teaches the necessity of a mediator between God and the created world; such a mediator he finds in the Divine Will proceeding from God and creating, conserving, and moving the world. His cosmogony shows a definitely Neo-Platonic shade and assumes a series of emanations. Cl. Baeumker, Avencebrolis Fons vitae. Beitr. z. Gesch. d. Philos. d. MA. 1892-1895, Vol. I. Joh. Wittman, Die Stellung des hl. Thomas von Aquino zu Avencebrol, ibid. 1900. Vol. III. --R.A. Avicenna: (Abu Ali al Hosain ibn Abdallah ibn Sina) Born 980 in the country of Bocchara, began to write in young years, left more than 100 works, taught in Ispahan, was physician to several Persian princes, and died at Hamadan in 1037. His fame as physician survived his influence as philosopher in the Occident. His medical works were printed still in the 17th century. His philosophy is contained in 18 vols. of a comprehensive encyclopedia, following the tradition of Al Kindi and Al Farabi. Logic, Physics, Mathematics and Metaphysics form the parts of this work. His philosophy is Aristotelian with noticeable Neo-Platonic influences. His doctrine of the universal existing ante res in God, in rebus as the universal nature of the particulars, and post res in the human mind by way of abstraction became a fundamental thesis of medieval Aristotelianism. He sharply distinguished between the logical and the ontological universal, denying to the latter the true nature of form in the composite. The principle of individuation is matter, eternally existent. Latin translations attributed to Avicenna the notion that existence is an accident to essence (see e.g. Guilelmus Parisiensis, De Universo). The process adopted by Avicenna was one of paraphrasis of the Aristotelian texts with many original thoughts interspersed. His works were translated into Latin by Dominicus Gundissalinus (Gondisalvi) with the assistance of Avendeath ibn Daud. This translation started, when it became more generally known, the "revival of Aristotle" at the end of the 12th and the beginning of the 13th century. Albert the Great and Aquinas professed, notwithstanding their critical attitude, a great admiration for Avicenna whom the Arabs used to call the "third Aristotle". But in the Orient, Avicenna's influence declined soon, overcome by the opposition of the orthodox theologians. Avicenna, Opera, Venetiis, 1495; l508; 1546. M. Horten, Das Buch der Genesung der Seele, eine philosophische Enzyklopaedie Avicenna's; XIII. Teil: Die Metaphysik. Halle a. S. 1907-1909. R. de Vaux, Notes et textes sur l'Avicennisme Latin, Bibl. Thomiste XX, Paris, 1934. --R.A. Avidya: (Skr.) Nescience; ignorance; the state of mind unaware of true reality; an equivalent of maya (q.v.); also a condition of pure awareness prior to the universal process of evolution through gradual differentiation into the elements and factors of knowledge. --K.F.L. Avyakta: (Skr.) "Unmanifest", descriptive of or standing for brahman (q.v.) in one of its or "his" aspects, symbolizing the superabundance of the creative principle, or designating the condition of the universe not yet become phenomenal (aja, unborn). --K.F.L. Awareness: Consciousness considered in its aspect of act; an act of attentive awareness such as the sensing of a color patch or the feeling of pain is distinguished from the content attended to, the sensed color patch, the felt pain. The psychologlcal theory of intentional act was advanced by F. Brentano (Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte) and received its epistemological development by Meinong, Husserl, Moore, Laird and Broad. See Intentionalism. --L.W. Axiological: (Ger. axiologisch) In Husserl: Of or pertaining to value or theory of value (the latter term understood as including disvalue and value-indifference). --D.C. Axiological ethics: Any ethics which makes the theory of obligation entirely dependent on the theory of value, by making the determination of the rightness of an action wholly dependent on a consideration of the value or goodness of something, e.g. the action itself, its motive, or its consequences, actual or probable. Opposed to deontological ethics. See also teleological ethics. --W.K.F. Axiologic Realism: In metaphysics, theory that value as well as logic, qualities as well as relations, have their being and exist external to the mind and independently of it. Applicable to the philosophy of many though not all realists in the history of philosophy, from Plato to G. E. Moore, A. N. Whitehead, and N, Hartmann. --J.K.F. Axiology: (Gr. axios, of like value, worthy, and logos, account, reason, theory). Modern term for theory of value (the desired, preferred, good), investigation of its nature, criteria, and metaphysical status. Had its rise in Plato's theory of Forms or Ideas (Idea of the Good); was developed in Aristotle's Organon, Ethics, Poetics, and Metaphysics (Book Lambda). Stoics and Epicureans investigated the summum bonum. Christian philosophy (St. Thomas) built on Aristotle's identification of highest value with final cause in God as "a living being, eternal, most good."   In modern thought, apart from scholasticism and the system of Spinoza (Ethica, 1677), in which values are metaphysically grounded, the various values were investigated in separate sciences, until Kant's Critiques, in which the relations of knowledge to moral, aesthetic, and religious values were examined. In Hegel's idealism, morality, art, religion, and philosophy were made the capstone of his dialectic. R. H. Lotze "sought in that which should be the ground of that which is" (Metaphysik, 1879). Nineteenth century evolutionary theory, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and economics subjected value experience to empirical analysis, and stress was again laid on the diversity and relativity of value phenomena rather than on their unity and metaphysical nature. F. Nietzsche's Also Sprach Zarathustra (1883-1885) and Zur Genealogie der Moral (1887) aroused new interest in the nature of value. F. Brentano, Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis (1889), identified value with love.   In the twentieth century the term axiology was apparently first applied by Paul Lapie (Logique de la volonte, 1902) and E. von Hartmann (Grundriss der Axiologie, 1908). Stimulated by Ehrenfels (System der Werttheorie, 1897), Meinong (Psychologisch-ethische Untersuchungen zur Werttheorie, 1894-1899), and Simmel (Philosophie des Geldes, 1900). W. M. Urban wrote the first systematic treatment of axiology in English (Valuation, 1909), phenomenological in method under J. M. Baldwin's influence. Meanwhile H. Münsterberg wrote a neo-Fichtean system of values (The Eternal Values, 1909).   Among important recent contributions are: B. Bosanquet, The Principle of Individuality and Value (1912), a free reinterpretation of Hegelianism; W. R. Sorley, Moral Values and the Idea of God (1918, 1921), defending a metaphysical theism; S. Alexander, Space, Time, and Deity (1920), realistic and naturalistic; N. Hartmann, Ethik (1926), detailed analysis of types and laws of value; R. B. Perry's magnum opus, General Theory of Value (1926), "its meaning and basic principles construed in terms of interest"; and J. Laird, The Idea of Value (1929), noteworthy for historical exposition. A naturalistic theory has been developed by J. Dewey (Theory of Valuation, 1939), for which "not only is science itself a value . . . but it is the supreme means of the valid determination of all valuations." A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic (1936) expounds the view of logical positivism that value is "nonsense." J. Hessen, Wertphilosophie (1937), provides an account of recent German axiology from a neo-scholastic standpoint.   The problems of axiology fall into four main groups, namely, those concerning (1) the nature of value, (2) the types of value, (3) the criterion of value, and (4) the metaphysical status of value.   (1) The nature of value experience. Is valuation fulfillment of desire (voluntarism: Spinoza, Ehrenfels), pleasure (hedonism: Epicurus, Bentham, Meinong), interest (Perry), preference (Martineau), pure rational will (formalism: Stoics, Kant, Royce), apprehension of tertiary qualities (Santayana), synoptic experience of the unity of personality (personalism: T. H. Green, Bowne), any experience that contributes to enhanced life (evolutionism: Nietzsche), or "the relation of things as means to the end or consequence actually reached" (pragmatism, instrumentalism: Dewey).   (2) The types of value. Most axiologists distinguish between intrinsic (consummatory) values (ends), prized for their own sake, and instrumental (contributory) values (means), which are causes (whether as economic goods or as natural events) of intrinsic values. Most intrinsic values are also instrumental to further value experience; some instrumental values are neutral or even disvaluable intrinsically. Commonly recognized as intrinsic values are the (morally) good, the true, the beautiful, and the holy. Values of play, of work, of association, and of bodily well-being are also acknowledged. Some (with Montague) question whether the true is properly to be regarded as a value, since some truth is disvaluable, some neutral; but love of truth, regardless of consequences, seems to establish the value of truth. There is disagreement about whether the holy (religious value) is a unique type (Schleiermacher, Otto), or an attitude toward other values (Kant, Höffding), or a combination of the two (Hocking). There is also disagreement about whether the variety of values is irreducible (pluralism) or whether all values are rationally related in a hierarchy or system (Plato, Hegel, Sorley), in which values interpenetrate or coalesce into a total experience.   (3) The criterion of value. The standard for testing values is influenced by both psychological and logical theory. Hedonists find the standard in the quantity of pleasure derived by the individual (Aristippus) or society (Bentham). Intuitionists appeal to an ultimate insight into preference (Martineau, Brentano). Some idealists recognize an objective system of rational norms or ideals as criterion (Plato, Windelband), while others lay more stress on rational wholeness and coherence (Hegel, Bosanquet, Paton) or inclusiveness (T. H. Green). Naturalists find biological survival or adjustment (Dewey) to be the standard. Despite differences, there is much in common in the results of the application of these criteria.   (4) The metaphysical status of value. What is the relation of values to the facts investigated by natural science (Koehler), of Sein to Sollen (Lotze, Rickert), of human experience of value to reality independent of man (Hegel, Pringle-Pattlson, Spaulding)? There are three main answers:   subjectivism (value is entirely dependent on and relative to human experience of it: so most hedonists, naturalists, positivists);   logical objectivism (values are logical essences or subsistences, independent of their being known, yet with no existential status or action in reality);   metaphysical objectivism (values   --or norms or ideals   --are integral, objective, and active constituents of the metaphysically real: so theists, absolutists, and certain realists and naturalists like S. Alexander and Wieman). --E.S.B. Axiom: See Mathematics. Axiomatic method: That method of constructing a deductive system consisting of deducing by specified rules all statements of the system save a given few from those given few, which are regarded as axioms or postulates of the system. See Mathematics. --C.A.B. Ayam atma brahma: (Skr.) "This self is brahman", famous quotation from Brhadaranyaka Upanishad 2.5.19, one of many alluding to the central theme of the Upanishads, i.e., the identity of the human and divine or cosmic. --K.F.L.

aura ::: Aura An invisible energy field surrounding the human body, animals and plants. That part of the aura which surrounds the head is often depicted by artists as a halo to denote saints and enlightened beings. Everyone has an aura filled with many colours of different intensity which reflect the thoughts and emotions active in the nervous system, and which change according to a person's state of mind. The colours and intensity of a person's aura are said to show that person's true nature and intentions, as we cannot 'fake' the colour or characteristics of our auras.

aureole ::: the radiant circle of light depicted around the head; a glorifying halo.

avadAna. (P. apadAna; T. rtogs par brjod pa; C. apotuona/piyu; J. ahadana or apadana/hiyu; K. ap'adana/piyu 阿波陀那/譬喩). In Sanskrit, "tales" or "narrative"; a term used to denote a type of story found in both Buddhist and non-Buddhist literature. The precise meaning of the word has been the subject of much discussion. In the Indian BrAhmanas and srauta literature, the term denotes either something that is sacrificed or a portion of a sacrifice. The term avadAna was originally thought to mean "something cut off; something selected" and was presumed to derive from the prefix ava- + the Sanskrit root √dA. Feer, who published a French translation of the AVADANAsATAKA in 1891, tentatively translated it as "légende, action héroïque," while noting that the Tibetans, the Chinese, and the Mongols all employed differing translations of the word as well. (The Chinese use a transcription, apotuona, as well as a translation, piyu, meaning "simile." The Tibetan rtogs brjod has been rendered as "judgment" or "moral legend"; literally, it means the presentation or expression of the realizations [of an adept]. The Mongolian equivalent is domok.) Feer's rendering of avadAna is closer to its meaning of "heroic action" in classical Indian works such as the RaghuvaMsa and the KumArasambhava. AvadAnas are listed as the tenth of the twelvefold (DVADAsAnGA) division of the traditional genres of Buddhist literature, as classified by compositional style and content. The total corpus of the genre is quite extensive, ranging from individual avadAnas embedded in VINAYA texts, or separate sutras in the SuTRAPItAKA, to avadAnas that circulated either individually or in avadAna collections. These stories typically illustrate the results of both good and bad KARMAN, i.e., past events that led to present circumstances; in certain cases, however, they also depict present events that lead to a prediction (VYAKARAnA) of high spiritual attainment in the future. AvadAnas are closely related to JATAKAs, or birth stories of the Buddha; indeed, some scholars have considered jAtakas to be a subset of the avadAna genre, and some jAtaka tales are also included in the AVADANAsATAKA, an early avadAna collection. AvadAnas typically exhibit a three-part narrative structure, with a story of the present, followed by a story of past action (karman), which is then connected by identifying the past actor as a prior incarnation of the main character in the narrative present. In contrast to the jAtakas, however, the main character in an avadAna is generally not the Buddha (an exception is Ksemendra's eleventh-century BodhisattvAvadAnakalpalatA) but rather someone who is or becomes his follower. Moreover, some avadAnas are related by narrators other than the Buddha, such as those of the AsOKAVADANA, which are narrated by UPAGUPTA. Although the avadAna genre was once dismissed as "edifying stories" for the masses, the frequent references to monks as listeners and the directives to monks on how to practice that are embedded in these tales make it clear that the primary audience was monastics. Some of the notations appended to the stories in sura's [alt. Aryasura; c. second century CE] JATAKAMALA suggest that such stories were also used secondarily for lay audiences. On the Indian mainland, both mainstream and MAHAYANA monks compiled avadAna collections. Some of the avadAnas from northwestern India have been traced from kernel stories in the MuLASARVASTIVADA VINAYA via other mainstream Buddhist versions. In his French translation of the AvadAnasataka, Feer documented a number of tales from earlier mainstream collections, such as the AvadAnasataka, which were reworked and expanded in later MahAyAna collections, such as the RatnAvadAnamAlA and the KalpadrumAvadAnamAlA, which attests to the durability and popularity of the genre. Generally speaking, the earlier mainstream avadAnas were prose works, while the later MahAyAna collections were composed largely in verse.

Avalokitesvara. (T. Spyan ras gzigs; C. Guanshiyin/Guanyin; J. Kanzeon/Kannon; K. Kwanseŭm/Kwanŭm 觀世音/觀音). In Sanskrit, "Lord who Looks Down [in Empathy]"; the BODHISATTVA of compassion, the most widely worshipped of the MAHAYANA bodhisattvas and one of the earliest to appear in Buddhist literature. According to legend, Avalokitesvara was produced from a beam of light that radiated from the forehead of AMITABHA while that buddha was deep in meditation. For this reason, Buddhist iconography often depicts AmitAbha as embedded in Avalokitesvara's crown. His name dates back to the beginning of the Common Era, when he replaced the Vedic god BRAHMA as the attendant to sAKYAMUNI Buddha, inheriting in turn BrahmA's attribute of the lotus (PADMA). Images of Avalokitesvara as PADMAPAnI LOKEsVARA ("Lord with a Lotus in his Hand"), an early name, are numerous. Avalokitesvara is the interlocutor or main figure in numerous important MahAyAna sutras, including the PRAJNAPARAMITAHṚDAYASuTRA ("Heart Sutra"). His cult was introduced to China in the first century CE, where his name was translated as Guanshiyin ("Perceiver of the Sounds of the World") or GUANYIN ("Perceiver of Sounds"); his cult entered Korea and Japan with the advent of Buddhism in those countries. Avalokitesvara was once worshipped widely in Southeast Asia as well, beginning at the end of the first millennium CE. Although the MahAyAna tradition eventually faded from the region, images of Avalokitesvara remain. Avalokitesvara is also the patron deity of Tibet, where he is said to have taken the form of a monkey and mated with TARA in the form of a local demoness to produce the Tibetan race. Tibetan political and religious leaders have been identified as incarnations of him, such as the seventh-century king SRONG BTSAN SGAM PO (although that attribution was most likely a later addition to the king's legacy) and, notably, the DALAI LAMAs. The PO TA LA Palace, the residence of the Dalai Lamas, in the Tibetan capital of LHA SA is named for Avalokitesvara's abode on Mount POTALAKA in India. In China, Avalokitesvara as Guanyin underwent a transformation in gender into a popular female bodhisattva, although the male iconographic form also persists throughout East Asia. PUTUOSHAN, located off the east coast of China south of Shanghai, is said to be Potalaka. Avalokitesvara is generally depicted in the full raiments of a bodhisattva, often with an image of AmitAbha in his crown. He appears in numerous forms, among them the two-armed PadmapAni who stands and holds a lotus flower; the four-armed seated Avalokitesvara, known either as Caturbhuja Avalokitesvara [CaturbhujAvalokitesvara] or CintAmani Avalokitesvara [CintAmanyavalokitesvara], who holds the wish-fulfilling jewel (CINTAMAnI) with his central hands in ANJALIMUDRA, and a lotus and crystal rosary in his left and right hands, respectively; the eleven-armed, eleven-faced EKADAsAMUKHA; and the thousand-armed and thousand-headed SAHASRABHUJASAHASRANETRAVALOKITEsVARA (q.v. MAHAKARUnIKA). Tradition holds that his head split into multiple skulls when he beheld the suffering of the world. Numerous other forms also exist in which the god has three or more heads, and any number of arms. In his wrathful form as AstabhayatrAnAvalokitesvara (T. Spyan ras gzigs 'jigs pa brgyad skyob), "Avalokitesvara who Protects against the Eight Fears," the bodhisattva stands in ARDHAPARYAnKA ("half cross-legged posture") and has one face and eight hands, each of which holds a symbol of one of the eight fears. This name is also given to eight separate forms of Avalokitesvara that are each dedicated to protecting from one of the eight fears, namely: AgnibhayatrAnAvalokitesvara ("Avalokitesvara Who Protects from Fear of Fire") and so on, replacing fire with Jala (water), SiMha (lion), Hasti (elephant), Danda (cudgel), NAga (snake), dAkinī (witch) [alt. PisAcī]; and Cora (thief). In addition to his common iconographic characteristic, the lotus flower, Avalokitesvara also frequently holds, among other accoutrements, a jeweled rosary (JAPAMALA) given to him by Aksamati (as related in chapter twenty-five of the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA), or a vase. In East Asia, Avalokitesvara often appears in a triad: the buddha AmitAbha in the center, flanked to his left and right by his two bodhisattva attendants, Avalokitesvara and MAHASTHAMAPRAPTA, respectively. In Tibet, Avalokitesvara is part of a popular triad with VAJRAPAnI and MANJUsRĪ. As one of the AstAMAHOPAPUTRA, Avalokitesvara also appears with the other bodhisattvas in group representation. The tantric deity AMOGHAPAsA is also a form of Avalokitesvara. The famous mantra of Avalokitesvara, OM MAnI PADME HuM, is widely recited in the MahAyAna traditions and nearly universally in Tibetan Buddhism. In addition to the twenty-fifth chapter of the Saddharmapundarīkasutra, the KARAndAVYuHA is also devoted to him. See also BAIYI GUANYIN; GUANYIN; MIAOSHAN; MAnI BKA' 'BUM.

“Avatarhood would have little meaning if it were not connected with the evolution. The Hindu procession of the ten Avatars is itself, as it were, a parable of evolution. First the Fish Avatar, then the amphibious animal between land and water, then the land animal, then the Man-Lion Avatar, bridging man and animal, then man as dwarf, small and undeveloped and physical but containing in himself the godhead and taking possession of existence, then the rajasic, sattwic, nirguna Avatars, leading the human development from the vital rajasic to the sattwic mental man and again the overmental superman. Krishna, Buddha and Kalki depict the last three stages, the stages of the spiritual development—Krishna opens the possibility of overmind, Buddha tries to shoot beyond to the supreme liberation but that liberation is still negative, not returning upon earth to complete positively the evolution; Kalki is to correct this by bringing the Kingdom of the Divine upon earth, destroying the opposing Asura forces. The progression is striking and unmistakable.” Letters on Yoga

Bacon had no system of his own, but openly preferred the lonians, Atomists and Epicureans.

ba da zizai wo. (J. hachidai jizaiga; K. p'al tae chaje a 八大自在我). In Chinese, the "eight great types of autonomy of the self." In distinction to mainstream Buddhist teachings about the absence of a perduring self (ANATMAN), the Chinese recension of the MAHAYANA MAHAPARINIRVAnASuTRA teaches a doctrine of a "great self" (dawo, S. mahAtman) that is realized through enlightenment. According to the Chinese renderings, a buddha, having realized this great self, is capable of eight kinds of miraculous transformations (ba shenbian; ba zizai): (1) self-manifesting (he has the power to make his body appear as multiple emanations; nengshi yishen wei duoshen); (2) infinite enlargement (his physical body appears to fill the myriad world systems; shi yichenshen man daqian jie); (3) levitation and translocation (viz., to transport himself to remote places through space; dashen qingju yuandao); (4) incarnating into myriad species or categories of sentient beings (xian wulianglei changju); (5) intentional synesthesia (e.g., to see with his ears, to smell with his eyes, etc.; zhugen huyong); (6) attaining any ability imaginable, but without giving rise to the (conceited) thought of attainment (de yiqie fa wude xiang); (7) elaborating on the meaning of a single scriptural stanza for innumerable eons (before exhausting his knowledge and eloquence; shuo yiji yi jing wuliang jie); (8) pervading all of infinite space (shenbian zhuchu youru xukong). Other MahAyAna scriptures outline similarly fantastic and dramatic depictions of greatly apotheosized buddhas and advanced bodhisattvas.

Ba (Egyptian) Ba. The human soul; closely connected with the heart, and usually depicted as a hawk with a human head. It was regarded in the nature of a human “double,” and mortal, equivalent to prana in some of its functions, or to kama-manas.

Bakkula. [alt. Nakula; Vakula; etc.] (P. Bakkula; T. Ba ku la; C. Bojuluo; J. Hakukura; K. Pakkura 薄拘羅). Sanskrit and PAi name of an ARHAT disciple of the Buddha, who became an arhat only eight days after ordaining at the age of eighty. The Buddha declared him to be foremost among those who enjoyed good health, and also one of the four monks most proficient in superknowledges (ABHIJNA), supernatural powers that are the by-products of meditation. ¶ Bakkula is also traditionally listed as fifth (or, in Tibetan, ninth) of the sixteen arhat elders (sOdAsASTHAVIRA), who are charged by the Buddha with protecting his dispensation until the advent of the next buddha, MAITREYA. He is said to reside in JAMBUDVĪPA with eight hundred disciples. According to the East Asian tradition, Bakkula was a fierce warrior. After he ordained, the Buddha calmed him by making him sit in meditation, whence he became known as the "Quietly Sitting Arhat" (Jingzuo Luohan). Bakkula may be the arhat known by the epithet of Kundovahan (Holder of the Mongoose; C. Juntoupohan) referred to in the sAriputraparipṛcchA ("Sutra of sAriputra's Questions"). In Tibetan iconography he holds a mongoose (nakula) spitting out jewels; East Asian images have him seated in a chair holding a mongoose, sometimes accompanied by a beggar child. In CHANYUE GUANXIU's standard Chinese depiction, Bakkula is shown sitting cross-legged on a rock, with both hands holding a backscratcher over his left shoulder. In Tibetan Buddhism, Bakkula (or Bakula) is the first figure in an important incarnation (SPRUL SKU) lineage of the DGE LUGS sect. The nineteenth Bakula Rinpoche (1917-2003) served in the Indian parliament and as the Indian ambassador to Mongolia. Bakkula is alternatively known in Sanskrit as Bakula, Vakkula, Vakula, Vatkula (cf. P. BAkula; Vakkula).

Bast is regarded as the personification of the power of the sun which manifests in the form of heat, a position which she holds together with the goddess Sekhet. But she is also intimately connected with the moon, especially in her connection with the cat — Khensu being a lunar god. Thus when she is depicted as a lioness her attributes are solar; when as a cat, lunar. This dual aspect bears a close analogy with the moon, which is further indicated when Bast is represented as being one of the goddesses of the birth chamber; and her son Khensu was declared to make women fruitful and make the human germ grow, especially in his character of the moon, the lightbearer.

Bayon. One of the most important Buddhist temples sites at ANGKOR THOM, the temple-city of the ancient Khmer kingdom; built by the Khmer king Jayavarman VII (r. 1181-c. 1220). The Bayon is a funerary temple located at the center of the Angkor Thom city complex. Constructed of sandstone and in the form of a terraced pyramid, the Bayon represents among other symbols Mt. SUMERU, the axis mundi of the Hindu-Buddhist universe. The temple is entered through four doorways, one on each side, that lead through galleries richly carved with bas-reliefs depicting scenes from contemporary life and Hindu mythology. The temple is crowned with fifty-two towers, the largest of which occupies the center and pinnacle of the structure. The four sides of every tower bear colossal guardian faces that are believed to be portraits of Jayavarman VII in the guise of the bodhisattva AVALOKITEsVARA. The Bayon is the first of Angkor's many temples specifically dedicated to a MAHAYANA Buddhist cult; those built earlier were exclusively Hindu in affiliation. Beneath the central tower is a chamber that once housed a buddha image protected by a hooded cobra. This image was situated above a receptacle intended to receive the king's ashes at death. The Bayon thus combines the function and architectural elements of a Hindu temple and a Buddhist STuPA, while Jayavarman's identification with Avalokitesvara was but an extension of Angkor's long-standing Hindu devarAjan (divine king) cult.

bdud. (dü). In Tibetan, "demon"; a class of pre-Buddhist harmful spirits, who are said to cause fits of unconsciousness and other illnesses, and are counteracted through a glud (lü) ceremony known as the brgya bzhi (gyashi). The bdud are depicted as black wrathful gods, carrying a snare (S. pAsa, T. zhags pa) or notched staff (T. khram shing) and riding black horses. There are also female bdud, known as bdud mo. The bdud are classified according to numerous schemata that include a different deity as the king. In BON texts, they are commonly grouped in classes of four or five: the sa (earth) bdud in the east, rlung (wind) bdud in the north, me (fire) bdud in the west and chu (water) bdud in the south; sometimes a fifth class, the lha (god) bdud, is added at the zenith. Bdud is also used as the Tibetan translation of MARA, evil personified.

beidou qixing. (J. hokuto shichisho; K. puktu ch'ilsong 北斗七星). In Chinese, "seven stars of the Northern Dipper" (viz., the Big Dipper, or Ursa Major); Daoist divinities that are also prominent in Korean Buddhism, where they are typically known as the ch'ilsong. The cult of the seven stars of the Big Dipper developed within Chinese Buddhist circles through influence from indigenous Daoist schools, who worshipped these seven deities to guard against plague and other misfortunes. The apocryphal Beidou qixing yanming jing ("Book of the Prolongation of Life through Worshipping the Seven Stars of the Northern Dipper"), suggests a correlation between the healing buddha BHAIsAJYAGURU and the Big Dipper cult by addressing the seven-star TATHAGATAs (qixing rulai) with names that are very similar to Bhaisajyaguru's seven emanations. This indigenous Chinese scripture (see APOCRYPHA), which derives from an early Daoist text on Big Dipper worship, is certainly dated no later than the late thirteenth or early fourteenth centuries but may have been composed as early as the middle of the eighth century; it later was translated into Uighur, Mongolian, and Tibetan, as part of the Mongol Yuan dynasty's extension of power throughout the Central Asian region. Thanks to this scripture, the seven-star cult became associated in Buddhism with the prolongation of life. We know that seven-star worship had already been introduced into esoteric Buddhist ritual by at least the eighth century because of two contemporary manuals that discuss HOMA fire offerings to the seven stars: VAJRABODHI's (671-741) Beidou qixing niansong yigui ("Ritual Procedures for Invoking the Seven Stars of the Northern Dipper") and his disciple AMOGHAVAJRA's (705-774) Beidou qixing humo miyao yigui ("Esoteric Ritual Procedure for the Homa Offering to the Seven Stars of the Northern Dipper"). Renderings of DHARAnĪ sutras dedicated to the tathAgata TEJAPRABHA (Qixingguang Rulai), who is said to be master of the planets and the twenty-eight asterisms, are also attributed to Amoghavajra's translation bureau. Worship of the seven stars within esoteric Buddhist circles was therefore certainly well established in China by the eighth century during the Tang dynasty and probably soon afterward in Korean Buddhism. ¶ The worship of the Big Dipper in Korea may date as far back as the Megalithic period, as evidenced by the engraving of the Big Dipper and other asterisms on dolmens or menhirs. In the fourth-century Ji'an tombs of the Koguryo kingdom (37 BCE-668 CE), one of the traditional Three Kingdoms of early Korea, a mural of the Big Dipper is found on the north wall of tomb no. 1, along with an accompanying asterism of the six stars of Sagittarius (sometimes called the Southern Dipper) on the south wall; this juxtaposition is presumed to reflect the influence of the Shangqing school of contemporary Chinese Daoism. Court rituals to the seven stars and the tathAgata Tejaprabha date from the twelfth century during the Koryo dynasty. By at least the thirteen century, the full range of texts and ritual practices associated with the seven-star deities were circulating in Korea. At the popular level in Korea, the divinities of the Big Dipper were thought to control longevity, especially for children, and the ch'ilsong cult gained widespread popularity during the Choson dynasty (1392-1910). This popularization is in turn reflected in the ubiquity in Korean monasteries of "seven-stars shrines" (ch'ilsonggak), which were typically located in less-conspicuous locations along the outer perimeter of the monasteries and were worshipped primarily by the nonelite. Inside these shrines were hung seven-star paintings (T'AENGHWA), which typically depict the tathAgatas of the seven stars, with the tathAgata Tejaprabha presiding at the center. There are also several comprehensive ritual and liturgical manuals compiled during the Choson dynasty and Japanese colonial period in Korea that include rituals and invocations to the seven stars and Tejaprabha, most dedicated to the prolongation of life. Along with the mountain god (sansin), who also often has his own shrine in the monasteries of Korea, the role of the ch'ilsong in Korean Buddhism is often raised in the scholarship as an example of Buddhism's penchant to adapt beliefs and practices from rival religions. Although ch'ilsong worship has declined markedly in contemporary Korea, the ch'ilsokche, a worship ceremony dedicated to the tathAgata Tejaprabha, is occasionally held at some Buddhist monasteries on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month, with lay believers praying for good fortune and the prevention of calamity.

belly-god ::: n. --> One whose great pleasure it is to gratify his appetite; a glutton; an epicure.

Epicheirema: (Gr. epicheirema) In Aristotle's logic a dialectical as distinct from an apodictic or an eristic syllogism.

Epictetus: (c. 60-110 A.D.) A Stoic philosopher and freed slave, who established his School in Nicopolis, Epirus; his Discourses were published by Arrian, his learned disciple, they contain sharp observations of human behavior and pithy sayings on ethical matters. -- R.B.W.

Epictetus Greek Stoic philosopher, a freed slave who taught philosophy in Rome until 90 AD, when Domitian expelled all philosophers. He left no writings, and his philosophy is known through the Discourses and Enchiridion of his pupil Flavius Arrian. Like other Stoics, he held that each person has at the root of his or her being a spark of the Logos, so that all people are brothers and relationships with others must be respected. Inner harmony could be attained by correct perceptions and attitudes, differentiating between what is “ours” and thus under our control, and what is “not ours” and therefore beyond our control. He encouraged making new habits of thought and action through constant practice and self-discipline and by acting deliberately.

Epicurean Philosophy School founded by Epicurus (b. 341 BC), an atomist philosopher popularly associated with later travesties of his teachings. His actual teachings and way of living prove that his chief aim and good was happiness rather than pleasure; for he taught and practiced abstemiousness of living. In this he reacted to the travestied forms of Platonism which existed in his time, moving away from a barren idealism towards a concrete practicality, trying to substitute realities for empty abstractions, both in philosophy and ethics. For this reason he lays the chief stress on ethics, to the comparative neglect of logic and philosophy.

Epicurean School: Founded by Epicurus in Athens in the year 306 B.C. Epicureanism gave expression to the desire for a refined type of happiness which is the reward of the cultured man who can take pleasure in the joys of the mind over which he can have greater control than over those of a material or sensuous nature. The friendship of gifted and noble men, the peace and contentment that comes from fair conduct, good morals and aesthetic enjoyments are the ideals of the Epicurean who refuses to be perturbed by any metaphysical or religious doctrines which impose duties and thus hinder the freedom of pure enjoyment. Epicurus adopted the atomism of Democritus (q.v.) but modified its determinism by permitting chance to cause a swerve (clinamen) in the fall of the atoms. See C. W. Bailey, Epicurus. However, physics was not to be the main concern of the philosopher. See Apathia, Ataraxia, Hedonism. -- M.F.

Epicurus: (341-270 B.C.) A native of Samos, founded his School in Athens about 306 B.C., where he instructed his disciples and admirers in the art of rational living. He taught that pleasure and happiness are the natural end of life. But, contrary to later misconceptions, he did not advocate the pursuit of all or any pleasures, but only of those which are consistent with intelligence and moderation. Joys of the mind are superior to pleasures of the body. In his interpretation of nature, he accepted Democritus' atomism, but contended that the element of chance enters into atoms' motions and makes them deviate from their course. -- R.B.W.

beta rhythm: also known as beta activity. Whilst an individual is alert and responsive, beta activity is depicted by irregular, low-amptitude waves on an EEG.

Bhadra. (P. Bhadda; T. Bzang po; C. Batuoluo zunzhe; J. Batsudara sonja; K. Palt'ara chonja 跋陀羅尊者). The Sanskrit name of the sixth of the sixteen ARHAT elders (sOdAsASTHAVIRA), who are charged by the Buddha with protecting his dispensation until the advent of the next buddha, MAITREYA. He is said to reside in Sri Lanka with nine hundred disciples. His mother gave birth to him under the bhadra (auspicious) tree, hence his name. A cousin of the Buddha, he served as his attendant and was famed for his clear exposition of the teachings. In the Chinese tradition, he is charged with matters related to bathing and his image is therefore enshrined in bath houses in some mountain monasteries. In CHANYUE GUANXIU's standard Chinese depiction, Bhadra typically sits on a rock in meditation. His forehead is high, his cheeks plump, and his gaze is turned slightly upward. His right hand is hidden under his robes and his left hand rests on his knee, holding prayer beads (JAPAMALA). Some East Asian images also show him accompanied by a tiger. In Tibetan iconography, he holds his left hand at his chest in VITARKAMUDRA, his right at his lap in DHYANAMUDRA.

Bhagavad Gita: Sanskrit for Song of the Divine One. The title of a celebrated philosophic epic poem, inserted in the Mahabharata (q.v.), containing a dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna, which clearly indicates the relationship between morality and absolute ethical values in the Hindu philosophy of action (Karma Yoga); it is considered to be one of the most influential philosophical poems of Sanskrit literature; the exact date of origin is unknown.

Bhagavad Gita: (Skr. the song, gita, of the Blessed One) A famed philosophic epic poem, widely respected in India and elsewhere, representing Krishna embodied as a charioteer imparting to the King Arjuna, who is unwilling to fight his kinsmen in battle, comprehension of the mysteries of existence, clearly indicating the relationship between morality and absolute ethical values in a Hindu philosophy of action. -- K.F.L.

bhagavad gita. ::: Song of the Bhagavan or Song of the Lord; a 700-verse episode composed about 200 BC and incorporated into the hindu epic Mahabharata in which Sri Krishna, the 8th Avatar of Vishnu, expounds the doctrine of selfless action done as duty, not for profit or recognition, but in a spirit of dedication to the one supreme being

Bhairava. (T. 'Jigs byed; C. Buwei; J. Fui; K. P'ooe 怖畏). In Sanskrit, "Fierce," "Frightening," "Horrible"; the name of a saivite Hindu and Buddhist deity. Bhairava first appears as one of the emanations of the Hindu god siva. Many stories appear in the Hindu tradition explaining how and why siva first took this wrathful form. In Buddhism, Bhairava, or commonly VAJRABHAIRAVA, is closely related to YAMANTAKA, "He who Brings an End (antaka) to Death (yama)." Vajrabhairava and YamAntaka are understood to be emanations of the BODHISATTVA MANJUsRĪ. Bhairava is particularly popular in Nepal and Tibet. In Tibetan Buddhism, Bhairava is both a meditative deity (YI DAM), where his wrathful appearance is said to frighten away the mistaken belief in a self (ATMAN), as well as a protector of the dharma (DHARMAPALA) who frightens away baleful spirits with his terrifying appearance. In Buddhist art, Bhairava is typically depicted with black or dark-blue skin, a single head (often that of a buffalo), and multiple arms brandishing a variety of weapons. He may also have a necklace made of skulls, a mouth stained with blood, and have his feet holding down a prone figure he has vanquished.

Bhaisajyaguru. (T. Sman bla; C. Yaoshi rulai; J. Yakushi nyorai; K. Yaksa yorae 藥師如來). In Sanskrit, "Medicine Teacher"; the "Healing Buddha" or "Medicine Buddha," who was the focus of an important salvific cult in the early MAHAYANA tradition. According to his eponymous scripture, the BHAIsAJYAGURUSuTRA, he has a body more brilliant than the sun, which was the color of lapis lazuli (vaiduryamani) and possessed the power to heal illness and physical deformities; his pure land of VaiduryanirbhAsa is located in the east. The origin of Bhaisajyaguru and his healing cult is unclear, although his worship seems to have arisen contemporaneously with the rise of the MahAyAna. BHAIsAJYARAJA and Bhaisajyasamudgata, two bodhisattvas mentioned in the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra"), are likely antecedents, and similarities with other "celestial" buddhas like AMITABHA and AKsOBHYA also suggest possible influence from those rival cults. The Bhaisajyagurusutra was translated into Chinese in the seventh century, during the Tang dynasty, when his worship finally achieved the wide recognition that it continues to enjoy within the Chinese tradition. The Bhaisajyagurusutra is also cited in the eighth-century tantric text, MANJUsRĪMuLAKALPA, indicating that his cult had by then achieved widespread acclaim throughout Asia. Bhaisajyaguru was one of the earliest buddhas to gain popularity in Japan, although initially he was familiar only within the imperial court, which constructed monasteries in his honor beginning in the sixth century. By the eighth century, his cult had spread throughout the country, with Bhaisajyaguru being invoked both to cure illness and to ward off dangers. The worship of Bhaisajyaguru seems to have entered Tibet during the eighth century, two versions of the Bhaisajyagurusutra having been translated into Tibetan by the prolific YE SHES SDE and others. Early in the development of his cult, Bhaisajyaguru was divided into a group of eight medicine buddhas (asta-bhaisajyaguru), made up of seven of his emanations plus the principal buddha. Their names vary according to source, and none save Bhaisajyaguru are worshipped individually. Two of these emanations-Suryaprabha and Candraprabha-are often depicted in a triad with Bhaisajyaguru. Further, Bhaisajyaguru is also said to command twelve warriors (YAKsA) related to various astrological categories and to wage war on illness in the name of their leader. Indic images of Bhaisajyaguru are rare, but his depictions are common across both the East Asian and Tibetan cultural spheres. East Asian images are almost uniform in depicting him seated, with his right hand in the gesture of fearlessness (ABHAYAMUDRA) or the gesture of generosity (VARADAMUDRA), his left in his lap, occasionally holding a medicine bowl. In Tibet, he is also shown holding the fruit of the medicinal myrobalan plant.

BhaisajyarAja. (T. Sman gyi rgyal po; C. Yaowang pusa; J. Yakuo bosatsu; K. Yagwang posal 藥王菩薩). In Sanskrit, "Medicine King"; a BODHISATTVA brother and probable antecedent of the buddha BHAIsAJYAGURU. Like his younger brother Bhaisajyasamudgata (C. Yaoshang), BhaisajyarAja is mentioned in both the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra") as well as in the Foshuo Guan Yaowang Yaoshang er pusa jing ("Sutra Spoken by the Buddha on Visualizing the Two Bodhisattvas BhaisajyarAja and Bhaisajyasamudgata") translated into Chinese by KALAYAsAS between 424-442 CE. The appearance of the brothers in the Saddharmapundarīkasutra suggests that a cult of a medicine bodhisattva or buddha had developed in India by at least the third century CE. The Saddharmapundarīkasutra tells of the elder brother BhaisajyarAja offering his own body to a buddha by burning himself on a pyre, a fire that is said to have burned for twelve hundred years. As their own sutra (the Guan Yaowang Yaoshang er pusa jing) relates, the two brothers did not make their initial bodhisattva aspirations before a buddha, as would typically be the case, but in front of an as-yet unenlightened monk named Suryagarbha, though both have the buddhas of the ten directions in their headdresses. That sutra further describes the myriad benefits attained through visualization of the two, an indication that the bodhisattvas were evolving from models of behavior to emulate, as they are depicted in the Saddharmapundarīkasutra into objects of worship. With the rise of the cult of the buddha Bhaisajyaguru, however, the two bodhisattvas assumed subservient positions, becoming the two main figures in that buddha's group of seven acolytes. See also SHESHEN.

BhArhut. An important Buddhist archeological site in India; located in central India, in northeastern Madhya Pradesh. In 1873, the British general Alexander Cunningham discovered at the site an ancient Buddhist STuPA, or reliquary mound, dating as far back as the third century BCE. Surrounding this stupa are a series of sculptures that date to the second and first centuries BCE. The antiquity of these works, and the quality of their preservation, render them invaluable to the study of Indian Buddhist iconography. The structure follows the general Indian stupa design, with a central mound surrounded by a fence-like enclosure with four gates. The stupa is illustrated with several aniconic representations of the Buddha. These images include an empty throne (VAJRASANA), a BODHI TREE, a set of the Buddha's footprints (BUDDHAPADA), the triple gem (RATNATRAYA) and a dharma wheel (DHARMACAKRA). This stupa also includes a number of reliefs depicting various episodes in the life of the Buddha (see BAXIANG; TWELVE DEEDS OF A BUDDHA), including the dream of queen MAYA when he was conceived, the battle with MARA, and his enlightenment. Also depicted are a number of the Buddha's birth stories (JATAKA). The stupa's sculptural remains are now housed in the Indian Museum in Kolkata (Calcutta) and in the Municipal Museum of Allahabad. See also SANCĪ.

bhavacakra. (P. bhavacakka; T. srid pa'i khor lo; C. youlun; J. urin; K. yuryun 有輪). In Sanskrit, "wheel of existence"; a visual depiction of SAMSARA in the form of a wheel, best known in its Tibetan forms but widely used in other Buddhist traditions as well. The BHAVACAKRA is a seminal example of Buddhist didactic art. The chart is comprised of a series of concentric circles, each containing pictorial representations of some of the major features of Buddhist cosmology and didactics. Standard versions consist of an outer ring of images depicting the twelve-linked chain of dependent origination (PRATĪTYASAMUTPADA). Within this ring is another circle broken into six equal sectors-one for each of the six realms of existence in saMsAra. The salutary realms of divinities (DEVA), demigods (ASURA), and humans (MANUsYA) are found in the top half of the circle, while the unfortunate realms (DURGATI; APAYA) of animals (TIRYAK), hungry ghosts (PRETA), and hell denizens (NARAKA) are found in the bottom half. Inside this circle is a ring that is divided evenly into dark and light halves. The most popular interpretation of these two halves is that the light half depicts the path of bliss, or the path that leads to better rebirth and to liberation, while the dark half represents the path of darkness, which leads to misfortune and rebirth in the hells. Finally, in the center of the picture is a small circle in which can be seen a bird, a snake, and a pig. These three animals represent the "three poisons" (TRIVIsA)-the principal afflictions (KLEsA) of greed or sensuality (LOBHA or RAGA), hatred or aversion (DVEsA), and delusion (MOHA)-that bind beings to the round of rebirth. The entire wheel is held in the jaws and claws of a demon whose identity varies from version to version. Often this demon is presumed to be MARA, the great tempter who was defeated in his attempt to sway GAUTAMA from enlightenment. Another common figure who grips the wheel is YAMA, the king of death, based on the idea that Yama was the original being, the first to die, and hence the ruler over all caught in the cycle of birth and death. Often outside the circle appear one or more buddhas, who may be pointing to a SuTRA, or to some other religious object. The buddhas' location outside the circle indicates their escape from the cycle of birth and death. The same figure of a buddha may be also found among the denizens of hell, indicating that a buddha's compassion extends to beings in even the most inauspicious destinies. According to several Indian texts, the Buddha instructed that the bhavacakra should be painted at the entrance of a monastery for the instruction of the laity; remnants of a bhavacakra painting were discovered at AJAntA.

Bhṛkutī. (T. Khro gnyer can; C. Pijuzhi; J. Bikutei; K. Piguji 毘胝). In Sanskrit, lit. "She who Frowns"; a wrathful deity understood to be a form of TARA, who is reputed to have been born from a frown of the BODHISATTVA AVALOKITEsVARA. An alternate account is that she arose from a ray of light emanating out of Avalokitesvara's left eye at the same time TArA was born from the right eye. Bhṛkutī is sometimes said to be an emanation of the buddha AMITABHA as well, particularly in Japan, and often appears with an image of AmitAbha in her crown. Although she can appear in peaceful form, she is generally depicted as a wrathful deity, most commonly with one face with three eyes, and four arms holding a trident, vase, and rosary and displaying the VARADAMUDRA, and either standing in ALĪdHA posture or sitting in LALITASANA. ¶ Bhṛkutī is also the name of the Nepali princess who married SRONG BTSAN SGAM PO. According to the MAnI BKA' 'BUM, she was the daughter of the Nepalese king AMsuvarman and was brought to Tibet by the famed minister Mgar stong btsan after Srong btsan sgam po saw her in a prophetic dream. The Nepalese king initially refused to send her, deriding Tibet as a land of savagery, lacking not only the teachings of the Buddha but basic civil laws as well. Mgar convinced the king that Srong btsan sgam po was sincere in desiring the DHARMA, and was able to return with her, after which he set out to China to bring back the Tang princess WENCHENG. Bhṛkuti is said to have brought with her to Tibet the statue of sAKYAMUNI called JO BO MI BSKYOD RDO RJE, which was eventually housed in RA MO CHE. The historicity of both Bhṛkuti and her father has been called into question by recent scholarship. The Nepalese princess is said to have also brought a sandalwood statue of BhṛkutĪ to Tibet, but (if it ever existed) it had disappeared by the seventeenth century, when the fifth DALAI LAMA, in his guidebook to the temples of LHA SA, reported it missing.

bhumisparsamudrA. (T. sa gnon gyi phyag rgya; C. chudi yin; J. sokujiin; K. ch'okchi in 觸地印). In Sanskrit, "gesture of touching the earth"; this MUDRA is formed by the right hand touching the ground with extended fingers, usually across the right knee, while the left hand remains resting in the lap. It is the most common mudrA depicted in seated images of sAKYAMUNI Buddha. The bhumisparsamudrA recalls a specific moment in sAkyamuni's biography. After MARA had sought to dislodge the future buddha from his seat under the BODHI TREE by attacking him with his minions and seducing him with his daughters, he ultimately tried to cause the Buddha to move by claiming that he had no right to occupy that spot. The bodhisattva then touched the earth, thereby calling on the goddess of the earth Pṛthivī or STHAVARA to bear witness to his practice of virtue over his many lifetimes on the bodhisattva path. The goddess responded affirmatively by causing the earth to quake. With that, MAra withdrew for good and the bodhisattva went on to achieve buddhahood that evening. In Southeast Asia, this scene is elaborated to include the goddess, called THORANI, emerging from the earth to wring from her hair all of the water that the Buddha had offered during his lifetimes as a BODHISATTVA. The water creates a flood that sweeps away MAra and his horde. The mudrA is also considered a gesture of immovability (acala) and is thus the mudrA associated with the buddha AKsOBHYA.

biandi. (J. henji; K. pyonji 邊地). In Chinese, "peripheral," or "outlying" "regions"; referring to the regions beyond the civilizing influences of Buddhism and higher spiritual culture. The corresponding Sanskrit term YAVANA was used to designate Greeks (Ionians) and later even Arab Muslims. In Buddhist cosmology, the term refers to regions north and west of India proper, which are inhabited by illiterate, barbaric peoples hostile to Buddhism. The birth into a "peripheral region" is considered to be one of the states that constitute an "inopportune moment or birth" (AKsAnA), i.e., a state that precludes attainment of enlightenment in the present lifetime. In other contexts, as in the SUKHAVATĪVYuHASuTRA, a PURE LAND devotee who practices with doubt, hesitancy, and intermittent faith, or who eventually regrets and regresses from his or her devotion, will not be able to be reborn directly into AMITABHA Buddha's pure land (see SUKHAVATĪ). Instead, he or she would be reborn first in the biandi ("outlying region") of the pure land for five hundred years before being granted access to sukhAvatī proper. The outlaying region of the pure land is depicted as a bejeweled place landscaped with lotus ponds and teeming with palatial buildings; it is almost as blissful and trouble-free as the pure land itself, except that its denizens lack the freedom to roam anywhere beyond its confines.

Binglingsi. (J. Heireiji; K. Pyongnyongsa 炳靈寺). In Chinese, "Bright and Numinous Monastery"; site of a Buddhist cave complex, located fifty miles outside Lanzhou, the capital of the present-day Chinese province of Gansu, and accessible only by boat. The complex contains 183 caves with 694 stone and eighty-two clay statues. Binglingsi, along with MAIJISHAN, developed under the patronage of the Qifu rulers of the Western Qin dynasty (385-43). The carving of Buddhist caves at Binglingsi may have started as early as the late fourth century; however, the earliest inscription was found in cave 169 and is dated 420. Two novel features can be found in cave 169. One is the stylistic link of some of its sculptures with the Buddhist art of KHOTAN on the southern SILK ROAD. For example, five seated buddhas in niche 23 inside the cave are attired in their monastic robes and perform the meditation gesture (DHYANAMUDRA), backed by a large aureole. Second, numerous inscriptions identify the sculptures and painted images in this cave, which include AMITABHA Buddha, accompanied by AVALOKITEsVARA (GUANYIN) and MAHASTHAMAPRAPTA (Dashizi). This triad in niche 6 closely resembles the style of Liangzhou, and thus KUCHA. Among the painted images are the buddhas of the ten directions (see DAsADIs), members of the Qin dynastic house, and the state preceptor (GUOSHI) Tanmobi (Dharmapriya), cotranslator with ZHU FONIAN of the AstASAHASRIKAPRAJNAPARAMITA. The representations in cave 169 depict the content of then-newly translated scriptures such as the VIMALAKĪRTINIRDEsA, SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA, and the shorter SUKHAVATĪVYuHASuTRA (see also AMITABHASuTRA), which had been translated by KUMARAJĪVA in Chang'an around 400-410. The sculptures and paintings at Binglingsi serve as precedents for the subsequent Northern Wei sculpture found at YUNGANG and LONGMEN.

Black Madonna ::: Popular shrine of great national and religious significance to Poland. It is located in the city of Czestochowa in the monastery of Jasna Gora (Bright Mountain). The Black Madonna is a painting on wood that depicts the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus. Its origins are ancient and obscure.

blazon ::: n. --> A shield.
An heraldic shield; a coat of arms, or a bearing on a coat of arms; armorial bearings.
The art or act of describing or depicting heraldic bearings in the proper language or manner.
Ostentatious display, either by words or other means; publication; show; description; record.


blivet ::: /bliv'*t/ [allegedly from a World War II military term meaning ten pounds of manure in a five-pound bag] 1. An intractable problem.2. A crucial piece of hardware that can't be fixed or replaced if it breaks.3. A tool that has been hacked over by so many incompetent programmers that it has become an unmaintainable tissue of hacks.4. An out-of-control but unkillable development effort.5. An embarrassing bug that pops up during a customer demo.6. In the subjargon of computer security specialists, a denial-of-service attack performed by hogging limited resources that have no access controls (for example, shared spool space on a multi-user system).This term has other meanings in other technical cultures; among experimental physicists and hardware engineers of various kinds it seems to mean any random fork that appears to depict a three-dimensional object until one realises that the parts fit together in an impossible way.[Jargon File]

blivet /bliv'*t/ [allegedly from a World War II military term meaning "ten pounds of manure in a five-pound bag"] 1. An intractable problem. 2. A crucial piece of hardware that can't be fixed or replaced if it breaks. 3. A tool that has been hacked over by so many incompetent programmers that it has become an unmaintainable tissue of hacks. 4. An out-of-control but unkillable development effort. 5. An embarrassing bug that pops up during a customer demo. 6. In the subjargon of computer security specialists, a denial-of-service attack performed by hogging limited resources that have no access controls (for example, shared spool space on a multi-user system). This term has other meanings in other technical cultures; among experimental physicists and hardware engineers of various kinds it seems to mean any random object of unknown purpose (similar to hackish use of {frob}). It has also been used to describe an amusing trick-the-eye drawing resembling a three-pronged fork that appears to depict a three-dimensional object until one realises that the parts fit together in an impossible way. [{Jargon File}]

blottesque ::: a. --> Characterized by blots or heavy touches; coarsely depicted; wanting in delineation.

BodhgayA. (S. BuddhagayA). Modern Indian place name for the most significant site in the Buddhist world, renowned as the place where sAKYAMUNI Buddha (then, still the BODHISATTVA prince SIDDHARTHA) became a buddha while meditating under the BODHI TREE at the "seat of enlightenment" (BODHIMAndA) or the "diamond seat" (VAJRASANA). The site is especially sacred because, according to tradition, not only did sAkyamuni Buddha attain enlightenment there, but all buddhas of this world system have or will do so, albeit under different species of trees. BodhgayA is situated along the banks of the NAIRANJANA river, near RAJAGṚHA, the ancient capital city of the MAGADHA kingdom. Seven sacred places are said to be located in BodhgayA, each being a site where the Buddha stayed during each of the seven weeks following his enlightenment. These include, in addition to the bodhimanda under the Bodhi tree: the place where the Buddha sat facing the Bodhi tree during the second week, with an unblinking gaze (and hence the site of the animesalocana caitya); the place where the Buddha walked back and forth in meditation (CAnKRAMA) during the third week; the place called the ratnagṛha, where the Buddha meditated during the fourth week, emanating rays of light from his body; the place under the ajapAla tree where the god BRAHMA requested that the Buddha turn the wheel of the dharma (DHARMACAKRAPRAVARTANA) during the fifth week; the lake where the NAGA MUCILINDA used his hood to shelter the Buddha from a storm during the sixth week; and the place under the rAjAyatana tree where the merchants TRAPUsA and BHALLIKA met the Buddha after the seventh week, becoming his first lay disciples. ¶ Located in the territory of MAGADHA (in modern Bihar), the ancient Indian kingdom where the Buddha spent much of his teaching career, BodhgayA is one of the four major pilgrimage sites (MAHASTHANA) sanctioned by the Buddha himself, along with LUMBINĪ in modern-day Nepal, where the Buddha was born; the Deer Park (MṚGADAVA) at SARNATH, where he first taught by "turning the wheel of the dharma" (DHARMACAKRAPRAVARTANA); and KUsINAGARĪ in Uttar Pradesh, where he passed into PARINIRVAnA. According to the AsOKAVADANA, the emperor AsOKA visited BodhgayA with the monk UPAGUPTA and established a STuPA at the site. There is evidence that Asoka erected a pillar and shrine at the site during the third century BCE. A more elaborate structure, called the vajrAsana GANDHAKUtĪ ("perfumed chamber of the diamond seat"), is depicted in a relief at BodhgayA, dating from c. 100 BCE. It shows a two-storied structure supported by pillars, enclosing the Bodhi tree and the vajrAsana, the "diamond seat," where the Buddha sat on the night of his enlightenment. The forerunner of the present temple is described by the Chinese pilgrim XUANZANG. This has led scholars to speculate that the structure was built sometime between the third and sixth centuries CE, with subsequent renovations. Despite various persecutions by non-Buddhist Indian kings, the site continued to receive patronage, especially during the PAla period, from which many of the surrounding monuments date. A monastery, called the BodhimandavihAra, was established there and flourished for several centuries. FAXIAN mentions three monasteries at BodhgayA; Xuanzang found only one, called the MahAbodhisaMghArAma (see MAHABODHI TEMPLE). The temple and its environs fell into neglect after the Muslim invasions that began in the thirteenth century. British photographs from the nineteenth century show the temple in ruins. Restoration of the site was ordered by the British governor-general of Bengal in 1880, with a small eleventh-century replica of the temple serving as a model. There is a tall central tower some 165 feet (fifty meters) in height, with a high arch over the entrance with smaller towers at the four corners. The central tower houses a small temple with an image of the Buddha. The temple is surrounded by stone railings, some dating from 150 BCE, others from the Gupta period (300-600 CE) that preserve important carvings. In 1886, EDWIN ARNOLD visited BodhgayA. He published an account of his visit, which was read by ANAGARIKA DHARMAPALA and others. Arnold described a temple surrounded by hundreds of broken statues scattered in the jungle. The MahAbodhi Temple itself had stood in ruins prior to renovations undertaken by the British in 1880. Also of great concern was the fact that the site had been under saiva control since the eighteenth century, with reports of animal sacrifice taking place in the environs of the temple. DharmapAla visited BodhgayA himself in 1891, and returned to Sri Lanka, where he worked with a group of leading Sinhalese Buddhists to found the MAHABODHI SOCIETY with the aim of restoring BodhgayA as place of Buddhist worship and pilgrimage. The society undertook a series of unsuccessful lawsuits to that end. In 1949, after Indian independence, the BodhgayA Temple Act was passed, which established a committee of four Buddhists and four Hindus to supervise the temple and its grounds. The Government of India asked AnagArika Munindra, a Bengali monk and active member of the MahAbodhi Society, to oversee the restoration of BodhgayA. Since then, numerous Buddhist countries-including Bhutan, China, Japan, Myanmar, Nepal, Sikkim, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Tibet, and Vietnam-have constructed (or restored) their own temples and monasteries in BodhgayA, each reflecting its national architectural style. In 2002, the MahAbodhi Temple was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Bodhidharma. (C. Putidamo; J. Bodaidaruma; K. Poridalma 菩提達磨) (c. late-fourth to early-fifth centuries). Indian monk who is the putative "founder" of the school of CHAN (K. SoN, J. ZEN, V. THIỀN). The story of a little-known Indian (or perhaps Central Asian) emigré monk grew over the centuries into an elaborate legend of Bodhidharma, the first patriarch of the Chan school. The earliest accounts of a person known as Bodhidharma appear in the Luoyang qielan ji and XU GAOSENG ZHUAN, but the more familiar and developed image of this figure can be found in such later sources as the BAOLIN ZHUAN, LENGQIE SHIZI JI, LIDAI FABAO JI, ZUTANG JI, JINGDE CHUANDENG LU, and other "transmission of the lamplight" (CHUANDENG LU) histories. According to these sources, Bodhidharma was born as the third prince of a South Indian kingdom. Little is known about his youth, but he is believed to have arrived in China sometime during the late fourth or early fifth century, taking the southern maritime route according to some sources, the northern overland route according to others. In an episode appearing in the Lidai fabao ji and BIYAN LU, after arriving in southern China, Bodhidharma is said to have engaged in an enigmatic exchange with the devout Buddhist emperor Wu (464-549, r. 502-549) of the Liang dynasty (502-557) on the subject of the Buddha's teachings and merit-making. To the emperor's questions about what dharma Bodhidharma was transmitting and how much merit (PUnYA) he, Wudi, had made by his munificent donations to construct monasteries and ordain monks, Bodhidharma replied that the Buddha's teachings were empty (hence there was nothing to transmit) and that the emperor's generous donations had brought him no merit at all. The emperor seems not to have been impressed with these answers, and Bodhidharma, perhaps disgruntled by the emperor's failure to understand the profundity of his teachings, left for northern China, taking the Yangtze river crossing (riding a reed across the river, in a scene frequently depicted in East Asian painting). Bodhidharma's journey north eventually brought him to a cave at the monastery of SHAOLINSI on SONGSHAN, where he sat in meditation for nine years while facing a wall (MIANBI), in so-called "wall contemplation" (BIGUAN). During his stay on Songshan, the Chinese monk HUIKE is said to have become Bodhidharma's disciple, allegedly after cutting off his left arm to show his dedication. This legend of Bodhidharma's arrival in China is eventually condensed into the famous Chan case (GONG'AN), "Why did Bodhidharma come from the West?" (see XILAI YI). Bodhidharma's place within the lineage of Indian patriarchs vary according to text and tradition (some list him as the twenty-eighth patriarch), but he is considered the first patriarch of Chan in China. Bodhidharma's name therefore soon became synonymous with Chan and subsequently with Son, Zen, and Thièn. Bodhidharma, however, has often been confused with other figures such as BODHIRUCI, the translator of the LAnKAVATARASuTRA, and the Kashmiri monk DHARMATRATA, to whom the DHYANA manual DAMODUOLUO CHAN JING is attributed. The Lidai fabao ji, for instance, simply fused the names of Bodhidharma and DharmatrAta and spoke of a BodhidharmatrAta whose legend traveled with the Lidai fabao ji to Tibet. Bodhidharma was even identified as the apostle Saint Thomas by Jesuit missionaries to China, such as Matteo Ricci. Several texts, a number of which were uncovered in the DUNHUANG manuscript cache in Central Asia, have been attributed to Bodhidharma, but their authorship remains uncertain. The ERRU SIXING LUN seems to be the only of these texts that can be traced with some certainty back to Bodhidharma or his immediate disciples. The legend of Bodhidharma in the Lengqie shizi ji also associates him with the transmission of the LankAvatArasutra in China. In Japan, Bodhidharma is often depicted in the form of a round-shaped, slightly grotesque-looking doll, known as the "Daruma doll." Like much of the rest of the legends surrounding Bodhidharma, there is finally no credible evidence connecting Bodhidharma to the Chinese martial arts traditions (see SHAOLINSI).

bodhimanda. (T. byang chub snying po; C. daochang; J. dojo; K. toryang 道場). In Sanskrit (and very late PAli), "seat of enlightenment" or "platform of enlightenment," the place in BODHGAYA under the BODHI TREE where the Buddha sat when he achieved liberation from the cycle of birth and death (SAMSARA). (The word manda in this compound refers to the scum that forms on the top of boiling rice or the heavy cream that rises to the top of milk, thus suggesting the observable and most essential signs of the supreme act of BODHI, or enlightenment. Note that Western literature sometimes wrongly transcribes the term as *bodhimandala rather than bodhimanda.) All buddhas are associated with such a place, and it is presumed that all BODHISATTVAs of this world system as well will sit on such a seat before attaining buddhahood. The term is also used to refer to the region surrounding the seat itself, which, in the case of sAKYAMUNI, is BodhgayA. The bodhimanda is also known as the VAJRASANA ("diamond seat"), since it is the only site on earth strong enough to bear the pressures unleashed by the battle for enlightenment. Buddhist iconography often depicts the Buddha just prior to his enlightenment sitting on the bodhimanda in the "earth-touching gesture" (BHuMISPARsAMUDRA), i.e., with his right hand touching the ground, calling the earth to bear witness to his achievement. The bodhimanda is often said to be the center or navel of the world and thus can be understood as what early scholars of religion called an axis mundi-the liminal site between divine and profane realms; according to the ABHIDHARMAKOsABHAsYA, the various hot and cold hells (see NARAKA) are located not below Mount SUMERU but below the bodhimanda. In medieval East Asia, the Chinese term for bodhimanda began to be used to designate a "ritual precinct," viz., a site where such critical Buddhist rituals as ordinations were held, and by the seventh century came to be commonly used as the equivalent of "monastery" (si). In Korea, toryang (= bodhimanda) is also used to designate the central courtyard around which are arrayed the most important shrine halls in a monastery.

BodhnAth Stupa. (T. Bya rung kha shor). The popular Nepali name for a large STuPA situated on the northeast edge of the Kathmandu Valley in Nepal. Venerated by both Newar and Tibetan Buddhists, it has become one of Nepal's most important and active Buddhist pilgrimage sites. The base, arranged on three terraces in a multiangled shape called viMsatikona (lit. "twenty angles"), is more than 260 feet on each side with the upper dome standing some 130 feet high. At the structure's south entrance stands a shrine to the Newar goddess known as Ajima or HARĪTĪ. Together with SVAYAMBHu and NAMO BUDDHA, BodhnAth forms a triad of great stupas often depicted together in Tibetan literature. The stupa's origins are unclear and a variety of competing traditions account for its founding and subsequent development. Most Nepali sources agree that the mahAcaitya was founded through the activities of King MAnadeva I (reigned 464-505), who unwittingly murdered his father but later atoned for his patricide through a great act of contrition. Among Newars, the stupa is commonly known as the KhAsticaitya, literally "the dew-drop CAITYA." This name is said to refer to the period in which King MAnadeva founded the stupa, a time of great drought when cloth would be spread out at night from which the morning dew could be squeezed in order to supply water necessary for the construction. The site is also called KhAsacaitya, after one legend which states that MAnadeva was the reincarnation of a Tibetan teacher called KhAsA; another well-known tradition explains the name as stemming from the buddha KAsYAPA, whose relics are said to be enclosed therein. The major Tibetan account of the stupa's origin is found in a treasure text (GTER MA) said to have been hidden by the Indian sage PADMASAMBHAVA and his Tibetan consort YE SHES MTSHO RGYAL. According to this narrative, the monument was constructed by a widowed poultry keeper. The local nobility grew jealous that such a grand project was being undertaken by a woman of such low status. They petitioned the king, requesting that he bring the construction to a halt. The king, however, refused to intervene and instead granted permission for the work to be completed, from which its Tibetan name Bya rung kha shor (Jarung Kashor, literally "permission to do what is proper") is derived. The stupa was renovated under the guidance of Tibetan lamas on numerous occasions and it eventually came under the custodial care of a familial lineage known as the Chini Lamas. Once surrounded by a small village, since 1959 BodhnAth has become a thriving center for Tibetan refugee culture and the location for dozens of relocated Tibetan monasteries.

Book of the Dead, Egyptian The name given to certain ancient papyri of the Egyptian, more correctly called Pert em hru (coming forth into day or light). They have been discovered in many of the tombs, interred with the mummies. Although by no means the only text of importance coming down from the ancient Egyptians, it is a work of extreme antiquity, containing the system expounded by the priests, and is far older than the two other extant works known as the Book of the Pylons and the Book of the Tuat. The work depicts in symbolic form the afterdeath state, as presented by the priests to the populace of Egypt. The soul is depicted in the guise of a pilgrim, journeying through various halls, at the portals of each of which he was obliged to give a correct answer — an account of the life he had lived upon earth. The pilgrim eventually reached the judgment hall, within which he was tried by the company of gods and goddesses. Before Osiris his heart was placed in a balance to testify for or against him. If he passed the test satisfactorily, he was permitted by Osiris to enter his domain and become as one of the deities.

botwar "chat" The epic struggle of {bots} vying for dominance. Botwars are generally (and quite inappropriately) carried out on {talk} systems, typically {IRC}, where botwar crossfire (such as {pingflood}ing) absorbs scarce server resources and obstructs human conversation. The wisdom of experience indicates that {Core Wars}, not {talk} systems, are the appropriate venue for aggressive bots and their {botmasters}. Compare {penis war}. (1997-04-08)

botwar ::: (chat) The epic struggle of bots vying for dominance.Botwars are generally (and quite inappropriately) carried out on talk systems, typically IRC, where botwar crossfire (such as pingflooding) absorbs scarce server resources and obstructs human conversation.The wisdom of experience indicates that Core Wars, not talk systems, are the appropriate venue for aggressive bots and their botmasters.Compare penis war. (1997-04-08)

BrahmA. [alt. MahAbrahmA] (T. Tshangs pa; C. Fantian; J. Bonten; K. Pomch'on 梵天). An Indian divinity who was adopted into the Buddhist pantheon as a protector of the teachings (DHARMAPALA) and king of the BRAHMALOKA (in the narrow sense of that term). A particular form of the god BrahmA, called SAHAMPATI, plays a crucial role in the inception of the Buddhist dispensation or teaching (sASANA). During the seven weeks following his enlightenment, the newly awakened buddha GAUTAMA was unsure as to whether he should teach, wondering whether there would be anyone in this world who would be able to duplicate his experience. BrahmA descended to earth and convinced him that there were persons "with little dust in their eyes" who would be able to understand his teachings. The Buddha then surveyed the world to determine the most suitable persons to hear the DHARMA. Seeing that his former meditation teachers had died, he chose the "group of five" (PANCAVARGIKA) and proceeded to ṚsIPATANA, where he taught his first sermon, the "Turning of the Wheel of the Dharma" (DHARMACAKRAPRAVARTANASuTRA; P. DHAMMACAKKAPPAVATTANASUTTA). Because of this intervention, BrahmA is considered one of the main dharmapAlas. BUDDHAGHOSA explains, however, that the compassionate Buddha never had any hesitation about teaching the dharma but felt that if he were implored by the god BrahmA, who was revered in the world, it would lend credence to his mission. BrahmA is depicted with four faces and four arms, and his primary attributes are the lotus and the CAKRA. The figure of BrahmA also fused with early Indian BODHISATTVAs such as PADMAPAnI (AVALOKITEsVARA). In Tibet the dharmapAla TSHANGS PA DKAR PO is a fusion of BrahmA and PE HAR RGYAL PO.

Budai. (J. Hotei; K. P'odae 布袋) (d. 916). A legendary Chinese monk, whose name literally means "Hemp Sack"; also occasionally referred to as Fenghua Budai, Changtingzi, and Budai heshang. He is said to have hailed from Fenghua county in Ningbo prefecture of Zhejiang province. Budai is often depicted as a short figure with an enormous belly and a staff or walking stick on which he has hung a hemp bag or sack (budai), whence derives his name. Budai wandered from one town to the next begging for food, some of which he saved in his sack. This jolly figure is remembered as a thaumaturge who was particularly famous for accurately predicting the weather. On his deathbed, Budai left the following death verse, which implied he was in fact a manifestation of the BODHISATTVA MAITREYA: "Maitreya, true Maitreya, / His thousands, hundreds, and tens of millions of manifestations, / From time to time appear among his fellow men, / But remain unrecognized by his fellow men." Budai is also associated in China with AnGAJA, the thirteenth of the sixteen ARHATs (see sOdAsASTHAVIRA) who serve as protector figures. Angaja had been a snake wrangler before he ordained, so whenever he went into the mountains, he carried a cloth bag with him to catch snakes, which he would release after removing their fangs so they would not injure people. For this reason, he earned the nickname "Cloth-Bag Arhat" (Budai luohan/heshang). In Zhejiang province, many images of Budai were made for worship, and an image of Budai installed in the monastery of MANPUKUJI on Mt. obaku in Japan is still referred to as that of the bodhisattva Maitreya. The local cult hero and thaumaturge Budai was quickly appropriated by the CHAN community as a trickster-like figure, leading to Budai often being as called the "Laughing Buddha." In Japan, Budai is also revered as one of the seven gods of virtue (see SHICHIFUKUJIN). It is Budai who is commonly depicted in all manner of kitschy knickknacks and called the "Fat Buddha." He has never been identified with, and is not to be mistaken for, sAKYAMUNI Buddha.

Buddhacarita. (T. Sangs rgyas kyi spyod pa; C. Fosuoxing zan; J. Butsushogyosan; K. Pulsohaeng ch'an 佛所行讚). In Sanskrit, "Acts [viz., Life] of the Buddha"; the title of two verse compositions written in the first and second centuries CE that were intended to serve as a complete biography of the historical Buddha. The first was by the monk Sangharaksa (c. first century CE), whose work survives today only in its Chinese translation. The second version, which became hugely popular across Asia, was composed by the well-known Indian philosopher-poet AsVAGHOsA (c. second century), who was supposedly an opponent of Buddhism until he converted after losing a debate with the VAIBHAsIKA teacher PARsVA. Because of the early date of Asvaghosa's epic poem, it is of great importance for both the history of Indian Buddhism, as well as the study of classical Indian linguistics and thought. Asvaghosa's version of the Buddha's life begins with a description of his parents-King sUDDHODANA and Queen MAYA-and ends with the events that immediately follow his death, or PARINIRVAnA. His text is written in the style of high court poetry, or kAvya. In keeping with this style, the Buddhacarita is characterized by lengthy digressions and elaborate descriptions. For example, one entire canto is devoted to a detailed description of the sight of the women sleeping in the palace that precedes GAUTAMA's renunciation (pravrajya; see PRAVRAJITA). Canto XII provides an invaluable outline of the ancient Indian SAMkhya philosophical system. The Buddhacarita has served an important role within the Buddhist tradition itself, as the canonical works do not offer a systematic, chronological account of the Buddha's life from his birth through his death. Only the first half of the Buddhacarita is extant in its original Sanskrit; the remainder survives in Tibetan and Chinese translations.

Bull, Bull Worship The bull has been worshiped as a symbol of generative creation in its celestial or cosmic aspect — in contrast with the terrestrial and human aspect represented by the ram and sometimes the lamb. Generally the bull or cow was used as a symbol of the moon cosmogonically, although occasionally associated with solar deities. Sometimes a white bull is represented, as seen in the Egyptian Apis, who legendarily is Osiris “incarnate” in that form; with the Hindus the white bull Nandi was associated with Siva. However, the significance of the ram is terrestrial, usually phallic, and lunar in the productive sense. Thus the bull represents cosmic evolutionary power, while the ram symbolizes the terrestrial generative powers. The sacred bulls did not necessarily represent male animals, but were mystically considered to be hermaphrodite or even sexless: thus the Egyptian bull, Apis, was depicted as being hermaphrodite, which showed his cosmic character.

cakra. (P. cakka; T. 'khor lo; C. lun; J. rin; K. yun 輪). In Sanskrit, "wheel," "disc," or "circle"; a frequent symbol used to represent various aspects of Buddhism, from the Buddha, to the DHARMA, to Buddhist notions of kingship. When the Buddha first taught his new religion, it is said that he "turned the wheel of dharma" (DHARMACAKRAPRAVARTANA) and the eight-spoked "wheel of dharma" (DHARMACAKRA) is subsequently used as a symbol for both the teachings as well as the person who rediscovered and enunciated those teachings. The ABHIDHARMAKOsABHAsYA explains that the noble eightfold path (ARYAstAnGAMARGA) is like a wheel because it is similar in terms of the hub that is the support of the wheel, the spokes, and the containment rim. Right speech, action, and livelihood are like the hub, because they are the training in morality that provides support for concentration (DHYANA) and wisdom (PRAJNA). Right view, thought, and effort are like spokes, because they are the training in wisdom. Right mindfulness and concentration are like the rim because the spokes of right view and so forth provide the objective support (ALAMBANA) in a one-pointed manner in dependence on them. The dharmacakra appears in some of the earliest Buddhist art, often as an iconographic symbol standing in for the Buddha himself. The sign of a thousand-spoked wheel on the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet is one of the thirty-two major marks of a great man (MAHAPURUsALAKsAnA), which is said to adorn the body of both a Buddha and a "wheel-turning emperor" (CAKRAVARTIN), his secular counterpart. A cakravartin's power is said to derive from his wheel of divine attributes, which rolls across different realms of the earth, bringing them under his dominion. The realm of SAMSARA is sometimes depicted iconographically in the form of a wheel, known as the "wheel of existence" (BHAVACAKRA), with a large circle divided into the six realms of existence (sAdGATI), surrounded by an outer ring representing the twelve links of dependent origination (PRATĪTYASAMUTPADA). ¶ The term cakra is also important in Buddhist TANTRA, especially in ANUTTARAYOGATANTRA. According to various systems of tantric physiognomy, a central channel (AVADHuTĪ) runs from either the tip of the genitals or the base of the spine to either the crown of the head or the point between the eyebrows, with a number of "wheels" (cakra) along its course. In one of the systems, these wheels are located at the point between the eyebrows, the crown of the head, the throat, the heart, the navel, the base of the spine, and the opening of the sexual organ. Running parallel to the central channel to the right and left are two channels, both smaller in diameter, the LALANA and the RASANA. It is said that the right and left channels wrap around the central channel, forming knots at the cakras. Much tantric practice is devoted to techniques for loosening these knots in order to allow the winds (PRAnA) or energies that course through the other channels to flow freely and enter into the central channel. The cakras themselves are essential elements in this practice and other tantric meditative practices, with seed syllables (BĪJA), spells (MANTRA), deities, and diagrams (MAndALA) visualized at their center. The cakras themselves are often described as open lotus blossoms, with varying numbers of petals in different colors.

Canaanitish epic lore, El is the angel who begot

Canon: (Gr. kanon, rule) A term reminiscent of the arts and crafts, sometimes applied, since Epicurus who replaced the ancient dialectics by a canonics (kanonike), to any norm or rule which the logical process obeys. Thus John Stuart Mill speaks of five experimental methods as being regulated by certain canons. Kant defined canon as the sum total of all principles a priori of the correct use of our powers of knowledge. See Baconian method, Mill's methods. -- K.F.L.

Casualism: The doctrine that all things and events come to be by chance. E.g., the view of the Epicureans. Casuistic: Adjective; pertaining to casuistry and casuists, or relating to case histories, especially cases of conduct. In a depreciative sense, sophistical and misleading. -- J.J.R.

Causality ::: The process through which the diversity of dualistic experiences emerge that characterize a current state of awareness, a particular thread or stream of Mind. The Kabbalah is one system that attempts to model this causal process that emanates stages of awareness from Consciousness amid similar maps that depict this ontological stacking of "selves". The Causal Plane is considered outside of the realm of causality because dualistic experience emanates from the Causal: the actual existence of dualistic experience is predicated on a Non-Duality of experience. This is a complex topic and active area of research; causality heavily determines the current form and subjective nature of Mind. See also Samsara and Karma.

Central Tendency ::: A statistical measurement attempting to depict the average score in a distribution (see mean, median, and/or mode)

Chaiya. One of the oldest cities in Thailand, located south of Bangkok, and famous for its Buddhist archaeological remains. The city was a center of the kingdom of sRĪVIJAYA, a MAHAYANA Buddhist empire that dominated the island of Sumatra, the Malay peninsula, and parts of Thailand and Java from the seventh through the thirteenth centuries. MahAyAna monasteries still exist at the city, which were constructed during this period, such as Wat Hua Wieng and Wat Keu. Chaiya monasteries display a unique architectural style: the tops of the structures have five towers, with a large tower on the center and four smaller towers on the corners. Strong Indian Gupta influences are seen in a sculpture of the Buddha under the hooded protection of the NAGA king and in depictions of MahAyAna deities, in particular, AVALOKITEsVARA. The city thrived until the thirteenth century, when srīvijaya fell to invasion from neighboring kingdoms.

character of the epic poem by the Dutch Shakes¬

cherub ::: Cherub In Christian tradition, the four Cherubim are associated with the four evangelists of the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, but the Cherubim were originally the ancient protectors of the Mesopotamian Tree of Life, usually depicted supporting the thrones of deities and kings. They are the four winged creatures described in the visions of Ezekiel, each winged creature bearing four faces, those of a lion, a bull, an eagle, and a human head. In Ritual or Ceremonial Magick, the four kerubim are the living energy of the Tetragrammaton.

Chitragupta (Sanskrit) Citragupta [from citr to depict, color with various colors + gupta hidden] The secret recorder who paints the picture of the person’s life on the astral light; a deva-scribe in the abode of the dead, who records human virtues and vices and reads out the account of every soul’s life from his register when the excarnate soul arrives in the kingdom of Yama, the god of death; a variant of the lipikas.

cid ::: n. --> Chief or commander; in Spanish literature, a title of Ruy Diaz, Count of Bivar, a champion of Christianity and of the old Spanish royalty, in the 11th century.
An epic poem, which celebrates the exploits of the Spanish national hero, Ruy Diaz.


Cinderella Book "publication" "Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages, and Computation", by John Hopcroft and Jeffrey Ullman, (Addison-Wesley, 1979). So called because the cover depicts a girl (putatively Cinderella) sitting in front of a Rube Goldberg device and holding a rope coming out of it. On the back cover, the device is in shambles after she has (inevitably) pulled on the rope. See also {book titles}. [{Jargon File}] (1996-12-03)

cloven hoof ::: 1. A divided or cleft hoof, as in deer or cattle. 2. Evil or Satan, often depicted as a figure with cleft hooves.

comedy of manners: A type of drama where the social demeanour of a community is humorously depicted.

Contemplate, for a moment, this wondrous reply in six lines, of Satyavan to his father’s gentle scolding of Savitri.”at noon leaving this house of clay”, for in the epic his death in the forest takes place at noon, not a departure of an early morning soul or one who leaves enfolded in the dark rooms of night, but at a time when the sun is at its most brilliant, showering the earth with light.

cosmosphere ::: n. --> An apparatus for showing the position of the earth, at any given time, with respect to the fixed stars. It consist of a hollow glass globe, on which are depicted the stars and constellations, and within which is a terrestrial globe.

deferent ::: a. --> Serving to carry; bearing. ::: n. --> That which carries or conveys.
An imaginary circle surrounding the earth, in whose periphery either the heavenly body or the center of the heavenly body&


depaint ::: p. p. --> Painted. ::: v. t. --> To paint; to picture; hence, to describe; to delineate in words; to depict.
To mark with, or as with, color; to color.


depicted ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Depict

depicting ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Depict

depiction ::: n. --> A painting or depicting; a representation.

depict ::: p. p. --> Depicted.
Depicted. ::: v. t. --> To form a colored likeness of; to represent by a picture; to paint; to portray.
To represent in words; to describe vividly.


depictured ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Depicture

depicture ::: v. t. --> To make a picture of; to paint; to picture; to depict.

depicturing ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Depicture

describe ::: 1. To represent pictorially; depict. 2. To trace the form or outline of. described, describing.

Devil Book "publication" "The Design and Implementation of the {4.3BSD} Unix Operating System", by Samuel J. Leffler, Marshall Kirk McKusick, Michael J. Karels, and John S. Quarterman (Addison-Wesley Publishers, 1989, ISBN 0-201-06196-1). The standard reference book on the internals of {BSD} {Unix}. So called because the cover has a picture depicting a little devil (a visual play on {daemon}) in sneakers, holding a pitchfork (referring to one of the characteristic features of Unix, the "{fork}(2)" {system call}). [{Jargon File}] (1996-12-03)

Devil Book ::: (publication) The Design and Implementation of the 4.3BSD Unix Operating System, by Samuel J. Leffler, Marshall Kirk McKusick, Michael J. Karels, and John S. Quarterman (Addison-Wesley Publishers, 1989, ISBN 0-201-06196-1).The standard reference book on the internals of BSD Unix. So called because the cover has a picture depicting a little devil (a visual play on daemon) in sneakers, holding a pitchfork (referring to one of the characteristic features of Unix, the fork(2) system call).[Jargon File] (1996-12-03)

directory "file system" A node in a hierarchical {file system} which contains zero or more other nodes - generally, {files} or other directories. The term "folder" is sometimes used in systems such as the {Macintosh} or {Microsoft Windows} in which directories are traditionally depicted as folders (like small briefcases). (2007-02-21)

drama ::: n. --> A composition, in prose or poetry, accommodated to action, and intended to exhibit a picture of human life, or to depict a series of grave or humorous actions of more than ordinary interest, tending toward some striking result. It is commonly designed to be spoken and represented by actors on the stage.
A series of real events invested with a dramatic unity and interest.
Dramatic composition and the literature pertaining to or


draw ::: 1. To cause to move in a given direction or to a given position, as by leading. 2. To bring towards oneself or itself, as by inherent force or influence; attract. 3. To cause to come by attracting; attract. 4. To cause to move in a particular direction by or as by a pulling force; pull; drag. 5. To get, take or obtain as from a source; to derive. 6. To bring, take, or pull out, as from a receptacle or source. 7. To draw a (or the) line (fig.) to determine or define the limit between two things or groups; in modern colloquial use (esp. with at), to lay down a definite limit of action beyond which one refuses to go. 8. To make, sketch (a picture or representation of someone or something) in lines or words; to design, trace out, delineate; depict; also, to mould, model. 9. To mark or lay out; trace. 10. To compose or write out in legal format. 11. To write out (a bill of exchange or promissory note). 12. To disembowel. 13. To move or pull so as to cover or uncover something. 14. To suck or take in (air, for example); inhale. 15. To extend, lengthen, prolong, protract. 16. To cause to move after or toward one by applying continuous force; drag. draws, drew, drawn, drawing, wide-drawn.

drawer ::: n. --> One who, or that which, draws
One who draws liquor for guests; a waiter in a taproom.
One who delineates or depicts; a draughtsman; as, a good drawer.
One who draws a bill of exchange or order for payment; -- the correlative of drawee.
That which is drawn
A sliding box or receptacle in a case, which is opened by


Duck In the opening runes of the ancient Finnish epic, the Kalevala, the earth is represented as coming into being by means of a duck or teal; in other Finnish legends it is an eagle. The duck makes her nest upon the knees of Ilmatar, the great water-mother, and lays six golden eggs and a seventh of iron. When the eggs hatch, fire is enkindled within Ilmatar, which causes her to shake herself, and in doing so she shakes the eggs into the great waters.

Durga ::: “In Hindu religion, the goddess who is the Energy of Shiva and the conquering and protecting aspect of the Universal Mother. She is the slayer of many demons including Mahisasura. Durga is usually depicted in painting and sculpture riding a lion, having eight or ten arms, each holding the special weapon of one or another of the gods who gave them to her for her battles with demons. (A; Enc. Br). Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo’s Works.

durga ::: "In Hindu religion, the goddess who is the Energy of Shiva and the conquering and protecting aspect of the Universal Mother. She is the slayer of many demons including Mahisasura. Durga is usually depicted in painting and sculpture riding a lion, having eight or ten arms, each holding the special weapon of one or another of the gods who gave them to her for her battles with demons. (A; Enc. Br.)” *Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works.

Eabani (Babylonian) Created by Ea; the hero-companion of Izdubar (Gilgamesh) in the epic of Gilgamesh. Here he is created by Ea upon supplication by the people to send them a champion to deliver them from the tyranny of Izdubar. Eabani, however, becomes his bosom-friend and fellow-traveler, acting as guide when Izdubar descends to the regions of the dead. See also MARDUK

Eidola: (Gr. eidola) Images; insubstantial forms, phantoms. Democritus and Epicurus use the term to denote the films, or groups of very fine particles, believed to be thrown off by bodies and to convey impressions to the eye. -- G.R.M.

elder days ::: The heroic age of hackerdom (roughly, pre-1980); the era of the PDP-10, TECO, ITS and the ARPANET. This term has been rather consciously adopted from J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy epic The Lord of the Rings.Compare Iron Age. See also elvish and Great Worm.[Jargon File]

elder days The heroic age of hackerdom (roughly, pre-1980); the era of the {PDP-10}, {TECO}, {ITS} and the {ARPANET}. This term has been rather consciously adopted from J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy epic "The Lord of the Rings". Compare {Iron Age}. See also {elvish} and {Great Worm}. [{Jargon File}]

emblazon ::: v. t. --> To depict or represent; -- said of heraldic bearings. See Blazon.
To deck in glaring colors; to set off conspicuously; to display pompously; to decorate.


epic ::: adj. 1. An extended narrative poem in elevated or dignified language, celebrating the feats of a legendary or traditional hero. 2. Resembling or suggesting such poetry. 3. Heroic; majestic; impressively great. 4. Of unusually great size or extent. n. 5. An epic poem. 6. Any composition resembling an epic. epics.

epical ::: a. --> Epic.

epic ::: a. --> Narrated in a grand style; pertaining to or designating a kind of narrative poem, usually called an heroic poem, in which real or fictitious events, usually the achievements of some hero, are narrated in an elevated style. ::: n. --> An epic or heroic poem. See Epic, a.

epicardiac ::: a. --> Of or relating to the epicardium.

epicardium ::: n. --> That of the pericardium which forms the outer surface of the heart; the cardiac pericardium.

epicarican ::: n. --> An isopod crustacean, parasitic on shrimps.

epicarp ::: --> The external or outermost layer of a fructified or ripened ovary. See Illust. under Endocarp.

epicede ::: n. --> A funeral song or discourse; an elegy.

epicedial ::: a. --> Elegiac; funereal.

epicedian ::: a. --> Epicedial. ::: n. --> An epicede.

epicedium ::: n. --> An epicede.

epicene ::: a. & n. --> Common to both sexes; -- a term applied, in grammar, to such nouns as have but one form of gender, either the masculine or feminine, to indicate animals of both sexes; as boy^s, bos, for the ox and cow; sometimes applied to eunuchs and hermaphrodites.
Fig.: Sexless; neither one thing nor the other.


epicentral ::: a. --> Arising from the centrum of a vertebra.

epicerastic ::: a. --> Lenient; assuaging.

epichirema ::: n. --> A syllogism in which the proof of the major or minor premise, or both, is introduced with the premises themselves, and the conclusion is derived in the ordinary manner.

epichiremata ::: pl. --> of Epichirema

epichordal ::: a. --> Upon or above the notochord; -- applied esp. to a vertebral column which develops upon the dorsal side of the notochord, as distinguished from a perichordal column, which develops around it.

epichorial ::: a. --> In or of the country.

epicleidium ::: n. --> A projection, formed by a separate ossification, at the scapular end of the clavicle of many birds.

epiclinal ::: a. --> Situated on the receptacle or disk of a flower.

epicoele ::: n. --> A cavity formed by the invagination of the outer wall of the body, as the atrium of an amphioxus and possibly the body cavity of vertebrates.

epicoene ::: a. --> Epicene.

epicolic ::: a. --> Situated upon or over the colon; -- applied to the region of the abdomen adjacent to the colon.

epicondylar ::: n. --> Pertaining to, or resembling, an epicondyle.

epicondyle ::: n. --> A projection on the inner side of the distal end of the numerus; the internal condyle.

epicoracoid ::: n. --> A ventral cartilaginous or bony element of the coracoid in the shoulder girdle of some vertebrates.

epicranial ::: a. --> Pertaining to the epicranium; as epicranial muscles.

epicranium ::: n. --> The upper and superficial part of the head, including the scalp, muscles, etc.
The dorsal wall of the head of insects.


epic simile: While taking a simile form, it is a very detailed comparison and can be many lines long.

epictetain ::: a. --> Pertaining to Epictetus, the Roman Stoic philosopher, whose conception of life was to be passionless under whatever circumstances.

epic: This is a type of classical poetry, generally recounting heroic achievements. It is a poem that is a long narrative about a serious subject, told in an elevated styleof language. Epics generally focus on the exploits of a hero or demi-god who represents the cultural values of a race, nation, or religious group. John Milton’sParadise lost is an example of a famous epic. See classic.

epicurean ::: a. --> Pertaining to Epicurus, or following his philosophy.
Given to luxury; adapted to luxurious tastes; luxurious; pertaining to good eating. ::: n. --> A follower or Epicurus.
One given to epicurean indulgence.


epicureanism: A philosophy derived from the writing of Epicurus who believed the seeking of pleasure to be good but with an emphasis on simplicity of life.

epicureanism ::: n. --> Attachment to the doctrines of Epicurus; the principles or belief of Epicurus.

epicure ::: a person who cultivates a refined taste; connoisseur.

epicurely ::: adv. --> Luxuriously.

epicure ::: n. --> A follower of Epicurus; an Epicurean.
One devoted to dainty or luxurious sensual enjoyments, esp. to the luxuries of the table.


epicureous ::: a. --> Epicurean.

epicurism ::: n. --> The doctrines of Epicurus.
Epicurean habits of living; luxury.


epicurize ::: v. i. --> To profess or tend towards the doctrines of Epicurus.
To feed or indulge like an epicure.


epicycle ::: n. --> A circle, whose center moves round in the circumference of a greater circle; or a small circle, whose center, being fixed in the deferent of a planet, is carried along with the deferent, and yet, by its own peculiar motion, carries the body of the planet fastened to it round its proper center.
A circle which rolls on the circumference of another circle, either externally or internally.


epicycle: The outer circle in producing the locus in an epicycloid.

epicyclic ::: a. --> Pertaining to, resembling, or having the motion of, an epicycle.

epicyclic: Of or related to an epicycloid.

epicycloidal ::: a. --> Pertaining to the epicycloid, or having its properties.

epicycloid ::: n. --> A curve traced by a point in the circumference of a circle which rolls on the convex side of a fixed circle.

epicycloid: The locus of the point fixed on the circumference of a circle which rolls around (wthout slipping) the outside of another, fixed circle.

epitrochoid ::: n. --> A kind of curve. See Epicycloid, any Trochoid.

epopoeia ::: n. --> An epic poem; epic poetry.

epos ::: n. --> An epic.

equant ::: n. --> A circle around whose circumference a planet or the center of ann epicycle was conceived to move uniformly; -- called also eccentric equator.

equate ::: 1. To consider, treat, or depict as equal or equivalent. 2. To state the equality of or between (things). equates, equating.

Ethical Hedonism is usually combined with a teleological view of the nature of right action. It may be combined with Ethical Egoism as in the view of Epicurus, or with Ethical Universalism, as in the views of J. Bentham, J. S. Mill, and H. Sidgwick. -- C.A.B.

Exilarch ::: (Aramaic, rosh galuta, head of the exile). A term used in early rabbinic Judaism for the head of the Jewish community in exile in Babylonia. The exilarch was depicted as an imperial dignitary, a member of the council of state, living in semi-royal fashion, who appointed communal officers and judges and was a descendant of the house of David.

fable: A brief narrative illustrating human tendencies through the depiction of animal characters. Unlike the parables, fables often feature talking animals or animated objects as the principal characters. The interaction of these animals or objects exposes truths about human nature.

fable ::: n. --> A Feigned story or tale, intended to instruct or amuse; a fictitious narration intended to enforce some useful truth or precept; an apologue. See the Note under Apologue.
The plot, story, or connected series of events, forming the subject of an epic or dramatic poem.
Any story told to excite wonder; common talk; the theme of talk.
Fiction; untruth; falsehood.


figure ::: n. 1. The form or shape of anything; appearance, aspect. 2. The human form, esp. as regards size or shape. 3. A representation or likeness of the human form.4. An emblem, type, symbol. 5. An amount or value expressed in numbers. 6. A written symbol other than a letter. v. 7. To compute or calculate. 8. To represent by a pictorial or sculptured figure, a diagram, or the like; picture or depict. 9. To shape to; symbolize; represent. figures, figured, figuring, figure-selves.**

Filippo Lippi’s painting, depicting the scene.

Finagle's Law "humour" The generalised or "folk" version of {Murphy's Law}, fully named "Finagle's Law of Dynamic Negatives" and usually rendered "Anything that can go wrong, will". One variant favoured among hackers is "The perversity of the Universe tends toward a maximum". The label "Finagle's Law" was popularised by SF author Larry Niven in several stories depicting a frontier culture of asteroid miners; this "Belter" culture professed a religion and/or running joke involving the worship of the dread god Finagle and his mad prophet Murphy. [{Jargon File}] (1995-12-14)

Finagle's Law ::: (humour) The generalised or folk version of Murphy's Law, fully named Finagle's Law of Dynamic Negatives and usually rendered Anything that can go wrong, will. One variant favoured among hackers is The perversity of the Universe tends toward a maximum.The label Finagle's Law was popularised by SF author Larry Niven in several stories depicting a frontier culture of asteroid miners; this Belter culture professed a religion and/or running joke involving the worship of the dread god Finagle and his mad prophet Murphy.[Jargon File] (1995-12-14)

Financial statement - Report containing financial information about an organisation. The required financial statements are balance sheet, income statement, and statement of changes in financial position. They may be combined with a supplementary statement to depict the financial status or performance of the organization.

folder ::: (operating system) A directory in the sense of a collection of computer files. The term is more common in systems such as the Macintosh or Windows 95 which have a graphical user interface and provide a graphical file browser in which directories are traditionally depicted as folders (like small briefcases). (1997-03-20)

Frog One of the oldest symbols in Egypt, for although associated particularly with the frog goddess Heqet, the four primeval gods of Egypt — Heh, Kek, Nau, and Amen — were each depicted with a frog’s head, the reference here being to the cosmic waters of space, out of which all things arose in the beginnings. Frog gods and goddesses were associated with the beginning or formation of the world, the symbol of the frog itself being that of resurrection and hence of renewed birth. “There must have been some very profound and sacred meaning attached to this symbol, since, notwithstanding the risk of being charged with a disgusting form of zoolatry, the early Egyptian Christians adopted it in their Churches. A frog or toad enshrined in a lotus flower, or simply without the latter emblem, was the form chosen for the Church lamps, on which were engraved the words ‘I am the resurrection’ . . . These frog goddesses are also found on all the mummies” (SD 1:386).

From another viewpoint, he represents spiritual humanity collectively and is equivalent to Purusha, synonymous in the Epic and Puranic period with Tvashtri, he is also called Karu (worker, builder) or Takshaka (carpenter, etc.).

Frost Giants, Rime Thurses In the Norse Eddas, the primeval hrimthurses [from Icelandic, Scandinavian hrim rime + thurs, thruse giant] or frost giants are ponderous, motionless, totally mindless and stupid, to illustrate that their characteristics are those of nonliving, inert matter, not formed or organized in any way. They are the equivalent of the Greek Chaos. They represent ages of nonlife between manifestations of universes, corresponding to the Sanskrit pralaya (dissolution). They depict graphically the stage of utter cold, unmoving “wavelessness” when no atoms move and therefore nothing exists. The frost giant from whose limbs the creative deities brought into being the spheres of life in the universe is named Ymir. His slaying marked the creation of worlds, when the gods “raised the tables” (spheres) where the deities feast on the mead of experience. The rime-thurses are said to be born from Ymir’s feet.

Garm (Icelandic) The hound of Hel, queen of the underworld, depicted in the Eddas as bloody-jawed and chained in the Gnipa cave at the entrance to her realm. At the last battle he will break his bonds and battle with the god Tyr whereupon each will be bane to the other.

Gassendi, Pierre: (1592-1655) Was a leading opponent of Cartesianism and of Scholastic Aristotelianism in the field of the physical sciences. Though he was a Catholic priest, with orthodox views in theology, he revived the materialistic atomism of Epicurus and Lucretius. Born in Provence, and at one time Canon of Dijon, he became a distinguished professor of mathematics at the Royal College of Paris in 1645. He seems to have been sincerely convinced that the Logic, Physics and Ethics of Epicureanism were superior to any other type of classical or modern philosophy. His objections to Descartes' Meditationes, with the Cartesian responses, are printed with the works of Descartes. His other philosophical works are Commentarius de vita moribus et placitis Epicuri (Amsterdam, 1659). Syntagma philosophiae Epicuri (Amsterdam, 1684). -- V.J.B.

gastronomer ::: n. --> One fond of good living; an epicure.

gastronomy ::: n. --> The art or science of good eating; epicurism; the art of good cheer.

Gatha (Sanskrit) Gāthā [from the verbal root gā to sing] A song, metrical hymn, or verse; usually applied to a verse consisting of a moral aphorism which belongs not to the Vedic writings but to the Itihasas or the epic poetry and legends of a later date. A gatha of eight equal feet or 32 syllables is called aryagiti.

general adaptation syndrome (GAS): a model, proposed by Hans Selye, depicting physiological mechanisms that occur in response to a stressor over an extended period of time. There are three stages: (a) alarm stage which activates an arousal response (e.g. to fight or flee); (b) resistance stage when body is attempts to cope with the stressor; (c) exhaustion stage takes place if the stressor continues over a long period of time, leading to physical symptoms such as stomach ulcers.

genre: A category of literature or film marked by defined shared features orconventions. The three broadest categories of genre are poetry, drama, and fiction. These general genres are often subdivided, for example murder mysteries, westerns, sonnets, lyric poetry, epics and tragedies.

Genres: Types of art to which special rules and independent developments were attributed. For example: in poetry -- epic, lyric, dramatic; in painting -- historic, portrait, landscape; in music -- oratorical, symphonic, operatic. -- L.V.

Geocentric Theory A theory in which the earth is regarded as being at the center of the solar system, usually referring to the system of Claudius Ptolemy. In accordance with ancient teachings, Ptolemy represents the earth as surrounded by ten concentric spheres: those of water, air (or fire), Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and the stars. To account for the actual irregularities of the planetary motions, he introduced eccentrics and epicycles as corrections, and by this means the system, though complicated, is workable. The heliocentric theory reduces the complication and anomaly to order and regularity. However, since we are living on the earth, and our consciousness is functioning on the corresponding plane, there is considerable justification for the adoption of a geocentric theory; and this may have been done for exoteric purposes by those who were actually aware of the heliocentric theory.

georama ::: n. --> A hollow globe on the inner surface of which a map of the world is depicted, to be examined by one standing inside.

Gilgamesh ::: Ancient Mesopotamian epic tail of a widespread flood similar to that described in the Torah.

Gnostic amulets known as Abraxas gems depicted the god as a pantheos (all-god), with the head of a cock, herald of the sun, representing foresight and vigilance; a human body clothed in armor, suggestive of guardian power; legs in the form of sacred asps. In his right hand is a scourge, emblem of authority; on his left arm a shield emblazoned with a word of power. This pantheos is invariably inscribed with his proper name IAO and his epithets Abraxas and Sabaoth, and often accompanied with invocations such as SEMES EILAM, the eternal sun (Gnostics and Their Remains 246), which Blavatsky equates with “the central spiritual sun” of the Qabbalists (SD 2:214). Though written in Greek characters, the words SEMES EILAM ABRASAX are probably Semitic in origin: shemesh sun; ‘olam secret, occult, hid, eternity, world; Abrasax Abraxas. Hence in combination the phrase may be rendered “the eternal sun Abrasax.”

Good, Highest: (sometimes the greatest, or supreme, good. Lat. summum bonum) That good which transcends yet includes all the others. According to Augustine, Varro was able to enumerate 288 definitions. For Plato, the supreme Idea, the totality of being. For Aristotle, eudemonism (q.v.), which consists in the harmonious satisfaction of all rational powers. For the Epicureans, pleasure. For Aquinas, obedience to and oneness with God. The all-inclusive object of desire. -- J.K.F.

gourmet ::: n. --> A connoisseur in eating and drinking; an epicure.

"Greatest Happiness": In ethics, the basis of ethics considered as the highest good of the individual or of the greatest number of individuals. The feeling-tone of the individual, varying from tranquillity and contentment to happiness, considered as the end of all moral action, as for example in Epicurus, Lucretius and Rousseau. The welfare of the majority of individuals, or of society as a whole, considered as the end of all moral action, as for example in Plato, Bentham and Mill. The greatest possible surplus of pleasure over pain in the greatest number of individuals. Although mentioned by Plato in the Republic (IV, 420), the phrase in its current form probably originated in the English translation, in 1770, of Beccaria's Dei delitti e delle pene, where it occurs as "la massima felicita divisa nel maggior numero", which was rendered as "the greatest happiness of the greatest number", a phrase enunciated by Hutcheson in 1725. One of a number of ethical ideals or moral aims. The doctrine with which the phrase is most closely associated is that of John Stuart Mill, who said in his Utilitarianism (ch. II) that "the happiness which forms the . . . standard of what is right in conduct, is not the agent's own happiness, but that of all concerned". -- J.K.F.

hadit ::: Hadit Hadit, 'the great god, the lord of the sky', is depicted on the Stle of Revealing (also called Stle 666 after its exhibit number), which was discovered by Aleister Crowley and his wife Rose in the Boulaq Museum in Cairo, Egypt in 1904, in the form of the winged disk of the Sun. Hadit is the principal speaker in the second chapter of Crowley's Book of the Law, where he identifies himself as 'the point in the centre of the circle', representing an infinitesimal point in space, and the human soul hidden therein. Hadit, the complement of Nuit, is related to the winged kneph, or Iao, an Egyptian emblem used in Masonic rites.

hanuman. ::: hindu deity in the form of a monkey who plays a central character in the Indian epic

Hanuman or Hanumat (Sanskrit) Hanumān, Hanumat Monkey-god of the Ramayana. The son of Pavana, god of the winds, or spirit, Hanuman is fabled to have assumed any form at will, wielded rocks, removed mountains, mounted the air, seized the clouds, and to have rivaled Garuda in swiftness of flight. According to the epic, Hanuman and his host of semi-human monkey-beings became the allies of Rama, the avatara of Vishnu, in his war with the Rakshasa-king of Lanka, Ravana, who had carried off Rama’s wife, the beautiful Sita. As advisor to Rama and leader of his army, Hanuman showed unparalleled audacity, wit, and wisdom, thereby accomplishing great feats.

Harivamsa, Harivansa (Sanskrit) Harivaṃśa The lineage of Hari, or Krishna. A celebrated poem of 16,374 verses, generally regarded as a part of the Mahabharata, but believed by some to be of much later date than the greater epic. It treats of the adventures of the family of Krishna, being divided into three parts: an introduction that traces the dynasty; the life and adventures of Krishna; and the conditions occurring during the kali yuga and the future condition of the world.

Hawk Symbol associated in ancient Egypt with the sun; whenever there was an emphasis placed on solar worship the hawk was usually present, especially at Hieraconopolis (the hawk city) south of Thebes. The hawk was especially sacred to Horus, Ra, Osiris, and Seker. Horus and Ra (the latter particularly in his association with Menthu, the lord of Thebes) were often depicted as hawk-headed, both being solar deities.

Hedonism [from Greek hedone, pleasure] In ethics, the doctrine that the gratification of natural inclinations is the chief good, and that the moral law is thereby fulfilled. The value of this doctrine depends entirely on what we are to understand by pleasure or inclination. In the best sense, which was that of Epicurus and his followers, these words may be considered as one way of trying to express the summum bonum, the goal of human endeavor; and this school pointedly taught that neither happiness nor peace are ever attainable by the subjection of human thought, mind, and conscience to the instincts or inclinations of the body. Some aspects of modern utilitarianism may be considered as a form of hedonism. But the doctrine as stated is easily degraded, and in its worst form becomes the pursuit of sensual gratification. In fact, hedonism as a word, and as understood now and by many even in ancient times, is the exact opposite of what these early philosophers believed and taught. See also EPICUREAN PHILOSOPHY

Hel (Icelandic) [from helju hell, death] The mythical regent of the Norse realm of the dead, depicted as half black or blue and half flesh-colored. In myths the representative of death is usually said to be a child of mind: in the Edda she is the daughter of Loki (fire of mind) and of the giantess Angerboda (boder of regret). She rules the nine worlds of death which correspond to the nine worlds of life, and apportions to each arrival a domicile appropriate to that soul’s merit or demerit. Some may frolic in sunlit meadows, others suffer agony beneath the lower gates leading to Niflhel [from nifl cloud + hel death] where matter is ground to extinction. The realm of Hel with its varied accommodations resembles the Greek Hades more than the hell of popular belief where evil souls are sent for punishment. Rather, the kingdom of death is a restful interlude where souls spend a fitting time in their rightful environment. The Eddas relate that elves (human souls) sleep among the gods when they are feasting on the mead of a past period of life (experience); thus the resting souls are present in the divine spheres even through unconscious of their surroundings.

His portrayal of Zeus in different dramas is inconsistent, since there were two Zeuses: the abstract deity of Grecian thought, and the Olympic Zeus. While the former represents the head of the hierarchy of divinities, the latter is, in man, the human soul or kama-manas. Prometheus, who steals fire from heaven and brings it to mankind in a fennel-stalk, is buddhi-manas, mankind’s savior. Zeus is the serpent, the intellectual tempter of humanity, which nevertheless begets in due time the man-savior, the solar Dionysus (SD 2:419-20). Harmony results from the equilibrium of contraries, and the drama of evolution as depicted in man shows the clash of descending and reascending cycles, the antimony of law and free will. These dramas have been immortalized for all generations by Aeschylus who, in his daring and self-sacrificing enthusiasm, may himself be styled a Prometheus offending the powers that be in order to bring light to mankind.

hope and charity) depicted as angels by 15th-

hypocycloid ::: n. --> A curve traced by a point in the circumference of a circle which rolls on the concave side in the fixed circle. Cf. Epicycloid, and Trochoid.

hypotrochoid: A hypotrochoid is the analogous curve to the epitrochoid (much as a hypocycloid is to an epicycloid) where the locus producing point can be anywhere within the inner circle, not necessarily having to be on the circumference of the circle.

hypotrochoid ::: n. --> A curve, traced by a point in the radius, or radius produced, of a circle which rolls upon the concave side of a fixed circle. See Hypocycloid, Epicycloid, and Trochoid.

Ideal Utilitarianism: See Utilitarianism. Idealization: In art, the process of generalizing and abstracting from specifically similar individuals, in order to depict the perfect type of which they are examples, the search for real character or structural form, to the neglect of external qualities and aspects. Also, any work of art in which such form or character is exhibited; i.e. any adequate expression of the perfected essence inadequately manifested by the physical particular. In classical theory, the object so discovered and described is a Form or Idea; in modern theory, it is a product of imagination. -- I.J.

Ilmatar (Finnish) The ancient Finnish great cosmic Mother, who helped in the production of the earth and heavens. In the Kalevala, she is described as daughter of ether or air (ilma). After passing her existence for ages in the air, she descended to the waters — naught else then existed. After seven hundred years she raised her voice to the great deity and the primeval duck was sent to her. When the earth was formed, she was able to bring forth her seven sons, whose exploits constitute the principal narrative of the great Finnish epic.

immaterial, that is, bodiless, is usually depicted as

In ancient Hindustan there were two principal dynasties of kings, as given in the epics and the Puranas, named the Suryavansa (the Solar Dynasty) and the Chandravansa (the Lunar Dynasty). The former was said to have been descended from the sun through Ikshvaku, who according to mythology was the son or grandson of the sun, Vaivasvata-Manu, the progenitor of our present humanity. The Chandravansa was said to have sprung from Atri, the maharshi (great rishi), whose son again was Soma or the moon, whence the name lunar given to the dynasty.

incensed ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Incense
of Incense ::: a. --> Angered; enraged.
Represented as enraged, as any wild creature depicted with fire issuing from mouth and eyes.


Indolentia (Latin) Freedom from pain; an Epicurean term denoting the tranquility which was their ideal of attainment for the sage who sees that happiness is inseparable from virtue.

In far later times both the Pahlavi commentaries on the Avesta and the great epic writer of Persia, Ferdowsi, personalized Azhi-Dahaka as a fiend called Zahak and Thraetaona as King Jamshid. Azhi-Dahak in a pact with the Devil sells his soul in return for worldly possessions and the estate of his father, Mardas, a man of many virtues. He consents to the death of his father, totally gives into self-indulgence in physical pleasures out of vanity, and falls prey to the enchantment of flattery. No sooner does Zahak permit the Devil to kiss his shoulders than two black snakes grow in place of his lip marks. Since no cure can be found that will get rid of the vicious snakes, the Devil in the form of a physician prescribes that relief would only come from feeding the snakes with the fresh brains of young men. Azhak later finds and cuts Jamshid into two in the sea of China, and reigns with cruelty for a thousand years until Fereydoun (Thraetaona, the thrice potent) defeats him and chains him to Mount Damavand.

In later mythology, as in the epic of Firdusi, the simorgh is depicted as a gigantic bird who finds the infant Zal on the mountain Alberz [Berj], carries him to his nest and rears him “teaching him the language of the country and cultivating his understanding.” Simorgh-anke (simurgh-’anka), the steed of Taimuraz or Tahmurath equivalent to the phoenix or roc, was “a marvelous bird, in truth, intelligent, a polyglot, and even very religious. . . . It complains of its old age, for it is born cycles and cycles before the days of Adam (also Kaimurath). It has witnessed the revolutions of long centuries. It has seen the birth and the close of twelve cycles of 7,000 years each, which multiplied esoterically will give us again 840,000 years” (SD 2:397).

In popular mythology the Tuat was separated from the world by a range of mountains and consisted of a great valley, shut in by mountains, through which ran a river (the counterpart of the Nile, reminding one of the Jordan of the Jews and Christians), the banks of which were the abode of evil spirits and monstrous beasts. As the sun passed through the Tuat great numbers of souls were described as making their way to the boat of the sun, and those that succeeded in clinging to the boat were able to come forth into new life as the sun rose from the eastern end of the valley to usher in another day. Tuat was also depicted as the region where the soul went during night, returning to join the living on earth during the day.

interior monologue: Where the author depicts the interior thoughts of a single individual, in the exact order these thoughts occur inside that character's head. The author does not attempt to provide any, or much, commentary, description, or guiding discussion to help the reader untangle the complex web of thoughts. Often the results include grammatical mistakes and illogical order. See stream of consciousness.

in the Epic of Izdubar. On earth, as a mortal, Enoch

In the epics, Pururavas is the famous prince of the Soma-vansa (lunar dynasty), the father of Ayus and the ancestor of Puru, Dushyanta, Bharata, Kuru, Dhritarashtra, and Pandu. He is supposed to have instituted the three sacrificial fires, and is likewise the hero of the Vikramorvasi.

’Ishin, ’Ishim (Hebrew, Chaldean) ’Īshīn, ’Īshīm In the Qabbalah, a lower order of angels, ranking ninth in the hierarchy of angels, corresponding to the Sephirah Yesod. The Zohar depicts the ’ishin as chained on a mountain in the desert, alluding to them as chained to the earth during the cycle of incarnation. The ’ishim are otherwise the Benei ’Elohim, who in human evolution were the prototypes of the fallen angels who by their fall made of the mindless races of protoplastic humanity the thinking and self-conscious human beings that men now are. Thus they correspond to the manasaputras . . . The ’ishin are also said to help magicians produce homunculi (SD 2:376). See also AZAZEL

Italian school. The scene is depicted in a woodcut

itihasa ::: historical tradition, a historico-mythic epic narrative; ancient historical or legendary tradition turned to creative use as a significant mythus or tale expressive of some spiritual or religious or ethical or ideal meaning.

Izdubar (Babylonian) An ancient hero of Erech, whose exploits are recorded in the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the most important literary works to have been excavated in Nineveh, coming from the royal collection of Assurbanipal (668-26 BC), in the form of twelve tablets (although not all are completely preserved). The hero’s name, written ideographically, was formerly read Izdubar, until another fragment of the same cycle gave the rendition Gilgamesh.

Jataka (Sanskrit) Jātaka [from the verbal root jan to be born] A birth story; the 550 Jataka tales form one of the books of the Khuddaka Nikaya of the Buddhist canon. These stories are supposed to have been related by the Buddha and are considered by some to be the accounts of his former lives, and by others to be a group of tales built of occult truth and past experiences of the Buddha and treated in an allegorical way by some of his first and greatest disciples in order to depict a synopsis of the evolutionary history of the human race.

Job (Hebrew) ’Iyyōb Persecuted, tried; one of the books in the Bible, depicting the story of Job, regarded by Blavatsky as far older than the Pentateuch. She points out that there is no reference to any of the Hebrew patriarchs, that Jehovah is not mentioned in the poem itself, that there is no mention of the Sabbatical institution, and that there is a direct discussion on the worship of the heavenly bodies (prevailing in those days in Arabia). “The Book of Job is a complete representation of ancient initiation and the trials which generally precede this grandest of all ceremonies. The neophyte perceives himself deprived of everything he valued, and afflicted with foul disease. His wife appeals to him to adore God and die; there was no more hope for him” (IU 2:494-5). Elihu the hierophant teaches Job, now ready to learn the meaning of his experience, and Job is able to contact his own higher self or inner god.

Kalevala: The Finnish epic of creation.

Kanada (Sanskrit) Kaṇāda The sage who founded the Vaiseshika or atomist school of Hindu philosophy. Like the Greek atomists Democritus and Epicurus, Kanada was no materialist for, just as they did, he believed in divinities or intelligent cosmic entities as the primal causes and governors in the universe. See also ATOMISTS.

Kauravas (Sanskrit) Kaurava-s The adjectival noun of Kurus, the opponents of the Pandavas in the Mahabharata. In a similar way Pandavas is derived from Pandu (light-colored, pale, blond). As light has always been taken as a synonym of spirit, some writers have argued that the Kauravas represent the material or evil forces, and the Pandavas the spiritual and light forces, both in cosmic and human natures; yet such analogies can be pressed too far. There was good and bad on both sides in the famous Indian epic.

kavya ::: poetry; the poetic faculty, the power of self-expression in the kavya rhythmic language of poetry which is "the highest form of speech available to man for the expression whether of his self-vision or of his world-vision"; the writing of poetry, part of sahitya, including work in the "epic, dramatic and the minor forms which again include narrative, lyric and reflective".

Kelim (Hebrew) Kēlīm Vessels, utensils; in space the Qabbalists depicted a great source or fountain of life, which becomes the beginning of a number of cosmic vases or vessels — the kelim — which are the ten Sephiroth; through which all the energies, forms, and innumerable manifested objects come into being. This source of lives, the Crown or Kether, corresponds to the productive or generative Brahma, which just before the beginning of manvantaric manifestation was nonmanifest in the bosom of its higher essence, Brahman or parabrahman. When Brahma awakens to new activity and thus becomes what Western religion and philosophy call the Creator, the cosmic demiurge or former, then the various vessels or vases spring into being, and flow forth from Brahma, the Father-Mother. Being termed vessels simply signifies that the cosmic Sephiroth are the holders or containers of all the powers, faculties, forces, attributes, etc., which bring about the building of the manifested universe, enshrining as the Sephiroth do the unfolding of the energies of the Divine in the latter’s activity during manifestation.

Khensu or Khonsu (Egyptian) Khensu or Khonsu [from khens to travel, move about] The third of the triad of deities worshiped especially at Thebes, where he was regarded as the moon god, son of Amen-Ra and Mut. As Nefer-hetep (lord of joy of heart) he is depicted with the head of a hawk, surmounted by the crescent moon and the disk, and bearing the flailed staff and the ankh. As the moon he ruled over the month and possessed complete power over evil (or lunar) beings bringing disease and suffering, regarded as infesting earth, air, sea, and sky. Thus Khensu was addressed as the healer of diseases and the banisher of evil. Khensu was also associated with Horus as Harpocrates (Heru-pa-khart — Horus the babe) and with Ra, the sun god. At Hermopolis (Khemennu) he was associated with Thoth and called Khensu-Tehuti.

khepera ::: Khepera Khepera (from the Egyptian word kheprer) means to become. With the attribute of self-generation and self-renewal, he is a form of the sun-god Re or Ra, and would roll the sun across the sky, much as the dung beetle rolls a ball of dung in front of itself (sometimes he was also depicted pushing the moon through the sky). Khepera was self-produced and usually depicted as a human with a scarab beetle on his head, or sometimes with the beetle as his head.

Khu (Egyptian) Khu. The human spirit-soul, closely connected with the heart (ab), and considered to be everlasting; usually depicted in hieroglyphics in the form of a heron. Massey makes it equivalent with manas, but Lambert makes it equivalent to divine spirit (SD 2:632-3). Elsewhere Blavatsky emphasizes the duality of the khu: the “justified” khu, absolved of sin by Osiris after death, which continues to live a second life; and the khu “which died a second time,” doomed to wander about and torture the living, as they are able to assume any form and enter into living bodies. This first type is equivalent to the reincarnating ego or immortal human soul. The second type is identical with the Roman larvae, lares, simulacrum, or shade, the Chinese houen, the theosophical elementary, and the necromantic “spirit” (cf BCW 7:155-17, 190-3).

Leucippus taught that space is filled with atoms — really monads — in ceaseless motion, and Epicurus and Lucretius added the idea of affinity, though doubtless Leucippus had the same idea in mind. The life-atoms discarded after incarnation return to the same individuality by affinity at the next rebirth.

liad ::: n. --> A celebrated Greek epic poem, in twenty-four books, on the destruction of Ilium, the ancient Troy. The Iliad is ascribed to Homer.

Limbo or Limbus [from Latin limbus border] The fringe of hell, according to the Scholastic conception, which was used by Dante and Milton in their epics. In patristic theology, it was regarded as a place for the souls of people who had lived before Christ, or imbeciles and unbaptized infants. Also in some churches it is regarded as a kind of purgatory or waiting place for the soul after death. Similar to kama-loka.

limned ::: depicted by or as painting or drawing. half-limned.

machamarei, because of his depiction as a sun god,

Macrocosm ::: The Cosmos in the Large. The Universe that the Mind is a part of. The connection between macrocosm and microcosm is best depicted in the Hermetic Axiom. See also Microcosm.

Madhav: “Aswapathy in the epic is the representative of the aspiring humanity who prepares and lays the path to the Divine Glory.” The Book of the Divine Mother

Madhav: “Aswapathy in the epic is the—representative of the aspiring humanity who prepares and—lays the path to the Divine Glory.”—The Book of the Divine Mother

Magha ::: the name of a classical Sanskrit author, writer of the epic Magha Śisupalavadha.

Mahabharata ::: [an epic poem of over 100,000 slokas written principally by the sage vyasa and dealing centrally with the conflict between the Pandavas and the Kauravas, descendants of Bharata].

mahabharatam ::: n. --> A celebrated epic poem of the Hindoos. It is of great length, and is chiefly devoted to the history of a civil war between two dynasties of ancient India.

Mahabharata (Sanskrit) Mahābhārata One of the two great epic poems of ancient India, the largest poetic work known to literature, consisting of 220,000 lines. The masses of tradition and tales in this epic make it the national treasury from which bards, poets, dramatists, and artists, as from an inexhaustible source, draw their themes. It contains the history of the family of the Bharatas in addition to a great many beautiful truly mystical and occult teachings, and a few really splendid minor episodes like the Bhagavad-Gita and Anugita. Tradition makes Vyasa — a generic name of high literary authority, used by at least several archaic writers — the author of this grand poem. The main theme of the epic is the great struggle between the Kauravas and the Pandavas, descendants through Bharata from Puru, the great ancestor of one branch of the Lunar race. The object of the struggle was the kingdom whose capital was Hastinapura (elephant city), the ruins of which are said to be traceable 57 miles northeast of Delhi, on an old bed of the Ganges.

Mahabharata: (Skr. "the great [war of the] Bharatas"). An Indian epic of 100,000 verses, ascribed to Vyasa, incorporating many philosophical portions, such as the Bhagavad Gita (q.v.) -- K.F.L.

Mahabharata: The ancient epic poem of India, of about 215,000 lines. It includes the Bhagavad Gita, the scripture in which Krishna appears.

mahabharata. ::: the world's longest epic poem comprising of 110,00 verses about the Mahabharata

Main works: Histoire naturelle de l'ame, 1745; L'homme-machine, 1747; L'homme-plante, 1748; Discours sur le bonheur, 1748; Le systeme d' Epicure, 1750. --R.B.W. Lange, Friedrich Albert: (1828-1875) Celebrated for his History of Materialism, based upon a qualified Kantian point of view, he demonstrated the philosophical limitations of metaphysical materialism, and his appreciation of the value of materialism as a stimulus to critical thinking. He worked for a greater understanding of Kant's work and anticipated fictionalism. -- H.H.

map ::: n. 1. A representation, usually on a plane surface, of a region of the earth or heavens. 2. A maplike delineation, representation, or reflection of anything. maps, concept-maps. v. 3. To depict as if on a map. 4. To sketch or plan out. maps, mapped.

Marx, Karl: Was born May 5, 1818 in Trier (Treves), Germany, and was educated at the Universities of Bonn and Berlin. He received the doctorate in philosophy at Berlin in 1841, writing on The Difference between the Democritean and Epicurean Natural Philosophy, which theme he treated from the Hegelian point of view. Marx early became a Left Hegelian, then a Feuerbachian. In 1842-43 he edited the "Rheinische Zeitung," a Cologne daily of radical tendencies. In 1844, in Paris, Marx, now calling himself a communist, became a leading spirit in radical groups and a close friend of Friedrich Engels (q.v.). In 1844 he wrote articles for the "Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher," in 1845 the Theses on Feuerbach and, together with Engels, Die Heilige Familie. In 1846, another joint work with Engels and Moses Hess, Die Deutsche Ideologie was completed (not published until 1932). 1845-47, Marx wrote for various papers including "Deutsche Brüsseler Zeitung," "Westphälisches Dampfbot," "Gesellschaftsspiegel" (Elberfeld), "La Reforme" (Paris). In 1847 he wrote (in French) Misere de la Philosophie, a reply to Proudhon's Systeme des Contradictions: econotniques, ou, Philosophie de la Misere. In 1848 he wrote, jointly with Engels, the "Manifesto of the Communist Party", delivered his "Discourse on Free Trade" in Brussels and began work on the "Neue Rheinische Zeitung" which, however, was suppressed like its predecessor and also its successor, the "Neue Rheinische Revue" (1850). For the latter Marx wrote the essays later published in book form as Class Struggles in France. In 1851 Marx did articles on foreign affairs for the "New York Tribune", published The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte and the pamphlet "Enthülungen über den Kommunistenprozess in Köln." In 1859 Marx published Zur Kritik der politischen Okonomie, the foundation of "Das Kapital", in 1860, "Herr Vogt" and in 1867 the first volume of Das Kapital. In 1871 the "Manifesto of the General Council of the International Workingmen's Association on the Paris Commune," later published as The Civil War in France and as The Paris Commune was written. In 1873 there appeared a pamphlet against Bakunin and in 1875 the critical comment on the "Gotha Program." The publication of the second volume of Capital dates from 1885, two years after Marx's death, the third volume from 1894, both edited by Engels. The essay "Value Price and Profit" is also posthumous, edited by his daughter Eleanor Marx Aveling. The most extensive collection of Marx's work is to be found in the Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe. It is said by the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute (Moscow) that the as yet unpublished work of Marx, including materials of exceptional theoretical significance, is equal in bulk to the published work. Marx devoted a great deal of time to practical political activity and the labor movement, taking a leading role in the founding and subsequent guiding of the International Workingmen's Association, The First International. He lived the life of a political refugee in Paris, Brussels and finally London, where he remained for more than thirty years until he died March 14, 1883. He had seven children and at times experienced the severest want. Engels was a partial supporter of the Marx household for the better part of twenty years. Marx, together with Engels, was the founder of the school of philosophy known as dialectical materialism (q.v.). In the writings of Marx and Engels this position appears in a relatively general form. While statements are made within all fields of philosophy, there is no systematic elaboration of doctrine in such fields as ethics, aesthetics or epistemology, although a methodology and a basis are laid down. The fields developed in most detail by Marx, besides economic theory, are social and political philosophy (see Historical materialism, and entry, Dialectical materialism) and, together with Engels, logical and ontological aspects of materialist dialectics. -- J.M.S.

Maya ::: A Sanskrit term that refers to several Buddhist concepts and philosophies depending on the source and time period. It generally translates as "illusion" or "magic show" and is used to depict the phenomenal world as being devoid of fundamentally true substance. This is due to the causal emanation of it from noumenal reality.

messiad ::: n. --> A German epic poem on the Messiah, by Klopstock.

Microcosm ::: The Cosmos in the Small. The Universe that is contained within the Mind. The connection between microcosm and macrocosm is best depicted in the Hermetic Axiom. See also Macrocosm.

Milton, John: Born in 1608, John Milton was a renowned poet and author during the 17th century. His most notable work is the epic poem Paradise Lost.

Moira (Greek) Plural morai or morae. One’s allotted share; destiny. As a proper name, there was originally only one Moira, but later there were three: Lachesis, Clotho, and Atropos. Lachesis is from a root lach, as in lagchano “to obtain that which has already been determined or fixed”; she is depicted as a grave maiden holding a staff pointing to a horoscope, signifying that which man has built in the past is now unfolding. She was occultly connected with the earth. Clotho or Klotho is from a verb meaning “to spin,” and is represented as a woman holding a spindle, spinning thread which is man’s destiny, that which he is at present weaving for the future, and is connected with the future in that what we weave now determines what our future shall be. Thus it is linked with the psychological part of human nature, and connected occultly with the moon. Atropos is from a verb meaning “impossible to set aside or evade,” and therefore is translated as “inevitable, ineluctable.” It was often represented as a woman pointing to a sundial signifying that as the sun brings its light to the earth, so the future shall bring its destiny to man, as the flying hours unfold what comes to us out of the womb of time. Thus we have Lachesis representing the ineluctable destiny coming to us in our present life on earth from our past; Clotho, the present spinning of our future destiny because of the actions and reactions, mental and emotional, by which we are now weaving the web of fate which someday will become the present; and Atropos, the ineluctable and inescapable future represented as held in store, every thread of which has been woven by ourselves in past and present. Their respective functions are sometimes interchanged. Equivalent to the Latin Parcae and Fata, and the Scandinavian Norns.

Multistage Model::: A carcinogenesis dose-response model where it is assumed that cancer originates as a "malignant" cell, which is initiated by a series of somatic-like mutations occurring in finite steps. It is also assumed that each mutational stage can be depicted as a Poisson process in which the transition rate is approximately linear in dose rate.



myocardium ::: n. --> The main substance of the muscular wall of the heart inclosed between the epicardium and endocardium.

nephroid: An epicycloid where the radius of the outer (moving) circle is half of that of the inner (fixed) circle.

  “nowhere shows Yama ‘as having anything to do with the punishment of the wicked.’ As king and judge of the dead, a Pluto in short, Yama is a far later creation. One has to study the true character of Yama-Yami throughout more than one hymn and epic poem, and collect the various accounts scattered in dozens of ancient works, and then he will obtain a consensus of allegorical statements which will be found to corroborate and justify the Esoteric teaching, that Yama-Yami is the symbol of the dual Manas, in one of its mystical meanings. For instance, Yama-Yami is always represented of a green colour and clothed with red, and as dwelling in a palace of copper and iron. Students of Occultism know to which of the human ‘principles’ the green and the red colours, and by correspondence the iron and copper, are to be applied. The ‘twofold-ruler’ — the epithet of Yama-Yami — is regarded in the exoteric teachings of the Chino-Buddhists as both judge and criminal, the restrainer of his own evil doings and the evil-doer himself. In the Hindu epic poems Yama-Yami is the twin-child of the Sun (the deity) by Sanjna (spiritual consciousness); but while Yama is the Aryan ‘lord of the day,’ appearing as the symbol of spirit in the East, Yami is the queen of the night (darkness, ignorance) ‘who opens to mortals the path to the West’ — the emblem of evil and matter. In the Puranas Yama has many wives (many Yamis) who force him to dwell in the lower world (Patala, Myalba, etc., etc.); and an allegory represents him with his foot lifted, to kick Chhaya, the handmaiden of his father (the astral body of his mother, Sanjna, a metaphysical aspect of Buddhi or Alaya). As stated in the Hindu Scriptures, a soul when it quits its mortal frame, repairs to its abode in the lower regions (Kamaloka or Hades). Once there, the Recorder, the Karmic messenger called Chitragupta (hidden or concealed brightness), reads out his account from the Great Register, wherein during the life of the human being, every deed and thought are indelibly impressed — and, according to the sentence pronounced, the ‘soul’ either ascends to the abode of the Pitris (Devachan), descends to a ‘hell’ (Kamaloka), or is reborn on earth in another human form” (TG 376).

nut ::: Nut Usually depicted nude, her body made of stars arching over the world, she is the Egyptian Goddess of the sky who swallowed the sun each evening and gave birth to it each morning. In Thelemic practice, Nut revealed herself to Aleister Crowley in her manifestation as Nuit (see the Book of the Law).

odyssey ::: n. --> An epic poem attributed to Homer, which describes the return of Ulysses to Ithaca after the siege of Troy.

On the question as to what acts are right or to be done ethical theories fall into two groups (1) Axiological theories seek to determine what is right entirely by reference to the goodness or value of something, thus miking the theory of obligation dependent on the theorv of value. For a philosopher like Martineau it is the comparative goodness of its motive that determines which act is right. For a teleologist it is the comparative amount of good which it brings or probably will bring into being that determines which act is right -- the egoistic teleologist holding that the right act is the act which is most conducive to the good of the agent (some Sophists, Epicurus, Hobbes), and the universalistic teleologist holding that the right act is the act which is most conducive to the good of the world as a whole (see Utilitarianism). (2) On deontological theories see Deontological ethics and Intuitionism.

oral literature : The custom of compiling and passing on narratives by word of mouth. Oral literature can often take the form of poetry or song. This mode of literature has long existed and still remains today in various societies. The Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf is an example of this tradition.

Ordered Array ::: A table consisting of data in order of highest to lowest or lowest to highest where each data is given a numbered rank depicting it&

Orientalists have speculated as to whether there was a monarch named Yudhishthira at the time of the commencement of the kali yuga (3102 BC). The computation of periods in Hindu accounts, however, applied to cosmic events as well as to terrestrial catastrophes, and names were used in the same manner. Thus Yudhishthira, “the first King of the Sacea, who opens the Kali Yuga era, which has to last 432,000 years — ‘an actual King and man who lives 3,102 years BC,’ applies also, name and all, to the great Deluge at the time of the first sinking of Atlantis. He is the ‘Yudishthira born on the mountain of the hundred peaks at the extremity of the world beyond which nobody can go’ and ‘immediately after the flood’ ” (SD 1:369-70). About the time of the reign of Yudhishthira the epic tells of a small flood which destroyed the Yadavas. Yudhishthira is both an eponymous hero, and an epic hero, an historical character, such as were also Arjuna, Krishna, and the many other heroes mentioned in the Mahabharata, stated to have lived when kali yuga began, now some 5,000 years ago.

orthoepic ::: a. --> Alt. of Orthoepical

orthoepical ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to orthoepy, or correct pronunciation.

ouroborus ::: Ouroborus Ouroborus is a Greek word meaning tail swallower, thus is usually circular in shape and depicted in the form of a snake swallowing its tail. The Ouroborus had its origins in ancient Egypt as a symbol of the sun, and represented the travels of the sun disk.

overuse strain injury ::: (medical) (Or repetitive strain injury, RSI, repetitive strain disorder) Any tendon or muscle injury resulting from overuse, usually in the due to bad ergonomics). The symptoms are pain, tingling, weakness, numbness, swelling, cracking, stiffness, or reduced coordination.Common conditions are:Carpal tunnel syndrome, where swelling of the membrane linings in your wrist surrounding the tendons that bend your fingers compresses the median nerve. This may result in numbness and pain in the hand, arm, shoulder, and neck.Tennis elbow, where rotating your wrist and using force causes a form of epicondylitis.Tendinitis, where unacustomed exercise or repeated awkward movements inflame wrist, elbow, or shoulder tendons, often leading to severe stiffness.Trigger finger, a popping or catching sensation when you bend your finger, wrist, or shoulder. This form of tenosynovitis is caused by repetitive hand movements.To prevent the condition worsening, treat the pain with heat, cold, or aspirin, ibuprofen, or naproxen sodium; rest; or immobilise the injured area with a splint or bandage. See a doctor. . . . . (1999-10-03)

overuse strain injury "medical" (Or "repetitive strain injury", RSI, "repetitive strain disorder") Any tendon or muscle injury resulting from overuse, usually in the hand, wrist, or arm. Injury may be caused by any combination of repetitive, unacustomed, or prolonged movements, forcefulness, or an awkward position (often due to bad {ergonomics}). The symptoms are pain, tingling, weakness, numbness, swelling, cracking, stiffness, or reduced coordination. Common conditions are: Carpal tunnel syndrome, where swelling of the membrane linings in your wrist surrounding the tendons that bend your fingers compresses the median nerve. This may result in numbness and pain in the hand, arm, shoulder, and neck. Tennis elbow, where rotating your wrist and using force causes a form of epicondylitis. Tendinitis, where unacustomed exercise or repeated awkward movements inflame wrist, elbow, or shoulder tendons, often leading to severe stiffness. Trigger finger, a popping or catching sensation when you bend your finger, wrist, or shoulder. This form of tenosynovitis is caused by repetitive hand movements. To prevent the condition worsening, treat the pain with heat, cold, or aspirin, ibuprofen, or naproxen sodium; rest; or immobilise the injured area with a splint or bandage. See a doctor. {Amara's RSI information (http://amara.com/aboutme/rsi.html)}. {RSI links from Yahoo (http://dir.yahoo.com/Health/Diseases_and_Conditions/Repetitive_Strain_Disorder/)}. {Guide to Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (http://sechrest.com/mmg/cts/)}. {CTS from Yahoo (http://dir.yahoo.com/Health/Diseases_and_Conditions/Carpal_Tunnel_Syndrome/)}. (1999-10-03)

Pacis or Bacchis (Greek) Bakha (Egyptian) Bakha. The sacred bull of Hermonthis. Although not so celebrated as Apis and Mnevis, he was styled the bull of the Mountain of the Sunrise (Bakhau), and the lion of the Mountain of the Sunset. Like Mnevis he was depicted with the solar disk between his horns, the reference being not to the cosmic energy of the spatial Deeps represented by Mnevis, nor to the lunar energy represented by Apis, but to the opening (sunrise) and the closing (sunset) of the solar system.


   varactor diode - PN junction diode with a high junction capacitance when reverse biased. Most often used as a voltage controlled capacitor. The varactor is also called: varicap, tuning diode and epicap.



perichordal ::: a. --> Around the notochord; as, a perichordal column. See Epichordal.

pericycloid: A type of epicycloid where one circle completely circumscribe the other circle at all times, as the outer circle roll around the inner circle.

perigord pie ::: --> A pie made of truffles, much esteemed by epicures.

Persian Philosophy: Persia was a vast empire before the time of Alexander the Great, embracing not only most of the orientnl tribes of Western Asia but also the Greeks of Asia Minor, the Jews and the Egyptians. If we concentrate on the central section of Persia, three philosophic periods may be distinguished Zoroastrianism (including Mithraism and Magianism), Manichaeanism, and medieval Persian thought. Zarathustra (Or. Zoroaster) lived before 600 B.C. and wrote the Avesta, apparently in the Zend language. It is primarily religious, but the teaching that there are two ultimate principles of reality, Ormazd, the God of Light and Goodness, and Ahriman, God of Evil and Darkness, is of philosophic importance. They are eternally fighting Mitra is the intermediary between Ormazd and man. In the third century A. D., Mani of Ecbatana (in Media) combined this dualism of eternal principles with some of the doctrines of Christianity. His seven books are now known only through second-hand reports of Mohammedan (Abu Faradj Ibn Ishaq, 10th c., and Sharastani, 12th c.) and Christian (St. Ephrem, 4th c., and Bar-Khoni, 7th c.) writers. St Augustine of Hippo (354-430 A.D.) has left several works criticizing Manichaeism, which he knew at first-hand. From the ninth century onward, many of the great Arabic philosophers are of Persian origin. Mention might be made of the epicureanism of the Rubaiyat of the Persian poet, Omar Kayyam, and the remarkable metaphysical system of Avicenna, i.e. Ibn Sina (11th c.), who was born in Persia. -- V.J.B.

Pharisees ::: (Heb. perushim, lit. separatists; adj. pharisaic). The name given to a group or movement in early Judaism, the origin and nature of which is unclear. Many scholars identify them with the later sages and rabbis who taught the oral and written law; others see them as a complex of pietistic and zealous separatists, distinct from the proto-rabbis. According to Josephus, the Pharisees believed in the immortality of souls and resurrection of the dead, in a balance between predestination and free will, in angels as active divine agents and in authoritative oral law. In the early Christian materials, Pharisees are often depicted as leading opponents of Jesus/Joshua and his followers, and are often linked with “scribes” but distinguished from the Sadducees.

Philosophic speculations, heavily shrouded by "pre-logical" and symbolic language, started with the poetic, ritualistic Vedas (q.v.), luxuriating in polytheism and polyanthropoism, was then fostered by the Brahman caste in treatises called Aranyakas (q.v.) and Brahmanas (q.v.) and strongly promoted by members of the ruling caste who instituted philosophic congresses in which peripatetic teachers and women participated, and of which we know through the Upanishads (q.v.). Later, the main bulk of Indian Philosophy articulated itself organically into systems forming the nucleus for such famous schools as the Mimamsa and Vedanta, Sankhya and Yoga, Nyaya and Vaisesika, and those of Buddhism and Jainism (all of which see). Numerous other philosophic and quasi philosophic systems are found in the epic literature and elsewhere (cf., e.g., Shaktism, Shivaism, Trika, Vishnuism), or remain to be discovered. Much needs to be translated by competent philosophers.

picture ::: 1. A visual representation or image painted, drawn, photographed, or otherwise rendered on a flat surface. 2. A visible image however produced. 3. A particular image or reality as portrayed in an account or description; depiction; version. pictures. (See also moving picture (‘s).)

Pleasure and pain: In philosophy these terms appear mostly in ethical discussions, where they have each two meanings not always clearly distinguished. "Pleasure" is used sometimes to refer to a certain hedonic quality of experiences, viz. pleasantness, and sometimes as a name for experiences which have that quality (here "pleasures" are "pleasant experiences" and "pleasure" is the entire class of such experiences). Mutatis mutandis, the same is true of "pain". Philosophers have given various accounts of the nature of pleasure and pain. E.g., Aristotle says that pleasure is a perfection supervening on ccrtain activities, pain the opposite. Spinoza defines pleasure as the feeling with which one passes from a lesser state of perfection to a greater, pain is the feeling with which one makes the reverse transition. Again, philosophers have raised various questions about pleasure and pain. Can they be identified with good and evil? Are our actions always determined by our own pleasure and pain actual or prospective? Can pleasures and pains be distinguished quantitatively, qualitatively? See Bentham, Epicureanism. -- W.K.F.

Pneuma: (Gr. pneuma, breath) A Stoic, also Epicurean, concept signifying spirit, vital force, or creative fire in its penetration into matter. Sometimes understood as psychic energy, or distinguished as the formative fire-mind and the divinely inspired rational part of man from the more emotional, physical aspect of soul. In early Christian, particularly Gnostic philosophy, pneuma, as spirit, is differentiated from psyche, or soul. See Pneuma Hagion, the Holy Ghost. -- K.F.L.

Prolepsis: (Gr. prolepsis) Notion, preconception. The term is used by the Stoics and Epicureans to denote any primary general notion that arises spontaneously and unconsciously in the mind is distinguished from concepts that result from conscious reflection. These prolepses are regarded by the Stoics as common to all men as rational beings, and are sometimes called innate (symphytoi), though in general they were looked upon as the natural outgrowth of sense-perception. -- G.R.M.

Psychopomp (Greek) A conductor of souls; applied to Charon, Apollo, and especially to Hermes, who was the conductor of souls to Hades or the Underworld and back again, an office assigned by Christians to Jesus Christ after his resurrection. The mystery of death, descent into Hades, and resurrection were enacted in initiation ceremonies, as depicted in Egyptian glyphs, where the dog-headed Anubis — the Egyptian Hermes — conducts the candidate.

Ptah (Egyptian) Ptaḥ [from to engrave, carve, fashion] One of the most ancient deities, and in his higher attributes one of the most abstract, whose worship goes back to the earliest part of the dynastic period; the principal deity of Memphis (Men-nefer), also known as Het-ka-Ptah (the city of Ptah). The deity is also called Ptah-neb-ankh (giver of life). He was addressed as the “father of beginnings; creator of the eggs of the sun and moon, he who created his own image, who fashioned his own body”; and was depicted as fashioning the world-egg upon a potter’s wheel. Together with Khnemu, he carried out the commands of Thoth for the creation of the universe. While Khnemu fashioned man and the animals, whether of the cosmos or of earth, Ptah was engaged in the construction of the heavens and the earth. In later times the Greeks associated him with Hephaestos, the Latins with Vulcan; but in addition to the attributes connected with the earth, in the Underworld (Tuat) Ptah was regarded as the fashioner of the bodies for the pilgrims who entered that realm after death.

Pururavas (Sanskrit) Purūravas In Hindu philosophical mysticism and epic literature, the son of Budha, regent of the planet Mercury and equivalent to cosmic wisdom. Budha is given as the son of Soma, the moon, and Ila or Ida, the ethereal earth. Pururavas is an extremely occult character, mentioned both in the Vedas and Puranas. In the Vedas he seems to be connected with the functions of the sun, Surya, while according to later writers he is one of the ten belonging to the class of visvadevas. His cosmic functions are those belonging to the realms of mahat or cosmic mind, and therefore Pururavas is that faculty of cosmic intelligence which guides cosmic evolution and directs it. The visvadevas are entities whose fields of activity are the intermediate region of our universe.

Pyrrhonism The philosophy of Pyrrho, the Greek Skeptic (c. 365-275 BC); also a general name for philosophic doubt. Pyrrho left no writings, but lives in those of his pupil Timon. His doctrine was that we can know nothing about reality by the use of our senses or mental faculties; against every statement its opposite may be maintained with equal justice; hence it is necessary to preserve a balanced judgment, the result of which is imperturbability, a tranquil acceptance of the events of life. The moral attitude thus engendered is somewhat like that of the Epicureans and Stoics, which has often been wrongly described as a self-centered indifference, bent upon the happiness of the individual, but this is only the negative aspect of the doctrine. His teachings approximate those of the Sankhya philosophy, and of some later philosophers — as in the doctrine of maya, that all is illusion save the divine. Whether Pyrrho himself stopped short at a suspense of judgment, or whether his teachings were imperfectly handed down by his followers, may be questioned. The ardent desire for knowledge may result in that illumination by which we becomes aware of the deceptive character of our faculties and the illusory nature of the images they create; but if our skepticism is merely the result of an intellectual disillusionment, unaccompanied by any inward vision, the result is usually selfish indifference bringing about a lapse into mere sensuality.

Qeren (Hebrew) Qeren [from qāran to emit rays, shine, have horns; power, strength, might] A horn, a vessel made of horn; a musical instrument; a ray, beam, flash, so that the deities represented with horns — such as Ashtoreth or Astarte — might also be associated with rays or beams of light. The Greek god Pan was always depicted with horns, as were several Egyptian deities, while the Atef-crown uses the horns as a symbol of strength and power. Moses, too, was often depicted with horns.

Ra-Hoor-Khuit: The Egyptian God of Force and Fire. He is the child of Nuit and Hadit and therefore the manifested universe, as Hoor-paar-kraat (his twin) is the hidden universe. Ra-Hoor Khuit represents The Crowned and Conquering Child, and as such the fulfilment of the Will of the Magician which he brings to birth or manifests. Ra-HoorKhuit is a form of Horns; he is depicted on the Ste'le' of Revealing throned and crowned; his mother, Nuit, arched above him, with Hadit (his father) in the form of a winged globe of Light beneath her.

Ramayana: A great epic poem of India, ascribed to Valmiki, describing the doings of Rama and his wife Sita, in about 24,000 verses divided into seven books; the first and the last are believed to be comparatively modern additions, but the date of the original books is probably the third or fourth century B.C.; Rama’s character is described as that of a perfect man, who bears suffering and self-denial with superhuman patience.

ramayana ::: n. --> The more ancient of the two great epic poems in Sanskrit. The hero and heroine are Rama and his wife Sita.

Ramayana: (Skr.) An epic poem, ascribed to Valmiki, celebrating in about 24,000 verses the doings of Rama and his wife Sita and containing ethical and philosophic speculations. -- K.F.L.

ramayana. ::: the great hindu epic poem by Valmiki describing the life of Rama and his consort

Ramayana ::: [the life-story of Rama, a celebrated epic poem by Valmiki whose central incident is the abduction of Rama's wife sita by Ravana, king of the raksasas, and her subsequent recovery by Rama and his allies].

Rank-Ordered Array ::: A table consisting of data in order of highest to lowest or lowest to highest where each data is given a numbered rank depicting it&

realism: Originally the term referred to a literary movement in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in America, Europe, and England. More generally speaking the term signals towards a literary, or artistic, depiction of life in an accurate, straightforward, unidealised manner.

rhapsodist ::: n. --> Anciently, one who recited or composed a rhapsody; especially, one whose profession was to recite the verses of Hormer and other epic poets.
Hence, one who recites or sings poems for a livelihood; one who makes and repeats verses extempore.
One who writes or speaks disconnectedly and with great excitement or affectation of feeling.


rhapsodist ::: One who recited epic and other poetry, especially professionally, in ancient Greece. (Sri Aurobindo employs the word as an adj.)

rhapsodist ::: one who recited epic and other poetry, especially professionally, in ancient Greece. (Sri Aurobindo employs the word as an adj.)

rhapsody ::: n. --> A recitation or song of a rhapsodist; a portion of an epic poem adapted for recitation, or usually recited, at one time; hence, a division of the Iliad or the Odyssey; -- called also a book.
A disconnected series of sentences or statements composed under excitement, and without dependence or natural connection; rambling composition.
A composition irregular in form, like an improvisation; as, Liszt&


romance ::: 1. A long medieval narrative in prose or verse that tells of the adventures and heroic exploits of chivalric heroes. 2. The colourful world, life, or conditions as in novels and other prose narratives depicting heroic or marvellous deeds and pageantry. 3. A love affair.

roulette: The locus of a point fixed on (relative to) a curve, as it rolls along another curve without slipping. It generalises the ideas behind epicycloids, epitrochoids, hypocycloids, hypotrochoids etc. to curves of any shape.

Sadducees ::: Tzedukim: An early Jewish sub-group whose origins and ideas are uncertain. It probably arose early in the 2nd century B.C.E. and ceased to exist when the Temple was destroyed in 70 CE. Sadducees supported priestly authority and rejected traditions not directly grounded in the Pentateuch, such as the concept of personal, individual life after death. They are often depicted as in conflict with the Pharisees.

Sanskrit, on the other hand, “was really the sacred language of the Brahmanas and held more or less private or secret by them. The Sanskrit even in those ancient times was the vehicle for the archaic Wisdom-teachings of the Aryan peoples of India, such as the Vedas, and the Puranas, and the Upanishads, and the great epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. But Pali was one of several other languages of culture in ancient India, all which were of so-called Prakrit character, although very little is known about these other literary languages. Pali has survived to the present time because . . . it became the linguistic vehicle in which were enshrined the teachings of Buddhism, i.e., of Southern Buddhism, much as Latin has survived because enshrining the teachings of early medieval Christianity. Just as there were in ancient Italy many other Italic tongues, each one having its literary or cultured form, and likewise its popular idiom, so was it in ancient India.

Sarama ::: a Vedic goddess whose action is "a forerunner of the dawn Sarama of Truth in the human mind", depicted in "the figure of the divine hound which was . . . a possibly later development of the Vedic imagery"; she represents the discovering intuition, a faculty "which goes straight to the Truth by the straight path of the Truth and not through the crooked paths of doubt and error".

sarcocarp ::: n. --> The fleshy part of a stone fruit, situated between the skin, or epicarp, and the stone, or endocarp, as in a peach. See Illust. of Endocarp.

Sati or Satet (Egyptian) Sati or Satet [from the verbal root sat to pour out, shoot, throw, emanate, evolve forth] Worshiped at Abu or Elephantine, the consort of Khnemu, and sister-goddess of Anqet, and the second member of a triad. Together with Khnemu her attributes are watery, so that she is depicted as sprinkling water and scattering seed. She was associated with Isis-Sothis, and at Dendera with Isis-Hathor; and was associated by the Greeks with Hera. Her temple at Abu was considered one to the holy places in ancient Egypt, for in the Book of the Dead the Osirified defunct mentions that he has visited the Temple of Satet which was one of the ancient initiation localities. With Isis she was connected with the star Sept (Sirius), where dwelt the soul of Isis.

scenic ::: a photographic or videographic depiction of beautiful natural scenery.

sea horse ::: --> A fabulous creature, half horse and half fish, represented in classic mythology as driven by sea dogs or ridden by the Nereids. It is also depicted in heraldry. See Hippocampus.
The walrus.
Any fish of the genus Hippocampus.


Seb (Egyptian) Seb. One of the older Egyptian deities, the son of Shu and Tefnut, brother and husband of Nut, father of Osiris and Isis, Set and Nephthys. A goose (seb) was held sacred to the god. One popular legend states that Seb first appeared flying through the air in the form of a goose — reminiscent of the Sanskrit kala-hansa (bird of eternity). Seb was the vitalizing divinity of cosmic space, often called earth: the earth was described as being formed of Seb’s cosmic body, and hence was in turn called the house of Seb. Being so closely associated with the earth, through popular misunderstanding he was regarded as the custodian of the dead in their tombs, and therefore held a prominent place in the scenes of the Underworld depicted in The Book of the Dead.

Sefirot ::: In kabbalistic literature the sefirot are depicted as emanations or manifestations of God. The Sefirot are explained on this site here.

self-image: is the mental picture, generally of a kind that is quite resistant to change, that depicts not only details that are potentially available to objective investigation by others (height, weight, hair color, sex, I.Q. score, etc.), but also items that have been learned by that person about himself or herself, either from personal experiences or by internalising the judgments of others.

sepic ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to sepia; done in sepia; as, a sepic drawing.

Seraphim ::: “Hybrid celestial beings [including Cherubim] with human, animal, or birdlike characteristics that are depicted in Jewish, Christian and Islamic literature. They act as throne bearers or throne guardians of the deity. In later theology Cherubim is an angel of the second order, and Seraphim of the first. They correspond, according to Sri Aurobindo, to the Gandharvas and Venas of India tradition. (Enc. Br). Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo’s Works

seraphim ::: "Hybrid celestial beings [including Cherubim] with human, animal, or birdlike characteristics that are depicted in Jewish, Christian and Islamic literature. They act as throne bearers or throne guardians of the deity. In later theology Cherubim is an angel of the second order, and Seraphim of the first. They correspond, according to Sri Aurobindo, to the Gandharvas and Venas of India tradition. (Enc. Br.)” Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works

short story: A prose narrative of fiction, which is relatively short and more concise, often depicting only one event or climax.

Shu (Egyptian) Shu [from shu dry, parched] The Egyptian god of light, popularly associated with heat and dryness, and the ethereal spaces existing between the earth and the vault of the sky; often depicted as holding up the sky with his two hands, one at the place of sunrise, the other of sunset. The phonetic value of shu is the feather, which is the symbol of this deity, and appears above his headdress. Shu is manifest during the day in the beams of the sun, and at night in the beams of the moon; the solar disk is his home. He is likewise one of the chief deities of the underworld, the gate of the pillars of Shu (tchesert) marking the entrance to this region, the pillars representing the four cardinal points said to hold up the sky. Although the twin brother of Tefnut — often alluded to as the twin lion-deities — Shu is more often represented with Seb and Nut (deities of cosmic space and of its garment of ethereal substance) in his position of holding up the sky, because in theosophical terminology cosmic light as well as cosmic intelligence (the Logos) is born from Brahman and pradhana, or parabrahman and mulaprakriti.

Silenus (Latin) Seilenos (Greek) The more elderly satyrs were called sileni, and their chief was Silenus, represented as a drunken pot-bellied old man with a wineskin, depicted as riding on an ass and the constant companion of Dionysos or Bacchus; sometimes also associated with Pan. These nature gods had a higher and a lower aspect and are most familiar to us in the lower, because of the common reference to them in popular mythology. Hence we find Silenus with all the marks of roistering jollity, but gifted, like Pan and the other satyrs, with the power of prophecy.

Sloka (Sanskrit) Śloka A verse, generally formed of verses in four half-lines of eight, or in two lines of sixteen syllables each, the Sanskrit epic meter of 32 syllables.

Sloka(Sanskrit) ::: "The Sanskrit epic meter formed of thirty-two syllables: verses in four half lines of eight, or intwo lines of sixteen syllables each" (H. P. Blavatsky, Theosophical Glossary).

Some of the deities in the Greek pantheon were often represented in a hermaphrodite aspect, thus Zeus is occasionally depicted with female breasts; while one of the Orphic hymns, which was sung during the Mysteries, says: “Zeus is a male, Zeus is an immortal maid.”

Sri Aurobindo: "Avatarhood would have little meaning if it were not connected with the evolution. The Hindu procession of the ten Avatars is itself, as it were, a parable of evolution. First the Fish Avatar, then the amphibious animal between land and water, then the land animal, then the Man-Lion Avatar, bridging man and animal, then man as dwarf, small and undeveloped and physical but containing in himself the godhead and taking possession of existence, then the rajasic, sattwic, nirguna Avatars, leading the human development from the vital rajasic to the sattwic mental man and again the overmental superman. Krishna, Buddha and Kalki depict the last three stages, the stages of the spiritual development — Krishna opens the possibility of overmind, Buddha tries to shoot beyond to the supreme liberation but that liberation is still negative, not returning upon earth to complete positively the evolution; Kalki is to correct this by bringing the Kingdom of the Divine upon earth, destroying the opposing Asura forces. The progression is striking and unmistakable.” *Letters on Yoga

Stem and Leaf Display ::: A multiple column table depicting the individual digits of the scores. A score of 95 would have a stem of 9 and a leaf of 5, a score of 62 would have a stem of 6 and a leaf of 2. If a particular stem has more than one leaf, such as the scores 54, 58, and 51, the stem of 5 has three leaves, in this case 458.

Tat or Djed or Tet (Egyptian) Ṭeṭ [from the verbal root ṭeṭ to establish] The emblem of stability; the pillar found in connection with Osiris in hieroglyphic texts and inscriptions, especially in the scenes depicting what is called the funeral of Osiris, scenes which are one aspect of the initiation cycle held in the Mysteries of ancient Egypt. The hieroglyphic representation of the tat is that of a tapered pillar surmounted by four crossbars, said to represent the branches of a tree, and to be connected with the four cardinal points. It was a favorite form for amulets fashioned out of lapis lazuli and carnelian. “The top part is a regular equilateral cross. This, on its phallic basis, represented the two principles of creation, the male and the female, and related to nature and cosmos; but when the tat stood by itself, crowned with the atf (or atef), the triple crown of Horus — two feathers with the uraeus in front — it represented the septenary man; the cross, or the two cross-pieces, standing for the lower quaternary, and the atf for the higher triad” (TG 322).

The agnishvattas signify our ancestral solar selves in contradistinction to the barhishads, our lunar ancestors. The agnishvattas are variously spoken of in The Secret Doctrine as the fashioners of the inner man, manasa-dhyanis (lords of mind), solar devas, sons of the flame of wisdom, givers of human intelligence and consciousness, and fire-dhyanis. In ancient Greece they were collectively personified by the epic figure of Prometheus, and in China by the Fiery Dragons of Wisdom.

The attributes ascribed to Kamadeva in exoteric literature rarely depict the full sway of this cosmic force or entity in its multifarious ranges of activity. Kama is not only a cosmic principle or entity but also is inherent in every unit of the innumerable hosts of entities which compose the cosmos. Thus kama is the fourth principle in the human constitution; and, just as in its cosmic activities and relations, kama is both a superior and an inferior activity; indeed, it may be said to be divine in its higher aspects, just as it is physical in its lowest fields of action.

thebaid ::: n. --> A Latin epic poem by Statius about Thebes in Boeotia.

The Christian Gospels appear to have originated in mystery-dramas, beautiful and often sublime in their inner significances, in which were depicted the experiences of the neophyte and adept in his union with the Logos, and hence such unified individual was called a Logos incarnate as a man, the Logos itself being variously named as Christos or Dionysos, and to have been by stages adapted and given a semi-historical guise, as has happened in other instances besides the Christian mythos. Christ therefore, or the Christos, is not a particular man or an especial incarnation of divinity, but a generic term for the divine as incarnated in all human beings, although Jesus was undoubtedly the name of this great Jewish initiate-avatara as an individual. Hence this universal allegory in its Christian version has a true historical peg to hang from; for there did appear, sometime before the Christian era, a special cyclic messenger who was due to come on the change of the ecliptic point from one sign of the celestial zodiac to another, from the sign of Aries to Pisces. In theosophical literature, Jesus is considered to be an avatara, the messenger for the European Messianic or Piscean cycle. As such, Jesus represented a ray sent from the Wondrous Being or spiritual hierarch of the earth into the soul of a pure human being, while the racial buddha, Gautama Buddha, supplied the intermediate or psychological nature in this act of white magic.

The early Christians looked upon the Holy Spirit as of distinctly feminine characteristics, influence, or svabhava, as the center not only of vital but of spiritual and intellectual activity, whether in the universe or man, so that the Holy Spirit corresponds to a divine sakti. A notable instance in Hinduism is the Sakti or goddess Durga, having both a lofty or spiritual, and an inferior or distinctly material, function in nature, and therefore a beneficent as well as a terrible action therein — the very name Durga meaning “terrible in action,” or “terrible in going.” And yet Durga is the consort or sakti of Siva, often called the Mahesvara (Great Lord); and the name of this goddess arises from the utterly impartial, infinitely just, and yet often simply terrific action of the forces in nature, particularly when karmically directed to works of regeneration, often called destruction. Cosmic operations or cosmic justice are often indeed to human vision terrible in their operation, which can never be set aside, stayed, or diverted. Hence Durga is often represented in iconography as surrounded with a necklace of skulls or by similar ghastly emblems — a series of ideas which the pragmatic West misinterprets and consequently depicts as horrible and revolting.

The end of the world is vividly portrayed in the foremost poem of the Elder Edda, Voluspa, which depicts horrors presaging the departure of the gods from this sphere of life. However, this is by no means the end for it is followed by a new creation, when a reborn earth is seen arising in serene beauty and contentment.

The ethical teachings of the Bhagavad Gita (q.v.). of the various religio-philosophical groups, of the Buddhists and Jainas of Greater India, are high; but if such ideals have not been attained generally in practice, or even if repulsive and cruel rituals and linga worship are prevalent, such phenomena are understandable if we consider the 340 millions of teeming humanity within the fold of Hinduism, from aborigines to a Gandhi, Tagore, and Sir Raman. Treatises dealing with practical morality are very numerous. They may be classed into those of a purely religious leaning among which we might count all religio-philosophical literature of the Vedic and non-Vedic tradition, including drama and epic literature, and those that deal specifically with practices of the nature of self-culture (cf. Yoga), religious observances (sacrifice, priest-craft, rites, ceremonies, etc.), household affairs and duties (Grhyasutras), and the science of polity and government (Arthasastras). -- K.F.L..

The hawk too depicted one of the parts of the human constitution, the human soul; oftentimes it is represented as hovering over the mummy: “The sense varies with the postures of the bird. Thus when lying as dead it represents the transition, larva state, or the passage from the state of one life to another. When its wings are opened it means that the defunct is resurrected in Amenti and once more in conscious possession of his soul. The chrysalis has become a butterfly” (TG 136).

The legendary Orpheus was the son of Apollo, god of music and the sun, and of Calliope, muse of epic poetry. With his seven-stringed lyre, the symbol of the cosmic and human constitution, he became the magical musician: rocks moved, trees bent, flowers sprang forth, mountains bowed themselves before his song. He journeyed with the Argonauts on their quest for the Golden Fleece. His mystic union with Eurydice, like the Argonautic quest, is clearly allegorical. Orpheus won his mystic bride by the power of his music and after the mystic union returned to Pimpleia on Mount Olympus where he lived and taught in a cave (recorded also of other great teachers).

The primeval duck is very similar in idea to kalahansa, the primeval goose of ancient Hindustan, and also the Egyptian goose and Seb “the great Cackler”; although this ancient Finnish epic preserves the ancient wisdom-teaching of the seven globes which comprise the earth planetary chain, and also on a larger field of action, the solar system itself in its various inner and outer planes, and the surrounding and comprehending universe or galaxy.

The sagas depict Thor as blunt, hot-tempered, without fraud or guile, of few words and ready blows. His chariot, drawn by the two goats Toothcrusher and Toothgnasher, has an iron whiffletree, and sparks fly from its wheels and from the goats’ hooves. Thor’s fiery eyes color the scarlet clouds, his beard is red, on his brow he wears a crown of stars, and under his feet rests the earth whose defender he is. His chariot cannot cross the rainbow bridge, Bifrost, for its lightnings would set the bridge on fire, so the god daily fords the river beneath it when he attends the Thing (parliament) of the gods.

The second question in value-theory is the question "What things are good? What is good, what is the highest good, etc.;" On this question perhaps the main issue historically is between those who say that the good is pleasure, satisfaction, or some state of feeling, and those who say that the good is virtue, a state of will, or knowledge, a state of the intellect. Holding the good to be pleasure or satisfaction are some of the Sophists, the hedonists (the Cyrenaic, the Epicureans, Hobbes, Hume, Bentham, Mill, Sidgwick, Spencer, Schlick). Holding virtue or knowledge or both to be good or supremely good are Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, the Neo-Platonists, Augustine, Aquinas, Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, G. E. Moore, H. Rashdall, J. Laird, W. D. Ross, N. Hartmann.

The story of Cupid and Psyche — where Psyche represents the human soul as such, apart from special connection with buddhi or kama — depicts the search for happiness, or the course of human love. Psyche is of mortal birth, but so beautiful that Venus herself becomes jealous and sends Cupid to inspire Psyche with love for an unworthy object. But Cupid himself becomes enamored of Psyche. The love between Cupid and Psyche cannot be realized in the atmosphere of earthly passion and delusion, and is fulfilled only when Psyche, reconciled with Venus, is taken to the Olympian heights. The emblem of Psyche was the butterfly, which in winged joy comes forth into the sunlight from its prison of caterpillar and chrysalis.

The universe is depicted as an ash tree, Yggdrasil, within which every lesser being is an ash tree in its own right. A Tree of Life is part of the traditions in every part of the world. “The Norse Ask, the Hesiodic Ash-tree, whence issued the men of the generation of bronze, the Third Root-Race, and the Tzite tree of the Popol-Vuh, out of which the Mexican third race of men was created, are all one” (SD 2:97).

The Vendidad (Pahlavi) or Vidaeva-data (Avestan) [from vi against + daeva evil + data law] has 22 fargards (chapters) of which the first two deal with the story of creation and the origin of civilization. The rest is the code of priesthood. The 21 Yashts are the epic of Yazatas or Izads (gods), composed in prose form. Their legends are often comparable with those of Shah-Nameh. Some hymns and prayers from other parts of the Avesta are found in shorter Yashts. There seems to be more profundity and originality of style in the longer Yashts. The Khorde Avesta (Avestan) or Khordak-Appestak (Pahlavi), meaning bits and pieces of Avesta, consists of different prayers taken from the other four parts of the Avesta, put together by Azarabad, the son of Mehrispand, during the reign of Shahpour II (310-379).

The vesica piscis is an instance of a large class of highly involved and entangled mystical emblems, where the phallic aspect seems to dog the footsteps of attempts to depict highly spiritual, deeply profound facts. The human mind, so desirous of making graphic emblems of purely abstract realities, sooner or later loses sight of the abstract truth, so that only the picture itself remains. See also ICHTHYS

the work of the classic masters. He is depicted

The worship of the sun was of very ancient origin in Egypt. Like Horus, Ra was depicted in a hawk-headed form known as Amen-Ra (Heru-khuti). The principal seat of the worship of Ra was at An or Heliopolis. The original deity of this city was Tem, but when the priests of Ra became more powerful during the 5th dynasty, they combined the two deities into one as Ra-Tem. In later dynastic times, although the priests of Ra were the most powerful in Egypt, the common people clung to their ideas of Osiris so tenaciously that eventually the priests placed Osiris as the deity of the sun — and this movement may have been initiated from within the sacerdotal sanctuary itself, because the attributes of Osiris and of Ra were alike, Osiris being a more limited entity than the abstract Ra of cosmic space.

Thoth, Thot (Greek) Tehuti (Egyptian) Teḥuti. Egyptian god of wisdom, equivalent to the Greek Hermes, Thoth was often represented as an ibis-headed deity, and also with a human head, especially in his aspect of Aah-Tehuti (the moon god), and as the god of Mendes he is depicted as bull-headed. Although best known in his character of the scribe or recorder of the gods, holding stylus and tablet, this is but another manner of showing that Thoth is the god of wisdom, inventor of science and learning; thus to him is attributed the establishment of the worship of the gods and the hymns and sacrifices, and the author of every work on every branch of knowledge both human and divine. He is described in the texts as “self-created, he to whom none hath given birth; the One; he who reckons in heaven, the counter of the stars; the enumerator and measurer of the earth [cosmic space] and all that is contained therein: the heart of Ra cometh forth in the form of the god Tehuti” — for he represents the heart and tongue of Ra, reason and the mental powers of the god and the utterer of speech. It has been suggested that Thoth is thus the equivalent of the Platonic Logos. Many are his epithets: his best known being “thrice greatest” — in later times becoming Hermes Trismegistus.

thoth ::: Thoth In Egyptian mythology, Thoth was the ancient Egyptian God of writing, magick, and learning. He is credited with the creation of language, numbers, and the measurement of time, and is often depicted as the scribe of the Gods. Thoth is considered the patron of magicians and sages, and has been credited as the originator of the Tarot.

Th. Skolem, Sur la portee du theoreme de Löwenheim-Skolem, Les Entretiens de Zurich sur les Fondements et la Methode des Sciences Mathematiques, Zurich 1941, pp. 25-52. Lucretius, Carus: (98-54 B.C.) Noted Roman poet, author of the famous didactic poem De Natura Rerum, in six books, which forms an interesting exposition of the philosophy of Epicureanism. -- M..F.

Tiferet ::: Sixth of the sefirot, Tiferet means “beauty.” It is the balance point between hesed and gevurah, and the seat of compassion. Tiferet is regarded as the center of the sefirot, and is sometimes depicted as the center of a wheel.

trochoid ::: n. --> The curve described by any point in a wheel rolling on a line; a cycloid; a roulette; in general, the curve described by any point fixedly connected with a moving curve while the moving curve rolls without slipping on a second fixed curve, the curves all being in one plane. Cycloids, epicycloids, hypocycloids, cardioids, etc., are all trochoids. ::: a.

Troll (Scandinavian) In common usage, an evil gnome or spirit depicted in stories as an ugly and dangerous sprite. As a prefix, used in Scandinavian tongues to denote magical or extrasensory means (e.g., trollkonst magic art, trollkaring old woman, hag, who practices magic arts). In this context it has come to mean almost exclusively an evil influence but there remain tales where a troll is seen as a model of gratitude and faithfulness. This may be a case where the spiritual influences of one culture become regarded by succeeding peoples as demonic. It is also possible that the trolls exemplified less evolved characteristics which become the faithful servants of him who overcomes these weaknesses in himself.

Ukko (Finnish) [cf Magyar agg old, an old being, grandfather] The highest god in the mythological hierarchy of the ancient Finns — the Suomilainen (fen-dwellers), as they called themselves. Ukko was represented as dwelling in Jumala (thunder-home) in the sky: seated on a cloud he bore the heavens on his shoulders. Snow, hail, ice, wind, and rain, sunshine and clouds are due to his activities; thus he is termed the leader of the clouds, the god of breezes, father of the heavens. He is most often depicted like the Scandinavian Thor, swinging a hammer amidst the thunder and lightning, his robe sparkling with fire, striking down evil beings on the mountains.

Unamuno y Jugo, Miguel de: Spanish Professor and writer. Born at Bilbao, Spain, September 29, 1864. Died 1936. First and secondary education in Bilbao. Philosophical studies and higher learning at the Central University of Madrid since 1880. Private instructor in Bilbao, 1884-1891. Professor of Greek language and literature at the University of Salamanca since 1891. President of the University of Salamanca and at the same time Professor of the History of the Spanish Language, in 1901. Madariaga considers him "The most important literary figure of Spain". If he does not embody, at least it may be asserted that Unamuno very well symbolizes the character of Spain. His conflict between faith and reason, life and thought, culture and civilization, depicts for us a clear picture of the Spanish cultural crisis.

unreliable narrator: A narrator or character who depicts what he observes and experiences, but misinterprets those dealings because of defective perception, personal bias or agenda, or limited understanding. Often the writer or poet creating such a narrator leaves clues so that the reader will detect the unreliability and question the interpretations offered.

vehicle: In literature, the term vehicle refers to the technique by which an authorachieves her purpose. For example, chilling diction could be identified as a vehicle to depict a murder scene.

Voodoo or Voodooism [from Fongbe dialect vodunu from vodu moral and religious life of the Fons of Dahomey] A definite system of African black magic or sorcery, including various types of necromantic practice. It reached the Americas with the African slaves brought from the West Coast, and in and around the Caribbean various degrees of the cult persist and constitute a recognized if little understood social feature in the history and life of the people. Especially significant in the original Fon religion are the principal temples in the sacred forests, with symbolic hieroglyphics on the walls, depicting the exploits of their kings, voodoo legends, etc., and explaining their belief in the unknowable god Meru (Great Master); this unmanifest god, too far removed from men for them to give to him any form, dealt with them through lesser gods and nature spirit, i.e., voodoo; the priestesses serving the temple in a secret cult with four degrees of initiation, and having passwords unknown to laymen; the cult of the snake or adder as the most primitive form of the religion. Such findings in voodoo history, however degraded in course of time and overlaid by beliefs and customs of cruder native tribes, have the basic elements of a hierarchic religion so enveloped in mystery as to indicate an origin far beyond the creative imagination of any people. Rather, here in strange temples of dark mystery, were the lingering echoes of some ancient wisdom teaching of those who were truly “as wise as serpents.” The least altered of the original system is probably the voodoo music with its solemn, insistent rhythm in the mood of prayer or an invocation. This rhythm persists, even when the ritual songs in Haiti are composed entirely of Creole words, or of a series of unintelligible sounds.

Was ::: A type of ancient Egyptian sceptre used as a symbol of power and dominion. Depicted with an animal head on top, a straight shaft, and a forked base.

Wheel of life: (1) Samsara (q.v.)—(2) A wheel often depicted in Tibetan paintings, setting forth the basic beliefs in reincarnation found in Lamaism. The endless circumference of the wheel is symbolic of immortality; the three prominences of the hub symbolize the three great vices, ignorance, lust and anger, a lapse into which will make the wrongdoer reincarnate as an insect or other low life-form in his next life; the six spokes symbolize the six principle divisions of life and religion: the gods, the demigods, hell, the tortured souls, human beings, and animals.

When the Egyptians wished to depict Hephaestos they draw a scarab and a vulture, and when they want to represent Athene (Net) they draw a vulture and a scarab, for they believed that the world is composed of masculine and feminine forces, and these two deities are the only gods whom they believed to be both male and female.

whitebait ::: n. --> The young of several species of herrings, especially of the common herring, esteemed a great delicacy by epicures in England.
A small translucent fish (Salanx Chinensis) abundant at certain seasons on the coasts of China and Japan, and used in the same manner as the European whitebait.


Winged Wheel Used in mystic philosophy worldwide, depicted under many forms, whether as a winged wheel, globe, egg, disk, etc. The Stanzas of Dzyan state that “Fohat takes five strides, and builds a winged wheel at each corner of the square for the four holy ones.” Here winged wheel is a name for the four Maharajas who are the guardians or regents of the cosmic forces of the cardinal points north, south, east, and west (SD 1:122).

Writing on the symbol of the egg which is often depicted as floating above a mummy, Blavatsky says: “This is the symbol of hope and the promise of a second birth for the Osirified dead; his Soul, after due purification in the Amenti, will gestate in this egg of immortality, to be reborn from it into a new life on earth. For this Egg, in the esoteric Doctrine, is the Devachan, the abode of Bliss; the winged scarabeus being alike a symbol of it” (SD 1:365).

Yaksha ::: A type of elemental of Earth within Indian tradition. Depicted as fierce and stout guardians of the treasures of the earth.



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1:The earth's uplook to a remote Unknown
   Is a preface only of the epic climb
   Of human soul from its flat earthly state
   To the discovery of a greater self
   And the far gleam of an eternal Light.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Secret Knowledge,
2:Life and mind and their glory and debate
Are the slow prelude of a vaster theme,
    A sketch confused of a supernal plan,
        A preface to the epic of the Supreme. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Greater Plan,
3:To read Savitri is to witness a tremendous adventure in the interior realms; to witness and participate in a multidimensional quest. Because Savitri is cast in the mould of epic poetry or mahakavya, the requisite state of mind is one of openness and humility, similar to that of prayer. Each word and each phrase should ring in a 'solitude and an immensity', be heard in the 'listening spaces of the soul' and the 'inner acoustic space', and be seized by the deeper self when the mantric evocations come into effect. ~ Murali Sivaramakrishnan,
4:We begin our study of The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds, which is the second Book of Sri Aurobindo’s epic poem Savitri. It is the largest Book with as many as fifteen cantos. Sri Aurobindo mentions that originally it was to be only a small passage about Aswapathy and the worlds but as he went on working with the poem it extended to many thousands of lines. This Book contains descriptions of the whole series of worlds. In a sense it is the occult geography of the cosmos. ~ M P Pandit, The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds (Part I),
5:During a period of nearly fifty years... [Sri Aurobindo] created what is probably the greatest epic in the English language… I venture the judgment that it is the most comprehensive, integrated, beautiful and perfect cosmic poem ever composed. It ranges symbolically from a primordial cosmic void, through earth's darkness and struggles, to the highest realms of supramental spiritual existence, and illumines every important concern of man, through verse of unparalleled massiveness, magnificence, and metaphorical brilliance. Savitri is perhaps the most powerful artistic work in the world for expanding man's mind towards the Absolute». ~ Raymond Frank Piper,
6:The books I liked became a Bible from which I drew advice and support; I copied out long passages from them; I memorized new canticles and new litanies, psalms, proverbs, and prophecies, and I sanctified every incident in my life by the recital of these sacred texts. My emotions, my tears, and my hopes were no less sincere on account of that; the words and the cadences, the lines and the verses were not aids to make believe: but they rescued from silent oblivion all those intimate adventures of the spirit that I couldn't speak to anyone about; they created a kind of communion between myself and those twin souls which existed somewhere out of reach; instead of living out my small private existence, I was participating in a great spiritual epic. ~ Simone de Beauvoir,
7:A major part of the book is devoted to poetry. It opens with Sri Aurobindo's Savitri. The author has a novel way of appreciating this most wonderful epic, which continually overwhelms and bewilders us. He has taken this bewilderment as the subject of the chapter "An Uninitiated Reader's Response to Savitri". This is a rarely explored area, namely the magical poetic beauty of Savitri that casts a spell on the reader even when he does not always understand its content. For the lover of poetry is attracted by its "beauty and strength", "he is overawed by the grandeur of the animated spirituality". Any time spent with Savitri thus becomes a special moment in his life. Later in the book we find another kind of appreciation of the epic in the chapter on K. D. Sethna as a "crusader of aesthetic yoga". There the author calls Savitri the "Odyssey of Integral Yoga" where yoga and poetry come together. He also appreciates the "sensitive analysis of stylistic effect" by Sethna, who uses wonderful quotations from Savitri as examples of adequate style, effective style, illumined style, etc. (From the Near to Far by Dr. Saurendranth Basu) ~ Nandita Chatterjee, review of the book,
8:Inspiration is always a very uncertain thing; it comes when it chooses, stops suddenly before it has finished its work, refuses to descend when it is called. This is a well-known affliction, perhaps of all artists, but certainly of poets. There are some who can command it at will; those who, I think, are more full of an abundant poetic energy than careful for perfection; others who oblige it to come whenever they put pen to paper but with these the inspiration is either not of a high order or quite unequal in its levels. Again there are some who try to give it a habit of coming by always writing at the same time; Virgil with his nine lines first written, then perfected every morning, Milton with his fifty epic lines a day, are said to have succeeded in regularising their inspiration. It is, I suppose, the same principle which makes Gurus in India prescribe for their disciples a meditation at the same fixed hour every day. It succeeds partially of course, for some entirely, but not for everybody. For myself, when the inspiration did not come with a rush or in a stream,-for then there is no difficulty,-I had only one way, to allow a certain kind of incubation in which a large form of the thing to be done threw itself on the mind and then wait for the white heat in which the entire transcription could rapidly take place. But I think each poet has his own way of working and finds his own issue out of inspiration's incertitudes.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Inspiration and Effort - I,
9:Musa Spiritus :::

O Word concealed in the upper fire,
Thou who hast lingered through centuries,
Descend from thy rapt white desire,
Plunging through gold eternities.

Into the gulfs of our nature leap,
Voice of the spaces, call of the Light!
Break the seals of Matter's sleep,
Break the trance of the unseen height.

In the uncertain glow of human mind,
Its waste of unharmonied thronging thoughts,
Carve thy epic mountain-lined
Crowded with deep prophetic grots.

Let thy hue-winged lyrics hover like birds
Over the swirl of the heart's sea.
Touch into sight with thy fire-words
The blind indwelling deity.

O Muse of the Silence, the wideness make
In the unplumbed stillness that hears thy voice,
In the vast mute heavens of the spirit awake
Where thy eagles of Power flame and rejoice.

Out, out with the mind and its candles flares,
Light, light the suns that never die.
For my ear the cry of the seraph stars
And the forms of the Gods for my naked eye!

Let the little troubled life-god within
Cast his veils from the still soul,
His tiger-stripes of virtue and sin,
His clamour and glamour and thole and dole;

All make tranquil, all make free.
Let my heart-beats measure the footsteps of God
As He comes from His timeless infinity
To build in their rapture His burning abode.

Weave from my life His poem of days,
His calm pure dawns and His noons of force.
My acts for the grooves of His chariot-race,
My thoughts for the tramp of His great steeds' course! ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems,
10:I know some individuals who make this their daily practice: starting at the beginning and reading a canto or half a canto every day till they reach the end and then starting at the beginning again, and in that way they have gone through the whole of Savitri many times. When this is done in groups there's really no doubt that by this going through the whole soundbody of the epic from beginning to end aloud, there must be built up a very strong force field of vibrations. It is definitely of benefit to the people who participate in it. But again I would say that the effect or benefit of this sacrifice will be richer to the extent that the reading is done with understanding and above all with soul surrender. It shouldn't become a mere ritual.
Sri Aurobindo's mantric lines, repeated one after the other, will always have their power; but the power will be much greater if the mind can participate, and the will and the heart.
I have also heard of some groups who select one line that seems to have a particular mantric power and then within the group they chant that line many, many times. They concentrate on that one special line, and try to take its vibrations deep into themselves. Again I am sure that this is very beneficial to those who practice it.
In that way the words enter very deeply into the consciousness. There they resonate and do their work, and perhaps not just the surface meaning but the deeper meaning and the deeper vibrations may reveal their full depth to those who undertake this exercise if it is done with self-dedication, with a true aspiration to internalise the heart of the meaning, not just as a mere repetition.
At another end of the spectrum of possible approaches to Savitri, we can say there would be the aesthetic approach, the approach of enjoying it for its poetic beauty. I met a gentleman a couple of months ago, who told me, "We have faith in Sri Aurobindo, but it is so difficult to understand his books. We tried with The Life Divine, we tried with The Synthesis of Yoga but we found them so difficult. ~ collab summer & fall 2011,
11:So then let the Adept set this sigil upon all the Words he hath writ in the book of the Works of his Will. And let him then end all, saying: Such are the Words!2 For by this he maketh proclamation before all them that be about his Circle that these Words are true and puissant, binding what he would bind, and loosing what he would loose. Let the Adept perform this ritual right, perfect in every part thereof, once daily for one moon, then twice, at dawn and dusk, for two moons; next thrice, noon added, for three moons; afterwards, midnight making up his course, for four moons four times every day. Then let the Eleventh Moon be consecrated wholly to this Work; let him be instant in constant ardour, dismissing all but his sheer needs to eat and sleep.3 For know that the true Formula4 whose virtue sufficed the Beast in this Attainment, was thus:

INVOKE OFTEN

So may all men come at last to the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel: thus sayeth The Beast, and prayeth his own Angel that this Book be as a burning Lamp, and as a living Spring, for Light and Life to them that read therein.

1. There is an alternative spelling, TzBA-F, where the Root, "an Host," has the value of 93. The Practicus should revise this Ritual throughout in the Light of his personal researches in the Qabalah, and make it his own peculiar property. The spelling here suggested implies that he who utters the Word affirms his allegiance to the symbols 93 and 6; that he is a warrior in the army of Will, and of the Sun. 93 is also the number of AIWAZ and 6 of The Beast.
2. The consonants of LOGOS, "Word," add (Hebrew values) to 93 [reading the Sigma as Samekh = 60; reading it as Shin = 300 gives 333], and ΕΠΗ, "Words" (whence "Epic") has also that value; ΕΙ∆Ε ΤΑ ΕΠΗ might be the phrase here intended; its number is 418. This would then assert the accomplishment of the Great Work; this is the natural conclusion of the Ritual. Cf. CCXX, III, 75.
3. These needs are modified during the process of Initiation both as to quantity and quality. One should not become anxious about one's phyiscal or mental health on à priori grounds, but pay attention only to indubitable symptoms of distress should such arise. ~ Aleister Crowley, Liber Samekh,
12:HOW CAN I READ SAVITRI?
An open reply by Dr Alok Pandey to a fellow devotee

A GIFT OF LOVE TO THE WORLD
Most of all enjoy Savitri. It is Sri Aurobindo's gift of Love to the world. Read it from the heart with love and gratitude as companions and drown in its fiery bliss. That is the true understanding rather than one that comes by a constant churning of words in the head.

WHEN
Best would be to fix a time that works for you. One can always take out some time for the reading, even if it be late at night when one is done with all the daily works. Of course, a certain receptivity is needed. If one is too tired or the reading becomes too mechanical as a ritual routine to be somehow finished it tends to be less effective, as with anything else. Hence the advice is to read in a quiet receptive state.

THE PACE
As to the pace of reading it is best to slowly build up and keep it steady. To read a page or a passage daily is better than reading many pages one day and then few lines or none for days. This brings a certain discipline in the consciousness which makes one receptive. What it means is that one should fix up that one would read a few passages or a page or two daily, and then if an odd day one is enjoying and spontaneously wants to read more then one can go by the flow.

COMPLETE OR SELECTIONS?
It is best to read at least once from cover to cover. But if one is not feeling inclined for that do read some of the beautiful cantos and passages whose reference one can find in various places. This helps us familiarise with the epic and the style of poetry. Later one can go for the cover to cover reading.

READING ALOUD, SILENTLY, OR WRITING DOWN?
One can read it silently. Loud reading is needed only if one is unable to focus with silent reading. A mantra is more potent when read subtly. I am aware that some people recommend reading it aloud which is fine if that helps one better. A certain flexibility in these things is always good and rigid rules either ways are not helpful.

One can also write some of the beautiful passages with which one feels suddenly connected. It is a help in the yoga since such a writing involves the pouring in of the consciousness of Savitri through the brain and nerves and the hand.

Reflecting upon some of these magnificent lines and passages while one is engaged in one\s daily activities helps to create a background state for our inner being to get absorbed in Savitri more and more.

HOW DO I UNDERSTAND THE MEANING? DO I NEED A DICTIONARY?
It is helpful if a brief background about the Canto is known. This helps the mind top focus and also to keep in sync with the overall scene and sense of what is being read.

But it is best not to keep referring to the dictionary while reading. Let the overall sense emerge. Specifics can be done during a detailed reading later and it may not be necessary at all. Besides the sense that Sri Aurobindo has given to many words may not be accurately conveyed by the standard dictionaries. A flexibility is required to understand the subtle suggestions hinted at by the Master-poet.

In this sense Savitri is in the line of Vedic poetry using images that are at once profound as well as commonplace. That is the beauty of mystic poetry. These are things actually experienced and seen by Sri Aurobindo, and ultimately it is Their Grace that alone can reveal the intrinsic sense of this supreme revelation of the Supreme. ~ Dr Alok Pandey,
13:It does not matter if you do not understand it - Savitri, read it always. You will see that every time you read it, something new will be revealed to you. Each time you will get a new glimpse, each time a new experience; things which were not there, things you did not understand arise and suddenly become clear. Always an unexpected vision comes up through the words and lines. Every time you try to read and understand, you will see that something is added, something which was hidden behind is revealed clearly and vividly. I tell you the very verses you have read once before, will appear to you in a different light each time you re-read them. This is what happens invariably. Always your experience is enriched, it is a revelation at each step.

But you must not read it as you read other books or newspapers. You must read with an empty head, a blank and vacant mind, without there being any other thought; you must concentrate much, remain empty, calm and open; then the words, rhythms, vibrations will penetrate directly to this white page, will put their stamp upon the brain, will explain themselves without your making any effort.

Savitri alone is sufficient to make you climb to the highest peaks. If truly one knows how to meditate on Savitri, one will receive all the help one needs. For him who wishes to follow this path, it is a concrete help as though the Lord himself were taking you by the hand and leading you to the destined goal. And then, every question, however personal it may be, has its answer here, every difficulty finds its solution herein; indeed there is everything that is necessary for doing the Yoga.

*He has crammed the whole universe in a single book.* It is a marvellous work, magnificent and of an incomparable perfection.

You know, before writing Savitri Sri Aurobindo said to me, *I am impelled to launch on a new adventure; I was hesitant in the beginning, but now I am decided. Still, I do not know how far I shall succeed. I pray for help.* And you know what it was? It was - before beginning, I warn you in advance - it was His way of speaking, so full of divine humility and modesty. He never... *asserted Himself*. And the day He actually began it, He told me: *I have launched myself in a rudderless boat upon the vastness of the Infinite.* And once having started, He wrote page after page without intermission, as though it were a thing already complete up there and He had only to transcribe it in ink down here on these pages.

In truth, the entire form of Savitri has descended "en masse" from the highest region and Sri Aurobindo with His genius only arranged the lines - in a superb and magnificent style. Sometimes entire lines were revealed and He has left them intact; He worked hard, untiringly, so that the inspiration could come from the highest possible summit. And what a work He has created! Yes, it is a true creation in itself. It is an unequalled work. Everything is there, and it is put in such a simple, such a clear form; verses perfectly harmonious, limpid and eternally true. My child, I have read so many things, but I have never come across anything which could be compared with Savitri. I have studied the best works in Greek, Latin, English and of course French literature, also in German and all the great creations of the West and the East, including the great epics; but I repeat it, I have not found anywhere anything comparable with Savitri. All these literary works seems to me empty, flat, hollow, without any deep reality - apart from a few rare exceptions, and these too represent only a small fraction of what Savitri is. What grandeur, what amplitude, what reality: it is something immortal and eternal He has created. I tell you once again there is nothing like in it the whole world. Even if one puts aside the vision of the reality, that is, the essential substance which is the heart of the inspiration, and considers only the lines in themselves, one will find them unique, of the highest classical kind. What He has created is something man cannot imagine. For, everything is there, everything.

It may then be said that Savitri is a revelation, it is a meditation, it is a quest of the Infinite, the Eternal. If it is read with this aspiration for Immortality, the reading itself will serve as a guide to Immortality. To read Savitri is indeed to practice Yoga, spiritual concentration; one can find there all that is needed to realise the Divine. Each step of Yoga is noted here, including the secret of all other Yogas. Surely, if one sincerely follows what is revealed here in each line one will reach finally the transformation of the Supramental Yoga. It is truly the infallible guide who never abandons you; its support is always there for him who wants to follow the path. Each verse of Savitri is like a revealed Mantra which surpasses all that man possessed by way of knowledge, and I repeat this, the words are expressed and arranged in such a way that the sonority of the rhythm leads you to the origin of sound, which is OM.

My child, yes, everything is there: mysticism, occultism, philosophy, the history of evolution, the history of man, of the gods, of creation, of Nature. How the universe was created, why, for what purpose, what destiny - all is there. You can find all the answers to all your questions there. Everything is explained, even the future of man and of the evolution, all that nobody yet knows. He has described it all in beautiful and clear words so that spiritual adventurers who wish to solve the mysteries of the world may understand it more easily. But this mystery is well hidden behind the words and lines and one must rise to the required level of true consciousness to discover it. All prophesies, all that is going to come is presented with the precise and wonderful clarity. Sri Aurobindo gives you here the key to find the Truth, to discover the Consciousness, to solve the problem of what the universe is. He has also indicated how to open the door of the Inconscience so that the light may penetrate there and transform it. He has shown the path, the way to liberate oneself from the ignorance and climb up to the superconscience; each stage, each plane of consciousness, how they can be scaled, how one can cross even the barrier of death and attain immortality. You will find the whole journey in detail, and as you go forward you can discover things altogether unknown to man. That is Savitri and much more yet. It is a real experience - reading Savitri. All the secrets that man possessed, He has revealed, - as well as all that awaits him in the future; all this is found in the depth of Savitri. But one must have the knowledge to discover it all, the experience of the planes of consciousness, the experience of the Supermind, even the experience of the conquest of Death. He has noted all the stages, marked each step in order to advance integrally in the integral Yoga.

All this is His own experience, and what is most surprising is that it is my own experience also. It is my sadhana which He has worked out. Each object, each event, each realisation, all the descriptions, even the colours are exactly what I saw and the words, phrases are also exactly what I heard. And all this before having read the book. I read Savitri many times afterwards, but earlier, when He was writing He used to read it to me. Every morning I used to hear Him read Savitri. During the night He would write and in the morning read it to me. And I observed something curious, that day after day the experiences He read out to me in the morning were those I had had the previous night, word by word. Yes, all the descriptions, the colours, the pictures I had seen, the words I had heard, all, all, I heard it all, put by Him into poetry, into miraculous poetry. Yes, they were exactly my experiences of the previous night which He read out to me the following morning. And it was not just one day by chance, but for days and days together. And every time I used to compare what He said with my previous experiences and they were always the same. I repeat, it was not that I had told Him my experiences and that He had noted them down afterwards, no, He knew already what I had seen. It is my experiences He has presented at length and they were His experiences also. It is, moreover, the picture of Our joint adventure into the unknown or rather into the Supermind.

These are experiences lived by Him, realities, supracosmic truths. He experienced all these as one experiences joy or sorrow, physically. He walked in the darkness of inconscience, even in the neighborhood of death, endured the sufferings of perdition, and emerged from the mud, the world-misery to breathe the sovereign plenitude and enter the supreme Ananda. He crossed all these realms, went through the consequences, suffered and endured physically what one cannot imagine. Nobody till today has suffered like Him. He accepted suffering to transform suffering into the joy of union with the Supreme. It is something unique and incomparable in the history of the world. It is something that has never happened before, He is the first to have traced the path in the Unknown, so that we may be able to walk with certitude towards the Supermind. He has made the work easy for us. Savitri is His whole Yoga of transformation, and this Yoga appears now for the first time in the earth-consciousness.

And I think that man is not yet ready to receive it. It is too high and too vast for him. He cannot understand it, grasp it, for it is not by the mind that one can understand Savitri. One needs spiritual experiences in order to understand and assimilate it. The farther one advances on the path of Yoga, the more does one assimilate and the better. No, it is something which will be appreciated only in the future, it is the poetry of tomorrow of which He has spoken in The Future Poetry. It is too subtle, too refined, - it is not in the mind or through the mind, it is in meditation that Savitri is revealed.

And men have the audacity to compare it with the work of Virgil or Homer and to find it inferior. They do not understand, they cannot understand. What do they know? Nothing at all. And it is useless to try to make them understand. Men will know what it is, but in a distant future. It is only the new race with a new consciousness which will be able to understand. I assure you there is nothing under the blue sky to compare with Savitri. It is the mystery of mysteries. It is a *super-epic,* it is super-literature, super-poetry, super-vision, it is a super-work even if one considers the number of lines He has written. No, these human words are not adequate to describe Savitri. Yes, one needs superlatives, hyperboles to describe it. It is a hyper-epic. No, words express nothing of what Savitri is, at least I do not find them. It is of immense value - spiritual value and all other values; it is eternal in its subject, and infinite in its appeal, miraculous in its mode and power of execution; it is a unique thing, the more you come into contact with it, the higher will you be uplifted. Ah, truly it is something! It is the most beautiful thing He has left for man, the highest possible. What is it? When will man know it? When is he going to lead a life of truth? When is he going to accept this in his life? This yet remains to be seen.

My child, every day you are going to read Savitri; read properly, with the right attitude, concentrating a little before opening the pages and trying to keep the mind as empty as possible, absolutely without a thought. The direct road is through the heart. I tell you, if you try to really concentrate with this aspiration you can light the flame, the psychic flame, the flame of purification in a very short time, perhaps in a few days. What you cannot do normally, you can do with the help of Savitri. Try and you will see how very different it is, how new, if you read with this attitude, with this something at the back of your consciousness; as though it were an offering to Sri Aurobindo. You know it is charged, fully charged with consciousness; as if Savitri were a being, a real guide. I tell you, whoever, wanting to practice Yoga, tries sincerely and feels the necessity for it, will be able to climb with the help of Savitri to the highest rung of the ladder of Yoga, will be able to find the secret that Savitri represents. And this without the help of a Guru. And he will be able to practice it anywhere. For him Savitri alone will be the guide, for all that he needs he will find Savitri. If he remains very quiet when before a difficulty, or when he does not know where to turn to go forward and how to overcome obstacles, for all these hesitations and incertitudes which overwhelm us at every moment, he will have the necessary indications, and the necessary concrete help. If he remains very calm, open, if he aspires sincerely, always he will be as if lead by the hand. If he has faith, the will to give himself and essential sincerity he will reach the final goal.

Indeed, Savitri is something concrete, living, it is all replete, packed with consciousness, it is the supreme knowledge above all human philosophies and religions. It is the spiritual path, it is Yoga, Tapasya, Sadhana, in its single body. Savitri has an extraordinary power, it gives out vibrations for him who can receive them, the true vibrations of each stage of consciousness. It is incomparable, it is truth in its plenitude, the Truth Sri Aurobindo brought down on the earth. My child, one must try to find the secret that Savitri represents, the prophetic message Sri Aurobindo reveals there for us. This is the work before you, it is hard but it is worth the trouble. - 5 November 1967

~ The Mother, Sweet Mother, The Mother to Mona Sarkar, [T0],

*** WISDOM TROVE ***

1:All bad writers are in love with the epic. ~ ernest-hemingway, @wisdomtrove
2:Your life was meant to be epic. Stand up for your best today. ~ robin-sharma, @wisdomtrove
3:The ode lives upon the ideal, the epic upon the grandiose, the drama upon the real. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove
4:Your life is meant to be an epic story. How you think, perform and live today is part of that script. ~ robin-sharma, @wisdomtrove
5:Eschew the monumental. Shun the Epic. All the guys who can paint great big pictures can paint great small ones. ~ ernest-hemingway, @wisdomtrove
6:The true epic of our times is not "Arm's and the Man," but "Tools and the Man"&
7:As you know, I describe Shirat ha-Yam as part of an epic story that has qualities of history and which also has qualities of the mythological, of an epic. ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove
8:I am not a great man, but sometimes I think the impersonal and objective equality of my talent and the sacrifices of it, in pieces, to preserve its essential value has some sort of epic grandeur. ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove
9:There is the happiness which comes from creative effort. The joy of dreaming, creating, building, whether in painting a picture, writing an epic, singing a song, composing a symphony, devising new invention, creating a vast industry. ~ henry-miller, @wisdomtrove
10:The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal. Some of their most esteemed inventions have no other apparent purpose - for example, the dinner party of more than two, the epic poem, and the science of metaphysics. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove
11:Six billion of us walking the planet, six billion smaller worlds on the bigger one. Shoe salesmen and short-order cooks who look boring from the outside - some have weirder lives than you. Six billion stories, every one an epic, full of tragedy and triumph, good and evil, despair and hope. You and me - we aren't so special, bro. ~ dean-koontz, @wisdomtrove
12:And this huge realization brings us to the happy ending. When we know that we are one with everything and everyone, we find ourselves in love with everything and everyone, because love is how oneness feels. When we’re conscious of the oneness of being, we fall in love with all beings. We simply love being. So our epic fable turns out to be a love story … and that’s what makes it worth telling. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove

*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***

1:Okay, this is epic. ~ Ben Shapiro,
2:Epic fail, Cameron, ~ Morgan Parker,
3:Shun epic verse. ~ Bernard Cornwell,
4:Epic is a state of mind. ~ Kim Holden,
5:Everybody lives an epic. ~ James Cook,
6:Okay guys, this is epic! ~ Ben Shapiro,
7:You are brave. [...] Do epic. ~ Kim Holden,
8:You do epic like no one else. ~ Kim Holden,
9:Be awesome. Do epic shit. ~ Johnny B Truant,
10:Even their downtime was epic. ~ Robert Kurson,
11:There commenced an epic snit. ~ Michael Perry,
12:which made for some epic selfies. ~ J D Barker,
13:You’re new motto is this: do epic. ~ Kim Holden,
14:Each thought was epic yet minuscule. ~ Aleatha Romig,
15:It is the neon epic of Saturday night. ~ Don DeLillo,
16:You are my most epic adventure, princess. ~ B N Toler,
17:My life is a vast inconsequential epic. ~ Jack Kerouac,
18:Every day became an epic of endurance. ~ Charles Baxter,
19:Man is lyrical, woman epic, marriage dramatic. ~ Novalis,
20:Physicists often quote from T. H. White's epic novel ,
21:Stop waiting for permission to be epic. ~ Johnny B Truant,
22:Work on nothing less than epic scale ~ Francis Ford Coppola,
23:All bad writers are in love with the epic. ~ Ernest Hemingway,
24:All bad writers are in love with the epic. ~ Sonallah Ibrahim,
25:This is epic monument-style shit we're in. ~ Elizabeth Norris,
26:I don’t just want a man. I want an epic romance. ~ Abbi Glines,
27:Do you know which is the greatest epic till date? ~ Hari Kumar K,
28:It can’t be epic if there’s no challenge to it. ~ Jennifer E Smith,
29:It was epic. It was awkward. It was epically awkward. ~ Ally Carter,
30:To be epic, all I'd need to do is to do epic shit. ~ Johnny B Truant,
31:You are epic fail if you think you are better than me! ~ Jordan Rudess,
32:your shit needs to be more epic. level it up broseph ~ Johnny B Truant,
33:An epic is the easiest kind of picture to make badly. ~ Charlton Heston,
34:My darlings, if I can't write dark, epic music, I can't live! ~ Amy Lee,
35:Not everything epic is meant for a worldwide audience. ~ Rebecca Yarros,
36:Feminine passion is to masculine as an epic is to an epigram. ~ Karl Kraus,
37:The evolutionary epic is ... the best myth we will ever have. ~ E O Wilson,
38:I love all things Queen - their songs are epic storytelling. ~ Nina Arianda,
39:I wanted to write a big novel, something epic in scale. ~ George R R Martin,
40:Be awesome. Do epic shit. Do it now. The clock is ticking. ~ Johnny B Truant,
41:Your life was meant to be epic. Stand up for your best today. ~ Robin Sharma,
42:I have great moments of epic stupidity like everyone else. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon,
43:Destiny wasn’t exciting or romantic or epic. It was annoying. ~ Danielle Paige,
44:It was a kiss small in its ministrations but epic in its feeling. ~ Libba Bray,
45:No, she learned that true love was epic stuff, as told by Mary. ~ Harriet Evans,
46:epic romances don’t just happen. We have to make them ourselves. ~ Marissa Meyer,
47:History is nothing if not an epic tale of missed opportunities. ~ Graydon Carter,
48:Every epic climax needs a good theme song,” he quips, forcing a smile. ~ S T Abby,
49:I'd love to be able to write crazy epic plots. I'm working on it. ~ Jami Attenberg,
50:Our sense of calling should be like an unfolding epic adventure. ~ Christine Caine,
51:Well, I guess we all can't have epic loves at such a young age. ~ Jennifer E Smith,
52:I've read 'Valley of the Dolls' at least four times. It's so epic! ~ Ashley Madekwe,
53:Stop being a pussy and go do something amazing. *** DO EPIC SHIT. ~ Johnny B Truant,
54:To end so abruptly was such an odd conclusion to our epic adventure. ~ Lauren Graham,
55:Every epic, my friend Jack used to say, should start with a burning map. ~ Hal Duncan,
56:For believers in true, epic, soul-shattering love. This one’s for you.   ~ Tillie Cole,
57:We must help men and women see the epic in the ordinary details of life. ~ Matt Chandler,
58:You mean you have to be epic already, for it to make you more epic? ~ Karen Marie Moning,
59:Epic literature is not history but is again a way of looking at the past. ~ Romila Thapar,
60:I love big budgeted, epic rock landscapes. That's what turns me on. ~ Melissa Auf der Maur,
61:There's something epic that happens every day if you look hard enough for it. ~ Kim Holden,
62:There’s something epic that happens every day if you look hard enough for it. ~ Kim Holden,
63:You are brave...
Now go... do epic!
That's an order.
Do it.
Please. ~ Kim Holden,
64:Dare to dream, live with passion. Make your life an epic extraordinary adventure! ~ Nik Halik,
65:Maybe great, epic romances don't just happen. We have to make them ourselves. ~ Marissa Meyer,
66:If epic poetry is a definite species, the sagas do not fall within it. ~ Lascelles Abercrombie,
67:let the stress and the sadness and the anger go. It’s time to do epic again, dude. ~ Kim Holden,
68:In physics: It’s called simultaneity. In music: rhythm. In your life: epic failure. ~ Laura Dave,
69:I want to do character driven epic storylines with Throne of Atlantis kicking off. ~ Geoff Johns,
70:All of us, each and every one, lives a life that is, in its own right, an epic. ~ Richard Hammond,
71:I actually do think the history is so epic that it actually kind of writes itself. ~ David Talbot,
72:In your head, you’re the star of an epic movie based on your amazing fucking life.  ~ Bryan Smith,
73:The ode lives upon the ideal, the epic upon the grandiose, the drama upon the real. ~ Victor Hugo,
74:ancient audiences interpreted the epic event to reflect their own particular worldview. ~ Anonymous,
75:He could write an epic poem about her ass. And all the ways he wanted to defile it. ~ R G Alexander,
76:The Hunger Games has epic spectacle, yearning romance and suspense that won't quit! ~ Peter Travers,
77:It is an epic battle. Man versus hard-on. Man rarely wins. Boners are too powerful. ~ Lauren Blakely,
78:Pure draughtsmen are philosophers and dialecticians. Colourists are epic poets. ~ Charles Baudelaire,
79:That was the most epic rejection I’ve ever seen,” Kelly said, snickering behind his hand. ~ Anonymous,
80:Ruined. You're going to ruin me for anyone else, Reya Cabrera."- One Epic Night (prequel) ~ L H Cosway,
81:The calibre of TV's changing. It's becoming much more epic. To rival film, definitely. ~ Emilia Clarke,
82:I love television. I think we're in a renaissance of epic proportion in television now. ~ Dennis Lehane,
83:Driving is like karaoke – your own is epic, other people’s is just embarrassing or alarming. ~ Ruth Ware,
84:One doesn't just wander unvetted into someone else's epic interstellar future history. ~ Edward M Lerner,
85:She’d made it a game. Hide-and-seek, Rambo style. The most epic game of hide-and-seek ever. ~ Maya Banks,
86:Bending down, I press a firm kiss to her forehead. “You are my most epic adventure, princess. ~ B N Toler,
87:Shower first. Epic bitch-out session second, sincere apology third, and then sleep. ~ Jennifer L Armentrout,
88:Shower first. Epic b****-out session second, sincere apology third, and then sleep. ~ Jennifer L Armentrout,
89:A lot of people, when you ask if they want to read your epic poem, start bolting for the door. ~ Toby Barlow,
90:I pulled back, my eyes still closed, knowing that I had just stolen an epic moment from life. ~ Leylah Attar,
91:The first epics were intended for recitation; the literary epic is meant to be read. ~ Lascelles Abercrombie,
92:I feel like an epic fail right now. Like I’m the captain of my own personal failboat. ~ Jennifer L Armentrout,
93:This is absurd. This is awful. This isn’t how people show loyalty. This is epic, epic bullshit. ~ Holly Black,
94:There is grand romance in The Lord of the Rings. It's an important part of epic literature. ~ Kevin J Anderson,
95:The thing about sports movies is, they can't help but feel epic - putting music to images, etc. ~ Lindsey Shaw,
96:Do epic," I remind him.
"Do epic," he repeats. Repetition is the key. Someday he'll believe it. ~ Kim Holden,
97:EPIC NAPPING! A NAP THAT WILL BE IMMORTALIZED FOR ALL TIME! A NAP FIT FOR THE KINGS OF ALL BEASTS! ~ Dixie Lyle,
98:Not that length and weight alone indicate excellence; many epic tales are pretty much epic crap. ~ Stephen King,
99:The clash is epic and internal, between the ego and the Self, and the stakes are our lives. ~ Steven Pressfield,
100:The true evolutionary epic, retold as poetry, is as intrinsically ennobling as any religious epic. ~ E O Wilson,
101:It’s a known fact that in certain contexts people’s great strengths become their epic failings. ~ A S A Harrison,
102:One day I will write an ode about kissing. I will call it "Ode to a Kiss".

It will be epic. ~ Nicola Yoon,
103:My secret dream is to write an epic poem. That's probably the most pretentious thing I've said. ~ Laurie Anderson,
104:ONE DAY I WILL WRITE AN ODE about kissing. I will call it 'Ode to a Kiss.'

It will be epic. ~ Nicola Yoon,
105:The terror of the unforeseen is what the science of history hides, turning a disaster into an epic. ~ Philip Roth,
106:Wouldn't it help you to realize that you really do live in an epic if your life had a soundtrack? ~ John Eldredge,
107:Grey's' is just a machine. I wasn't really prepared for the epic nature of how popular the show is. ~ Kevin McKidd,
108:Never doubt my weaseling abilities, Shadowhunter, for they are epic and memorable in their scope. ~ Cassandra Clare,
109:The art of storytelling is reaching its end because the epic side of truth, wisdom, is dying out. ~ Walter Benjamin,
110:I had begun to perceive my genitals as imaginary beasts in some epic fourteenth-century Scottish poem. ~ Steve Toltz,
111:In order to make a great, epic movie, you have to have the four Bs - babes, bullets, blood and blades. ~ Danny Trejo,
112:Your life is meant to be an epic story. How you think, perform and live today is part of that script. ~ Robin Sharma,
113:Considered subjectively, philosophy always begins in the middle, like an epic poem. ~ Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel,
114:I've been dealing with epic images, and I realized all of a sudden that I grew up in the age of epics. ~ Robert Longo,
115:The epic battle of our generation is between the status quo of mass and the never-ceasing tide of weird. ~ Seth Godin,
116:The narrator commands the Muse, “Tell me”: enn-epe. An epic poem is, at its root, simply a tale that is told. ~ Homer,
117:Her reputation for reading a great deal hung about her like the cloudy envelope of a goddess in an epic. ~ Henry James,
118:I have aspirations of making a big, historical epic. I don't know if I'll ever get the money to do it. ~ Cary Fukunaga,
119:Quest are epic. Quest take forever. We don't have forever. I don't know that we have much time at all. ~ Andrea Cremer,
120:Troy is based on the epic poem The Iliad by Homer , according to the credits. Homer's estate should sue. ~ Roger Ebert,
121:The culture of the Epic Fail, in its rituals of comic sacrifice, is a culture of sublimated predation. ~ Mark O Connell,
122:There's never been a fantasy movie of the epic battle of good versus evil that ended with evil winning. ~ David Benioff,
123:While war for love is inspiring in legends and epic poems, we must be governed by cynical pragmatism. ~ James L Cambias,
124:God is telling an amazing, glorious, epic story. We have to decide if we will trust Him with it. ~ Steven Curtis Chapman,
125:I'm beginning to think that maybe great, epic romances don't just happen. We have to make them ourselves. ~ Marissa Meyer,
126:alive who have read the three complete volumes of the ageless epic La Araucana, in rhyme and old Spanish. ~ Isabel Allende,
127:A travesty of epic proportions,” Tock agreed. “How much you wanna bet they couldn’t even turn the computer on? ~ T J Klune,
128:Humans enter this world and awaken to a simple truth: We must find our story with this great epic of being. ~ Brian Swimme,
129:I hate being driven—driving is like karaoke—your own is epic, other people’s is just embarrassing or alarming. ~ Ruth Ware,
130:What are you thinking about?"
"Whether they'll write my life story as a tragedy or an epic fantasy. ~ Maggie Stiefvater,
131:Are you kidding me? We’re going to steal a cop car. How could I not be naked for this story? It’s going to be epic. ~ Tijan,
132:...all these epic battles and monsters lately - but love is a tiny world and I prefer a more personal style... ~ John Geddes,
133:The trip was to be an odyssey in the fullest sense of the word, an epic journey that would change everything. ~ Jon Krakauer,
134:We take a snapshot of our teens in their current phase and mistake it for the epic movie of their entire life. ~ Wendy Mogel,
135:The Fourth Crusade was an epic clusterfuck a comic-opera misadventure a tragic saga with farcical elements. ~ Neal Stephenson,
136:A pair of legs engineered to defy the laws of physics and a mindset to master the most epic of splits. ~ Jean Claude Van Damme,
137:It was with the advent of the Laudie London era that I realized the whole teenage epic was tottering to doom. ~ Colin MacInnes,
138:There’s a Heartrender at the Little Palace who can recite epic poetry for hours. Then you’d wish you had died. ~ Leigh Bardugo,
139:this was all evidence of the tradition at work, of Homer being more interested in epic music than its meaning. ~ Adam Nicolson,
140:You are just a murdered. (Near) (btw this was an epic win on near's part when light spazzed out and went crazy) ~ Tsugumi Ohba,
141:Everyone here is armed,” observed Ben to his companions. Rhys sarcastically replied, “The bar fights must be epic. ~ A C Cobble,
142:Helpless and fearful people are drawn to magical figures, mythic figures, epic men who intimidate and darkly loom. ~ Don DeLillo,
143:I am a fucking puppet of epic proportions, he thought to himself. Just what I always wanted to be when I grew up. ~ Caisey Quinn,
144:Never mind the stillness -
the deep sleeps to awake.

- The Epic of Sheik Bedreddin, Verse 6. ~ N z m Hikmet Ran,
145:I hate being driven—driving is like karaoke—your own is epic, other people’s is just embarrassing or alarming.” “Well ~ Ruth Ware,
146:I met a girl. We talked. It was epic. But then the sun came up and reality set in. Well, this is reality. Right here, ~ L J Smith,
147:Life, I announced, is not a B picture. Well, it ain't no De Mille epic either, boss. Things'll work out, Bernie. ~ Lawrence Block,
148:Eschew the monumental. Shun the Epic. All the guys who can paint great big pictures can paint great small ones. ~ Ernest Hemingway,
149:I looked up to the Heavens gauging the distance. Maybe I could catapult Raphael back with an epic kick to the ass. ~ Ashlan Thomas,
150:That our age is thought to be less epic than those worlds on offer at natural history museums is only an illusion. ~ Peter Brannen,
151:The true epic of our times is not "Arm's and the Man," but "Tools and the Man"--an infinitely wider kind of epic. ~ Thomas Carlyle,
152:Nice teeth is a turn on for me. If you open your mouth and it looks like a battle of epic proportions, I don't like it. ~ Dane Cook,
153:All the elements of an Epic poem are found in Tragedy, but the elements of a Tragedy are not all found in the Epic poem. ~ Aristotle,
154:ELANTRIS is a new BEN HUR for the fantasy genre, with a sweeping, epic storyline and closely personal characters. ~ Kevin J Anderson,
155:How does one lift one’s own life out of the mundane and into something epic? Surely one should be brave enough to love? ~ Jojo Moyes,
156:Time spent with Trump on the campaign plane was often an epic dissing experience: everybody around him was an idiot. ~ Michael Wolff,
157:I like the idea of building this wandering, epic narrative in a form that people don't expect epic narratives to appear. ~ Lucas Neff,
158:You're the wildcard Mac. I've thought that since the beginning. This thing thinks you're epic. So do I. -Barrons ~ Karen Marie Moning,
159:But I had no idea what I looked like. Children may feel epic and large to theyselves and yet be only scraps to view. ~ Sebastian Barry,
160:Cut quarrels out of literature, and you will have very little history or drama or fiction or epic poetry left. ~ Robert Staughton Lynd,
161:I need you honey, just for tonight. Just give me tonight and then you can decide if you want to keep me."- One Epic Night ~ L H Cosway,
162:I wrote a graphic novel called 'Soul Stealer' with big, beautiful, epic artwork by Chris Shy. It grew into a trilogy. ~ Michael Easton,
163:Millions of characters, each with their own epic narratives singing it’s hard to be an angel until you’ve been a demon. ~ Kate Tempest,
164:[Beowolf] is considered an epic because of its long speeches, its digressions, its repetition, and its being required. ~ Richard Armour,
165:Nothing will snuff out what has begun to rage between us. An inferno. A fiery explosion of epic proportions. We are the sun ~ Ker Dukey,
166:between 1195 and 1220, Wolfram composed his epic romance Parzival, he conferred on the Templars a most exalted status. ~ Michael Baigent,
167:She'd better be okay. Otherwise the world was going to see a bloodbath of epic proportions in the organized game world. ~ Nancy Haviland,
168:The library committee had an epic secret meeting about the ethics of literary eugenics which ended in a furious deadlock. ~ Lev Grossman,
169:If a chap can't compose an epic poem while he's weaving tapestry, he had better shut up, he'll never do any good at all. ~ William Morris,
170:I will be lost and unlost, over
and over again, relax love. You
were meant to be this glorious.
Epic. Story. ~ Nayyirah Waheed,
171:More often than not, a hero’s most epic battle is the one you never see; it’s the battle that goes on within him or herself. ~ Kevin Smith,
172:I want the Reader of Words to scan it before I send.” She bent down and pressed a kiss to his neck. “Our story’s pretty epic. ~ Kresley Cole,
173:Those who realize the epic story of life is not about them but actually about the people around them somehow win in the end. ~ Donald Miller,
174:I think American drama is at its best when it takes the domestic and makes it epic, like a Greek tragedy in the front room. ~ Anne Marie Duff,
175:I think it's essential to make new music now, and to try and make epic records now, and not rely on what happened in the past. ~ Jason Pierce,
176:You have to be doing things that matter - responsibility, but also responsibility with epic and beautiful and noble tasks. ~ Michelle Bachelet,
177:That was the part of the epic story about coming back from the dead, being restored to life. “He is risen,” it says. He is risen. ~ Terry Hayes,
178:That’s when great things happen.  Not good things … but epic things. And I’ve fallen in love with epic.  It’s the only way to live. ~ Kim Holden,
179:The wise will admire you. The wishful will envy you. The weak will hate you. This is the reality for those who dare to be epic. ~ Steve Maraboli,
180:I listened in amazement. You saw a face on an American street, or in an office, and you had no idea that a tragic epic lay behind it. ~ Greg Iles,
181:The cultural work done in the past by gods and epic sagas is now done by laundry-detergent commercials and comic-strip character ~ Roland Barthes,
182:Epic is a word we often hear overused these days.
Epic is Echoes or the guitar solo in Comfortably Numb.
THAT is "Epic. ~ Sienna McQuillen,
183:Lincoln' is a powerful film. It's one of those epic films that talk about this very specific issue in history of the United States. ~ Demian Bichir,
184:When I think of the play of force and matter, and all the tremendous struggle of it, I feel as if I could write an epic on the grass. ~ Jack London,
185:An epic without a focus - without a single action, a coherent plot, a single terrible point to make - was just a very long poem. ~ Daniel Mendelsohn,
186:I don't think the latest Star Wars pictures have any artistic intentions, but the original picture opened up epic science fiction. ~ William Monahan,
187:the romance, mystery, intrigue, love, betrayal, and majesty of the greatest epic. As you read, I believe your spirit will soar and your ~ Beth Moore,
188:His tales took on the form of an epic poem, and I felt I was hearing some Canadian Homer reciting his Iliad of the High Arctic regions. ~ Jules Verne,
189:There’s something epic that happens every day if you look hard enough for it. And every day is a chance to go out there and do epic. The ~ Kim Holden,
190:I love reading epic fantasies and big fat books and so I really wanted to write one. I think you always write what you want to read. ~ Cassandra Clare,
191:The Wardens put on their own epic production of Fahrenheit 451," Bob said. "They spent about twenty years finding and destroying copies. ~ Jim Butcher,
192:The Wardens put on their own epic production of Fahrenheit 452," Bob said. "They spent about twenty years finding and destroying copies. ~ Jim Butcher,
193:Ain't no way I'm letting her out of this now. Not after that confession. It was as epic as the fucking storm and ten times as unexpected. ~ C M Stunich,
194:Aristotle was to verge from his mentor in the Poetics, recognizing the light both tragic drama and epic poetry shed on the human condition. ~ Aristotle,
195:Cardiff Stadium was a warm up for the 3 Hyde Park shows. James Brown opened. And I think it may be the only time we played Mini Epic live. ~ Chad Smith,
196:In the last two years 24 countries have set new all-time temperature records. We've seen flooding on an epic scale in every continent . ~ Bill McKibben,
197:To everyone who has lost love and been lucky enough to find it again. To second chances and the epic romances that sweep us off our feet. ~ Bella Jewel,
198:Yeah, but he's a douche," Amara continues to hold out. "I mean like, epic-level super-douche. He's like the Lich King of Douchebaggery. ~ Miranda Martin,
199:I want epic love, like you see in the movies. I want it so desperately that it fills my heart when I even think about the possibility of it. ~ L H Cosway,
200:Yeah but he's a douche," Amara continues to hold out. "I mean like epic level super-douche. He's like the Lich King of Douchebaggery." I ~ Miranda Martin,
201:She's useful to me, I'm useful to her. As long as that continues, Rowan Street is safe from an old-lady smack down of epic proportions. ~ Kelley Armstrong,
202:I’m the cheerleader for all hair-brained schemes. You only live once, and I plan to skid into those pearly gates with a boatload of epic tales. ~ J A DeRouen,
203:Jesus didn't die on the cross so we can do something epic. He died so we can have a relationship with an epic God who moves in epic ways! ~ Alisa Hope Wagner,
204:Sometimes I marveled at how grown-up we’d all become, and then Dick would recite a sixteen-stanza penis-based epic poem, and I’d take it back. ~ Molly Harper,
205:Does it hurt?”
He bent his head and lightly kissed her forehead. “Only when I laugh.”
“I’ll try not to be funny.”
Epic fail, beautiful. ~ Rachel Caine,
206:It is in times of superlative hardship that individuals live their epic adventures, stories that thrill, fascinate, inspire, and illuminate. ~ Laura Hillenbrand,
207:My head bows before the thing you mention.
But my heart doesn't speak that language.

- The Epic of Sheik Bedreddin, Verse 9. ~ N z m Hikmet Ran,
208:Homer must have felt this pressure to come up with an epic poem that would sound totally new to an audience that had loved his previous best-seller. ~ Anne Carson,
209:I didn't want to just write a series - I wanted to write an epic, on story that spans three books, where decisions made in the first impact the last. ~ Marcus Sakey,
210:THE LONGEST RIDE is epic Sparks… [It] showcases the author’s most accomplished work to date… There are moments of perfection.” —Mountain Times (NC) ~ Nicholas Sparks,
211:The State tells the epic of people's lives, putting people on the scale, weighing all the wrong things, then acting ponderous about the misinformation. ~ Eileen Myles,
212:Epic poetry exhibits life in some great symbolic attitude. It cannot strictly be said to symbolize life itself, but always some manner of life. ~ Lascelles Abercrombie,
213:The drama is complete poetry. The ode and the epic contain it only in germ; it contains both of them in a state of high development, and epitomizes both. ~ Victor Hugo,
214:As you know, I describe Shirat ha-Yam as part of an epic story that has qualities of history and which also has qualities of the mythological, of an epic. ~ Elie Wiesel,
215:In eternity this world will be Troy, I believe, and all that has passed here will be the epic of the universe, the ballad they sing in the streets. ~ Marilynne Robinson,
216:The Epic?” Raylynn raised her eyebrows. “You actually read through it?” “Of course.” Vhalla couldn’t fathom who wouldn’t finish a book once they’d started. ~ Elise Kova,
217:You no longer have much in the way of knowing what to do in a big, epic novel about the future, because nobody knows what the hell is going to happen. ~ Jerry Pournelle,
218:I have a tendency to do the epic kind of long shot and put in everything that you need to know. And that's by design; that's the kind of approach I take to it. ~ Jim Lee,
219:Kethry had once described summoning as being “like balancing on a rooftree while screaming an epic poem in a foreign language at the top of your lungs. ~ Mercedes Lackey,
220:It was a mistake of epic proportions, I knew that. And just like any huge mistake, payback was going to be painful. Sadly, it was a price I was willing to pay. ~ L J Shen,
221:There's no such thing as 'epic love'. But there is such a thing as 'epically bad decisions based on something believed to be love, but is most likely lust. ~ Brodi Ashton,
222:I’m sorry ma’am,” I said. Really, I had no idea what else to say. I’d spent the weekend caught up in an epic battle to save humanity, and now… jean shorts? ~ Richelle Mead,
223:I would do anything to make you happy because no one had ever smelled like you did. It was candy canes and pinecones. It was epic and awesome. and it was home. ~ T J Klune,
224:Jesus wastes none of our stories, even our tales of woe. He transforms them into epic adventures where we dare to face our past for the sake of our present. ~ Mary E DeMuth,
225:My sonnet asserts that the sonnet still lives. My epic, should such fortune befall me, asserts that the heroic narrative is not lost - that it is born again. ~ James Fenton,
226:Then there were things-- epic, terrible things-- that he didn't tell her but skirted around, like caressing the edges of a wound, hesitant, testing for pain. ~ Laini Taylor,
227:connected to the Crane’s Nest than she. Still, it sort of sucked to have what was a pretty epic kiss interrupted by ghostly possession. Ghosts were so damn rude. ~ Anonymous,
228:In eternity this world will be like Troy, I believe, and all that has passed here will be the epic of the universe, the ballad they sing in the streets. ~ Marilynne Robinson,
229:Having left, for various reasons, the homeland of epic, they were uprooted like trees overthrown, they had lost their heroic character and deep-seated virtue. ~ Ismail Kadare,
230:The struggle to excavate your true, authentic self from beneath the mountain of conditioning and ridiculous expectation is the epic struggle of your lifetime. ~ Bryant McGill,
231:And for the first time, Gus’s tattoo makes sense. Because this … everything I see … everything I hear … everything I feel … it’s epic.  Gus.  Rook.  They do epic. ~ Kim Holden,
232:...but which of us has read every line of the Iliad, or the Aeneid, or The Divine Comedy, or Paradise Lost? Only men of epic stomach can digest these epic tales. ~ Will Durant,
233:But for every epic love tale splashed out in lights for the world to see, there were ten million more couples that loved each other in the dark just as beautifully. ~ Seth King,
234:Leo couldn’t fly. He had a couple of minutes at most before he’d hit the water and go ker-splat. He decided he didn’t like that ending to the Epic Ballad of Leo. ~ Rick Riordan,
235:Nicholas Monsarrat’s epic postwar novel of the Battle of the Atlantic, The Cruel Sea, is a quite different, nightmarish elemental story of men at sea amid ~ Victor Davis Hanson,
236:she knew he would not rest until he had done it. It was maddening. It was strange, even. But then again, she thought, it gave their marriage a certain epic scope. ~ Dave Eggers,
237:The struggle to excavate your true, authentic self from beneath the mountain of conditioning and ridiculous expectation is the epic struggle of your lifetime. ~ Bryant H McGill,
238:We are in the midst--much closer to the beginning than to the end, I believe--of an epic, political, cultural, and economic realignment in treatment of animals. ~ Wayne Pacelle,
239:There's something about being a teenager that's so sincere. Everything is more epic, like your first crush. I feel that it's not always portrayed very accurately. ~ Sofia Coppola,
240:Actually, I always dreamed about getting a gold medal in the 100-meter freestyle in Olympic swimming. I always thought that would be the epic award in sports to get. ~ Chris Klein,
241:Even though we've written epic poems and made incredible films about love, I still don't think anyone can understand what it is, or why it means everything. ~ Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor,
242:I tried to cover myself and it turned into an epic fail. I needed much thicker arms to complete the job. These weren’t let-your-boyfriend’s-brother-see-you-pajamas. ~ Ashlan Thomas,
243:So much as I enjoy big novels of epic sweep, I often find, say, if they follow several generations, by the third generation, I'm not caring about the people anymore. ~ Emma Donoghue,
244:Dharma, in any case, is at the heart of the poem; it is not only untranslatable, but the Mahabharata’s characters are still trying to figure it out at the epic’s end. ~ Gurcharan Das,
245:There’s something epic that happens every day if you look hard enough for it. And every day is a chance to go out there and do epic. The key is putting forth the effort. ~ Kim Holden,
246:The Homeric Epic does not have to be discovered inside a book; it begins just west of Fort Worth and extends all the way to Santa Monica." Wayfaring Stranger Pg. 415 ~ James Lee Burke,
247:The world may be ever-changing and full of uncertainties, but walking away is not the answer. World-rejection, according to the epic, is dangerous and destructive. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik,
248:Yep. His epic good looks without succumbing to the adorable label had made him a man-unicorn in my mind. Or a merman. Or a Loch Ness Monstman. He was a mystical creature. ~ Penny Reid,
249:You came into my life. You changed my world. You made me realize I’m capable of loving completely. You’re my one. You’re it. This is my epic love, and I can’t lose that. ~ Abbi Glines,
250:Dharma, the word at the heart of the epic, is in fact untranslatable. Duty, goodness, justice, law and custom all have something to do with it, but they all fall short. ~ Gurcharan Das,
251:In ancient days, men looked at stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood. ~ Richard M Nixon,
252:Since 1977, there have been many science fiction movies, but none has managed to equal [A New Hope's] blend of adventure, likable characters, and epic storytelling. ~ James Berardinelli,
253:I thought about how we all believed ourselves to be the hero of some personal epic, when in fact we were basically identical organisms colonizing a vast and windowless room. ~ John Green,
254:Sorry, Ms. Terwilliger. I'm flattered that you think I'm such an upstanding person, but I'm already caught up in one epic battle of good versus evil. I don't need another. ~ Richelle Mead,
255:I loved him more than I loved pralines and beignets, and that was hardcore, because my love of sugary, sweet things rivaled the most epic love stories known to man. ~ Jennifer L Armentrout,
256:It’s a classic love story. I hit on him at a party, he asked me out, then we fought an epic magical battle between good and evil side by side, and now we need a vacation. ~ Cassandra Clare,
257:The fact that The Bridge contains folk lore and other material suitable to the epic form need not therefore prove its failure as a long lyric poem, with interrelated sections. ~ Hart Crane,
258:Boyle looked like a Monty Python in drag. Then she opened her mouth and this epic noise came ripping out of her. Within a week, she was the most celebrated person on earth, an ~ Steve Almond,
259:Feeling slightly better about telling the truth, she closed her notebook, titled “Unaccomplishments and Epic Disasters,” and tucked it in her dresser drawer with a sigh. Nothing ~ Chanda Hahn,
260:From its inception by Michael Bennett, 'Dreamgirls' has always been an epic story with an ensemble cast. I didn't change that. The screen version remains, really, a group story. ~ Bill Condon,
261:There are epic downsides to living a somewhat public life. The upshot of that is there's nothing to hide. It's a relief in a way. There's nothing about me that can't be said. ~ Natasha Lyonne,
262:When the responses elicited by the Epic of Evolution are gathered together several religious principles emerge that I can believe, serve as a framework for a global Ethos. ~ Ursula Goodenough,
263:It was, she believed, a simple and unassailable fact of life that if a woman went to epic lengths to throw herself on the mercy of a man, the man would not, could not, refuse. ~ Nicholas Evans,
264:It would be like those epic love affairs that exploded into existence and burned white hot for all eternity. The type of love that time and distance and death couldn't seperate ~ Marissa Meyer,
265:An epic subject requires a writer of epic skill and scope, and we have a perfect pairing in Cleopatra and Stacy Schiff. Absorbing and illuminating, this new biography will endure. ~ Jon Meacham,
266:By the time Swami Vivekananda made the epic speech at Chicago that attracted Western following to yogic wisdom, the British had already implemented a ‘modern’ education system. ~ Rujuta Diwekar,
267:He passes from lyric to epic poetry in order to speak about the world and the torment in the world through man, rationally and emotionally. The poet then becomes a danger. ~ Salvatore Quasimodo,
268:Norman is a very up-close, personal, character drama and I'd like to do something more zoomed out, a little more pastoral, some sweeping epic. I'd like to try something different. ~ Andrew Bird,
269:No, there is no romance so stirring, so thrilling, and so heartrending as life's great epic; but its fate is the same as that of the Bible — there are but few who care to read it. ~ Axel Munthe,
270:This one was going to be the mother of all vaginal orgasms. It was going to be epic. She might even start writing romance novels just so that she could describe this moment. ~ Charlene Hartnady,
271:This reminded him of Alvis Bender's contention that stories were like nations - Italy, a great epic poem, Britain, a thick novel, America, a brash motion picture in technicolor... ~ Jess Walter,
272:Carl Rinsch has a good balance between the visual and the drama and action, so I thought if he's going to direct, we can make a new, epic film. My fear was gone when I met him. ~ Hiroyuki Sanada,
273:Smith wiped grass and dirt from his butt and scowled at their surroundings as though they hadn't just escaped a fascist clusterfuckturducken of epic scale and infinite suckage. ~ John Birmingham,
274:The methods and tools of science perennially breach barriers, granting me confidence that our epic march of insight into the operations of nature will continue without end. ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson,
275:Ingeniously plotted and executed, Print the Legend is an epic masterpiece from Craig McDonald. Beginning to end, I was riveted by this story of character, history and intrigue. ~ Michael Connelly,
276:[Geology] may be looked upon as the history of the earth's changes during preparation for the reception of organized beings, a history, which has all the character of a great epic. ~ Edward Forbes,
277:I am all for titillating trivialities. I am all for the epic touch. I could almost say that everything in Time, should be either titillating or epic or starkly, supercurtly factual. ~ Henry R Luce,
278:this is the epic proposal that you’ll tell our kids and grandkids. You pinned against my truck, in tears and pissed off at me. And me refusing to let you go. I will never let you go. ~ Jewel E Ann,
279:So here we are, talking about Roman unicycles and alien sandwiches and my sister’s Italian misfortunes, while hanging in between us is: MY EPIC FAILURE TO CARPE. What’s wrong with me? ~ Laini Taylor,
280:I think what we're trying to do as filmmakers is make a big, gritty, raw, epic movie and within that show things graphically in a way that they haven't been seen in that world before. ~ Rupert Sanders,
281:An arranged marriage. His bratty, meddling sister. A potential loose-lipped man. Nothing will snuff out what has begun to rage between us. An inferno. A fiery explosion of epic proportions. ~ Ker Dukey,
282:I might have lost some skin, but I got kissed by a beautiful woman who was happy to see me. I gotta say that’s pretty epic in my book. Definitely not a worst-case day here.” – Sundown ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon,
283:love story is epic in its own way. It’s up to you how epic you make it. It’s up to you how much you love them and how much you fight for them and keep them and wind them around your soul. ~ Shelly Crane,
284:But asking why rappers always talk about their stuff is like asking why Milton is forever listing the attributes of heavenly armies. Because boasting is a formal condition of the epic form. ~ Zadie Smith,
285:HARD SF and EPIC FANTASY – both of these forms have been conventionalised, proscribed and prescribed, such that they constitute valid GENRES in a way that science fiction and fantasy do not. ~ Hal Duncan,
286:Speaking of tiny skivvies I think that's what you both should wear during your inevitable cage fight. We can even call your soon-to-be epic battle the Die-You in the Bayou. Sell tickets. ~ Adrian Phoenix,
287:The spectacle is the epic poem of this struggle, a struggle that no fall of Troy can bring to an end. The spectacle does not sing of men and their arms, but of commodities and their passions. ~ Guy Debord,
288:The world knows of a vast stock of epic material scattered up and down the nations; sometimes its artistic value is as extraordinary as its archaeological interest, but not always. ~ Lascelles Abercrombie,
289:I have been tied up, my apologies, Abigail Miller.” He chuckled deeply at his corny joke and I would have rolled my eyes, but considering he just took an epic fall, I let him have this one. ~ Ashlan Thomas,
290:I often make movies that involve depression or deep holes of sadness, although there are also these other great things in 'New Moon,' like this epic set-piece at the end of the film in Italy. ~ Chris Weitz,
291:She thought, Ours is one of the epic loves of our generation. Possibly of all time. Who cares if no one sees it, walking by? This story is s a love song. Who cares if history won't remember? ~ Lydia Netzer,
292:Male egos require constant stroking. Every task is an achievement, every success epic. That is why women cook, but men are chefs: we make cheese on toast, they produce pain de fromage. ~ Belle de Jour,
293:That is to say, epic poetry has been invented many times and independently; but, as the needs which prompted the invention have been broadly similar, so the invention itself has been. ~ Lascelles Abercrombie,
294:Personally, I consider 'Titanic' the most brilliant example of successful counterprogramming; the film actually countered itself by embedding an epic chick flick within a classic disaster movie. ~ Diablo Cody,
295:We all talk a big game like the universe is actually setting us up for something epic, and then everything ends. If we were all just a little more realistic, we wouldn't keep losing people. ~ Becky Albertalli,
296:With several different kinds of poetry to choose from, a man would decide that he would like best to be an epic poet, and he would set out, in conscious determination, on an epic poem. ~ Lascelles Abercrombie,
297:Your idiocy has reached epic heights. You’re the king of the jackwagons, Campbell Montgomery. You’re going to go down in the books as a first class donkey face with a pile of shit on your head. ~ Brynne Asher,
298:Only God, my dear,” wrote Yeats blithely, “Could love you for yourself alone/And not your yellow hair.” This quote is meant as a bit of lighthearted verse. But it is an epic tragedy in three lines. ~ Naomi Wolf,
299:The ass to end all asses,” I said, unable to stop myself. “The Holy Grail of asses. If we lived in a world with fairies and elves, there would be epic quests to go get that ass. I wanted to bite it. ~ T J Klune,
300:The solution is the abolition of wages, alienated labour, and private property in one blow. In a word, communism. Marx introduces communism in terms befitting the closing chapter of a Hegelian epic: ~ Anonymous,
301:It was Vyasa’s genius to take the whole great Mahabharata epic and see it as metaphor for the perennial war between the forces of light and the forces of darkness in every human heart. ~ Krishna Dwaipayana Vyasa,
302:My earliest acting memory is making up a play for my mom and dad called The Lonesome Baby. I have no idea what The Lonesome Baby was about. I just remember the title. But I'm sure it was an epic. ~ Jane Horrocks,
303:This is the single loveliest thing anyone's ever done for me. It's movie lovely. It feels somehow epic and fragile, and I wand the night to last forever, and knowing it can't already has me sad. ~ Jennifer Niven,
304:I just think the David O. Selznick story is one of the great, epic stories of Hollywood history that nobody knows. Maybe one of the reasons why nobody knows it is because he wasn't a movie star. ~ Karina Longworth,
305:I am not a great man, but sometimes I think the impersonal and objective equality of my talent and the sacrifices of it, in pieces, to preserve its essential value has some sort of epic grandeur. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald,
306:We need a better guide to facing giants—and there is no better place to start that journey than with the epic confrontation between David and Goliath three thousand years ago in the Valley of Elah. ~ Malcolm Gladwell,
307:Her reputation for reading a great deal hung about her like the cloudy envelope of a goddess in an epic; it was supposed to engender difficult questions and to keep the conversation at a low temperature. ~ Henry James,
308:We pay for content that we like, and we like the content we pay for. It's a lot more satisfying to pay $7.50 for Steven Spielberg's next epic than it is to watch my home movies for free. Even for me. ~ Nathan Myhrvold,
309:what I had tried to do was take the little novel, about one person, where there is not much external action, it is all internal, and extend it into an epic format, do you understand what I mean? He ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,
310:Life isn’t a bloody comic strip, kid,” Ryodan said coolly.

“Yes it is,” he said, “and we get to write our own script, so be epic or vacate the page. You’re all taking this way too seriously. ~ Karen Marie Moning,
311:Once a choker, always a choker. It never ever changes. That was one of the epic meltdowns. He didn`t know where he was. I thought he was going - I thought he was going to die. Good going, Chris [Christie]. ~ Donald Trump,
312:Second, this epic tale allows the audience to actually listen to the Native Americans and receive their wisdom. Spielberg conveys the respect for Native Americans that is normally lacking in Western films. ~ Beau Bridges,
313:They obviously weren't trying to recruit us, which was sort of a shame. I imagined a full unit of vampire soldiers and I got a little giddy, and distracted. Bad idea, maybe. But it'd be epic, wouldn't it? ~ Cherie Priest,
314:Both Steven Pressfield’s Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae and Tides of War: A Novel of Alcibiades and the Peloponnesian War are well-told accounts of crucial events in Greek history. ~ Nancy Pearl,
315:Nothing higher can be accomplished by the epic poet thus interpreting his own time in order to serve the future.
(Foreword by Frederick Ungar in Elective Affinities, 1962, Ungar Publishing) ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,
316:CROUCHING TIGER is nevertheless a gloriously big epic, starring the Hong Kong action stars Chow Yun-Fat and Michelle Yeoh in a visionary adventure where the characters seem set free from the force of gravity. ~ Roger Ebert,
317:The only good produced by the disappearance of Africville was the appearance of a conscious black nationalism … In this regard, Consecrated Ground is the heir of fierce, vengeful, and epic activism. ~ George Elliott Clarke,
318:But it is only in epic tragedies that gloom is unrelieved. In real life tragedy and comedy are so intermingled that when one is most wretched ridiculous things happen to make one laugh in spite of oneself. ~ Georgette Heyer,
319:I want to make people smile. I want to tell an epic story... with laughter. I want to change the way people view the world. I want life to stop being so damn dramatic all the time. I want... what are you doing? ~ Cassie Mae,
320:The epic poet collaborates with the spirit of his time in the composition of his work. That is, if he is successful; the time may refuse to work with him, but he may not refuse to work with his time. ~ Lascelles Abercrombie,
321:Lassiter had been the wild card, and he had not lasted. Distracted by physical yearnings, he had gotten into epic trouble and been banished, lost to a destiny and destination of which Colin was only vaguely aware. ~ J R Ward,
322:Six of Crows

A smol precious deadly flower, two gaybies, a beautiful Grisha warrior, a grumpy convict, and their brilliant, fearless (and sometimes clueless) leader perform a heist of epic proportions. ~ Leigh Bardugo,
323:Thanks to a lifetime of brainwashing by Disney and Lifetime and Hallmark, she naively believes glimpsing God during an epic fuck somehow translates into some kind of happily ever after with her Prince Charming. ~ Lauren Rowe,
324:As in the dialogue between Yudhishtira and Nahusha, the Mahabharata repeatedly states that one becomes a Brahman not by birth but by effort. Thus the epic challenges the traditional understanding of caste. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik,
325:He was acutely aware of her chest rising and falling as she tortured him with silence for several seconds before finally opening her baby blues and saying, “That Was Epic.” Then she broke into a fit of laughter. ~ Robin Bielman,
326:I never shied away from a challenge and I love doing big, epic films. They're interesting to me just on a pure music level, just in terms of the amount of music I could create for a symphony orchestra and chorus. ~ Howard Shore,
327:It is difficult to fathom that any Indian military journal would present an appraisal of the Kurukshetra War, which features the Hindu god Vishnu and is described in the Hindu Vedic epic poem the Mahabharata. ~ C Christine Fair,
328:Knew for sure when Prophet reached out and put his hands on Tommy’s waist and pulled him close so fast it was hard cock to hard cock, match to flame and sparking a totally spectacular meltdown. Epic. Memorable. This ~ S E Jakes,
329:My mind leads me to speak now of forms changed into new bodies: O gods above, inspire this undertaking (which you’ve changed as well) and guide my poem in its epic sweep from the world’s beginning to the present day. The ~ Ovid,
330:But it was only in epic tragedies that gloom was unrelieved. In real life tragedy and comedy were so intermingled that when one was most wretched ridiculous things happened to make one laugh in spite of oneself ~ Georgette Heyer,
331:How infuriating it is to be continually born to war that continues one's whole lifetime, even as one protests it - what futility. It is perhaps a more public epic in this regard, and carries a ritual vocalization. ~ Anne Waldman,
332:Our history, in the cosmos and on planet Earth, was shaped by countless events, some obviously epic, some seemingly trivial, yet all vital in getting us to this point, here and now, the people we are today. ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson,
333:There is only one thing which can master the perplexed stuff of epic material into unity; and that is, an ability to see in particular human experience some significant symbolism of man's general destiny. ~ Lascelles Abercrombie,
334:Life and mind and their glory and debate
Are the slow prelude of a vaster theme,
    A sketch confused of a supernal plan,
        A preface to the epic of the Supreme. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Greater Plan,
335:You, Mad Dog, are exactly what I came here to protect her from. But you know what? We're all broken some way or another. Even with your epic fuckup, you just might be exactly what she needs. You get one more chance ~ Jamie McGuire,
336:Any long work in which poetry is persistent, be it epic or drama or narrative, is really a succession of separate poetic experiences governed into a related whole by an energy distinct from that which evoked them. ~ John Drinkwater,
337:Oh God," Coyote said, and rolled onto his side, propping his head up on one hand. "It's hard to remember something that long ago. It's almost like an epic poem I memorized once, and can barely recite anymore. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson,
338:Happy birthday, Bright Side. I hope you’re in charge of showtime tonight. I’m expecting nothing short of fucking incredible on behalf of your big day, just so you know. No pressure, but you’d better step up and do epic. ~ Kim Holden,
339:What the fuck? You’re MIA, Shiori is gone, and that’s a clusterfuck of epic proportions. If I find out that you hurt her in any way, so help me god I will . . . No, Jesus, Amery! Let go. Give me back my goddamn phone. ~ Lorelei James,
340:Maybe there isn’t such a thing as fate. Maybe it’s just the opportunities we’re given, and what we do with them. I’m beginning to think that maybe great, epic romances don’t just happen. We have to make them ourselves. ~ Marissa Meyer,
341:The epic love I’ve always wanted was with me all along, and it’s nothing like what I imagined. It’s better, because it’s real. It’s not perfect or pretty. It’s full of mistakes and sacrifices, and sometimes even ugliness. ~ L H Cosway,
342:We can either choose to cling to starring roles in the little-bitty stories of us or opt to exchange our fleeting moment in the spotlight for a supporting role in the eternally beautiful epic that is the Story of God. I ~ Louie Giglio,
343:Zach had been on the receiving end of a few of Lanning’s ass-chewings back in the day. They were epic sagas of righteous fury and perfectly applied touches of profanity. It was like being verbally disemboweled. ~ Christopher Farnsworth,
344:I don't think that people think of Marvel in the same way that people think of Pixar. Because Pixar is story-orientated, and they think of these guys as epic movie orientated. But they're story-orientated. That's the secret. ~ Amy Pascal,
345:My name is Scarlet Stone. I was offered useful traits the day I entered this world. I passed on common sense, opting for the-edge-of-a-knife journey. When I die, I want my gravestone to have the word 'epic' on it somewhere. ~ Jewel E Ann,
346:Epic things start with small humble steps. Pay respect to your beginnings. And if you're just starting out, know that it's OK to be sucky. To be small. To be messy and chaotic. Just make sure to never ever stop dreaming. ~ Vishen Lakhiani,
347:Darwin matters because evolution matters. Evolution matters because science matters. Science matters because it is the preeminent story of our age, an epic saga about who we are, where we came from and where we are going. ~ Michael Shermer,
348:It was full of whispered words, the lure of stories waiting to be read, a rustle of promise that hung in the air. How many adventures were hidden here in paper and ink, how many great love stories, how many epic battles? ~ Mechthild Gl ser,
349:Avatar' is the greatest, most comprehensive collection of movie cliches ever assembled, but it's put together in a brand new way with a new technology, and tremendous imagination, making it a true epic and a kind of a milestone. ~ Joe Dante,
350:The money quickly began to disappear into the rucksacks and footlockers of the officers and enlisted personnel who had access to it; some was mailed home to wives and girlfriends. The stealing in Iraq reached epic proportions. ~ James Risen,
351:People fall in and out of love all the time, and sometimes people have numerous loves throughout their lives. But you have two epic loves and no matter who you were with, I don’t think you’d ever get over or forget the other. ~ Molly McAdams,
352:Everyone loves New York City for all these different reasons. The culture. The mix of people. The pace. The food. But for me, it's like one epic Easter egg hunt. You're always finding these little surprises around every corner. ~ Gayle Forman,
353:The epic poet has behind him a tradition of matter and a tradition of style; and that is what every other poet has behind him too; only, for the epic poet, tradition is rather narrower, rather more strictly compelling. ~ Lascelles Abercrombie,
354:A classic lecture, rich in sentiment, With scraps of thundrous Epic lilted out By violet-hooded Doctors, elegies And quoted odes, and jewels five-words-long, That on the stretched forefinger of all Time Sparkle for ever. ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson,
355:In the words of classicist Jennifer Wise, “With little exaggeration, it could be said that the entirety of the Odyssey ultimately boils down to one simple technological problem: the epic hero’s inability to write home.”35 ~ William J Bernstein,
356:The story of David has all the rape, patricide, fratricide, betrayal and civil war that you’re ever going to want in an epic - but also a terrible beauty and a sense of joy that cannot be mitigated even in the most tragic moments. ~ Tim Lieder,
357:It really showed that you can do a major motion picture, from the folks at Marvel, that has multiple characters on an epic scale. On top of that, it also showed us that one of the most important elements is a certain kind of levity. ~ Jeph Loeb,
358:...sometimes I wait for you at the exact edge of the jetty where we left each other. Sometimes I disappear into an unconscious hole and lie there silted up in stories having nothing to do with the vigorous immediacy of our epic. ~ H l ne Cixous,
359:Success is being artistically fulfilled and happy. You can't control how people see your movie or how much money it makes...and the same thing with music. When I'm writing a song or I'm in the studio, those memories, that's epic. ~ Ansel Elgort,
360:For the scientist the analytical process does not diminish the splendour of what he or she sees. Every detail added is an extra stanza added to a great epic poem, one that is never complete, nor yet ever tedious in its particulars ~ Richard Fortey,
361:How I wished I'd have had a camera of my own, a mad mental camera that could register pictorial shots, of the photographic artist himself prowling about for his ultimate shot - an epic in itself. (On the road with Robert Frank, 1958) ~ Jack Kerouac,
362:There is the happiness which comes from creative effort. The joy of dreaming, creating, building, whether in painting a picture, writing an epic, singing a song, composing a symphony, devising new invention, creating a vast industry. ~ Henry Miller,
363:Everything about Jocelyn had been ordinary. A Norman Rockwell painting of mom, dad, one boy, one girl. Scott was her wild storm, her great American novel, her epic story. Every extraordinary moment she experienced was because of him. ~ Jessica Shook,
364:I was all like rawr and grr but then I smelled it again and it was him and it was all ka­boom!
I don’t even know! I don’t even know! You gotta smell him and then tell me why it’s all
candy canes and pinecones and epic and awesome. ~ T J Klune,
365:The earth's uplook to a remote Unknown
   Is a preface only of the epic climb
   Of human soul from its flat earthly state
   To the discovery of a greater self
   And the far gleam of an eternal Light.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Secret Knowledge,
366:Philosophy always begins in the middle, like an epic poem. ~ Friedrich Schlegel, “Selected Aphorisms from the Athenaeum (1798)”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (Pennsylvania University Press:1968) #84.,
367:She'd been criticized for holding the reins of parenthood too tightly, of controlling her children too completely, but she didn't know how to let go. From the moment she'd first decided to become a mother, it had been an epic battle. ~ Kristin Hannah,
368:These days young kids don't have any place to form an epic adventure. It's more often in front of the TV screen or a laptop. That's very hard on them. They're being taught daily unsocial skills. Facebook is an unsocial skill. It's so sad. ~ John Lydon,
369:And for the city's birthday, we will host events in every neighborhood of the city, inviting all of our residents to share in the celebration of Boston's great epic - the story of neighbors who support one another where it matters most. ~ Thomas Menino,
370:King Karl sent his own musicians and minstrels to entertain at the wedding feast. The first night they sang the song they had written about the epic love between the Margrave of Thornbeck and his clever and courageous wife, Avelina. ~ Melanie Dickerson,
371:One of my earliest memories is seeing the bright blue, Epic 45 of Jackie Wilson singing 'Higher and Higher,' and I'd say, 'That one!' and my parents would play it every Sunday afternoon and we'd all get up and leap around the house. ~ Bronagh Gallagher,
372:When you think about it, some people don't like certain things, but when it comes to music, no matter who you are, where you're from, what kind of personality you've got...everyone loves music of some sort; that's what's so epic about it. ~ Niall Horan,
373:A few seconds after he stepped out into the hallway and closed the door behind him, there was a fleshly smack and then Andrew yelling, “Ouch. What in the hell was that for?” “Your timing sucks on an epic level,” Daemon shot back. ~ Jennifer L Armentrout,
374:My perfectly measured ingredients should have mixed and turned into an epic lava. Instead it looks like an outtake from an old sci-fi movie. Green goo has killed my volcano. My chance to win the science fair at Sendak has been slimed! ~ Angela Cervantes,
375:Technology may have shrunk the epic journey to a couple of short car rides and regional jet legs—four states and twelve hundred miles traversed in an afternoon—but true quests aren’t measured in time or distance anyway, so much as in hope. ~ Jess Walter,
376:Do not fear to put novels into the hands of young people as an occasional holiday experiment, but above all, good poetry in all kinds,--epic, tragedy, lyric. If we can touch the imagination, we serve them; they will never forget it. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,
377:Helpless and fearful people are drawn to magical figures, mythic figures, epic men who intimidate and darkly loom. ... Some people are larger than life. Hitler is larger than death. You thought he would protect you. I understand completely. ~ Don DeLillo,
378:I think it’s fairly common for writers to be afflicted with two simultaneous yet contradictory delusions, the burning certainty that we’re unique geniuses, and the constant fear that we’re witless frauds who are speeding toward epic failure. ~ Scott Lynch,
379:Seat belts. Welcome to Psi Services. I'm Zach and I'll be your driver on this epic quest to freedom. If you look out your windows--but, obviously, don't because Ruby just told you not to--you can give Nevada the finger as we pull away. ~ Alexandra Bracken,
380:God, Himself, wrote the 10 into stone with his own finger. He told the epic of mankind, our origins and our future, in a book. For me, there is no more noble a cause and no more honorable a vocation than to say, like Him, I am a writer. ~ Gerard de Marigny,
381:This show [Timeless] is absolutely epic. I simply can't believe the production value for the episodes. Each episode is creating a new world. I just can't think of another television show that trumps the Hindenburg to the 1970s week to week. ~ Misha Collins,
382:I don't know what has happened to movies, but lately every movie is at least 20 minutes too long. It used to be that if you were three hours long it was because it was epic - a movie about Gandhi; something with very important subject matters. ~ Ethan Hawke,
383:Milton says, that the lyric poet may drink wine and live generously, but the epic poet, he who shall sing of the gods, and their descent unto men, must drink water out of a wooden bowl. For poetry is not "Devil's wine," but God's wine. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,
384:Rationalists believe Gandhari had only two sons, Duryodhana and Dusshasana, who are the only two of the hundred to play a significant role in the epic. They were probably twins, the ‘two-year’ pregnancy probably meaning ‘twin’ pregnancy. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik,
385:we all know stories of epic entrepreneurs who managed to pull out a victory when things seemed incredibly bleak. unfortunately,we don’t hear stories about the countless nameless others who persevered too long, leading their companies to failure. ~ Eric Ries,
386:I wanted the feel in these books to be like an epic fantasy, with kings, queens, dukes and court politics, but of course like what I was explaining before, about making the science make sense, you have to make the politics make sense, too. ~ Kevin J Anderson,
387:It was a receipt for my painting. My heart stuttered. He squeezed my hand in his and smiled. “It’s gonna look so fucking epic in my bedroom, don’t you think? I could fuck you and stare at myself as I do it. That’s some Napoleon shit right there.” It ~ L J Shen,
388:Only Brunel had experience with large-scale projects. He was indubitably a genius but an unnerving one, as it nearly always took epic infusions of time and cash to find a point of intersection between his soaring visions and an achievable reality. ~ Bill Bryson,
389:We work through this together, remember? No shutting me out. No epic sulks.”
“I was figuring I could sulk for Idris in the next Olympics,” Jace said…
“You and Alec could go for pair sulking,” said Clary with a smile. “You’d get the gold. ~ Cassandra Clare,
390:A work is completed without deference to a husband, an absurd epic of maudlin childhood is about to be sent to a pimp, before a husband is allowed to correct it,” he said seething. “You would only tinker with it,” she said fearless, though fearing. ~ Edna O Brien,
391:Jule watched a shit-ton of movies. She knew that women were rarely the centers of such stories. Instead, they were eye candy, arm candy, victims, or love interests. Mostly, they existed to help the great white hetero hero on his fucking epic journey. ~ E Lockhart,
392:The alienation effect in German epic theater is achieved not only through the actors, but also through music (chorus and song) andsets (transparencies, film strips, etc.). Its main purpose is to place the staged events in their historical context. ~ Bertolt Brecht,
393:I could write an epic poem about your thighs.”

“That would amuse polite society rather too much, and I wouldn’t like that.”

“I wouldn’t either.” She pressed her cheek to his belly. “I can’t think of a word to rhyme with marble column. ~ Christina Dodd,
394:The beauty of the inlet was nearly that of Peru, and I wondered at all this exposition God had created, as though it were an invitation to an epic so grand it might match the scenery. The mountains themselves call us into greater stories, I thought. ~ Donald Miller,
395:I’d like to tell you that I died in epic fashion, guns blazing in the middle of a vast street brawl, or at least something scandalously hot, like falling off a balcony during the most incredible sex of my life. The truth? My death was cringingly mundane. ~ Eva Chase,
396:All of a sudden, it comes to me. The epic love I've always wanted was with me all along, and it's nothing like what I imagined. It's better, because it's real. It's not perfect or pretty. It's full of mistakes and sacrifices, and sometimes even ugliness. ~ L H Cosway,
397:The thing was, though, history had a nasty habit of repeating itself. And if one were foolish enough to forget the lessons of the past, one couldn’t recognize the pattern—the chain of events that time and again had led to catastrophes of epic proportions. ~ I T Lucas,
398:The only subject fewer authentic Americans cared about than the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo was World Cup Soccer. America is an epic global battle with ruthless savages who seek our destruction, and liberals are feeling sorry for the terrorists. ~ Ann Coulter,
399:You're not as much of a lost cause as she was. I mean, with her, I had to overcome her deep, epic love with a Russian warlord. You and I just have to overcome hundreds of years' worth of deeply ingrained prejudice and taboo between our two races. Easy. ~ Richelle Mead,
400:I read a random issue when I was a kid, but no, I wasn't super familiar with the characters [Captain Victory] until I started researching them. What I found once I started reading back issues however, was this crazy, sprawling, [Jack] Kirby space epic. ~ Sterling Gates,
401:I read obituaries first thing in the morning. With a cup of coffee. This is NOT MORBID. Just epic. Maybe it's a way of trying to figure out, before the day begins, what is important. And I am curious about all the little things that make up life. Little? ~ Maira Kalman,
402:Ours was an epic love story, and I won't be able to get more than a sentence into it without disappearing into a puddle of tears. Gus knew. Gus knows. I will not tell you our love story, because-like all real love stories-it will die with us, as it should. ~ John Green,
403:Some people stick with the traditional, feeling struck by the epic beauty or blown away by the insane scale of the universe. Personally, I go for the old "existential meltdown followed by acting weird for the next half hour. But everyone feels something. ~ Enrico Fermi,
404:The librarian thought the problem was just that the right books weren’t breeding with each other and proposed a forced mating program. The library committee had an epic secret meeting about the ethics of literary eugenics which ended in a furious deadlock. ~ Lev Grossman,
405:Besides, if she was able to get away, Dorothea would obtain the one thing that Avelina had dreamed of, written stories about, and imagined in many a long hour—true romantic love—about which the troubadours sang, the subject of epic poems and tales. No, ~ Melanie Dickerson,
406:Understand this: we are both tiny and massive. We are nothing more than molded clay given breath, but we are nothing less than divine self-portraits, huffing and puffing along mountain ranges of epic narrative arcs prepared for us by the Infinite Word Himself. ~ N D Wilson,
407:His fiancé was somewhere in Verania with a sexually aggressive dragon (which I was still offended about, by the way), and Ryan was stuck here with a malfunctioning wizard apprentice who secretly pined after him.
My life was a tragic farce of epic proportions. ~ T J Klune,
408:When Chinese people want liberal reforms, they are delivered. When they want more Communism and an epic fight against corruption, like now, China's government immediately reacts. It is powerful and democratic, although a very specific and complex arrangement. ~ Andre Vltchek,
409:His life has been lived, so far, within narrow limits and he is quite naïve about most kinds of experience; he fears it and yet is wildly eager for it. To reassure himself, he converts it into epic myth as fast as it happens. He is forever play-acting. ~ Christopher Isherwood,
410:If you ever want to see something hilarious, hold a condom tightly by the rim, then stick it out the window of a moving car. Half the time, it just blows away. But once in a while you can get it to catch the breeze, and then it blows up to truly epic proportions. ~ Alexa Land,
411:[Donald Trump] spreading preposterous rumors that [Ted] Cruz`s father had connections to Lee Harvey Oswald and the assassination of JFK. That put a bit of a damper on the bromance ultimately culminating in Cruz`s epic non-endorsement at the Republican convention. ~ Chris Hayes,
412:Understand this: we are both tiny and massive. We are nothing more than molded clay given breath, but we are nothing less than divine self-portraits, huffing and puffing along the mountain ranges of epic narrative arcs prepared for us by the Infinite Word Himself. ~ N D Wilson,
413:You must think I'm a total idiot."
"Nah. I am starting to wonder if you're trying to beat Keefe's record for biggest interspeciesial episode- and if you are, I'm pretty sure you've won. The Great Gulon Incident was epic, but it didn't almost start a war. ~ Shannon Messenger,
414:Sometimes in the shadows the view would light up, usually when he was smoking weed, as if the contrast knob of Creation had been messed with just enough to give everything an underglow, a luminous edge, and promise that the night was about to turn epic somehow. ~ Thomas Pynchon,
415:Why haven't we fixed sick yet? You scientists there-- put down those starfish and HELP us. I hereby demand that all the people who are good at math make the world free of illness. The rest of us will write you epic poems and staple them together into a booklet. ~ Daniel Handler,
416:[P]eople think that in order for something to be frightening, it has to be dark, musty, and full of cobwebs and secrets. That's a lie of epic proportion. The scariest, most unexplainable things happen in the bright light of day. And just when you least expect. ~ Suzanne Palmieri,
417:The richly cadenced prose is hypnotic, the research prodigious, the analysis acute, the mood spellbinding, and the cast of characters mythic in scale. I cannot conceive of a better book about Capitol Hill. An unforgettable, epic achievement in the art of biography. ~ Ron Chernow,
418:Seeing that his smile had grown to epic proportions, she asked, “What?” “You just smiled.” “I did not.” “I saw it.” “You were hallucinating.” He shook his head, chuckling. “Nope, I saw you smile. I saw those pretty little dimples.” “I do not have dimples, Fuller! ~ Suzanne Wright,
419:Primitive times are lyrical, ancient times epical, modern times dramatic. The ode sings of eternity, the epic imparts solemnity tohistory, the drama depicts life. The characteristic of the first poetry is ingeniousness, of the second, simplicity, of the third, truth. ~ Victor Hugo,
420:Robert Vavra is one of these artists, part magician, part alchemist, who is able to create a series of photographs in unforgettable compositions. Only visible are the dunes, the blinding fields of flowers and the vast sky, the epic intimacy of Robert Vavra's vision. ~ Peter Ustinov,
421:Something of this kind, I replied:–God is always to be represented as he truly is,
whatever be the sort of poetry, epic, lyric or tragic, in which the representation
is given.
Right.
And is he not truly good? and must he not be represented as such?
Certainly. ~ Plato,
422:What I hoped to accomplish with this final book was to present a character who could exemplify the idea that not all heroes die in an epic fight or ultimate showdown. On the contrary, a lot of our heroes die quietly in bed, after a long battle with an unforgiving disease. ~ A R Wise,
423:Most people think that they need to be tapped on the shoulder by the Epic Fairy if they ever hope to be epic, or if they're ever going to have the audacity to do something truly epic. But it's not true. Want to be epic? Just do epic shit. There's nothing else to it. ~ Johnny B Truant,
424:Ollie-O was in a semicatatonic state, uttering nonsensical phrases like "This is not biodegradable - the downstream implications are enormous - the optics make for rough sledding - going forward -" before getting stuck on the words "epic fail," which he kept repeating. ~ Maria Semple,
425:Your primary presumption that The Bridge was proffered as an epic has no substantial foundation. You know quite well that I doubt that our present stage of cultural development is so ordered yet as to provide the means or method for such an organic manifestation as that. ~ Hart Crane,
426:All classes of people under social pressure are permeated with a common experience; they are emotionally welded as others cannot be. With them, even ordinary living has epic depth and lyric intensity, and this, their material handicap, is their spiritual advantage. ~ Alain LeRoy Locke,
427:Hollywood movies of the Fifties, like The Ten Commandments and Ben-Hur, with their epic clash of pagan and Judeo-Christian cultures, tell more about art and society than the French-infatuated ideologues who have made a travesty of the "best" American higher criticism. ~ Camille Paglia,
428:I know. I'm sorry. I think you might be right, though. Maybe there isn't such a thing as fate. Maybe it's just opportunities we're given, and what we do with them. I'm beginning to think that maybe great, epic romances don't just happen. We have to make them ourselves. ~ Marissa Meyer,
429:I returned to my pillow and comforter, both of which I loved; they smelled like lavender, and were so cozy, poems should be written about their epic cozy wonder. I snuggled against their softness and willed away the touch of anxiety I felt about my mom’s strange behavior. ~ Penny Reid,
430:The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal. Some of their most esteemed inventions have no other apparent purpose - for example, the dinner party of more than two, the epic poem, and the science of metaphysics. ~ H L Mencken,
431:The millennium that is fast approaching is a transcultural event of epic proportions. It is a climax that occurs once every thousand years, a psychic convergence felt by every soul on earth who is living at the time. It is a moment of tremendous blessing for mankind. ~ Michael D O Brien,
432:The only thing a girl in high school—who’s never dated anyone before—wants is to find someone to love her. I was breaking out and going my own way, and while I was reinventing myself to become the me I would always be, I was dying to throw my epic love story in the mix. “I ~ Shelly Crane,
433:[Kafka] transformed the profoundly antipoetic material of a highly bureaucratized society into the great poetry of the novel; he transformed a very ordinary story of a man who cannot obtain a promised job . . . into myth, into epic, into a kind of beauty never before seen. ~ Milan Kundera,
434:a traveling epic Hunkey, crossing and recrossing the country every year, south in the winter and north in the summer and only because he has no place he can stay in without getting tired of it and because there was nowhere to go but everywhere, and keep rolling under the stars ~ Jack Kerouac,
435:Perhaps the gods will surprise us and it will be neither.”
“A true tragedy.”
“Of epic proportions.”
“Two longstanding rivals.”
“And only one robe to bear.”
“Who will win?” Darren’s tone was wry. “The handsome prince?”
I grinned. “Or his valiant betrothed? ~ Rachel E Carter,
436:Their story was nothing like a romantic movie despite the epic crowd scene. Theirs was a tale of clumsy beginnings, quick getaways, and right when she thought a scary ending was inevitable, he’d managed to swoop in and let her save him. They were all the genres rolled into one. ~ Tracy Ewens,
437:The richest love is that which submits to the arbitration of time." Lawrence Durrell in "Clea," book three of the epic Alexandria Quartet - which I am reading for the third time since my early 20s...relishing its superb prose and enigmatic insights into the nature of love. ~ Lawrence Durrell,
438:Larry Colton’s Ordinary Joes are just like us, yet they endure what we could never imagine, and are ennobled in ways they themselves might not claim. Intimate and epic, unblinking and even-handed, Colton’s engrossing story strips sentimentality and cliché from our notion of hero. ~ Ron Shelton,
439:Steve Jobs is the most epic entrepreneur of all time. He served as a guiding light for any emerging businessperson who wanted to learn how things should get done. He'll be looked at as one of the best business leaders of all time, and certainly one of the best tech entrepreneurs. ~ Aaron Levie,
440:Tens of millions of Russian people died, fighting all sorts of Western expansionism. They defeated Nazism. They helped to liberate much of our world from colonialism. Of course the West never forgave Russia for fighting the epic battles against its expansionism and colonialism. ~ Andre Vltchek,
441:Undoubtedly, the place to start with Chinese fiction is with Cao Xueqin’s eighteenth-century classic, A Dream of Red Mansions, a sweeping epic about family life and Confucian practices in feudal China, including numerous subplots, a gazillion characters, and a touching love story. ~ Nancy Pearl,
442:When and if Violet ever fell in love, lightning would split the heavens, tectonic plates would shift, continents would reorder themselves.

Because she might be willful and spoiled and impetuous, but no one loved with the force of his sister. Her love story would be epic. ~ Julie Anne Long,
443:Reading is the way mankind delays the inevitable. Reading is the way we shake our fist at the sky. As long as we have these epic, improbable reading projects arrayed before us, we cannot breathe our last: Tell the Angel of Death to come back later; I haven't quite finished Villette. ~ Joe Queenan,
444:This, it occurred to me, this was the undisciplined human community that, fired by its dull collective wit, now drove the armed nation towards it knew-not-what sort of epic martial cataclysm: a massive flailing organism with all the rectitude and foresight of an untrained puppy. ~ George Saunders,
445:whether they'll write the story of my life as a tragedy or an epic fantasy... I was wondering if it was going to be a kiss at the end, or sad music and a sweeping camera shot over the fields I once roamed freely. I'm hoping for the kiss, but expecting the sweeping camera shot. ~ Maggie Stiefvater,
446:And as I sat beneath florescent cylinders spewing aggressively artificial light, I thought about how we all believed ourselves to be the hero of some personal epic, when in fact we were basically identical organisms colonizing a vast and windowless room that smelled of Lysol and lard. ~ John Green,
447:All the little quirks that make even the most barren, frigid places beautiful, that make a tiny gray dot on the map the one place you'll always call home, no matter where your glamorous, boring, adventurous, average, ridiculous, impossible, epic, romantic, bacon-infused life leads you. ~ Sarah Ockler,
448:The creation myths of the various peoples and religions of the world pale when compared to the glory of the big band. The three-billion-year history of life's evolution from self-reproducing molecules to civilization contains twists and romances that cannot be matched by any myth or epic. ~ Liu Cixin,
449:The creation myths of the various peoples and religions of the world pale when compared to the glory of the big bang. The three-billion-year history of life's evolution from self-reproducing molecules to civilization contains twists and romances that cannot be matched by any myth or epic. ~ Liu Cixin,
450:The creation myths of the various peoples and religions of the world pale when compared to the glory of the big bang. The three-billion-year history of life’s evolution from self-reproducing molecules to civilization contains twists and romances that cannot be matched by any myth or epic. ~ Liu Cixin,
451:There was a bidding war between Epic Records and Jive - now RCA - which was bittersweet. Just having labels bid over me was really cool, but I ended up going with Jive because it felt better over there, and they have my favorite artists like Usher, Chris Brown, and Justin Timberlake. ~ Jacob Latimore,
452:I pulled back, my eyes still closed, knowing that I had just stolen an epic moment from life. Someday when I looked back, I would smile in the middle of the street and no one would know why, because it was just for me, so that I could say to myself: Once in Africa, I kissed a king . . . ~ Leylah Attar,
453:I think it is our job, as writers, to be epic. Epic and tiny at the same time. If you're going to be a fiction writer, why not take on something that means something. In doing this, you must understand that within that epic structure it is the tiny story that is possibly more important. ~ Colum McCann,
454:Writing is the act of creation. Put words on a page, words to sentences, sentences to paragraphs, paragraphs to seven-book epic fantasy cycles with books so heavy you could choke a hippo. But don’t give writing too much power, either. A wizard controls his magic; it doesn’t control him. ~ Chuck Wendig,
455:I was listening to this Ngozi Family record, 45,000 Volts, and it's mostly this guy singing, and then for the choruses, he's doubled. And it's not even harmonized, it's all the same note! And I'm like, "Oh, that sounds epic." I don't know, it's just one of those arbitrary taste things. ~ Robin Pecknold,
456:They had a silent staring contest, but Percy didn’t back down. When he and Annabeth started dating, his mother had drummed it into his head: It’s good manners to walk your date to the door. If that was true, it had to be good manners to walk her to the start of her epic solo death quest. ~ Rick Riordan,
457:Vohannes turns and grins at her. “So! Here is the triumphant warrior, fresh off of her conquest. What an epic night you’ve had!” “Vo, I honestly do not have time for your supposed charms. How did you get in?” “By liberally applying my supposed charms, of course,” says Vohannes. ~ Robert Jackson Bennett,
458:I think authors are just realizing there's no real reason to feel limited to a narrow set of genre rules in their writing. There's no reason a mystery novel can't have fantastic elements in it. Similarly, there's no reason why your epic fantasy series can't have elements of a mystery. ~ Patrick Rothfuss,
459:I love that, for Kanye [West], there's no difference between the epic and the personal. That makes him sound like a really grandiose douche - which, I don't think anyone, himself included, could contest - but at the same time, it's really amazing. I love the scope of his perfectionism. ~ David Longstreth,
460:In a sense, you're always mythologizing your life; it's always an effort to make yourself epic. At least in fiction you can lie and sort of justify your delusion about your "epicness." But when you're writing a memoir, you're trying to make your life epic and it's not - nobody's life is. ~ Sherman Alexie,
461: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,
462:The Greek word epos means simply “word” or “story” or “song.” It is related to a verb meaning “to say” or “to tell,” which is used (in a form with a prefix) in the first line of the poem. The narrator commands the Muse, “Tell me”: enn-epe. An epic poem is, at its root, simply a tale that is told. ~ Homer,
463:We were little children, four or five years old, but they were all around the house and they made us look epic, like we were part of some story being told. My mom would have this woman come to our house and take photos of us. She did a photo book of us as well when I was one. I still have it. ~ Jeff Vespa,
464:Maybe learning how to be out in the big world isn't the epic journey everyone thinks it is. Maybe that's actually the easy part. The hard part is what's right in front of you. The hard part is learning how to hold the title to your very existence, to own not only property, but also your life. ~ Meghan Daum,
465:The detectives slide back on the digital timeline to the moment when Mendelssohn steps out into the snowstorm: there is something of the Greek epic about it, the old gray man with his walking stick, venturing out, into the snow, out of frame and away, like an ancient word stepping off a page. ~ Colum McCann,
466:I know there are epic tales of romance, where love means you're supposed to die. Where it's all about sacrifice. But I don't want to die. I don't want Stephen to die. I'm looking for the scenario where we both get to live. Where we can continue this marvel that is love and discovery and trust. ~ David Levithan,
467:If someone asked you what the greatest good on this earth is, what would you say? An epic surf session? Financial security? Health? Meaningful, trusting friendships? Intimacy with your spouse? Knowing that you belong? The greatest good on this earth is God. Period. God’s one goal for us is Himself. ~ Francis Chan,
468:How we approached this was I wanted this to be personal in a way. It's not a big, epic Hollywood score but really personal and intimate, and we thought guitar would be the perfect instrument for him because he's young and he has an undying spirit and all that stuff and we went on that feeling totally. ~ A R Rahman,
469:I have been working. I've been blessed to have shared a movie in the north of Chile called 'The 33,' with Gabriel Byrne and Juliette Binoche and Antonio Banderas, which is the beautiful story of the miners (trapped underground for 69 days in 2010). And then, this incredible, epic story came my way. ~ Cote de Pablo,
470:I never use paradox. The statements I make are wearisome and obvious common sense. I have even been driven to the tedium of reading through my own books, and have been unable to find any paradox. In fact, that thing is quite tragic, and some day I shall hope to write an epic called 'Paradox Lost'. ~ G K Chesterton,
471:One flake falls, twisting down through the empty sky. One frozen speck of snow. Then another, and another, and before I know it the roads will be covered in dozens of distinct flakes. All these little pieces combining to create one giant, volatile snowstorm, something beautiful and dangerous and epic ~ Sara Raasch,
472:Compelling and poetic, Four Letters of Love spirits the reader away to a magical, mist-clad coastline, inhabited by a passionate people, and unfurls like some epic poem which has been handed down in song, generation to generation. Half fable, half tragic realism, its musical rhythm is unforgettable ~ Niall Williams,
473:My God, that scene in Monster Inc. where the monsters realise that their entire world is founded on hurting children -look at that for a change! Two galumphing cartoon characters making a shattering realisation about their world and their role in sustaining it. A truly epic moment. It's stunning. ~ Russell T Davies,
474:The opportunities of the twenty-first century make those of us who care about cities feel like kids in a candy store: How will cities survive and lead the way in the transformation required to combat global warming? Resilient Cities gives us a road map for this epic journey upon which we are embarking. ~ Greg Nickels,
475:Mads [Mikkelsen] and I have a really epic brawl - a week shoot, lots of rehearsal - and he was just delightful. He's a dancer and a gymnast so he knows how to plant the moves. He was always saying, "Are you okay?" When you've got that level of mutual consideration you form a family very quickly. ~ Benedict Cumberbatch,
476:Turned the wrong way around, the relentless unforeseen was what we schoolchildren studied in "History", harmless history, where everything unexpected in its own time is chronicled on the page as inevitable. The terror of the unforeseen is what the science of history hides, turning a disaster into an epic. ~ Philip Roth,
477:Because the ancients didn’t differentiate as easily as you do between fact and fiction. Myths illuminate a society’s behavior and beliefs on multiple levels all at the same time. So you can learn more ‘truth’ from a fictional epic than you can from a bunch of bone shards. No offense.” “Some taken. ~ Jordanna Max Brodsky,
478:This could, quite possibly, be the dumbest thing she’d ever done: pursuing a poisonous basilisk into a cave during an earthquake in the company of a bunch of dead guys, armed with a potato cannon and a six-pack of lye. Never mind her soggy pink fiberglass armor. This was going to be an epic way to die. The ~ Laura Bickle,
479:It’s an innocent love. It’s a beautiful love. I think it’s even an eternal love. But … I don’t know yet. Maybe in another lifetime we’ll see. We’ll find out if our souls share something that transcends time or if they are nothing more than epoch.” “Epic?” “E-p-o-c-h. It’s a memorable event or period in time. ~ Jewel E Ann,
480:On the television planet, where men make up the tribe, the law of the caveman rules. So, for a woman coming from another world, without experience or cunning, to succeed gradually in gaining control over what is to be taped, what goes out over the air, what is said without censorship, is an epic feat. ~ Cristina Saralegui,
481:To want to give to prose the rhythm of verse (but keeping it very much prose), and to want to write about ordinary life as one writes history or the epic (without denaturing the subject) is perhaps an absurdity. That's what I wonder sometimes. But perhaps it's also a grand undertaking and very original! ~ Gustave Flaubert,
482:I have heard people say love is weak but they’re wrong—love is strong. In nearly everyone it trumps all other things—patriotism and ambition, religion and upbringing. And of every kind of love—the epic and the small, the noble and the base—the one that a parent has for their child is the greatest of them all. ~ Terry Hayes,
483:We started out making a film [ The Fourth Phase] about the incredible snow we get at home in Wyoming, the journey soon macroed out into this epic 16,000 mile trip around the North Pacific, taking us to locations in Japan, Alaska, the Kamchatka Peninsula in far-eastern Russia, and back to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. ~ Travis Rice,
484:She knew that women were rarely the centers of such stories. Instead, they were eye candy, arm candy, victims, or love interests. Mostly, they existed to help the great white hetero hero on his fucking epic journey. When there was a heroine, she weighed very little, wore very little, and had had her teeth fixed. ~ E Lockhart,
485:Epic: A Journey Through Church History fills an urgent need for adult Catholics to recover their history as a believing community, debunk false criticisms of their Church, and understand the Christian underpinnings of the modern world. This is a vivid, thorough and engaging program. I heartily recommend it. ~ Charles J Chaput,
486:I don’t feel that I’m making movies for iPhones. If someone wants to watch it on an iPhone, I’m not going to stop them, especially if they’re paying for it, but I don’t recommend it. I think it’s dumb, when you have characters that are so small in the frame that they’re not visible. I’m trying to make an epic. ~ James Cameron,
487:My lord said, amongst other things, that he did not propose to burden the doctor with the details of his genealogy. He consigned the doctor and all his works, severally and comprehensively described, to hell, and finished up his epic speech by a pungent and Rabelaisian criticism of the whole race of leeches. ~ Georgette Heyer,
488:I have heard people say love is weak but they're wrong--love is strong. In nearly everyone it trumps all other things--patriotism and ambition, religion and upbringing. And of every kind of love--the epic and the small, the noble and the base--the one that a parent has for their child is the greatest of them all. ~ Terry Hayes,
489:Augustus Waters was the great star-crossed love of my life. Ours was an epic love story, and I won’t be able to get more than a sentence into it without disappearing into a puddle of tears. Gus knew. Gus knows. I will not tell you our love story, because—like all real love stories—it will die with us, as it should. ~ John Green,
490:...many forces that influenced the flow of the tale: boons and curses and manmade laws. There was no hero or villain in the epic, just people struggling with life, responding to crises, making mistakes, repeating mistakes, in innocence or ignorance, while trying to make their lives meaningful and worthwhile. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik,
491:Some books will remain famous but will be considered anonymous works, as for us the epic of Gilgamesh; others author's names will still be known, but none of their works will survive, as was the case with Socrates; or perhaps, all the surviving books will be attributed to a single, mysterious author, like Homer. ~ Italo Calvino,
492:I have been saying this for some time, but customers are not interested in grand games with higher-quality graphics and sound and epic stories. Only people who do not know the video game business would advocate the release of next-generation machines when people are not interested in cutting-edge technologies. ~ Hiroshi Yamauchi,
493:I'm a big John Steinbeck fan. Cormac McCarthy. I've always loved the stories of regular people. Mark Twain, too. When you look back at some of the epic writers of our country's history, very rarely do you find upper-class royalty. We seem to delve into the struggle of life and the labor of life much more frequently. ~ Lucas Neff,
494:Middlemarch offers what George Eliot calls, in a wonderfully suggestive turn of phrase, "the home epic"- the momentous, ordinary journey traveled by most of us who have not even thought of aspiring to sainthood. The home epic has its own nostalgia - not for a country left behind but for a childhood landscape lost. ~ Rebecca Mead,
495:We stood crying, Huda with tears, I with my mother's silence and taut jaw. We were enfolded in each other like the last word of an epic poem we had never imagined would end. A childhood story we had lived together line by line, hand in hand, was ending and we knew it would close the moment we unraveled our arms. ~ Susan Abulhawa,
496:What you seek, you shall never find. For when the Gods made man, They kept immortality for themselves. Fill your belly. Day and night make merry, Let Days be full of joy. Love the child that holds your hand. Let your wife delight in your embrace. For these alone are the concerns of man. —The Epic of Gilgamesh ~ Christopher Moore,
497:I think poets are supposed to be writing for television and film. I grew up in the day of early TV that was so raw and funny, and I think we're in the next important moment of television, where it's really telling the epic of the culture like Charles Dickens was doing in the 19th century with his serialized novels. ~ Eileen Myles,
498:She was the epic crush of my childhood. She was the tragedy that made me look inside myself and see my corrupt heart. She was my sin and my salvation, come back from the grave to change me forever. Again. Back then, when she sat on my bed and told me she loved me, I wanted her as much as I have ever wanted anything. ~ Holly Black,
499:This is just great,” he grumbled under his breath. “Here I thought I was being recruited for an epic space adventure, but it turns out I’m a guest star on Love Boat: The Next Generation.” “Set course…for romance!” Shin quoted, doing such a perfect Patrick Stewart impersonation that Milo and I both laughed out loud. ~ Ernest Cline,
500:I understand La Dolce Famiglia will be exclusive to Purity hotels. When is the opening?”

Julietta spoke up. “Sex months.”

Silence dropped. The three of them stared at her as if she’d sprouted horns, and suddenly, she realized what she said. Holy crap. Talk about a Freudian slip of epic propor-tions. ~ Jennifer Probst,
501:Not only do we have the handsomest voice cast out there, along with the very lovely Black Widow, we also have an incredible voice cast, in terms of being able to handle the drama, the fun, the excitement and the promise that Marvel brings to every single one of our projects, which is epic adventure on the human spirit. ~ Jeph Loeb,
502:To quote Dr. Ewer: 'Behaviour will tend to be always a jump ahead of structure and so play a decisive role in the evolutionary process.' In this light, evolution no longer appears as a tale told by an idiot, but rather as an epic recited by a stutterer-at times haltingly and painfully, then precipitating in bursts. ~ Arthur Koestler,
503:It occurred to me that the moment in space and time before lips touch, the small exquisite sting of wanting, a beat of thirst, of yearning, was the most underrated part of kissing. There should be sonnets and epic poems written about the space before a kiss, and the thrilling rush that comes with the moment of contact. ~ Natasha Boyd,
504:mix epic individualism with extreme religion; mix show business with everything else; let all that steep and simmer for a few centuries; run it through the anything-goes 1960s and the Internet age; the result is the America we inhabit today, where reality and fantasy are weirdly and dangerously blurred and commingled. ~ Kurt Andersen,
505:I have a thing about losers. Flaws in oneself open you up to others with flaws. Not that Dostoyevsky's characters don't generate phatos, but they're flawed in ways that don't come across as faults. And while I'm on the subject, Tolstoy's characters' faults are so epic and out of scale, they're as static as backdrops. ~ Haruki Murakami,
506:I reached for the notebook which was always close by. All thoughts of composing epic poems of Greek heroes had left me. The words that often burst from my onto the paper in recent days would be considered mere nothings to the world, but they were everything to me . . . They were the pourings of my heart FOR my heart . . . ~ Nancy Moser,
507:We’re at different places on our journey but we share a guiding story, a sweeping epic drama called the Bible. We find faith as we follow Jesus and share a willingness to honestly wrestle with God and our questions and doubts. We find dignity as God’s image-bearers and strive to call out that dignity in one another. ~ Rachel Held Evans,
508:A great many of the epic fantasies, from The Lord of the Rings onward, are about war, but to my mind, a lot of it doesn't really deal honestly with the consequences of war, what war does to us, as a society, what war does to us, as individuals, and the struggle for power, in the same way, and what we're fighting for. ~ George R R Martin,
509:It occurred to me that the moment in space and time before lips touch, the small exquisite sting of wanting, a beat of thirst, of yearning, was the most underrated part of kissing. There should be sonnets and epic poems written about the space before a kiss, and the thrilling rush that comes with the moment of contact. My ~ Natasha Boyd,
510:The way Leo figured it, he spent more time crashing than he did flying. If there were a rewards card for frequent crashers, he’d be, like, double platinum level. Leo couldn’t fly. He had a couple of minutes at most before he’d hit the water and go ker-splat. He decided he didn’t like that ending to the Epic Ballad of Leo. ~ Rick Riordan,
511:When the call came for the factory fire, Logan was spoiling for a fight...His degree of pissed-off had reached epic proportions.

The fire was everything Logan needed right now. Big and raging and hungry...

He couldn't do a damn thing about his private life but he could beat this motherfucker into submission. ~ Amy Andrews,
512:What I wish is that people would look beyond the tribbles and see I've written some other books that I really would like people to notice. There's The Man Who Folded Himself, there's The Martian Child, which is about my son and the adoption. There's The War Against The Chtorr, which is my magnum opus, my great epic story. ~ David Gerrold,
513:I love seeing the Oscar films and epic dramas. But I'd rather watch a romantic comedy than any other kind of movie. There's something about movies like these that make you feel so good and happy and that you want to live in that world -- to be that girl and be part of the fairy tale. I have always believed in fairy tales. ~ Jennifer Lopez,
514:Nobody's going to give you the gift of awesome. Nobody's going to make you good, or great, or amazing, or epic. Nobody's going to make you an expert or an authority or a voice anyone should listen to. Nobody's going to level you up. If you want that next level, take it. Take it for yourself. Grab it. Become it. Claim it. ~ Johnny B Truant,
515:I’ve heard of you,’ Leon said, as James Adams approached. ‘You’re the guy that started the epic food fight in the campus dining-room.’ James smirked. ‘Good to know my legend lives on.’ ‘I bow down before you,’ Alfie said. ‘You’re the guy that had sex in the campus fountain.’ Grace shook her head. ‘No, that was Dave Moss. ~ Robert Muchamore,
516:So how are we suppose to win? On the one hand, the world tells us that capital-L Love is epic, and all-conquering, and the meaning of everything, but on the other, it drills us with this message that we shouldn't make any sacrifice or effort to pursue it, because that would make us weak, unempowered, desperate, silly girls. ~ Abby McDonald,
517:As a southerner born after the epic events of the civil rights movement, I've always wondered how on earth people of good will could have conceivably lived with Jim Crow - with the daily degradations, the lynchings in plain sight, and, as the movement gathered force, with the fire hoses and the police dogs and the billy clubs. ~ Jon Meacham,
518:And once you live a good story, you get a taste for a kind of meaning in life, and you can’t go back to being normal; you can’t go back to meaningless scenes stitched together by the forgettable thread of wasted time. The more practice stories I lived, the more I wanted an epic to climb inside of and see through till its end. ~ Donald Miller,
519:Six billion of us walking the planet, six billion smaller worlds on the bigger one. Shoe salesmen and short-order cooks who look boring from the outside - some have weirder lives than you. Six billion stories, every one an epic, full of tragedy and triumph, good and evil, despair and hope. You and me - we aren't so special, bro. ~ Dean Koontz,
520:After graduating from our school, they went into the Woods expecting epic battles with monsters and wizards, only to find their fairy tales unfold right in their own houses. They didn’t realize that villains are the ones closest to us. They didn’t realize that to find a happy ending, a hero must first look right under his nose. ~ Soman Chainani,
521:A well-managed plant, I soon learned, is a quiet place. A factory that is “dramatic,” a factory in which the “epic of industry” is unfolded before the visitor’s eyes, is poorly managed. A well-managed factory is boring. Nothing exciting happens in it because the crises have been anticipated and have been converted into routine. ~ Peter F Drucker,
522:For official record, announce instructor, the state requires no epic hero. No strive achieve personal celebrity of spotlight and applause. Lectures instructor, the state desires best ideal perform as mediocre. No gain attention showboat. No buffoon. Best effort so occur average. Suppress climbing ego. Become ordinary. Invisible. ~ Chuck Palahniuk,
523:The ultimate dreamer is Vishnu floating on the cosmic Milky Ocean, couched upon the coils of the abyssal serpent Ananta, the meaning of whose name is Unending. In the foreground stand the five Pandava brothers, heroes of the epic Mahabharata, with Draupadi, their wife: allegorically, she is the mind and they are the five senses. ~ Joseph Campbell,
524:Epic sex?" I sputtered. "By what standards, precisely, is sex judged to be epic?"

"And tons and tons of mortal simps like you used as pawns." Bob sighed happily, ignoring my question. "There are no words. It was like the Lord of the Rings and All My Children made a baby with the Macho Man Randy Savage and a Whac-A-Mole machine. ~ Jim Butcher,
525:I don't mess around with the men in the coven, especially my Shadowblades," she said with quiet finality. Flirting was one thing but anything more, it was a mistake of epic proportions.

His eyes narrowed and he gave a slow shake of his head. "That is all right then. Because I want so much more than just to mess around. ~ Diana Pharaoh Francis,
526:In other words: mix epic individualism with extreme religion; mix show business with everything else; let all that steep and simmer for a few centuries; run it through the anything-goes 1960s and the Internet age; the result is the America we inhabit today, where reality and fantasy are weirdly and dangerously blurred and commingled. ~ Kurt Andersen,
527:A burning map. Every epic, my friend Jack used to say, should start with a burning map. Like in the movies. Fucking flames burning the world away; that's the best thing about all those old movies, he said - when you see this old parchment map just… getting darker and darker in the centre, crisping, crinkling until suddenly it just… fwoom ~ Hal Duncan,
528:Many Theresas have been born who found for themselves no epic life wherein there was a constant unfolding of far-resonant action; perhaps only a life of mistakes, the offspring of a certain spiritual grandeur ill-matched with the meanness of opportunity; perhaps a tragic failure which found no sacred poet and sank unwept into oblivion. ~ George Eliot,
529:Dude, you’re all over YouTube.”

Alex did a double take at the blurry video clip of a huge gray wolf running down the middle of the street and slamming into a car.

Shit.

“Over ten thousand downloads in the last thirty minutes.” Cooper’s grin broadened. “First full shift, and you’re trending. It’s freaking epic! ~ Paige Tyler,
530:I had dreams, and they were not about ending up a speck. I didn't dream of becoming a star, but I thought I might have a small nonspeaking role in a grand epic, an epic with a touch of artistic credentials. I didn't dream of becoming a giant - I wasn't that delusional or arrogant - but I wanted to be more than a speck, maybe a midget. ~ Rabih Alameddine,
531:The idea itself, the notion of what the next Tron could be, is exciting enough that it would be worth going back to do it. Obviously we hinted some things at the end of Legacy, it's kind of there for people to see what that potential is. So we just want to make sure that we have a script that delivers on that promise on an epic scale." ~ Joseph Kosinski,
532:How did we start worrying about climate? In 1948 a conservationist named Fairfield Osborn wrote a book titled Our Plundered Planet (the first jeremiad of its kind) and, with Laurance Rockefeller, founded the Conservation Foundation in New York. In 1958 Charles Keeling began his epic project measuring the atmospheric concentration of CO 2. ~ Stewart Brand,
533:Oh, please, Mr. B thinks, not a human. Not another human. He is filled with despair. God's passion for humans always leads to catastrophe, to meteorological upset on an epic scale. What is wrong with the boy that he can't get it up for some nice goddess? Why, oh why, can't he pursue a sensible relationship, one that will not end in disaster? ~ Meg Rosoff,
534:Peter glances out at the falling snow. Oh, little man. You have brought down your house not through passion but by neglect. You who dared to think of yourself as dangerous. You are guilty not of the epic transgressions but the tiny crimes. You have failed in the most base and human of ways - you have not imagined the lives of others. ~ Michael Cunningham,
535:Would you say the chip on your shoulder is massive or epic?” he asked. There was no hint of amusement in his tone, and he was staring at me with more ice than I’d believed he could muster. It didn’t feel like we were sniping at each other anymore. “It might be semantics to you but I’m trying to get a feel for what I’m dealing with here. ~ Kate Canterbary,
536:What novel - or what else in the world - can have the epic scope of a photograph album? May our Father in Heaven, the untiring amateur who each Sunday snaps us from above, at an unfortunate angle that makes for hideous foreshortening, and pastes our pictures, properly exposed or not, in his album, guide me safely through this album of mine. ~ Gunter Grass,
537:You, Mad Dog, are exactly what I came here to protect her from. But you know what? We’re all broken some way or another. Even with your epic fuckup, you just might be exactly what she needs. You get one more chance,” she said, holding up her index finger an inch from my nose. “Just one. Don’t mess it up . . . you know . . . more than usual. ~ Jamie McGuire,
538:A burning map. Every epic, my friend Jack used to say, should start with a burning map. Like in the movies. Fucking flames burning the world away; that's the best thing about all those old films, he said -- when you see this old parchment map just ... getting darker and darker in the centre, crisping, crinkling until suddenly it just ... fwoom. ~ Hal Duncan,
539:Griff had never been the fanciful sort, even as a boy. When he was with Pauline, the world was different. She forced him to see things through fresh eyes. Suddenly his library was the eighth wonder of the world, and Corinthian columns merited blasphemy. A ferry across the Thames was an epic journey, and a kiss . . . a kiss was everything. ~ Tessa Dare,
540:I think President Obama is the most radical president this nation's ever seen. And in particular, I think he is a true believer in government control of the economy and of our everyday lives. In my judgment, we are facing what I consider to be the epic battle of our generation, quite literally the battle over whether we remain a free market nation. ~ Ted Cruz,
541:I write books for teenagers because I vividly remember what it felt like to be a teen facing everyday and epic dangers. I don't write to protect them. It's far too late for that. I write to give them weapons-in the form of words and ideas-that will help them fight their monsters. I write in blood because I remember what it felt like to bleed. ~ Sherman Alexie,
542:And that’s the thing you’ll realize when you organize your life into the structure of story. You’ll get a taste for one story and then want another, and then another, and the stories will build until you’re living a kind of epic of risk and reward, and the whole thing will be molding you into the actual character whose roles you’ve been playing. ~ Donald Miller,
543:But look at Avatar (2009), one of the most globally viewed pieces of entertainment to have ever been made - the central emotional event of the whole movie was a tree being cut down. And the entire movie, essentially, is saying, "If we let the military industrial complex trash the place that we're living in, we will have committed an epic crime." ~ Edward Norton,
544:Power justifies itself, in countless small ways. But one of the big ways it does so is by creating an ideological narrative about how things got to be this way—and what must now change. These narratives are more than technical explanations. They are epic morality tales, and they typically follow this sequence: Paradise Paradise Lost Paradise Redeemed ~ Eric Liu,
545:The History of the World is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom,’ he wrote. The Phenomenology is thus an immense philosophical epic, tracing the history of Mind from its first blind gropings in a hostile world to the moment when, in recognizing itself as master of the universe, it finally achieves self-knowledge and freedom. ~ Anonymous,
546:You haven’t always been the mug you are today, bogged down by circumstances, work, and thirst, the most disastrous of servitudes … Do you think that, just for a moment, you can revive the poetry in you? … are your heart and cock still capable of leaping to the words of an epic, sad to be sure, but noble … resplendent? You feel up to it? ~ Louis Ferdinand C line,
547:If the military knew about vampires, and it knew about a few of the other less conventional brands of humanity, too, then what was the big plot? They obviously weren’t trying to recruit us, which was sort of a shame. I imagined a full unit of vampire soldiers and I got a little giddy, and distracted. Bad idea, maybe. But it’d be epic, wouldn’t it? ~ Cherie Priest,
548:THE OLD FAITHFUL area was the largest complex in the park, consisting of hundreds of cabins, the Snow Lodge, retail stores, souvenir shops and snack bars, a rambling Park Service visitor center, and the showpiece structure of the entire park: the hundred-plus-year-old Old Faithful Inn that stood in sharp, gabled, epic relief against the star-washed sky. ~ C J Box,
549:the same way that you can easily switch the letters of a word around to see another hidden meaning, such is life. A life can be defined by its hardships or its blessings. It’s all a matter of how you look at it. So, while this book was once setting up to be a tragic tale, it turned into a love story, an imperfect but unconventionally epic romance. ~ Penelope Ward,
550:But nothing of all that the peoples of Europe have produced is worth the first known poem to have appeared among them. Perhaps they will rediscover that epic genius when they learn how to accept the fact that nothing is sheltered from fate, how never to admire might, or hate the enemy, or to despise sufferers. It is doubtful if this will happen soon. ~ Simone Weil,
551:She dreamed of deep soul connections and passionate kisses and daring escapades. She was certain that he simply had to meet her, just once, and he would feel the same way. It would be like those epic love affairs that exploded into existence and burned white hot for all eternity. The type of love that time and distance and even death couldn’t separate. ~ Marissa Meyer,
552:socialism preceded Marxism, and socialism has survived Marxism, in part because Marxism was subjected to a real-world test for nearly a century and failed on an epic scale. Soviet revolutionaries did not engage in Fabian incrementalism; they got their country and their empire and their worldwide movement, and they worked their will without opposition. ~ Jonah Goldberg,
553:It came out an overpowering story, hinting at sickly relatives dying in inaccessible parts of the island, cross-country journeys, and a noble, if exhausted Ramillies crawling gamely home to be persuaded by an adoring wife to snatch what rest he might before attempting the feat of endurance which lay before him as a passenger on an almost epic flight. ~ Margery Allingham,
554:Hollywood is no longer the top. I love going to the cinema. I've always adored the idea of being in great, epic films. But they just don't really exist anymore. It's a real shame. There's great auteurs that create small movies, but it's really hard for anyone to see them, and for them to make any sort of money, or for them even to be made in the first place. ~ Ruth Wilson,
555:The way Shakespeare wrote Fallstaff is with a heightened language and everything. That's the genuis of having Ken Branagh here as well. Shakespeare doesn't require you to have a doctorate in his language or whatever to understand him. It just has to be directed and played right. It's all about scale and presence and getting these huge, epic stories across. ~ Ray Stevenson,
556:This, it occurred to me, this was the undisciplined human community that, fired by its dull collective wit, now drove the armed nation towards it knew-not-what sort of epic martial cataclysm: a massive flailing organism with all the rectitude and foresight of an untrained puppy. In the private letters of Albert Sloane, by permission of the Sloane family. ~ George Saunders,
557:Understand this: we are both tiny and massive. We are nothing more than molded clay given breath, but we are nothing less than divine self-portraits, huffing and puffing along mountain ranges of epic narrative arcs prepared for us by the Infinite Word Himself. Swell with pride and gratitude, for you are tiny and given much. You are as spoken by God as the stars. ~ Anonymous,
558:It’s like in movies,” I explain. “The heroine always has a cool sassy best friend—that’s me—whose life’s specifics don’t really matter, because the epic love story is the heroine’s. That’s you, obviously. And this is always how it works! Late in the movie, the best friend has some sort of experience that makes the heroine see her own relationship more clearly. ~ Amy Spalding,
559:Christ is a persuasion, a form evoking desire, and the whole force of the gospel depends upon the assumption that this persuasion is also peace: that the desire awakened by the shape of Christ and his church is one truly reborn as agape, rather than merely the way in which a lesser force succumbs to a greater, as an episode in the endless epic of power. (3) ~ David Bentley Hart,
560:This, it occurred to me, this was the undisciplined human community that, fired by its dull collective wit, now drove the armed nation towards it knew-not-what sort of epic martial cataclysm: a massive flailing organism with all the rectitude and foresight of an untrained puppy.

--In the private letters of Albert Sloane, by permission of the Sloane family. ~ George Saunders,
561:And, most vivid of all, there was the dramatic epic of the rats - the scampering army of obscene vermin which had burst forth from the castle three months after the tragedy that doomed it to desertion - the lean, filthy, ravenous army which had swept all before it and devoured fowl, cats, dogs, hogs, sheep, and even two hapless human beings before its fury was spent. ~ H P Lovecraft,
562:Young people today are flooded with disconnected images but lack a sympathetic instrument to analyze them as well as a historical frame of reference in which to situate them. I am reminded of an unnerving scene in Stanley Kubrick's epic film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, where an astronaut, his air hose cut by the master computer gone amok, spins helplessly off into space. ~ Camille Paglia,
563:I was fucked and I knew it. I had stupidly wandered into some epic rape palace run by meth-addicted hobos and bald men with beards who recently escaped nearby jails and had taken over this place for their torture sessions with hapless young women they found exploring the coast. Even worse, I was going to be the hapless woman who decided to infiltrate their headquarters. ~ Karina Halle,
564:The story of Judith. But one of the reasons I'm doing it is because the roles I've been writing for myself over the past few years have gotten older and older. And I thought, You know, before it's too late, I want to play a sexy, tough young gal again. And I always wanted to do a Biblical epic. So, I'll play a beautiful young widow who saves her people from the Assyrians. ~ Charles Busch,
565:He could describe walking towards the Taj Mahal – ho-hum, thinks the reader, immediately in the realm of the tacky postcard – and still give you a wholly fresh impression of the exact scale and actual presence of that white tomb; delicate but powerful, compact and yet boundlessly imposing. Epic grace. With those two words he encapsulated it, and you knew exactly what he meant. ~ Iain Banks,
566:Humanity is sitting on a time bomb. If the vast majority of the world's scientists are right, we have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet's climate system into a tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced - a catastrophe of our own making. ~ Al Gore,
567:As I work in the afternoon on committing to paper some of my morning's thoughts, I find myself just about to close on the knotty question of whether or not I believe in God. In fact I am about to type, 'I do not believe in God', when the sky goes black as ink, there is a thunderclap and a huge crash of thunder and a downpour of epic proportions. I never do complete the sentence. ~ Michael Palin,
568:Science properly done is one of the humanities, as a fine physics teacher once said. The point of science is to help us understand what we are and how we got here, and for this we need the great stories: the tale of how, once upon a time, there was a Big Bang; the Darwinian epic of the evolution of life on Earth; and now the story we are just beginning to learn how to tell... ~ Daniel C Dennett,
569:There's a pretty epic battle "Part 2" of Twilight. It's really involved and it took us a few weeks to film it, because there was so many of us and it was such a large, massive war. I think they're really gonna love that. I feel like we've been working up to this the whole series and there was a bit of confrontation, but you never really got to see all the vampires go full force. ~ Ashley Greene,
570:One of the great comforts of Israel’s epic is that it contains raw expressions of fierce doubt and lack of trust in God embraced by the ancient Israelites as part of their faith. I am thankful to God for this Bible rather than a sanitized one where spiritual struggles of the darkest kind are brushed aside as a problem to be fixed rather than accepted as part of the journey of faith. ~ Peter Enns,
571:He stops before a perfect little painting in which she has pictured her spine as a cracked column. There is something about the grief in her eyes that won’t let him look away. That is suffering, he thinks. He thinks about how long he’s been moping about Sandrine, and it makes him feel embarrassed, self-indulgent. Theirs, he suspects, was not an epic love story like Diego and Frida’s. ~ Jojo Moyes,
572:Her predicament (the word she had come to prefer in her mind, rather than "circumstances") had turned her into quite a philosopher, when by nature she'd always been a pragmatist. For instance, one allegedly wasn't rewarded for all of the good one did until on departed the Earthly Plane. But if you committed one (albeit epic) transgression, a lifetime of damnation seemed required. ~ Julie Anne Long,
573:I have long dreaded the thought of getting to the end of life and regretting that I allowed my own timidity or other people's expectations to determine the course of my life. I had decided at a much younger age that several of my beliefs should determine the course of my life...I...believe that Waengongi, the Creator, has an epic script into which my minute presence has been written. ~ Steve Saint,
574:Imagine if our lives were treated as carefully as the rest of history. Imagine if we were documented as conscientiously, preserved as gently. Each birth at least as important as a naval victory. Each death a national tragedy. There are plenty of ways to remember someone: a park bench, a colossus, an epic poem. Your only job is creating a life that contains a story worth telling. ~ Carolyn Parkhurst,
575:Expect an army of Vigil drones, nearly as a many Praesidis guards, a Machim ground detachment of super-soldiers and at least one Inquisitor. Oh, and security barriers everywhere. Possibly some of those mechs we met on Helix Retention, too. You Humans have kicked off a shitstorm of epic proportions.”

Alex spread her arms wide in an exagerrated shrug. “It’s one of our best skills. ~ G S Jennsen,
576:The Great Story of our immense journey contains crucial lessons for guiding humanity safely through the dangers and confusions evident today. This grand epic will propel us forward in a spirit of expectant curiosity. We will place our trust not only in the Whole but also in our own species' capacity to serve as the vessel through which the evolutionary impulse is most active at this time. ~ Michael Dowd,
577:I visited Paterson many years ago - 20 some years ago as a kind of day trip because of William Carlos Williams, because of Allen Ginsberg having lived there. And I went to the Great Falls and sat really in the exact same spot as Adam Driver does as Paterson. And I walked around the factory buildings, and I was rereading - I was reading at the time the epic length poem "Paterson" by Williams. ~ Jim Jarmusch,
578:“There are numerous synchronisms recorded in the Vedic, Puranic and epic literatures which are in consonance with the arrangement of names in the dynastic lists of the Puranas. These facts clearly establish the correctness of the arrangement of names in the Puranic genealogies.” ~ (Bhargava 1998:5), quoted in Elst, Koenraad (2018). Still no trace of an Aryan invasion: A collection on Indo-European origins.,
579:Because this story struck me as extraordinary, and it still does. Once upon a time there was a man in a spacesuit in a secret reconnaissance plane reading The Once and Future King, that great historical epic, that comic, tragic, romantic retelling of the Arthurian legend that tussles with questions of war and aggression, and might, and right, and the matter of what a nation is or might be. ~ Helen Macdonald,
580:Now, we're used to thinking of communism as being once-upon-a-time-all-things-were-owned-in-common, maybe-someday-this-will-come-again. And people agree that there is a sort of epic narrative going on here. I think we should just throw this narrative out, it's irrelevant anyway, and who cares who owns things? I don't. You know, we all own the White House. So what? I still can't go in, right? ~ David Graeber,
581:One good thing about a good book or a good film, or maybe even a song, I'm not a musician but I love to listen to music, is the range that each piece is able to give you. Like 'Bohemian Rhapsody' by Queen, 1975, that song is so epic. It goes in so many different places, it's and opera and it is heavy metal, and it's so crazy as it goes every which way. I kind of like films like that. ~ Kleber Mendonca Filho,
582:There the original Sumerian Epic of Creation was translated and revised so that Marduk, the Babylonian national god, was assigned a celestial counterpart. By renaming Nibiru "Marduk" in the Babylonian versions of the creation story, the Babylonians usurped for Marduk the attributes of a supreme "God of Heaven and Earth." This version—the most intact one found so far—is known as Enuma elish ~ Zecharia Sitchin,
583:It was difficult to see the exact nature of his expression as, in addition to the ubiquitous mustache, the clockmaker also wore a golden-brown beard of such epic proportions as might dwarf a mulberry bush. It was as though his mustache had become overly enthusiastic and, seized with the spirit of adventure, set out to conquer the southern reaches of his face in a take-no-prisoners kind of way. ~ Gail Carriger,
584:I think a relationship is like two stories,” I say at last, feeling my way cautiously through my thoughts. “Like…two open books, pressing together, and all the words mingle into one big, epic story. But if they stop mingling…” I lift my glass for emphasis. “Then they turn into two stories again. And that’s when it’s over.” I clap my hands together, spilling champagne. “The books shut. The End. ~ Sophie Kinsella,
585:The discipline of a soldier is formed by exercise rather than by study; the talents of a commander are appropriated to those calm though rapid minds, which nature produces to decide the fate of armies and nations: the former is the habit of a life, the latter the glance of a moment; and the battles won by lessons of tactics may be numbered with the epic poems created from the rules of criticism. ~ Edward Gibbon,
586:To come out here and play on Woodstock grounds, first year ever headlining on the main stage there's nothing more iconic. [Mysteryland] is one of those festivals that holds down the legacy of dance music it's been around for so many years. It's been part of what we do for so long. It kinda makes sense to bring the tradition over here to America. The festival grounds of Woodstock, that's pretty epic. ~ Steve Aoki,
587:I thought that it was more likely the opposite. I must have shut grief out. Found it in books. Cried over fiction instead of the truth. The truth was unconfined, unadorned. There was no poetic language to it, no yellow butterflies, no epic floods. There wasn't a town trapped underwater or generations of men with the same name destined to make the same mistakes. The truth was vast enough to drown in. ~ Nina LaCour,
588:Kiss Across Time," she read. Well, that fit with the lyrics and Domhnall words. Domhnall lived through years of threat from enemies., the invasion of his country and the loss of his culture. His stories and epic poems were all full of death, glory, love, battles, dying and more... or would be, if she had ever been able to catch more than a glimpse of him from the corner of her eye, in research terms. ~ Teal Ceagh,
589:Widespread criticisms of jihad in Islam and the so-called sword verses in the Quran have unearthed for fair-minded Christians difficult questions about Christianity's own traditions of holy war and 'texts of terror.' Like Hinduism's Mahabharata epic, the Bible devotes entire books to war and rumors thereof. Unlike the Quran, however, it contains hardly any rules for how to conduct a just war. ~ Stephen R Prothero,
590:Ennio Morricone is royalty. He doesn't really do this a lot and Quentin brought him back [in Hateful Eight]. Quentin [Tarantino] basically went back and made his The Good, The Bad and The Ugly-kind of film, the ultimate epic spaghetti western, and then you've got mister spaghetti western himself scoring your movie. It's gonna be hard to not vote for him in a landslide. Probably the easiest win of the night. ~ Bun B,
591:I thought that it was more likely the opposite. I must have shut grief out. Found it in books. Cried over fiction instead of the truth. The truth was unconfined, unadorned. There was no poetic language to it, no yellow butterflies, no epic floods. There wasn’t a town trapped underwater or generations of men with the same name destined to repeat the same mistakes. The truth was vast enough to drown in. ~ Nina LaCour,
592:Sucks what happened with that Henry guy, though,” she continued. “I mean, I’m sad for both of you, all that unrequited love for years. It’s like one of those messed up art house movies that you think is going to be this epic love story but ends with no one getting what they wanted and makes you want to go straight to the bar after the movie and down a dozen shots of vodka to forget you saw that shit. ~ Kristen Ashley,
593:Don’t even get me started on who the elven archers know—let’s just put it this way: Their daddy’s bigger than your daddy.” “They all ally with those witch mercenaries?” She nodded. “Naughty Lykae, creating an interspecies incident like this. Six immortals you trapped. This is a Charlie Foxtrot of epic proportions.” At Lachlain’s irritated look, Emma supplied, “Charlie Foxtrot is code for a cluster fuck. ~ Kresley Cole,
594:Denying Ahab greatness is an aesthetic blunder: He is akin to Achilles, Odysseus, and King David in one register, and to Don Quixote, Hamlet, and the High Romantic Prometheus of Goethe and Shelley in another. Call the first mode a transcendent heroism and the second the persistence of vision. Both ways are antithetical to nature and protest against our mortality. The epic hero will never submit or yield. ~ Harold Bloom,
595:He stood, pulled on his pajama bottoms, and headed for the door. Stopping short, he looked over his shoulder, his intense gaze melting my boned. “Dammit.”

A few seconds after he stepped out into the hallway and closed the door behind him, there was a fleshly smack and then Andrew yelling. “Ouch. What in the hell was that for?!

“Your timing sucks on an epic level,” Daemon shot back. ~ Jennifer L Armentrout,
596:Nothing will get you anywhere with me," I exclaimed. "I don't know about that." He put on an introspective look that was both unexpected and intriguing. "You're not as much of a lost cause as she was. I mean, with her, I had to overcome her deep, epic love with a Russian warlord. You and I just have to overcome hundreds of years' worth of deeply ingrained prejudice and taboo between our two races. Easy. ~ Richelle Mead,
597:The gentle wisdom of Ram as he goes into exile is what transforms him from an ordinary hero into a divine being. He does not see himself as the victim. It is significant, however, that when Sita is later banished into the forest, the authors of the epic do not grant her the same gentle wisdom. They prefer visualizing her as victim, not sage. The gender bias continues even in the most modern writings. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik,
598:The great wheel of fire of ancient wisdom, silence and word engendering the myth of the origin, human action engendering the epic voyage toward the other; historical violence revealing the tragic flaw of the hero who must then return to the land of origin; myth of death and renewal and silence from which new words and images will arise, keeps on turning in spite of the blindness of purely lineal thought. ~ Carlos Fuentes,
599:And as Lindbergh's election couldn't have made clearer to me, the unfolding of the unforeseen was everything. Turned wrong way round, the relentless unforeseen was what we schoolchildren studied as "History," harmless history, where everything unexpected in its own time is chronicled on the page as inevitable. The terror of the unforeseen is what the science of history hides, turning a disaster into an epic. ~ Philip Roth,
600:I had just finished polishing all the smudges off the mirror in the elevator when it began descending with me inside. In only a T-shirt and underwear.
"Seriously?" I muttered, yanking off my rubber gloves to try to put order to my hair. After rolling around with Gideon all night, I looked like an epic mess.
The doors slid open and Angus started to step in, his footstep halting midair when he spotted me. ~ Sylvia Day,
601:One of the methods, called sortes virgilianae (fate as decided by the epic poet Virgil), involved opening Virgil’s Aeneid at random and interpreting the line that presented itself as direction for the course of action. You should use such method for every sticky business decision. I will repeat until I get hoarse: the ancients evolved hidden and sophisticated ways and tricks to exploit randomness. For ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb,
602:It's all about time, dimwit time, inferior time, people checking watches and other devices, other reminders. This is time draining out of our lives. Cities were built to measure time, to remove time from nature. There's an endless counting down, he said. When you strip away surfaces, when you see into it, what's left is terror. This is the thing that literature was meant to cure. The epic poem, the bedtime story. ~ Don DeLillo,
603:It’s not as if he’s had much of a chance until now, but somehow he has internalized the ur-cultural narrative: you grow up, go to university, get a job, meet Ms. Right, get married, settle down, have kids, grow old together . . . it’s like some sort of checklist. Or maybe a list of epic quests you’ve got to complete while level-grinding in a game you’re not allowed to quit, with no respawns and no cheat codes. ~ Charles Stross,
604:Those around you can have their novellas, sweet, their short stories of cliché and coincidence, occasionally spiced up with tricks of the quirky, the achingly mundane, the grotesque. A few will even cook up Greek tragedy, those born into misery, destined to die in misery. But you, my bride of quietness, you will craft nothing less than epic with your life. Out of all of them, your story will be the one to last. ~ Marisha Pessl,
605:For if there were a list of cosmic things that unite us, reader and writer, visible as it scrolled up into the distance, like the introduction to some epic science-fiction film, then shining brightly on that list would be the fact that we exist in a financial universe that is subject to massive gravitational pulls from states. States tug at us. States bend us. And, tirelessly, states seek to determine our orbits. ~ Mohsin Hamid,
606:The world has progressed to the point where it's most powerful force is public opinion. And I believe that in this world it is not the great book or epic play, as once was the case, that will shape that opinion, but those who understand mass media and the techniques of mass persuasion...We must not just believe in what we sell. We must sell what we believe in. And we must pour a vast energy into those causes. ~ William Bernbach,
607:This guy is an epic douche. Kick his shiny ass, Atticus, Oberon said.
I compartmentalized his comment and resolved to enjoy it later. I glared at this would be usurper and said in my most authoritative voice, "Aenghus Og, you have broken Druidic law by killing the land around us and opening a gate to hell, unleashing demons on this plane. I judge you guilty and sentence you to death."
Amen, Atticus! Testify! ~ Kevin Hearne,
608:He inched in, slid out. Pumped deeper, pulled away. Just as her frustration swelled to a f#ckingly epic level, he hauled her hips up, dragging her higher before he sank all the way in, filling her so completely she gasped.
Her flesh stretched, unaccustomed to a man after so long. Each thrust stirred her unspeakably. More than just her p#ssy linked with him when he slid into her. A little part of her heart did as well. ~ Cari Quinn,
609:It’s in our nature to want to watch our human frailties played out on a huge, epic canvas. Ancient societies had anthropomorphic gods: a huge pantheon expanding into centuries of dynastic drama: fathers and sons, star-crossed lovers, warring brothers, martyred heroes. Tales that taught us the danger of hubris and the primacy of humility. It’s the everyday stuff of everyman’s life, but it’s writ large, and we love it. ~ Tom Hiddleston,
610:Such experiences can make us bewail how the Western world gives itself over annually to its Claus-mass or commerce-mass. We celebrate a reworked pagan Saturnalia of epic proportions, one in which the only connection with the incarnation is semantic. Santa is worshiped, not the Savior; pilgrims go to the stores with credit cards, not to the manger with gifts. It is the feast of indulgence, not of the incarnation. ~ Sinclair B Ferguson,
611:There's something beautiful about the perfect hashtag. Never underestimate what can be accomplished with a few carefully chosen characters strung together behind a number symbol.

At its purest, the hashtag contains and defines and reduces a massive idea down to a single word or phrase. The best ones offer subversive commentary on themselves.

Truly, the hashtag is the epic poem of the 21st century. ~ Tansy Rayner Roberts,
612:It seems far simpler to go ahead and say that the epic is a fantastic myth, that happens to be true of the material Universe, that other myths are true in terms of their cultural meaning, and that there's absolutely no problem with holding more than one story, just as there's no problem with viewing the sunset in terms of planetary rotation and spectra and nuclear fusions one moment and as visual splendor the next. ~ Ursula Goodenough,
613:Marriage, which has been the bourne of so many narratives is a still a great beginning, as it was to Adam and Eve, who kept their honeymoon in Eden, but had their first little one among thorns and thistles of the wilderness. It is still the beginning of the home epic-the gradual conquest or irremediable loss of that complete union which makes the advancing years a climax, and age the harvest of sweet memories in common. ~ George Eliot,
614:Homer's epic does not tell of such seemingly essential events as the abduction of Helen, for example, nor of the mustering and sailing of the Greek fleet, the first hostilities of the war, the Trojan Horse, and the sacking and burning of Troy.
Instead, the 15,693 lines of Homer's Iliad describe the occurrences of a roughly two-week period in the tenth and final year of what had become a stalemated siege of Troy. ~ Caroline Alexander,
615:In a way, that's also a recognition that Dante needs Virgil and that the Inferno needs the Aeneid and that the epic needs a model and that for Dante to write this great poem he needs someone to come before him and he turns to Virgil's text, especially book six where Aeneas goes down into the underworld. And for me, that's a model of the poet's relationship to previous poetry, to another poetry as calling out for guidance. ~ Edward Hirsch,
616:intimate or epic the setting, instinctively the audience draws a circle around the characters and their world, a circumference of experience that’s defined by the nature of the fictional reality. This line may reach inward to the soul, outward into the universe, or in both directions at once. The audience, therefore, expects the storyteller to be an artist of vision who can take his story to those distant depths and ranges. ~ Robert McKee,
617:That image of a chessboard — an epic contest between two giant players, carefully nudging their pieces around the globe as part of a grand strategy — has indeed become a familiar metaphor for the Cold War. But it is misleading. Many decisions remembered today for their farsighted, tactical brilliance were denounced in their day as weak-willed. And big, public gestures often made less difference than the small, hidden ones. ~ Sam Tanenhaus,
618:The effect, to be sure, is precisely that which they describe, and is, furthermore, the actual source of the conception of epic which they themselves hold, and with them all writers decisively influenced by classical antiquity. But the true cause of the impression of “retardation” appears to me to lie elsewhere—namely, in the need of the Homeric style to leave nothing which it mentions half in darkness and unexternalized. ~ Erich Auerbach,
619:Claudia Rankine's Citizen comes at you like doom. It's the best note in the wrong song that is America. Its various realities-'mistaken' identity, social racism, the whole fabric of urban and suburban life-are almost too much to bear, but you bear them, because it's the truth. Citizen is Rankine's Spoon River Anthology, an epic as large and frightening and beautiful as the country and various emotional states that produced it. ~ Hilton Als,
620:Marriage, which has been the bourne of so many narratives, is still a great beginning, as it was to Adam and Eve, who kept their honey-moon in Eden, but had their first little one among the thorns and thistles of the wilderness. It is still the beginning of the home epic - the gradual conquest or irremediable loss of that complete union which make the advancing years a climax, and age the harvest of sweet memories in common. ~ George Eliot,
621:I began dividing life in absolutes... Things and people were either perfectly bad, or perfectly good, and when life didn't obey this black-and-white rule, when things or people were complex or contradictory, I pretended otherwise. I turned every defeat into a disaster, every success into an epic triumph, and separated all people into heroes or villains. Unable to bear ambiguity, I built a barricade of delusions against it. ~ J R Moehringer,
622:Heroes are heroes because they are heroic in behavior, not because they won or lost. Patrocles does not strike us as a hero because of his accomplishments (he was rapidly killed) but because he preferred to die than see Achilles sulking into inaction. Clearly, the epic poets understood invisible histories. Also later thinkers and poets had more elaborate methods for dealing with randomness, as we will see with stoicism. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb,
623:Beautiful though it is, I find the language of epic unconvincing, for I cannot accept that the myths we tell about our first lives prepare us for the brighter, more authentic second lives that are meant to begin when we awake. Because—for people like me, at least—that second life is none other than the book in your hand. So pay close attention, dear reader. Let me be straight with you, and in return let me ask for your compassion. ~ Orhan Pamuk,
624:The War went on far too long... It was too vast for its meaning, like a giant with the brain of a midge. Its epic proportions were grotesquely out of scale, seeing what it was fought to settle. It was far too indecisive. It settled nothing, as it meant nothing. Indeed, it was impossible to escape the feeling that it was not meant to settle anything - that could have any meaning, or be of any advantage, to the general run of men. ~ Wyndham Lewis,
625:Samuel was, more than all the others, the man of failed works of beauty; – a fantastical and sickly creature, whose poetry shines forth much more in his person than in his works, and who, around one o’clock in the morning, between the dazzling of a coal fire and the clock’s tick-tock, always seemed to be the god of impotence, – a modern and hermaphrodite god, – so colossal an impotence, so enormous, reaching epic proportions! ~ Charles Baudelaire,
626:The painted aircraft took on sunlight and pulse. Sweeps of color, bands and spatters, airy washes, the force of saturated light—the whole thing oddly personal, a sense of one painter’s hand moved by impulse and afterthought as much as by epic design. I hadn’t expected to register such pleasure and sensation. The air was color-scrubbed, coppers and ochers burning off the metal skin of the aircraft to exchange with the framing desert. ~ Don DeLillo,
627:With most electronic music I hear now, the things I like will be the things that have soul. It has to have a feeling in it, where it feels warm, or feels epic. I like to play with that in my music as well, there will always be a piano chord or something underneath it to make you feel at home. I always try and make sure even with vocals and layering that you still feel like you know me, no matter whether you're into grime or hip hop. ~ Naomi Klein,
628:I don't want anyone fighting over me," Kate said. "It's not worth it."

"Like hell it's not." Samuel turned to her. "Don't ever say you're not worth it, Katie. You're worth epic battles. Entire wars."

Her heart pinched. "Samuel..."

"Yes, Helen of Troy?" She thought she saw him wink as he backed away, reaching for a sword to match Evan's.

After all this time...he would choose this moment to be charming. ~ Tessa Dare,
629:THERE’S A NAME FOR HUMAN awareness and it’s called Sonder. The definition: the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground. It’s a pocket in time, where you may redefine life by the idea of the struggle of others. ~ Kate Stewart,
630:Normally my clients were my mother, my grandmother, and my dad, and I would sell them the issues with a great color cover. There was a story I remember called ‘The Invader,’ and it had an invisible dome covering a city, with a giant tentacled monster eating everybody in sight, and people trying to drill a hole in the dome. And I did these epic Prismacolor pencil illustrations and sold out the three issues to my captive audience. ~ Guillermo del Toro,
631:Understand this: we are both tiny and massive. We are nothing more than molded clay given breath, but we are nothing less than divine self-portraits, huffing and puffing along mountain ranges of epic narrative arcs prepared for us by the Infinite Word Himself. Swell with pride and gratitude, for you are tiny and given much. You are as spoken by God as the stars. You stand in history with stories stretching out both behind and before. We ~ N D Wilson,
632:In order for innovation to happen, a bunch of things that aren't happening on closed platforms need to occur. Valve wouldn't exist today without the PC, or Epic, or Zynga, or Google. They all wouldn't have existed without the openness of the platform. There's a strong tempation to close the platform, because they look at what they can accomplish when they limit the competitors' access to the platform, and they say 'That's really exciting.' ~ Gabe Newell,
633:To later Romans Ennius was the personification of the spirit of early Rome; by them he was called "The Father of Roman Poetry." We must remember how truly Greek he was in his point of view. He set the example for later Latin poetry by writing the first epic of Rome in Greek hexameter verses instead of in the old Saturnian verse. He made popular the doctrines of Euhemerus, and he was in general a champion of free thought and rationalism. ~ Quintus Ennius,
634:The Cal State Fullerton library was epic. Granted, I’ve never been to other university libraries but I would be hard-pressed to believe any of them could be as big as this one. There were five floors of books, with rows upon rows of aisles that seemed endless. Cubicles everywhere, filled with students connected to iPods, iPhones and iEverything else. The juxtaposition of dusty library with modern technology was striking. Two worlds colliding. At ~ J R Rain,
635:Surely, by all convention, the Iliad will end here, with the triumphant return of its vindicated hero. But the Iliad is not a conventional epic, and at the very moment of its hero's greatest military triumph, Homer diverts his focus from Achilles to the epic's two most important casualties, Patroklos and Hektor: it is to the consequences of their deaths, especially to the victor, that all action of the Iliad has been inexorably leading. ~ Caroline Alexander,
636:Thus the hero’s rescue of the captive corresponds to the discovery of a psychic world. This world is already of vast extent as the world of Eros, embracing everything that man has ever done for woman, everything that he has experienced and created for her sake. The world of art, of epic deeds, poesy, and song which revolves round the liberated captive spreads out like a virgin continent that has broken away from the world of the First Parents. ~ Erich Neumann,
637:To persons standing alone on a hill during a clear midnight such as this, the roll of the world is almost a palpable movement. To enjoy the epic form of that gratification it is necessary to stand on a hill at a small hour of the night, and, having first expanded with a sense of difference from the mass of civilized mankind, who are diregardful of all such proceedings at this time, long and quietly watch your stately progress through the stars. ~ Thomas Hardy,
638:even as he knew what kind of parent he’d become, the kind that used to make him gag as recently as two months ago. The ones who blithely assumed their online friends were gluttons for punishment. Here’s my baby lying on his back! And here’s my baby also lying on his back! And how about this one: blurry baby on his back! Good God, the vanity of it all, the epic self-centeredness. He knew all this, and still he uploaded eleven pictures of Brian. ~ Victor LaValle,
639:I don't think all films should necessarily look like they do on digital video. I think it cheats the audience, at some point. If you try to make an epic and you shoot it digitally, that doesn't make much sense. I think there's a certain kind of film that could be a "digital film." But it shouldn't be interchangeable with other films. It should be something more than just a capture medium. It should be a different form altogether, something new. ~ Richard Linklater,
640:Imagine a poem written with such enormous three-dimensional words that we had to invent a smaller word to reference each of the big ones; that we had to rewrite the whole thing in shorthand, smashing it into two dimensions, just to talk about it. Or don’t imagine it. Look outside. Human language is our attempt at navigating God’s language; it is us running between the lines of His epic, climbing on the vowels and building houses out of the consonants. ~ N D Wilson,
641:Hamilton’s crowded years as treasury secretary scarcely exhaust the epic story of his short life, which was stuffed with high drama. From his illegitimate birth on Nevis to his bloody downfall in Weehawken, Hamilton’s life was so tumultuous that only an audacious novelist could have dreamed it up. He embodied an enduring archetype: the obscure immigrant who comes to America, re-creates himself, and succeeds despite a lack of proper birth and breeding. ~ Ron Chernow,
642:Man demands truth and fulfills this demand in moral intercourse with other men; this is the basis of all social life. One anticipates the unpleasant consequences of reciprocal lying. From this there arises the duty of truth. We permit epic poets to lie because we expect no detrimental consequences in this case. Thus the lie is permitted where it is considered something pleasant. Assuming that it does no harm, the lie is beautiful and charming. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
643:The American People will take Socialism, but they won't take the label. I certainly proved it in the case of EPIC [End Poverty in California]. Running on the Socialist ticket I got 60,000 votes, and running on the slogan to 'End Poverty in California' I got 879,000. I think we simply have to recognize the fact that our enemies have succeeded in spreading the Big Lie. There is no use attacking it by a front attack, it is much better to out-flank them. ~ Upton Sinclair,
644:The Wonderland Wars,” Fabiola says. “What did you think those epic fantasies, the Lord of the Rings and Narnia, were about?” No words come out of my mouth. I’m starting to realize how Wonderland is connected to everything. “They were meant to inspire generations and educate them about the idea of good and evil in this world.” Fabiola stops to make sure I am following. “They were discreetly using literature to prepare generations for the Wonderland Wars. ~ Cameron Jace,
645:That was what made the story so epic: the player, the hero, had to suffer mightily en route to his final triumph. Schwartz knew that people loved to suffer, as long as the suffering made sense. Everybody suffered. The key was to choose the form of your suffering. Most people couldn't do this alone; they needed a coach. A good coach made you suffer in a way that suited you. A bad coach made everyone suffer in the same way, and so was more like a torturer. ~ Chad Harbach,
646:The good news is as epic as it gets, with universal theological implications, and yet the Bible tells it from the perspective of fishermen and farmers, pregnant ladies and squirmy kids. This story about the nature of God and God's relationship to humanity smells like mud and manger hay and tastes like salt and wine...It is the biggest story and the smallest story all at once--the great quest for the One Ring and the quiet friendship of Frodo and Sam. ~ Rachel Held Evans,
647:Bad tactics, and whoever this Caladan Brood is, he’s shown himself adept at making us pay for our mistakes.” “Caladan Brood,” Calot murmured. “I swear I’ve heard that name somewhere before. Odd that I’ve never given it much thought.” Tattersail’s eyes narrowed on Tayschrenn. Calot was right: the name of the man commanding the Tiste Andii alongside the Crimson Guard did sound familiar—but in an old way, echoing ancient legends, perhaps, or some epic poem. ~ Steven Erikson,
648:A Concordance of Leaves is an epic poem of the indomitable yet fragile human spirit. Philip Metres brings Palestine and Palestinians into English with rare luminosity. One feels echoes of Oppen's succinct tenderness in the depiction of the numerous characters of this work. Without other, there is no self. And that other is the stranger who must be loved. Concordance is, after all, a wedding poem-leaves and pages in search of a certain passage toward harmony. ~ Fady Joudah,
649:People always say, "I wish I was amazing. I wish I was awesome." Fucking hell. Stop whining and just be it already. Be fucking awesome. Nobody's going to give you the gift of awesome. Nobody's going to make you good, or great, or amazing, or epic. Nobody's going to make you an expert or an authority or a voice anyone should listen to. Nobody's going to level you up. If you want that next level, take it. Take it for yourself. Grab it. Become it. Claim it. ~ Johnny B Truant,
650:People say love is weak, but they're wrong: love is strong. In nearly everyone it trumps all other things - patriotism and ambition, religion and upbringing. And every kind of love - the epic and the small, the noble and the base - the one that a parent has for their child is the greatest of them all. That was the lesson I learned that day, and I'll be forever grateful I did. Some years later, deep in the ruins called Theatre of Death, it salvaged everything. ~ Terry Hayes,
651:Seeing that his smile had grown to epic proportions, she asked “What?”
“You just smiled.”
“I did not.”
“I saw it.”
“You were hallucinating.”
He shook his head, chuckling. “Nope, I saw you smile. I saw those pretty little dimples.”
“I do not have dimples, Fuller!” She had to resist the urge to immaturely stomp her foot.
“Here comes the schoolteacher tone again. Will I have to stay behind after class? I’ll do whatever it takes to get an A. ~ Suzanne Wright,
652:What were you arguing about?” When Jack simply shrugged, Parker let out a groan. “For fuck’s sake, you two agreed to a ceasefire. I even made you sign that agreement never to discuss it!” Jack’s sputtered defense was one Parker had heard too many times before. “I’m sorry, but it’s bullshit! Saving Private Ryan is an epic movie, and one of these days that asshole is gonna have to admit it. I refuse to hear a bad word about—” “I don’t want to hear it. I swear, I had ~ Anonymous,
653:When NASA makes discoveries they are profound and they make headlines, everyone takes notice. It drives dialogue and, today, it would drive the blogosphere. It would drive the projects the kids do in school. So you wouldn't even need programs to try and stimulate curiosity. You wouldn't need programs to try to convince people that science literacy is good. Because they're going to want to participate on this epic adventure that we call space exploration. ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson,
654:I've always felt like my calling was to inspire people. And not with famed, epic accomplishments, but with imperfection, struggles and humanity. I want people to read my stories and books and blogs, and look at my life and say, "She should have had nothing going for her. Meager means, questionable looks, no apparent safety nets and an absence of impressive letters after her name. But she followed her bliss anyway. If she can do it, I can do it. I'm not giving up. ~ Jennifer DeLucy,
655:Dove held out a hand to Johnson, and he took it—not because they were fleeing a fire and not because she was holding a million dollars. He took her hand to wrap his fingers around hers.

His long, long fingers.

Her knees went a little watery. Johnson placed a hand on her lower back to steady her. Her ass went a little watery. The trip up her stairs took longer than Ulysses on his epic journey. Johnson took the keys from her hand and opened her door. ~ Debra Anastasia,
656:In keeping with the American effort to reconcile with Japan, all of them, including those serving life sentences, would soon be paroled. It appears that even Sueharu Kitamura, “the Quack,” was set free, in spite of his death sentence. By 1958, every war criminal who had not been executed would be free, and on December 30 of that year, all would be granted amnesty. Sugamo would be torn down, and the epic ordeals of POWs in Japan would fade from the world’s memory. ~ Laura Hillenbrand,
657:One of the things that was really influential early on was Ezra Pound's Cantos, one poem he worked on for 50 years. It's epic. I had a great deal of difficulty understanding it. One of the problems was you'd be reading along in English and he would move to a Chinese ideogram or French-he actually used seven different languages in a given poem. And for somebody who's not fluent in different languages it has the impact of rupturing your way of understanding something. ~ Richard Misrach,
658:My name is Hazel. Augustus Waters was the great star-crossed love of my life. Ours was an epic love story, and I won't be able to get more than a sentence into it without disappearing into a puddle of tears. Gus knew. Gus knows. I will not tell you our love story, because-like all real love stories-it will die with us, as it should. I'd hoped that he'd be eulogizing me, because there's no one I'd rather have..." I started crying. "Okay, how not to cry. How am I-okay. Okay. ~ John Green,
659:He raises an eyebrow, almost winks at me. Something about the gesture reminds me of a politician.

“So did you have a good time last night?”

Let’s see: I’m tiptoeing across your room, praying you won’t wake up, can barely remember your name. Yeah, I had an epic night. Just fantastic. Care to tell me what transpired between say midnight and oh, ten minutes ago? Wait. Don’t bother. Let’s just pretend this never happened and we’ll never mention it again. Cool? ~ Daisy Whitney,
660:And there is no use in saying that if we can invent the nuclear bomb and fly to the moon, we can solve hunger and related problems of land use. Epic feats of engineering require only a few brilliant technicians and a lot of money. But feeding a world of people year to year for a long time requires cultures of husbandry fitted to the nature of millions of unique small places—precisely the kind of cultures that industrialism has purposely disvalued, uprooted, and destroyed. ~ Wendell Berry,
661:Finding patterns and structure in information is how our brains extract meaning from the world, and putting words to music and rhyme are a way of adding extra levels of pattern and structure to language. It’s the reason Homeric bards sang their epic oral poems, the reason that the Torah is marked up with little musical notations, and the reason we teach kids the alphabet in a song and not as twenty-six individual letters. Song is the ultimate structuring device for language. ~ Joshua Foer,
662:My name is Hazel. Augustus Waters was the great star-crossed love of my life. Ours was an epic love story, and I won’t be able to get more than a sentence into it without disappearing into a puddle of tears. Gus knew. Gus knows. I will not tell you our love story, because—like all real love stories—it will die with us, as it should. I’d hoped that he’d be eulogizing me, because there’s no one I’d rather have . . .” I started crying. “Okay, how not to cry. How am I—okay. Okay. ~ John Green,
663:What I wanted was for them to have a grand, sweeping narrative that they deserved, the kind of American history that belongs to the Wright Brothers and the astronauts, to Alexander Hamilton and Martin Luther King Jr. Not told as a separate history, but as part of the story we all know. Not at the margins, but at the very center, the protagonists of the drama. And not just because they are black, or because they are women, but because they are part of the American epic. ~ Margot Lee Shetterly,
664:Celebration when your plan is working? Anyone can do that. But when you realize that the story of your life could be told a thousand different ways, that you could tell it over and over as a tragedy, but you choose to call it an epic, that's when you start to learn what celebration is. When what you see in front of you is so far outside of what you dreamed, but you have the belief, the boldness, the courage to call it beautiful instead of calling it wrong, that's celebration. ~ Shauna Niequist,
665:We live with illusion daily, he reflected. When the first bard rattled off the first epic of a sometime battle, illusion entered our lives; the Iliad is as much a “fake” as those robant children trading postage stamps on the porch of the building. Humans have always striven to retain the past, to keep it convincing; there’s nothing wicked in that. Without it we have no continuity; we have only the moment. And, deprived of the past, the moment—the present—has little meaning, if any. ~ Philip K Dick,
666:I'd say probably the most epic experience was before the Victoria's Secret show - I think it was before the casting - and I saw Naomi Campbell at a party. I was saying that I was nervous about my walk and she said "Come to my hotel tomorrow and we're going to practice." So I went in New York and we practiced in the hallway of her hotel with all of the hotel staff watching. She just said "Don't even flinch. Keep going!" It was hilarious, but I think that was kind of a confidence booster. ~ Gigi Hadid,
667:Although Gene was white there was something of the wise and tired old Negro in him, and something very much like Elmer Hassel, the New York dope addict, in him, but a railroad Hassel, a traveling epic Hassel, crossing and recrossing the country every year, south in the winter and north in the summer, and only because he had no place he could stay in without getting tired of it and because there was nowhere to go but everywhere, keep rolling under the stars, generally the Western stars. ~ Jack Kerouac,
668:And as we take up our positions on the stage, we call upon the nine Muses for assistance, Calliope, who helps with the epic ballads, Euterpe, who helps with the sad songs, Erato, who helps with the confessional songs, Clio, who helps with the oldies, Melpomene, who helps with the super-tragic stuff, Polyhymnia, who helps with the religious songs, Terpsichore, who helps with the dance numbers, Thalia, who helps with the funny songs, And Urania, who helps when it gets spacey and psychedelic. ~ Anonymous,
669:I've discovered that like every writer, I'm helpless MYSELF - and that means I find myself unconsciously or semi-consciously repeating motifs and themes and even using certain words or images recurrently in my work, no matter how much I think I'm starting fresh. But I've always admired artists who made a specific sport of trying to visit different kinds of genres or mediums or modes - not just 'western' or 'detective', but comedy/tragedy, epic and miniature, traditional/experimental. ~ Jonathan Lethem,
670:The process by which a boring cloud of plain-vanilla hydrogen gas becomes a blinding ball of white fire is epic in purpose and scale. The result, a stable star such as the Sun with a fourteen-billion-year life span, destined to create puppies and pomegranates, certainly deserves its own holiday. Yet no nation celebrates the Sun’s birth. We do, theoretically, honor its existence each Sunday. In practice, most use that time to sleep as late as possible and thus minimize any awareness of it. ~ Bob Berman,
671:...epic, epic love is not about having someone. It's about being willing to give them up. It's sacrifice. It's my mom's theater tickets stuffed down at the bottom of her jewelry box. It's Noah and August. It's my sister and Annabelle. It's Jordan and his mom, the truth he reserves to protect her. And see, that's the thing I didn't understand. The thing no one tells you. That just because you find love doesn't mean it's yours to keep. Love never belongs to you. It belongs to the universe. ~ Rebecca Serle,
672:My writing derived from the conviction I conceived during my college years: one should lead one's life as if one were the protagonist of an epic novel, with the outcome predetermined and chapter after chapter of edifying, traumatic, and exhilarating events to be suffered through. Since the end is known in advance, one must try to experience as much as possible in the brief time allotted. Writing is a way of ensuring that you pay enough attention along the way to understand what you see. ~ Jeffrey Tayler,
673:This might be a controversial thing to suggest, but in a quest to understand and relate to terrorism or school shootings, sometimes it feels like it's real, the appeal. As we've seen with ISIS, it's not always the devout who are getting into it; it's just people looking for a sense of belonging. The more they feel they're up against, the more intensity the cause has. It's an epic clash of cultures, and both sides are playing that up, but it's human beings disaffected, detached, and lonely. ~ Andrew Bird,
674:As another aside, it has occurred to various people, including Robert Graves in his epic novel King Jesus, that poor Judas Iscariot has received a bad deal from history, given that his ‘betrayal’ was a necessary part of the cosmic plan. The same could be said of Jesus’ alleged murderers. If Jesus wanted to be betrayed and then murdered, in order that he could redeem us all, isn’t it rather unfair of those who consider themselves redeemed to take it out on Judas and on Jews down the ages? ~ Richard Dawkins,
675:What she wouldn’t have given for her father to see her—to see his baby girl who used to count the stars now sending men to travel among them. Joshua Coleman knew as if from second sight that Katherine, his brilliant, charismatic, inquisitive youngest child—a black girl from rural West Virginia, born at a time when the odds were more likely that she would die before age thirty-five than even finish high school—would somehow, someday, unite her story with the great epic of America. And ~ Margot Lee Shetterly,
676:Many are the noble words in which poets speak concerning the actions of men; but like yourself when speaking about Homer, they do not speak of them by any rules of art: they are simply inspired to utter that to which the Muse impels them, and that only; and when inspired, one of them will make dithyrambs, another hymns of praise, another choral strains, another epic or iambic verses- and he who is good at one is not good any other kind of verse: for not by art does the poet sing, but by power divine. ~ Plato,
677:Maybe instead, I wanted the kind of love that devastates you. The kind that rips your insides open and leaves you gutted, out in the cold. Maybe I wanted that great, epic, once-in-a-lifetime love, that consumes with the brightest of flames. And maybe, even though I knew the hottest fires often burn out the fastest, even though it couldn’t last… it was worth it.
People say love isn’t supposed to be painful. But maybe the best things in life are the ones that hurt the most after they’re gone. ~ Julie Johnson,
678:The great tragic love story of Percy and me is neither great nor truly a love story, and is tragic only for its single-sidedness. It is also not an epic monolith that has plagued me since boyhood, as might be expected. Rather, it is simply the tale of how two people can be important to each other their whole lives, and then, one morning, quite without meaning to, one of them wakes to find that importance has been magnified into a sudden and intense desire to put his tongue in the other’s mouth. ~ Mackenzi Lee,
679:Despite the many occasions when its characters feel frustrated before the weight of circumstances, and despite blaming their feeling of impotence on daiva, 'fate', moral autonomy shines through in the epic. Because they have some freedom to choose they can be praised when they follow dharma or blamed when they follow adharma. At the moment of making a decision they become conscious of their freedom, and it is this perception of autonomy that gives them the ability to lead authentic moral lives. ~ Gurcharan Das,
680:Nobody's going to give you the gift of awesome. Nobody's going to make you good, or great, or amazing, or epic. Nobody's going to make you an expert or an authority or a voice anyone should listen to. Nobody's going to level you up. If you want that next level, take it. Take it for yourself. Grab it. Become it. Claim it. Write a treatise. Create an event. Champion a cause. Build something great. Speak your mind. Make the call. Build the business. Author the book. Send the email. Do it. Do it. ~ Johnny B Truant,
681:Frey winced. "Hello, Sumarbrander. I didn't mean to ignore you."
"Yeah, yeah. Well, Magnus here is going to get Bragi to write an epic poem about me!"
"Frey raised an eyebrow. "You are?"
"Uh -"
"That's right!" Jack huffed. "Frey never got Bragi to write an epic poem about me! The only thing he ever gave me was a stupid Hallmark Sword's Day card."
Added to my mental notes: there was such a thing as Sword's Day. I silently cursed the greeting-card industry. ~ Rick Riordan,
682:I can’t believe that, when we have all been changed and put on incorruptibility, we will forget our fantastic condition of mortality and impermanence, the great bright dream of procreating and perishing that meant the whole world to us. In eternity this world will be Troy, I believe, and all that has passed here will be the epic of the universe, the ballad they sing in the streets. Because I don’t imagine any reality putting this one in the shade entirely, and I think piety forbids me to try. ~ Marilynne Robinson,
683:A certain kind of magic is born when the curtain rises. Intoxicated by the smell of the greasepaint and powered by the glow of the footlights, lovers successfully elope, villains get their just deserts and people die in epic stunts and yet live to tell the tale. Thousands pay to sit and be fooled by illusions and still jump to their feet to applaud despite their gullibility. It's an inexplicable, delicious, addictive power that keeps people entranced and coming back for more, again and again. ~ Carrie Hope Fletcher,
684:Hollywood did not just make horror movie monsters, it was its own horror movie monster, smashing me under its foot. I had failed and the Auteur would make The Hamlet as he intended, with my countrymen serving merely as raw material for an epic about white men saving good yellow people from bad yellow people. I pitied the French for their naïveté in believing they had to visit a country in order to exploit it. Hollywood was much more efficient, imagining the countries it wanted to exploit. ~ Viet Thanh Nguyen,
685:And I can’t believe that, when we have all been changed and put on incorruptibility, we will forget our fantastic condition of mortality and impermanence, the great bright dream of procreating and perishing that meant the whole world to us. In eternity this world will be Troy, I believe, and all that has passed here will be the epic of the universe, the ballad they sing in the streets. Because I don’t imagine any reality putting this one in the shade entirely, and I think piety forbids me to try. ~ Marilynne Robinson,
686:He reached up and found my hand and caressed my thumb, saying nothing. I gazed down adoringly at his face. A relaxed face now, its great burden of care finally removed. I hadn’t realized how much it had affected him, this fear for me, this certain knowledge that some crisis was coming that he might be powerless to avert. And now that I’d survived it, that he’d rescued me from the fate he’d always feared for me, his soul had taken on the peace of the fully redeemed. It had made for an epic honeymoon ~ Beatriz Williams,
687:I’m here because of a letter.
Not the kind with hearts and lipstick marks, but the kind that takes your breath away. I wanted it to have that effect on him, and so it was the story of how we fell in love told through our kisses. Both kisses we’d had and kisses I wanted to have, and places I wanted to kiss. Places like Paris and Amsterdam, along the river or by the canal, or Kauai under waterfalls.
It was an epic love letter, and it was all I’d ever wanted in my life-to feel that kind of epic love. ~ Lauren Blakely,
688:Upon the publication of Goethe’s epic drama, the Faustian legend had reached an almost unapproachable zenith. Although many failed to appreciate, or indeed, to understand this magnum opus in its entirety, from this point onward his drama was the rule by which all other Faust adaptations were measured. Goethe had eclipsed the earlier legends and became the undisputed authority on the subject of Faust in the eyes of the new Romantic generation. To deviate from his path would be nothing short of blasphemy. ~ E A Bucchianeri,
689:That place, called the heliopause, is one definition of the outer boundary of the Empire of the Sun. But the Voyager spacecraft will plunge on, penetrating the heliopause sometime in the middle of the twenty-first century, skimming through the ocean of space, never to enter another solar system, destined to wander through eternity far from the stellar islands and to complete its first circumnavigation of the massive center of the Milky Way a few hundred million years from now. We have embarked on epic voyages. ~ Carl Sagan,
690:So, why should Christian children be subject ed t o Homer? Or, why Homer rat her t han t he Gilgamesh Epic or t he Kalevala? T he sole reason seems t o be t hat Homer is part of "West ern Civilization." But we are entitled t o ask: Who cares? Why keep t his baggage? Let college st udent s st udying t he ancient world read Homer as a curiosit y, but don't use him in t he att empt t o f orm f undament al mind of t he Christian f ut ure. T he great dramas of t he lat er Greeks reflect a f urt her move int o t he mind ~ Anonymous,
691:There comes a moment when you witness events so epic you don’t know how to place them in the cosmos or in relation to the normal workings of a day. Worse, when these events recur, at an ever greater magnitude, in a cascade of what you have never seen before and do not know how to classify. Troubling because each time you acclimate, you move on, and, if this continues, there is a mundane grandeur to the scale that renders certain events beyond rebuke or judgment, horror or wonder, or even the grasp of history. ~ Jeff VanderMeer,
692:Thousands of times greater in space and time is the third of our worlds, the biosphere, the totality of all life, plastered like a membrane over all of earth. The biosphere has its own epic cycles. Humanity, one of the countless species forming the biosphere, can perturb it, but we cannot leave it or destroy it without perishing ourselves. The cycles of the other species can be destroyed, and the biosphere corrupted. But for each careless step we take, our species will ultimately pay an unwelcome price—always. ~ Edward O Wilson,
693:Hidden amongst the cluck and hiss, the croak and chatter outside the window, are songs of the extinct. The epic of evolution, told by bards long gone. Oh, to abandon the labyrinthine shell and shed old skin. To be naked and vulnerable. Free to swim, sprint and fly without inhibition. To vanish without a trace only to reappear as a mating call, the way the sun sets in the west and rises in the east … Can their stories and songs be heard by the living, they wonder. Do they acknowledge their legacy in the fossils? ~ Shubhangi Swarup,
694:Mom! Mom. You have to smell him! It’s like… like… I don’t even know what it’s like! I was walking in the woods to scope out our territory so I could be like Dad and then it was like… whoa. And then he was all standing there and he didn’t see me at first because I’m getting so good at hunting. I was all like rawr and grr but then I smelled it again and it was him and it was all kaboom! I don’t even know! I don’t even know! You gotta smell him and then tell me why it’s all candy canes and pinecones and epic and awesome. ~ T J Klune,
695:Yes, I was standing on nothing but congealed starlight. Yes, I was walking up through a savage storm, the wind threatening to tear me off and throw me into the freezing waters of Lake Michigan far below. Yes, I was using a legendary and enchanted means of travel to transcend the border between one dimension and the next, and on my way to an epic struggle between ancient and elemental forces.
But all i could think to say, between panting breaths, was, "Yeah. Sure. They couldn't possibly have made this an escalator. ~ Jim Butcher,
696:Apple’s founder reportedly fired employees in the elevator and screamed at underperforming executives. Perhaps there is something endemic in the fast-paced technology business that causes this behavior, because such intensity is not exactly rare among its CEOs. Bill Gates used to throw epic tantrums. Steve Ballmer, his successor at Microsoft, had a propensity for throwing chairs. Andy Grove, the longtime CEO of Intel, was known to be so harsh and intimidating that a subordinate once fainted during a performance review. ~ Brad Stone,
697:I know this is all mere apparition compared to what awaits us, but it is only lovelier for that. There is a human beauty in it. And I can’t believe that, when we have all been changed and put on incorruptibility, we will forget our fantastic condition of mortality and impermanence, the great bright dream of procreating and perishing that meant the whole world to us. In eternity this world will be Troy, I believe, and all that has passed here will be the epic of the universe, the ballad they sing in the streets. ~ Marilynne Robinson,
698:My secrets cry aloud.
I have no need for tongue.
My heart keeps open house,
My doors are widely swung.
An epic of the eyes
My love, with no disguise.


My truths are all foreknown,
This anguish self-revealed.
I’m naked to the bone,
With nakedness my shield.
Myself is what I wear:
I keep the spirit spare.


The anger will endure,
The deed will speak the truth
In language strict and pure.
I stop the lying mouth:
Rage warps my clearest cry
To witless agony. ~ Theodore Roethke,
699:Recall that epic heroes were judged by their actions, not by the results. No matter how sophisticated our choices, how good we are at dominating the odds, randomness will have the last word. We are left only with dignity as a solution—dignity defined as the execution of a protocol of behavior that does not depend on the immediate circumstance. It may not be the optimal one, but it certainly is the one that makes us feel best. Grace under pressure, for example. Or in deciding not to toady up to someone, whatever ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb,
700:The International Committee to support People’s War in India salutes all the initiatives held in different countries of the world for the International Days of action on 29-30-31 January 2015. We are carefully collecting all these small and wide actions. They are a sign of solidarity of proletarians and peoples with the fighting masses in India, marching to the liberation from imperialism, feudalism and comprador bourgeoisie, along the epic rebellion began in Naxalbari on 1967, which impetuously comes up to the present day. ~ Anonymous,
701:This age needs rather men like Shakespeare, or Milton, or Pope; men who are filled with the strength of their cultures and do not transcend the limits of their age, but, working within the times, bring what is peculiar to the moment to glory. We need great artists who are willing to accept restrictions, and who love their environments with such vitality that they can produce an epic out of the Protestant ethic.... Whatever the many failings of my work, let it stand as a manifesto of my love for the time in which I was born. ~ John Updike,
702:To read Savitri is to witness a tremendous adventure in the interior realms; to witness and participate in a multidimensional quest. Because Savitri is cast in the mould of epic poetry or mahakavya, the requisite state of mind is one of openness and humility, similar to that of prayer. Each word and each phrase should ring in a 'solitude and an immensity', be heard in the 'listening spaces of the soul' and the 'inner acoustic space', and be seized by the deeper self when the mantric evocations come into effect. ~ Murali Sivaramakrishnan,
703:Sheol was really like. There were myths and legends, ballads and epic verse written about it. The saying went that the mouth of Sheol and Abaddon was never satisfied, Abaddon meaning “place of destruction.” It was the Land of Forgetfulness, outer darkness, where the worm does not die. It was said that Tartarus was the deepest pit in Sheol, which was as far below the earth as the earth was below the heavens. He already felt as if he was in Tartarus. He had no idea what possible reality heaven could ever have in his existence. ~ Brian Godawa,
704:Deal resistance a death blow and make sweet love to your art all night long. Put on your fishnet thigh highs and your patent leather stilettos and your special occasion lingerie. Seduce the hell out of your own creative soul. It’s time for an epic lap dance. Dance for your paint and canvas, for fingers tripping across keyboard, for the open arms of motherhood, for the layers of flavor in the meals you create. Wind your hips down for the click of the shutter, for the 3 a.m. bathroom poem, for the late night lesson planning ~ Jeanette LeBlanc,
705:We were all quiet for a few moments before I broke the silence by saying, in my best upper-crust-girls'-school voice, "I am sure that all of you are really just suffering from some horrible disease, and that I should feel nothing but pity for you. If you let me go, I will organize a charity function that you will not believe. It will be, as our ancestors used to say, 'epic.'"
There was some furious whispering before Bram responded with, "Ah, thank you, Miss, but we're already dead."
I bit my lip. I was starting to crumble. ~ Lia Habel,
706:In that six months, so much happened that death seemed, primarily, inconvenient. The trial period was extended. I seem to keep extending it. There are many things to do. There are books to write and naps to take. There are movies to see and scrambled eggs to eat. Life is essentially trivial. You either decide you will take the trite business of life and give yourself the option of doing something really cool, or you decide you will opt for the Grand Epic of eating disorders and dedicate your life to being seriously trivial. ~ Marya Hornbacher,
707:Where else but America could football flourish, America with its millions of fertile acres of corn, soy, and wheat, its lakes of dairy, its year-round gushers of fruits and vegetables, and such meats, that extraordinary pipline of beef, poultry, seafood, and pork, feedlot gorged, vitamin enriched, and hypodermically immunized, humming factories of high-velocity protein production, all of which culminate after several generations of epic nutrition in this strain of industrial-sized humans? Only America could produce such giants. ~ Ben Fountain,
708:Physicists often quote from T. H. White's epic novel The Once and Future King, where a society of ants declares, "Everything not forbidden is compulsory." In other words, if there isn't a basic principle of physics forbidding time travel, then time travel is necessarily a physical possibility. (The reason for this is the uncertainty principle. Unless something is forbidden, quantum effects and fluctuations will eventually make it possible if we wait long enough. Thus, unless there is a law forbidding it, it will eventually occur.) ~ Michio Kaku,
709:OPEN HOUSE

My secrets cry aloud.
I have no need for tongue.
My heart keeps open house,
My doors are widely swung.
An epic of the eyes
My love, with no disguise.

My truths are all foreknown,
This anguish self-revealed.
I'm naked to the bone,
With nakedness my shield.
Myself is what I wear:
I keep the spirit spare.

The anger will endure,
The deed will speak the truth
In language strict and pure.
I stop the lying mouth:
Rage warps my clearest cry
To witless agony. ~ Theodore Roethke,
710:That I had never heard of such a bird did not surprise me.... But others more experienced also did not know of the Carolina Parakeet. The more I spoke of the bird, the more it seemed that, somehow, its existence had been a chimera. Admittedly, my survey was small and unscientific, but intelligent people who could reel off the names of various dinosaurs and identify sparrows at epic distances could not name the forgotten parakeet. I realized, forcefully, what I suppose I knew abstractly: Histories, like species, can go extinct. ~ Christopher Cokinos,
711:Generally, for most fiction, there are three foolproof layouts you can use. One, a flat landscape picture, hopefully at least with a humanizing element (a garment, object, footsteps... something that refers to a character – because without character there is no story). Two, a landscape picture with a character in it; either in the foreground or background. Smaller figures for more epic stories with bigger landscapes; bigger characters for more action and character-driven stories. Three, a face on top and a landscape on the bottom. These ~ Derek Murphy,
712:What does the name of an author on the jacket matter? Let us move forward in thought to three thousand years from now. Who knows which books from our period will be saved, and who knows which authors’ names will be remembered? Some books will remain famous but will be considered anonymous works, as for us the epic of Gilgamesh; other authors’ names will still be well know, but none of their works will survive, as was the case with Socrates; or perhaps all the surviving books will be attributed to a single, mysterious author, like Homer. ~ Italo Calvino,
713:The great tragic love story of Percy and me is neither great nor truly a love story, and is tragic only for its single-sidedness. It is also not an epic monolith that has plagued me since boyhood, as might be expected. Rather, it is simply the tale of how two people can be important to each other their whole lives, and then, one morning, quite without meaning to, one of them wakes to find that importance has been magnified into a sudden and intense desire to put his tongue in the other's mouth.
A long, slow slide, then a sudden impact. ~ Mackenzi Lee,
714:It helps to regard soul as an active intelligence, forming and plotting each person's fate. Translators use "plot" to render the ancient Greek word mythos in English. The plots that entangle our souls and draw forth our characters are the great myths. That is why we need a sense of myth and knowledge of different myths to gain insight into our epic struggles, our misalliances, and our tragedies. Myths show the imaginative structures inside our messes, and our human characters can locate themselves against the background of the characters of myth. ~ James Hillman,
715:The poetry of motion is a phrase much in use, and to enjoy the epic form of that gratification it is necessary to stand on a hill at a small hour of the night, and, having first expanded with a sense of difference from the mass of civilized mankind, who are dreamwrapt and disregardful of all such proceedings at this time, long and quietly watch your stately progress through the stars. After such a nocturnal reconnoitre it is hard to get back to earth, and to believe that the consciousness of such a majestic speeding is derived from a tiny human frame. ~ Thomas Hardy,
716:We would pass the afternoon at Ya Ya’s table, eating stringy boiled meat served with spinach pie. The food tasted as though it had been cooked weeks beforehand and left to age in a musty trunk. Her meals had been marinated in something dank and foreign and were cooked not in pots and pans, but in the same blackened kettles used by witches. Once we’d been served, she performed an epic version of grace. Delivered in both Greek and broken English, it involved tears and excessive hand-wringing and came off sounding less like a prayer than a spell. “Enough ~ David Sedaris,
717:Sunsets are like snowflakes. No one is the same, my mom said. We miss too many of them rushing around. They are celebrations because every day is an accomplishment, a blessing of epic magnitude that we all take for granted. No matter how difficult a day has been, a sunset proves that there is still hope and good things can happen tomorrow. See how slowly they seem to take, and then how quickly they fade? my dad asked. Sunsets are really metaphors for life, which is why we should slow down to enjoy them. Which is why I always want you to appreciate them. ~ Viola Shipman,
718:I have a story to tell you. It has many beginnings, and perhaps one ending. Perhaps not. Beginnings and endings are contingent things anyway; inventions, devices. Where does any story really begin? There is always context, always an encompassingly greater epic, always something before the described events, unless we are to start every story with “BANG! Expand! Sssss…,” then itemize the whole subsequent history of the universe before settling down, at last, to the particular tale in question. Similarly, no ending is final, unless it is the end of all things… ~ Iain M Banks,
719:But we all have a moral obligation to set things right. We are all responsible for challenging the system and forcing it to create a fair learning experience for all students because we are dealing with more than just a failed school system or a broken home, or even millions of broken homes; we are dealing with failure on a historic scale, spanning hundreds of years. Acknowledging that we face this kind of epic failure is the first step in bringing about real change. That's a big challenge in the United States, where accepting failure has never been our strength. ~ D Watkins,
720:First Lord of the Admiralty, long enough to engineer what an anti-Churchillian would say was an epic and unparalleled military disaster—a feat of incompetent generalship that made the Charge of the Light Brigade look positively slick. It was an attempt to outflank the stalemate on the Western Front that not only ended in humiliation for the British armed forces; it cost the lives of so many Australians and New Zealanders that to this day their 1915 expedition to Turkey is the number-one source of pom-bashing and general anti-British feeling among Antipodeans. ~ Boris Johnson,
721:Victor Hugo's mighty settings where dream figures immeasurably larger than life stalked through an everlasting battle of antitheses, had carried them away by their epic sweep and sent them gesticulating to watch the sun go down behind ruins or to watch life go by in the false but superb lighting of a Romantic fifth act. Then Musset had come and overwhelmed them with his passion and his tears...a new, more human world had opened before them, conquering them through pity and the eternal cry of anguish they were to associate henceforth with every mortal thing. (31) ~ mile Zola,
722:You start out with big dreams and I mean, big dreams artistically. You want to work with the greatest living directors, make a great movie. I wanted to make a great love story, I wanted to make a great epic and then you realize that the truth of it is that it's so hard to make a great film. It's hard to get a great role. Those big expectations change to realism pretty quickly. But what's never changed is my desire to work with great directors and to find projects that push me out of my comfort zone and keep me alive. I still don't think I've done my best work ~ Nicole Kidman,
723:It's all embedded, the hours and minutes, words and numbers everywhere, he said, train stations, bus routes, taxi meters, surveillance cameras. It's all about time, dimwit time, inferior time, people checking watches and other devices, other reminders. This is time draining out of our lives. Cities were built to measure time, to remove time from nature. There's an endless counting down, he said. When you strip away all the surfaces, when you see into it, what's left is terror. This is the thing that literature was meant to cure. The epic poem, the bedtime story. ~ Don DeLillo,
724:So, go to Paris. If you can’t do that, go somewhere. Take a road trip, a train trip, a bus trip if you must. Find a place that reminds you that the world is so much bigger than your heart and whoever broke it this time around. Go hang out by the ocean and trip out on its mammoth ancientness. Offer it your heartache—it’s big enough to hold it, to dilute it with all that salt and water, melt it away to nothing. Salt purifies. Take a dunk if you can stand it. You’re alive. That relationship was but one chapter in your long, long story, one little scene in your epic. ~ Michelle Tea,
725:That was me on the staircase to Chicago-Over-Chicago. Yes, I was standing on nothing but congealed starlight. Yes, I was walking up through a savage storm, the wind threatening to tear me off and throw me into the freezing waters of Lake Michigan far below. Yes, I was using a legendary and enchanted means of travel to transcend the border between one dimension and the next, and on my way to an epic struggle between ancient and elemental forces. But all I could think to say, between panting breaths, was, “Yeah. Sure. They couldn’t possibly have made this an escalator. ~ Jim Butcher,
726:Dear Fiona, I’m sure by now you’ve probably figured out that these adventures are more about you than they are about me. If this were truly my bucket list, you’d probably still be lost after spelunking in a cave right now. But this isn’t about me. My only regret would have been for you to continue to mourn me after I’m gone and not live the most epic life you possibly could. Your heart is too big to keep it contained to little ol’ me. Spread that shit around. Bring joy and love to others the way you have to me, and make sure you get it in return. Love always and forever, Kia ~ Penny Wylder,
727:[When asked for her advice to aspiring writers] Run! Just kidding. Sort of. Really, I think the best advice I can give is to wait for the book that compels you to write it-- the one that you eat, sleep, and breathe.

If you try to force yourself to create an epic story, you will feel the ensuing drudgery quite acutely-- and worse, your readers will feel it too.

Conversely, if you wait for the book that won't leave you alone until you finish it, your readers will feel that energy and it will make it difficult for them to put the book down until they have finished it! ~ Kealohilani,
728:In my opinion, the trombone is the true head of the family of wind instruments, which I have named the 'epic' one. It possesses nobility and grandeur to the highest degree; it has all the serious and powerful tones of sublime musical poetry, from religious, calm and imposing accents to savage, orgiastic outburst. Directed by the will of the master, the trombones can chant like a choir of priests, threaten, utter gloomy sighs, a mournful lament, or a bright hymn of glory; they can break forth into awe-inspiring cries and awaken the dead or doom the living with their fearful voices. ~ Hector Berlioz,
729:Edelman likes to tell the latte story, even if it seems like a trivial wish, because for him it perfectly represents the new kind of epic win that is possible in a world where more and more people are willing to use their mobile phones to broadcast where they are and what they need. The win is nothing less than an augmented human capacity to do good and feel good every single day, by making better use of each other's spare time. As Edelman puts it, 'We can love a lot more people when we can make their wishes come true in seconds . . . We can love people when we know what they need. ~ Jane McGonigal,
730:My own memories of the vimanas during my lifetime as Yudhisthira are that they were basically leftovers from a golden age several thousand years before when India was a colony of Atlantis. The epic Ramayana dates from this earlier time frame and chronicles a war with the Atlaneans when India rebelled against their oppressive rule. Toward the later days of Atlantis’s history, it had been bent on tyrannical world domination by force. In that distant time, more than twelve thousand years ago, the vimanas were far larger and more numerous than they were during my lifetime as Yudhisthira. ~ Michael Jaco,
731:Imagine a pantomime directed by Quentin Tarantino, where villains are booed, heroes are blood-stained, the body-count is high, the entertainment pulsating, the language filthy and the audience screamed behind you'' as tackles hurtled in like boulders crashing down a mountain-side. Such was the epic drama that gripped the Emirates yesterday. A derby crammed with sound, fury and significance ended with everyone grasping for breath, with Arsenal regaining the high ground of the Premier League... This was the Premier League at its raw, mistake-filled, mesmerising best. Utterly compelling. ~ Henry Winter,
732:History conditioned you for epic-scale calamity. Once, when she was studying the death tolls of battles in World War I, she'd caught herself thinking, Only eight thousand men died here. Well, that's not many. Because next to, say, the million who died at the Somme, it wasn't. The stupendous numbers deadened you to the merely tragic, and history didn't average in the tame days for balance. On this day, no one in the world was murdered. A lion gave birth. Ladybugs launched on aphids. A girl in love daydreamed all morning, neglecting her chores, and wasn't even scolded. ~ Laini Taylor,
733:Short of climbing aboard a time capsule and peeling back eight and one-half decades, James Cameron's magnificent Titanic is the closest any of us will get to walking the decks of the doomed ocean liner. Meticulous in detail, yet vast in scope and intent, Titanic is the kind of epic motion picture event that has become a rarity. You don't just watch Titanic , you experience it from the launch to the sinking, then on a journey two and one-half miles below the surface, into the cold, watery grave where Cameron has shot never-before seen documentary footage specifically for this movie. ~ James Berardinelli,
734:Disappointment

Can do a couple things.
It can drop you into a giant
sucking sinkhole of

depression,

a place you have to fight
to climb out of. Or it
can trigger an epic

mania

to overcome the odds
and transform failure
into success. Say you

swing

as high as the chains will
take you because you seek
the thrill of flight, and on the

up-

kick, you lose your seat.
Injury is likely. But if you
worry about falling

down,

and never chance "up,"
the sky will remain
forever out of reach. ~ Ellen Hopkins,
735:Christianity, in its true form, tells us that there is an Author and that he is good, the essence of all that is good and beautiful and true, for he is the source of all these things. It tells us that he has set our hearts’ longings within us, for he has made us to live in an Epic. It warns that the truth is always in danger of being twisted and corrupted and stolen from us because there is a Villain in the Story who hates our hearts and wants to destroy us. It calls us up into a Story that is truer and deeper than any other, and assures us that there we will find the meaning of our lives. ~ John Eldredge,
736:I'm fascinated by the period that goes from the Industrial Revolution to right after World War II. There's something about that period that's epic and tragic. There's a point after the industrial period where it seems like humanity's finally going to make it right. There were advances in medicine and technology and education. People are going to be able to live longer lives; literacy is starting to spread. It seemed like finally, after centuries of toiling and misery, that humanity was going to get to a better stage. And then what happens is precisely the contrary. Humanity betrays itself. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon,
737:Indeed, the protesters who believed they were seeing the company’s relationship with Trump in political terms were actually seeing this in conventional brand terms and zooming in on the disconnect. Uber’s customer base is strongly young, urban, and progressive, and therefore out of sync with the Trump base. Brand-conscious millennials saw this as beyond policy dickering and as part of an epic identity clash. The Trump White House stood less for government and the push-pull of competing interests and developing policies, and more, in a brand-savvy world, as a fixed and unpopular cultural symbol. ~ Michael Wolff,
738:That drunken poet from whom you would not take a dreary tragedy, he believed in himself. That elderly minister with an epic from whom you were hiding in a back room, he believed in himself. If you consulted your business experience instead of your ugly individualistic philosophy, you would know that believing in himself is one of the commonest signs of a rotter. Actors who can't act believe in themselves; and debtors who won't pay. It would be much truer to say that a man will certainly fail because he believes in himself. Complete self-confidence is not merely a sin; complete self-confidence is a weakness. ~ G K Chesterton,
739:I tend to interpret that whole 'everyone's wife is a Mossad agent' thing in a more sort of metaphorical way--that people you're intimate with might be, like, 'double agents,' y'know? It's a weird kind of paranoia you get about people you love--that they might turn out to be completely different from who you think they are, that it's all been some sort of diabolically patient plot against you. I think that's a pretty normal fear you have in any serious relationship. And that's why it's such a popular part of the epic, because so many people can relate to that fear. But personally, I don't really worry about it too much. ~ Mark Leyner,
740:Our family has survived a long time. We’ve weathered battles and transformations, enchantments and floods and fires. We’ve endured being sent away, and we’ve coped with evildoers in our midst. If I were telling a story of Sevenwaters – and it would be a grand epic told over all the nights of a long winter – I would surely end it with a triumph. A happy ending, all well, puzzles solved, enemies defeated, the future stretching ahead bright and true. With new challenges and new adventures, certainly, because that’s the way things always are. But overall it would be a very satisfying story, one to give the listener heart. ~ Juliet Marillier,
741:DESPERATELY SEEKING EPIC You’re my father. I don’t know much about you. I know your name is Paul James, you’re a thrill seeker, and once upon a time you did stunts and people called you ‘Epic.’ I’ve been told you don’t know about me. That it’s complicated. But for me it’s simple. Here’s the thing: I’m twelve years old . . . and I’m dying. And as much as this could crush my mother, I have to meet you before I go. In time, I’m sure she’ll understand. She’s still in love with you. So, Epic, if you read this, please come back. You don’t have to be my dad. You don’t even have to tell me you love me or you’re sorry. Just come see me. ~ B N Toler,
742:One would have a strong case for arguing that it was the men in her life—the lovers, the father, the directors, producers, critics—who destroyed it. And yet when you looked at the broad sweep they appeared more as agents, collectively, of a darker, wider force of ruin that pursued her. It was as if her epic beauty somehow angered the gods and drew down a suitably Promethean punishment; and the girl behind the beauty—the nice girl from Connecticut who at the end would wonder whether, if her life had been a movie, she would have been cast to play her part—found she had wandered off the lot into a Greek tragedy. [On Gene Tierney] ~ Paul Murray,
743:Why have two figures of such remarkable interest been so scanted by the annalists and historians, so overlooked by philosophers, poets, and priests? I think it may be that they were, to put it bluntly, too disreputable. They were too stubbornly independent to give allegiance to a single city and thus become subject matter for a civic epic. They were too often involved with demons and sorcerers to appeal to the staid philosopher and too shifty to please the sober historian. In short, they were rogues, and rogues have no place in the lists of kings and demigods and heroes. It may be that no poet shall ever write of them, alas! ~ Steven Saylor,
744:The Akitu New Year Festival was a twelve-day celebration. The first day would involve the final arrival of the people into the temple district and city streets. The second day brought elaborate purification rituals and washings for both priests and temple. On the third day, statues of the gods were carved out of cedar and tamarisk wood. The fourth day was considered the true starting point, because it was the actual first day of the year. After recitations, prayers and rituals, the priests would recite their creation epic to the people. The story would connect their past with their future and reinforce the kingdom of the gods. ~ Brian Godawa,
745:The goddess smiled. "You are a good hero, Percy Jackson. Not too proud. I like that. But you have much to learn. When Dionysus was made a god, I gave up my throne for him. It was the only way to avoid a civil war among the gods."
"It unbalanced the Council," I remembered. "Suddenly there were seven guys and five girls."
Hestia shrugged. "It was the best solution, not a perfect one. Now I tend the fire. I fade slowly into the background. No one will ever write epic poems about the deeds of Hestia. Most demigods don't even stop to talk to me. But that is no matter. I keep the peace. I yield when necessary. Can you do this? ~ Rick Riordan,
746:By lunchtime, the rest of the school was still talking about last night’s epic howler at Hell Hall, but Mal had no interest. The party was the past; she’d moved on. She had bigger things to worry about now. All she could think about was how her mother wanted the Dragon’s Eye back. And how Maleficent wouldn’t see her as anything other than her father’s daughter—in other words, a pathetic, soft human—until Mal could prove her wrong. Mal kept reliving last night’s conversation over and over, so that she missed her first few classes and sleepwalked through the rest. She arrived for her one-on-one after-school seminar with Lady ~ Melissa de la Cruz,
747:I’m at the tipping point of a transformation that began months ago, an intentional decision put in motion. And it feels so fucking good. I’ve come to the full realization that my happiness, my life, falls squarely on my shoulders. No one’s gonna do it for it me. I’m the one who makes it or breaks it.  It’s a choice.  A choice that demands action in exchange for reward. Idleness and complacency lead to mediocrity. Sometimes action is really fucking hard fought, but that’s when the payoff’s the highest.  That’s when great things happen.  Not good things … but epic things. And I’ve fallen in love with epic.  It’s the only way to live. ~ Kim Holden,
748:into the West Wing. Not even the sisters came to this part of the castle. He had escaped their mockery for long stretches of time when he spent most of his days here in the beginning—hiding away, letting his anger swell to epic proportions, fearful of what he was becoming, yet intrigued concurrently. It had been that way at first, hadn’t it? Intriguing. The subtle differences in his features, the lines around his eyes that frightened his foes when he narrowed them. Using a look rather than words to strike fear into his enemies was very useful indeed. He had looked upon himself in the mirror in those days, trying to distinguish ~ Serena Valentino,
749:told of his receiving the Tablet of Destinies, and it ended with a recitation of the fifty names of Marduk. During the recitation of the epic, the crown of Anu and the seat of Enlil were veiled in humility before Marduk’s might and glory.   In the divine council of heaven, a different story was being unveiled. Ten thousand times ten thousand of Yahweh Elohim’s holy ones, the Sons of God, surrounded his throne chariot in the heavenly courtroom of the temple above the waters. On earth, the forefathers Enoch and Noah knew the Creator only as Elohim, and Abram knew him as El Shaddai. But in the heavenlies, he was always Yahweh Elohim. ~ Brian Godawa,
750:For Stoics, in other words, the tale of Hercules symbolizes the epic challenge of deciding who we really want to be in life, the promise of philosophy, and the temptation of giving in to pleasure and vice. The moral is that it often requires a Herculean effort to keep to the right path. But wasn’t Hercules’s life unpleasant? As we’ll see, from the Stoic perspective Hercules remained cheerful, despite the terrible things he endured. He enjoyed a profound sense of inner satisfaction knowing that he was fulfilling his destiny and expressing his true nature. His life had something far more satisfying than pleasure: it had purpose. ~ Donald J Robertson,
751:My love, once upon a time your poet
launched a great epic in his mind.
  Alas, I was not careful, and it struck
your ringing anklets and came to
grief.
  It broke up into scraps of songs and
lay scattered at your feet.
  All my cargo of the stories of old
wars was tossed by the laughing waves
and soaked in tears and sank.
  You must make this loss good to me,
my love.
  If my claims to immortal fame after
death are scattered, make me immortal
while I live.
  And I will not mourn for my loss nor
blame you.

~ Rabindranath Tagore, The Gardener XXXVIII - My Love, Once Upon A Time
,
752:I wonder if the real measure of "home" is the degree to which you can leave it alone. Maybe appreciating a house means knowing when to stop decorating. Maybe you've never really lived there until you've thrown its broken pieces in the garbage. Maybe learning how to be out in the big world isn't the epic journey everyone thinks it is. Maybe that's actually the easy part. The hard part is what's right in front of you. The hard part is learning how to hold the title to your very existence, to own not only property, but also your life. The hard part is learning not just how to be but mastering the nearly impossible art of how to be at home. ~ Meghan Daum,
753:During a period of nearly fifty years... [Sri Aurobindo] created what is probably the greatest epic in the English language… I venture the judgment that it is the most comprehensive, integrated, beautiful and perfect cosmic poem ever composed. It ranges symbolically from a primordial cosmic void, through earth’s darkness and struggles, to the highest realms of supramental spiritual existence, and illumines every important concern of man, through verse of unparalleled massiveness, magnificence, and metaphorical brilliance. Savitri is perhaps the most powerful artistic work in the world for expanding man’s mind towards the Absolute». ~ Raymond Frank Piper,
754:When I placed the album cover side by side with the screenshot of the game screen, the two symbols matched exactly. 2112’s title track is an epic seven-part song, over twenty minutes in length. The song tells the story of an anonymous rebel living in the year 2112, a time when creativity and self-expression have been outlawed. The red star on the album’s cover was the symbol of the Solar Federation, the oppressive interstellar society in the story. The Solar Federation was controlled by a group of “priests,” who are described in Part II of the song, titled “The Temples of Syrinx.” Its lyrics told me exactly where the Crystal Key was hidden: ~ Ernest Cline,
755:But aren’t all great quests folly? El Dorado and the Fountain of Youth and the search for intelligent life in the cosmos—we know what’s out there. It’s what isn’t that truly compels us. Technology may have shrunk the epic journey to a couple of short car rides and regional jet legs—four states and twelve hundred miles traversed in an afternoon—but true quests aren’t measured in time or distance anyway, so much as in hope. There are only two good outcomes for a quest like this, the hope of the serendipitous savant—sail for Asia and stumble on America—and the hope of scarecrows and tin men: that you find out you had the thing you sought all along. ~ Jess Walter,
756:Stop waiting for someone to give you what you want. The universe is too busy to care. It has worlds to create and galaxies to destroy. If you're worried about death and about your own end, don't. It's coming whether you like it or not. You will either arrive at the end of your life in style or you will arrive broken and beaten, but whichever way you choose, have no doubt that you WILL ARRIVE. There is only now. If you have power, it's now. If you can change anything, you have to do it now. If you want to be or to have that next great thing, be it. Have it. Take it. Own it. Do it. Become it. Be awesome. Do epic shit. Do it now. The clock is ticking. ~ Johnny B Truant,
757:earliest Sumerian and Akkadian texts with geographical information, only the Babylonian map of the world and another text, The Sargon Geography, describe the earth’s surface, and they both picture a central circular continent surrounded by cosmic waters, often referred to as “the circle of the earth.”[88] Other texts like the Akkadian Epic of Gilgamesh, and Egyptian, and Sumerian works share in common with the Babylonian map the notion of mountains at the edge of the earth beyond which is the cosmic sea and the unknown,[89] and from which come “the circle of the four winds” that blow upon the four corners of the earth (a reference to compass points).[90] ~ Brian Godawa,
758:If you think you're going to have a thoughtful discussion with someone who is toxic, be prepared for epic mindfuckery rather than conversational mindfulness. Malignant narcissists and sociopaths use word salad, circular conversations, ad hominem arguments, projection and gas lighting to disorient you and get you off track should you ever disagree with them or challenge them in any way. They do this in order to discredit, confuse and frustrate you, distract you from the main problem and make you feel guilty for being a human being with actual thoughts and feelings that might differ from their own. In their eyes, you are the problem if you happen to exist. ~ Shahida Arabi,
759:In my training in the Army, I’d been exposed to a variety of weapons. Rifles. Handguns of all makes and models. RPG launchers. I’d shot a fifty-cal a few times—now, that’s a weapon. The fifty’s legit. So I think you can understand, Cordero, when I say that a sword was a little disappointing.

Sword fighting was fine in the movies, for gladiators or fighting trolls or whatever. But actually using a sword in combat? Nope. It felt tardy by a couple of centuries. Of course I’d just been in an epic fistfight, but everyone knows fisticuffs is a timeless art. Point is I wasn’t thrilled about the sword, but it was better than no sword, so I rolled with it. ~ Veronica Rossi,
760:But aren't all great quests folly? El Dorado and the Fountain of Youth and the search for intelligent life in the cosmos-- we know what's out there. It's what isn't that truly compels us. Technology may have shrunk the epic journey to a couple of short car rides and regional jet lags-- four states and twelve hundred miles traversed in an afternoon-- but true quests aren't measured in time or distance anyway, so much as in hope. There are only two good outcomes for a quest like this, the hope of the serendipitous savant-- sail for Asia and stumble on America-- and the hope of scarecrows and tin men: that you find out you had the thing you sought all along. ~ Jess Walter,
761:I'm done with the pouting," he said. "Done with being moody—well, I mean, I'm always a little moody. That's what Adrian Ivashkov's all about. But I'm done with the excessive stuff. That didn't get me anywhere with Rose. It won't get me anywhere with you."
"Nothing will get you anywhere with me," I exclaimed.
"I don't know about that." He put on an introspective look that was both unexpected and intruiging. "You're not as much of a lost cause as she was. I mean, with her, I had to overcome her deep, epic love with a Russian warlord. You and I just have to overcome hundreds of years' worth of deeply ingrained prejudice and taboo between our two races. Easy. ~ Richelle Mead,
762:Kvothe looked at Bast for a long moment. “Oh Bast,” he said softly to his student. His smile was gentle and sad. “I know what sort of story I’m telling. This is no comedy.”

“This is the end of the story, Bast. We all know that.” Kvothe’s voice was matter-of-fact, as casual as if he were describing yesterday’s weather. “I have led an interesting life, and this reminiscence has a certain sweetness to it. But . . .”

Kvothe drew a deep breath and let it out gently. “. . . but this is not a dashing romance. This is no fable where folk come back from the dead. It’s not a rousing epic meant to stir the blood. No.
We all know what kind of story this is. ~ Patrick Rothfuss,
763:Man, a gigantic child, must play with Babylon and Nineveh, with Isis and with Ashtaroth. By all means let him dream of the Bondage of Egypt, so long as he is free from it. By all means let him take up the Burden of Tyre, so long as he can take it lightly. But the old gods must be his dolls, not his idols. His central sanctities, his true possessions, should be Christian and simple. And just as a child would cherish most a wooden horse or a sword that is a mere cross of wood, so man, the great child, must cherish most the old plain things of poetry and piety; that horse of wood that was the epic end of Ilium, or that cross of wood that redeemed and conquered the world. ~ G K Chesterton,
764:I realized that Joyce had gone as far as one could in the direction of knowing more, in control of one's material. He was always adding to it; you only have to look at his proofs to see that. I realised that my own way was impoverishment, in lack of knowledge and in taking away, subtracting rather than adding. When I first met Joyce, I didn't intend to be a writer. That only came later when I found out that I was no good at all at teaching. When I found I simply couldn't teach. But I do remember speaking about Joyce's heroic achievement. I had a great admiration for him. That's what it was: epic, heroic, what he achieved. I realized that I couldn't go down that same road. ~ Samuel Beckett,
765:Unix is not so much a product as it is a painstakingly compiled oral history of the hacker subculture. It is our Gilgamesh epic: a living body of narrative that many people know by heart, and tell over and over again—making their own personal embellishments whenever it strikes their fancy. The bad embellishments are shouted down, the good ones picked up by others, polished, improved, and, over time, incorporated into the story. […] Thus Unix has slowly accreted around a simple kernel and acquired a kind of complexity and asymmetry about it that is organic, like the roots of a tree, or the branchings of a coronary artery. Understanding it is more like anatomy than physics. ~ Neal Stephenson,
766:We are supposed to believe [capitalist ideology] was the champion of freedom and prosperity in the epic struggle called the Cold War. If there was such a champion, might it not have been freedom itself, as realized in the institutional forms of democracy? This is not how the story has been told. We are t believe it was an economic system, capitalism, that arrayed its forces against its opposite, communism, and rescued all we hold dear. Yet in the new era... [capitalism] has shown itself very ready to devour what we hold dear, if the list can be taken to include culture, education, the environment, and the sciences, as well as the peace and well-being of our fellow citizens. ~ Marilynne Robinson,
767:Do your work, I tell myself. And after? Find a patch of lawn and sit down and hug your knees to your chest and let everything you’ve ever been told and everything you’ve ever seen mingle together in a show just for you, your own eye-popping pageant of existence, your own twelve-thousand-line epic poem. The tickle of the grass on your thighs, the sky moving over you, sunless or blue, echoes from a homily or a wedding toast or a letter your grandmother sent. Remember something good, a sunburn you liked the feeling of, a plate of homemade pasta. Do your work, Kelly. Then lean back. Rest from the striving to reduce. Like the padre said, life is a mystery to be lived. Live your mystery. ~ Kelly Corrigan,
768:What is the world? What is it for?
It is an art. It is the best of all possible art, a finite picture of the infinite. Assess it like prose, like poetry, like architecture, sculpture, painting, dance, delta blues, opera, tragedy, comedy, romance, epic. Assess it like you would a Faberge egg, like a gunfight, like a musical, like a snowflake, like a death, a birth, a triumph, a love story, a tornado, a smile, a heartbreak, a sweater, a hunger pain, a desire, a fufillment, a desert, a waterfall, a song, a race, a frog, a play, a song, a marriage, a consummation, a thirst quenched.
Assess it like that. And when you're done, find an ant and have him assess the cathedrals of Europe. ~ N D Wilson,
769:(On D.W Griffith's The Birth of a Nation)
This was the one time in movie history that a man of great ability worked freely, in an unspoiled medium, for an unspoiled audience, on a majestic theme which involved all that he was; and brought to it, besides his abilities as an inventor and artist, absolute passion, pity, courage, and honesty. “The Birth of a Nation” is equal with Brady’s photographs, Lincoln’s speeches, Whitman’s war poems; for all its imperfections and absurdities it is equal, in fact, to the best work that has been done in this country. And among moving pictures it is alone, not necessarily as “the greatest” — whatever that means — but as the one great epic, tragic film. ~ James Agee,
770:Coach wastes no time delivering one of his brief, post-game speeches. As usual, it sounds like he’s talking in point form.

“We lost. It feels shitty. Don’t let it get to you. Just means we work harder during practice and bring it harder for the next game.” He nods at everyone, then stalks out the door.

I’d think he was pissed at us, if not for the fact that his victory speeches more or less go the same way—“We won. It feels great. Don’t let it go to your head. We work just as hard during practice and we win more games.” If any of our freshman players are expecting Coach to deliver epic motivational speeches a la Kurt Russell in Miracle, they’re in for a grave disappointment. ~ Elle Kennedy,
771:And among the most bizarre aspects of the ‘total war’ drive in the second half of 1944 was the fact that at precisely the time he was combing out the last reserves of manpower, Goebbels – according to film director Veit Harlan – was allowing him, at Hitler’s express command, to deploy 187,000 soldiers, withdrawn from active service, as extras for the epic colour film of national heroism, Kolberg, depicting the defence of the small Baltic town against Napoleon as a model for the achievements of total war. According to Harlan, Hitler as well as Goebbels was ‘convinced that such a film was more useful than a military victory’. Even in the terminal crisis of the regime, propaganda had to come first. ~ Ian Kershaw,
772:One of the things you never really see in a romance book is a woman who has self-esteem issues. I mean, I’m sure they’re out there, but they’re few and far between. Like they can have eating disorders, post-traumatic stress from sexual assault or mental abuse. They can be sold into sex trafficking and they can carry epic amounts of grief. We have female characters who have suffered every loss imaginable and ones who are scarred physically and mentality, but where in the hell are the average women? Ones who look in the mirror and cringe a little? Like, why are all those others acceptable to women, but reading or knowing another woman who has a low self-esteem is, like, worse than all that drama llama? ~ J Lynn,
773:You really love him, huh? Not just the sweet ‘oh, we met in high school and just couldn’t seem to find someone else’ sort of love, but the epic, desperate, ‘move mountains and cross oceans’ sort of love.”
I chuckled. “I think that would be an apt description. When you realize that someone would do anything for you, even if it means separating themselves from you, risking that you’ll never love them again, just to make sure you’re safe and well . . . There’s no coming back from that. You’ll do whatever it takes to be with them. You might want to kick their ass a few times along the way. But when you find that, you don’t let it go.”
Jamie shuddered.
“Too mushy?” I asked.
“I’ll survive. ~ Molly Harper,
774:History is about longing and belonging. It is about the need for permanence and the perception of continuity. It concerns the atavistic desire to find deep sources of identity. We live again in the twelfth or in the fifteenth century, finding echoes and resonances of our own time; we may recognise that some things, such as piety and passion, are never lost; we may also conclude that the great general drama of the human spirit is ever fresh and ever renewed. That is why some of the greatest writers have preferred to see English history as dramatic or epic poetry, which is just as capable of expressing the power and movement of history as any prose narrative; it is a form of singing around a fire. ~ Peter Ackroyd,
775:PRAISE FOR KILLING FLOOR A People Magazine “Page-Turner” An Anthony Award winner A Barry Award winner   “All [Jack Reacher novels] are ripping yarns, but . . . Killing Floor wins awards for Best Corrupt Southern Town in a Summer Novel and Best Exploding Warehouse.” —Stephen King, Entertainment Weekly “Combines high suspense with almost nonstop action. And Reacher is a wonderfully epic hero: tough, taciturn, yet vulnerable.” —People “The violence is brutal . . . depicted with the kind of detail that builds dread and suspense . . . Great style and careful plotting.” —The New York Times “A complex thriller with layer upon layer of mystery and violence and intrigue . . . A long, unsettling trip that leaves ~ Lee Child,
776: The Greater Plan
I am held no more by life's alluring cry,
Her joy and grief, her charm, her laughter's lute.

Hushed are the magic moments of the flute,
And form and colour and brief ecstasy.

I would hear, in my spirit's wideness solitary,
The Voice that speaks when mortal lips are mute:
I seek the wonder of things absolute
Born from the silence of Eternity.

There is a need within the soul of man
The splendours of the surface never sate;
For life and mind and their glory and debate
Are the slow prelude of a vaster theme,
A sketch confused of a supernal plan,
A preface to the epic of the Supreme.
Sonnets

607
~ Sri Aurobindo, - The Greater Plan
,
777:The Tull-Toks claim that everything in the universe can be read. Each star is a living text, where the massive convection currents of superheated gas tell an epic drama, with the starspots serving as punctuation, the coronal loops extended figures of speech, and the flares emphatic passages that ring true in the deep silence of cold space. Each planet contains a poem, written out in the bleak, jagged, staccato rhythm of bare rocky cores or the lyrical, lingering, rich rhymes—both masculine and feminine—of swirling gas giants. And then there are the planets with life, constructed like intricate jeweled clockwork, containing a multitude of self-referential literary devices that echo and re-echo without end. ~ Ken Liu,
778:At the moment when, ordinarily, there was still an hour to be lived through before meal-time sounded, we would all know that in a few seconds we should see the endives make their precocious appearance, followed by the special favour of an omelette, an unmerited steak. The return of this asymmetrical Saturday was one of those petty occurrences, intra-mural, localised, almost civic, which, in uneventful lives and stable orders of society, create a kind of national unity, and become the favourite theme for conversation, for pleasantries, for anecdotes which can be embroidered as the narrator pleases; it would have provided a nucleus, ready-made, for a legendary cycle, if any of us had had the epic mind. ~ Marcel Proust,
779:A Song Of The Pen
Not for the love of women toil we, we of the craft,
Not for the people's praise;
Only because our goddess made us her own and laughed,
Claiming us all our days,
Claiming our best endeavour -- body and heart and brain
Given with no reserve -Niggard is she towards us, granting us little gain:
Still, we are proud to serve.
Not unto us is given choice of the tasks we try,
Gathering grain or chaff;
One of her favoured servants toils at an epic high,
One, that a child may laugh.
Yet if we serve her truly in our appointed place,
Freely she doth accord
Unto her faithful servants always this saving grace,
Work is its own reward!
~ Banjo Paterson,
780:The creation myths of the various peoples and religions of the world pale when compared to the glory of the big bang. The three-billion-year history of life’s evolution from self-reproducing molecules to civilization contains twists and romances that cannot be matched by any myth or epic. There is also the poetic vision of space and time in relativity, the weird subatomic world of quantum mechanics … these wondrous stories of science all possess an irresistible attraction. Through the medium of science fiction, I seek only to create my own worlds using the power of imagination, and to make known the poetry of Nature in those worlds, to tell the romantic legends that have unfolded between Man and Universe. ~ Liu Cixin,
781:There’s always that one guy who gets a hold on you. Not like your best friend’s brother who gets you in a headlock kind of hold. Or the little kid you’re babysitting who attaches himself to your leg kind of hold.
I’m talking epic. Life changing. The “can’t eat, can’t sleep, can’t do your homework, can’t stop giggling, can’t remember anything but his smile” kind of hold. Like, Wesley and Buttercup proportions. Harry and Sally. Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. The kind of hold in all your favorite ’80s songs, like the “Must Have Been Love”s, the “Take My Breath Away”s, the “Eternal Flame”s—the ones you sing into a hairbrush-microphone at the top of your lungs with your best friends on a Saturday night. ~ Jess Rothenberg,
782:Every given commodity fights for itself, cannot acknowledge the others, and attempts to impose itself everywhere as if it were the only one. The spectacle, then is the epic poem of this struggle, an epic which cannot be concluded by the fall of any Troy. The spectacle does not sign the praises of men and their weapons, but of commodities and their passions. In this blind struggle every commodity, pursuing its passion, unconsciously realizes something higher: the becoming-world of the commodity, which is also the becoming-commodity of the world. Thus, by means of a ruse of commodity logic, what's specific in the commodity wears itself out in the fight while the commodity-form moves toward its absolute realization. ~ Guy Debord,
783:Morgan Rice   Morgan Rice is the #1 bestselling and USA Today bestselling author of the epic fantasy series THE SORCERER’S RING, comprising seventeen books; of the #1 bestselling series THE VAMPIRE JOURNALS, comprising eleven books (and counting); of the #1 bestselling series THE SURVIVAL TRILOGY, a post-apocalyptic thriller comprising two books (and counting); and of the new epic fantasy series KINGS AND SORCERERS. Morgan’s books are available in audio and print editions, and translations are available in over 25 languages. TURNED (Book #1 in the Vampire Journals), ARENA ONE (Book #1 of the Survival Trilogy), and A QUEST OF HEROES (Book #1 in the Sorcerer’s Ring) are each available as a free download on Amazon! ~ Morgan Rice,
784:After she disappeared inside the hotel, Pasquale entertained the unwieldy thought that he’d somehow summoned her, that after years of living in this place, after months of grief and loneliness and waiting for Americans, he’d created this woman from old bits of cinema and books, from the lost artifacts and ruins of his dreams, from his epic, enduring solitude. He glanced over at Orenzio, who was carrying someone’s bags, and the whole world suddenly seemed so unlikely, our time in it so brief and dreamlike. He’d never felt such a detached, existential sensation, such terrifying freedom—it was as if he were hovering above the village, above his own body—and it thrilled him in a way that he could never have explained. ~ Jess Walter,
785:I seem to remember only centuries of heroic war, in which you were always heroes--epic on epic, Iliad on Iliad, and you always brothers in arms. Whether it was but recently (for time is nothing), or at the beginning of the world, I sent you out to war. I sat in the darkness, where there is not any created thing, and to you I was only a voice commanding valour and an unnatural virtue. You heard the voice in the dark, and you never heard it again. The sun in heaven denied it, the earth and sky denied it, all human wisdom denied it. And when I met you in the daylight I denied it myself...But you were men. You did not forget your secret honour, though the whole cosmos turned an engine of torture to tear it out of you. ~ G K Chesterton,
786:I’d simplified and objectified our relationship into one of lust and boundaries, and while both were necessary for a good relationship, it took a lot more than that to make it an epic one. Things we had, like respect and trust, but also freely expressed desires and accountability to whatever degree it took to make both people happy. It took work, a willingness to fight passionately and fairly—out of bed, not just in it—commitment and honesty. It took waking up and saying each day, I hold this man sacred and always will. He’s my sun, moon, and stars. It took letting the other person in; a thing I’d stopped doing. It took being unafraid to ask for what you wanted, to put yourself on the line, to risk it all for love. We ~ Karen Marie Moning,
787:Although the disappearance of the true wildwood [in the British Isles] occurred in the Neolithic period, before humanity began to record its own history, creation myths in almost all cultures look fabulously back to a forested earth. In the ancient Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh, the quest-story which begins world literature, Gilgamesh sets out on his journey from Uruk to the Cedar Mountains, where he has been charged to slay the Huwawa, the guardian of the forest. The Roman empire also defined itself against the forests in which its capital city was first established, and out of which its founders, the wolf-suckled twins, emerged. It was the Roman Empire which would proceed to destroy the dense forests of the ancient world. ~ Robert Macfarlane,
788:member of the family recounted a few stories or read a poem. “His mind was never a captive of reality,” Laurene said. “He possessed an epic sense of possibility. He looked at things from the standpoint of perfection.” Mona Simpson, as befitting a novelist, had a finely crafted eulogy. “He was an intensely emotional man,” she recalled. “Even ill, his taste, his discrimination, and his judgment held. He went through sixty-seven nurses before finding kindred spirits.” She spoke of her brother’s love of work and noted that “even in the last year, he embarked upon projects and elicited promises from his friends at Apple to finish them.” She also, more personally, stressed his love of Laurene and all four of his children. Although ~ Walter Isaacson,
789:Vogon poetry is of course the third worst in the Universe. The second worst is that of the Azgoths of Kria. During a recitation by their Poet Master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem “Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning” four of his audience died of internal hemorrhaging, and the President of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council survived by gnawing one of his own legs off. Grunthos is reported to have been “disappointed” by the poem’s reception, and was about to embark on a reading of his twelve-book epic entitled My Favorite Bathtime Gurgles when his own major intestine, in a desperate attempt to save life and civilization, leaped straight up through his neck and throttled his brain. ~ Douglas Adams,
790:Creativity is, by its nature, fitful and inconstant, easily upset by constraint, foreboding, insecurity, external pressure. Any great preoccupation with the problems of ensuring animal survival exhausts the energies and disturbs the receptivity of the sensitive mind. Such creativity as was first achieved in the city came about largely through an arrogation of the economic means of production and distribution by a small minority, attached to the temple and the palace. In the epic of creation Marduk remarks of man: "Let him be burdened with the toil of the gods that they may freely breathe." Shall we err greatly if we translate this as: "Let our subjects be burdened with daily toil that the king and the priesthood may freely breathe"? ~ Lewis Mumford,
791:...while hiding in plain sight in Belgrade, undercover as a New Age mountebank, Karadžić frequented a bar called Mad House - Luda kuća. Mad House offered weekly gusle-accompanied performances of Serbian epic poetry; wartime pictures of him and General Ratko Mladić, the Bosnian Serbs' military leader (now on trial in The Hague), proudly hung on the walls. A local newspaper claimed that, on at least one occasion, Karadžić performed an epic poem in which he himself featured as the main hero, undertaking feats of extermination. Consider the horrible postmodernism of the situation: an undercover war criminal narrating his own crimes in decasyllabic verse, erasing his personality so that he could assert it more forcefully and heroically. ~ Aleksandar Hemon,
792:John Horace Burleson
I won the prize essay at school
Here in the village,
And published a novel before I was twenty-five.
I went to the city for themes and to enrich my art;
There married the banker’s daughter,
And later became president of the bank—
Always looking forward to some leisure
To write an epic novel of the war.
Meanwhile friend of the great, and lover of letters,
And host to Matthew Arnold and to Emerson.
An after dinner speaker, writing essays
For local clubs. At last brought here—
My boyhood home, you know—
Not even a little tablet in Chicago
To keep my name alive.
How great it is to write the single line:
“Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean, roll!”
~ Edgar Lee Masters,
793:You try to separate yourselves from history. You pretend its ugliness could never happen where you are. But it can...and it does, when normal people, en mass, allow worse and worse shit to go down because either they're too ignorant to understand or they're being corrupted by the powers that control the country. That's how this starts, that's how it gets too far. PLEASE see the signs. Please. This is human nature...to miss the boat out of fear or anger about others "taking what's ours" and so we allow (or cheer on) heinousness one step at a time until, before you know it, you're living in a nightmare of epic proportions and history sees you as the villain you became.

DON'T BECOME A VILLAIN. BE THE VOICE THAT BREAKS THE INSANITY OPEN. ~ Jennifer DeLucy,
794:Do you want to hurt yourself?'
'No. I'm trying to get a grip. Have a more normal life.' Scribble, scribble.
'The number of suicides in the area has recently escalated,' she commented.
'The train track suicides. Yes, I know. And yet, here I am. Thrilled to be in counseling. Weren't we supposed to be focusing on a healthy expression of my grief?'
Scribble. 'You seem disoriented. Have you been drinking?'
'I have too few brain cells naturally to waste any on a temporary buzz.'
Scribble. 'Drugs?'
'Just write See Above-the same philosophy applies. Look, I had a really lousy lunch. Food poisoning of epic proportions. Its messed me up.'
'I'd like to get a urine sample.'
'Give me your coffee cup.'
Scribble, scribble, scribble. ~ Shannon Delany,
795:Nothing is working. Nothing in my life is working. Giants of literature, philosophy, and the arts have influenced my life, but what have I done with this life? I remain a speck in a tumultuous universe that has little concern for me. I am no more than dust, a mote—dust to dust. I am a blade of grass upon which the stormtrooper’s boot stomps. I had dreams, and they were not about ending up a speck. I didn’t dream of becoming a star, but I thought I might have a small nonspeaking role in a grand epic, an epic with a touch of artistic credentials. I didn’t dream of becoming a giant—I wasn’t that delusional or arrogant—but I wanted to be more than a speck, maybe a midget. I could have been a midget. All our dreams of glory are but manure in the end. ~ Rabih Alameddine,
796:The books I liked became a Bible from which I drew advice and support; I copied out long passages from them; I memorized new canticles and new litanies, psalms, proverbs, and prophecies, and I sanctified every incident in my life by the recital of these sacred texts. My emotions, my tears, and my hopes were no less sincere on account of that; the words and the cadences, the lines and the verses were not aids to make believe: but they rescued from silent oblivion all those intimate adventures of the spirit that I couldn’t speak to anyone about; they created a kind of communion between myself and those twin souls which existed somewhere out of reach; instead of living out my small private existence, I was participating in a great spiritual epic. ~ Simone de Beauvoir,
797:The library was still giving trouble: a few books in some of the more obscure corners of the stacks retained some autonomy, dating back to an infamous early experiment with flying books, and lately they'd begun to breed. Shocked undergraduates had stumbled on books in the very act.
Which sounded interesting, but so far the resulting offspring had either been predictably derivative (in fiction) or stunningly boring (nonfiction); hybrid pairings between fiction and nonfiction were the most vital. The librarian thought the problem was just that the right books weren't breeding with each other and proposed a forced mating program. The library committee had an epic secret meeting about the ethics of literary eugenics which ended in a furious deadlock. ~ Lev Grossman,
798:The books I liked became a Bible from which I drew advice and support; I copied out long passages from them; I memorized new canticles and new litanies, psalms, proverbs, and prophecies, and I sanctified every incident in my life by the recital of these sacred texts. My emotions, my tears, and my hopes were no less sincere on account of that; the words and the cadences, the lines and the verses were not aids to make believe: but they rescued from silent oblivion all those intimate adventures of the spirit that I couldn't speak to anyone about; they created a kind of communion between myself and those twin souls which existed somewhere out of reach; instead of living out my small private existence, I was participating in a great spiritual epic. ~ Simone de Beauvoir,
799:Nowhere was this theme more trenchantly presented than in the last major film production of the Third Reich, Kolberg. This was an epic period drama set in the eponymous fortress, where Gneisenau and Schill collaborated with the civil authorities in the town to hold the numerically superior French at bay. Against all odds – and contrary to the historical record – the French are forced to fall back and the town is unexpectedly saved by a peace treaty. Here was the image of Prussia as a kingdom of the pure will, holding out by courage and fortitude alone. The film’s purpose was obvious enough; it was a call to mobilize every last resource against the enemies who were closing in around Germany. It was, as the director Veit Harlan put it, a ‘symbol of the present ~ Anonymous,
800:Literature...describes a descent. First, gods. Then demigods. Then epic became tragedy: failed kings, failed heroes. Then the gentry. Then the middle class and its mercantile dreams. Then it was about you--Gina, Gilda: social realism. Then it was about them: lowlife. Villains. The ironic age...Literature, for a while, can be about us...:about writers. But that won't last long. How do we burst clear of all this? And he asked them: Whither the novel? ... Supposing...that the progress of literature (downward) was forced in that direction by the progress of cosmology (upward--up, up). For human beings, the history of cosmology is the history of increasing humiliation. Always hysterically but less and less fiercely resisted, as one illusion after another fell away. ~ Martin Amis,
801:In Africa, Asia, Amerindia, Oceania, Europe came and established its order of Analysis and Death. What it could not use, it killed or altered. In time the death-colonies grew strong enough to break away. But the impulse to empire, the mission to propagate death, the structure of it, kept on. Now we are in the last phase. American Death has come to occupy Europe. It has learned empire from its old metropolis. But now we have only the structure left us, none of the great rainbow plumes, no fittings of gold, no epic marches over alkali seas. The savages of other continents, corrupted but still resisting in the name of life, have gone on despite everything... while Death and Europe are separate as ever, their love still unconsummated. Death only rules here. ~ Thomas Pynchon,
802:Und zu guter Letzt euch, den allmächtigen Lesern: Ihr lehrt mich Demut. Jeden. Einzelnen. Tag. Die Tatsache, dass ihr eure kostbare Zeit damit verbracht habt, mein Buch zu lesen, bedeutet mir mehr, als ihr je ahnen werdet. Es haut mich einfach um, wenn ihr die Wahrheit wissen wollt. Ein Buch zu schreiben und es mit jemanden zu teilen ist wie splitterfasernackt vor großem Publikum einen Vortrag zu halten. Man entblößt alles vor der ganzen Welt. Die Menschen beurteilen dich, gut oder schlecht. Danke für eure ungebrochene Unterstützung! Dadurch fühle ich mich weniger nackt.
Ich verlasse euch nun mit einem letzten Gedanken, weil das Leben manchmal hart ist. Für uns alle.
Ihr seit mutig ...

Und jetzt los ... do epic!
Das ist ein Befehl.
Tut es.
Bitte. ~ Kim Holden,
803:President Ronald Reagan, who spent World War II in Hollywood, vividly described his own role in liberating Nazi concentration camp victims. Living in the film world, he apparently confused a movie he had seen with a reality he had not. On many occasions in his Presidential campaigns, Mr. Reagan told an epic story of World War II courage and sacrifice, an inspiration for all of us. Only it never happened; it was the plot of the movie A Wing and a Prayer — that made quite an impression on me, too, when I saw it at age 9. Many other instances of this sort can be found in Reagan's public statements. It is not hard to imagine serious public dangers emerging out of instances in which political, military, scientific or religious leaders are unable to distinguish fact from vivid fiction. ~ Carl Sagan,
804:As soon as he delivered that line, there issued forth from André one of the most monumental farts any of us had ever heard. Now, I suppose you wouldn’t expect a man of André’s proportions to pass gas quietly or unobtrusively, but this particular one was truly epic, a veritable symphony of gastric distress that roared for more than several seconds and shook the very foundations of the wood and plaster set we were now grabbing on to out of sheer fear. It was long enough and loud enough that every member of the crew had time to stop what they were doing and take notice. All I can say is that it was a wind that could have held up in comparison to the one Slim Pickens emitted in the campfire scene in Mel Brooks’s Blazing Saddles, widely acknowledged as the champion of all cinematic farts. ~ Cary Elwes,
805:The total distance—11,741 miles—gave me sticker shock. Round it up to twelve thousand. Almost halfway around the world! It seemed slightly mad, but then it might do me good. To make such an epic road trip, discovering places I’d never been, rediscovering others, never knowing what I’d find beyond the next curve or hill, would be to recapture the enchantment of youth, a sense of promise and possibility. The cicada chirped incessantly in my head. I clicked back to the first map. Looking at it brought on a mixture of eagerness and reluctance. The buzzing grew more shrill. If you don’t go now, geezer, you never will. I listened to my inner cicada, and the uneasiness subsided. If I’d learned anything, it was that the things you do never cause as much regret as the things you don’t. But ~ Philip Caputo,
806:Don’t worry, Drake. Even nipple to nipple, you wouldn’t turn me on.” His expression offended, Drake stepped back. “I don’t believe you for even a second, Mari. I ooze sexy animal magnetism.” Darling rolled his eyes at Drake’s arrogance. “Excuse me, little brother? Not to tear down your epic ego or anything, but… Mari and I have gotten more women as gay men than you have ever gotten with all that oozing sexy animal whatever.” Maris concurred, then stepped forward to whisper loudly. “And if it is oozing, sweetie, you really should see a doctor about it. I’m told they have medication for things like that nowadays.” “Oh dear gods, what did I just walk in on?” Annalise pressed her hands to her ears and started singing out loud as she continued on her way down the hall, past them. Maris ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon,
807:During a recitation by their Poet Master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem “Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning” four of his audience died of internal hemorrhaging, and the President of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council survived by gnawing one of his own legs off. Grunthos is reported to have been “disappointed” by the poem’s reception, and was about to embark on a reading of his twelve-book epic entitled My Favorite Bathtime Gurgles when his own major intestine, in a desperate attempt to save life and civilization, leaped straight up through his neck and throttled his brain. The very worst poetry of all perished along with its creator, Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Greenbridge, Essex, England, in the destruction of the planet Earth. ~ Douglas Adams,
808:This was truly to be a radical milestone: the world’s first-ever marathon nude psychotherapy session for criminal psychopaths. Elliott’s raw, naked, LSD-fueled sessions lasted for epic eleven day stretches. The psychopaths spent every waking moment journeying to their darkest corners in an attempt to get better. There were no distractions—no television, no clothes, no clocks, no calendars, only a perpetual discussion (at least one hundred hours every week) of their feelings. When they got hungry, they sucked food through straws that protruded through the walls. As during Paul Bindrim’s own nude psychotherapy sessions, the patients were encouraged to go to their rawest emotional places by screaming and clawing at the walls and confessing fantasies of forbidden sexual longing for one another... ~ Jon Ronson,
809:I feel sometimes as if I were a child who opens its eyes on the world once and sees amazing things it will never know any names for and then has to close its eyes again. I know this is all mere apparition compared to what awaits us, but it is only lovelier for that. There is a human beauty in it. And I can't believe that, when we have all been changed and put on incorruptibility, we will forget our fantastic condition of mortality and impermanence, the great bright dream of procreating and perishing that meant the whole world to us. In eternity this world will be Troy, I believe, and all that has passed here will be the epic of the universe, the ballad they sing in the streets. Because I don't imagine any reality putting this one in the shade entirely, and I think piety forbids me to try. ~ Marilynne Robinson,
810:I feel sometimes as if I were a child who opens its eyes on the world once and sees amazing things it will never know any names for and then has to close its eyes again. I know this is all mere apparition compared to what awaits us, but it is only lovelier for that. There is a human beauty in it. And I can’t believe that, when we have all been changed and put on incorruptibility, we will forget our fantastic condition of mortality and impermanence, the great bright dream of procreating and perishing that meant the whole world to us. In eternity this world will be Troy, I believe, and all that has passed here will be the epic of the universe, the ballad they sing in the streets. Because I don’t imagine any reality putting this one in the shade entirely, and I think piety forbids me to try. ~ Marilynne Robinson,
811:Theology is especially suited for reading within the community of faith, because the community shares a personal stake in its promises. Marilynne Robinson says this beautifully:   Good theology is always a kind of giant and intricate poetry, like epic or saga. It is written for those who know the tale already, the urgent messages and the dying words, and who attend to its retelling with a special alertness, because the story has a claim on them and they on it. . . . Theology is written for the small community of those who would think of reading it. So it need not define freighted words like “faith” or “grace” but may instead reveal what they contain. To the degree that it does them any justice, its community of readers will say yes, enjoying the insight as their own and affirming it in that way.2 ~ Tony Reinke,
812:At first it's bliss. It's drunken, heady, intoxicating. It swallows the people we were - not particuarly wonderful people, but people who did our best, more or less - and spits out the monsters we are becoming.
Our friends despise us. We are an epic. Everything is grand, crashing, brilliant, blinding. It's the Golden Age of Hollywood, and we are a legend in our own minds, and no one outside can fail to see that we are headed for hell, and we won't listen, we say they don't understand, we pour more wine, go to the parties, we sparkle, fly all over the country, we're on an adventure, unstoppable, we've found each other and we race through our days like Mr. Toad in his yellow motorcar, with no idea where the brakes are and to hell with it anyway, we are on fire, drunk with something we call love. ~ Marya Hornbacher,
813:Give Me The Harp Of Epic Song
Give me the harp of epic song,
Which Homer's finger thrill'd along;
But tear away the sanguine string,
For war is not the theme I sing.
Proclaim the laws of festal rite,
I'm monarch of the board tonight;
And all around shall brim as high,
And quaff the tide as deep as I!
And when the cluster's mellowing dews
Their warm, enchanting balm infuse,
Our feet shall catch th' elastic bound,
And reel us through the dance's round.
Oh Bacchus! we shall sing to thee,
In wild but sweet ebriety!
And flash around such sparks of thought,
As Bacchus could alone have taught!
Then give the harp of epic song,
Which Homer's finger thrill'd along;
But tear away the sanguine string,
For war is not the theme I sing!
~ Anacreon,
814:In my past, there's also an opportunity I could have taken advantage of that I didn't, and that I wish I had. There's a thing I got rid of that I really wish I'd kept. But the train never backs up. Never. I missed those things, and I will never get a second chance. Do yourself a favor, right now, and realize two things: 1. You will keep getting older, and then you will die. 2. Everything that's ever entered your experience has lasted and will continue to last for only a brief moment in the life of the universe. This is game time, champ. You're in. You're in, playing, right now, and the clock is ticking. So stop wondering what it all means and how you'll possibly ever do X and what people will think, and get on with your life already. Stop being a pussy and go do something amazing. *** DO EPIC SHIT. ~ Johnny B Truant,
815:This revolution was a legend in the making. The kind of tale that sprawled out long before me and far beyond my reach. The sort of epic that was told over and over to explain how the world was never the same after this handful of people lived and fought and won or died trying. And after it happened, the story seemed somehow inevitable. Like the world was waiting to be changed, needing to be saved, and the players in the tale were all plucked out of their lives and moved into places exactly where they needed to be, like pieces on a board, just to make this story come true. But it was wilder and more terrifying and intoxicating, and more uncertain, than I’d ever thought. And I could be part of it. If I wanted to. It was getting way too late to rip myself out of this story now, or to rip it out of me. “Where ~ Alwyn Hamilton,
816:I don’t mean to interrupt your gossip free-for-all, but do you know if there’s a non-GMO or organic section in this grocery store? This New York skank has some standards.”

Two faces pale, as expected when caught in the middle of an epic gossip session, but the brassy blonde straightens her shoulders.

“You’ll probably want to go back to New York for that. Here we just have normal-people food and none of that fancy crap.”

“I’m not leaving anytime soon, so I guess I’ll have to ask Logan to help me find what I need.”

All their eyes widen at the mention of his name.

“It sounds like he already found what you needed,” the blonde says in a snotty tone.

“My G-spot, my clit, and the back of my throat? Absolutely.” With a smile, I turn my cart around and push it in the opposite direction. ~ Meghan March,
817:None of it made any sense to her - the deceit, the betrayal, the sheer chutzpah of it. Like something from a movie. Who in real life acted this way? But then she remembered this had happened in India, and India was not real life. The most heartbreaking, most desperate, most bizarre stories she had ever heard all came from India. Every story was epic; every emotion was exaggerated; every action was melodramatic. Desperate love, mad obsessions, outbursts of rage, bizarre self sacrifice, self immolation. Young women eat rat poison, jumping off buildings, or burning themselves alive. Young men throwing themselves onto railroad tracks in the path of oncoming trains. And all this self destruction over issues that in the West would be solved by a simple elopement or estrangement from one's parents or a move to a different city. ~ Thrity Umrigar,
818:His military triumphs had been neither frequent nor epic in scale. He had lost more battles than he had won, had botched several through strategic blunders, and had won at Yorktown only with the indispensable aid of the French Army and fleet. But he was a different kind of general fighting a different kind of war, and his military prowess cannot be judged by the usual scorecard of battles won and lost. His fortitude in keeping the impoverished Continental Army intact was a major historic accomplishment. It always stood on the brink of dissolution, and Washington was the one figure who kept it together, the spiritual and managerial genius of the whole enterprise: he had been resilient in the face of every setback, courageous in the face of every danger. He was that rare general who was great between battles and not just during them. ~ Ron Chernow,
819:Matthias,” she murmured in Fjerdan, giving his arm what she hoped was a friendly, siblinglike nudge, “must you glower at everything?”
“I’m not glowering.”
“We’re Fjerdans in the Ravkan sector. We already stand out. Let’s not give everyone another reason to think you’re about to lay siege to the market. We need to get this task done without drawing unwanted attention. Think of yourself as a spy.”
His frown deepened. “Such work is beneath an honest soldier.”
“Then pretend to be an actor.” He made a disgusted sound.
“Have you ever even been to the theater?”
“There are plays every season in Djerholm.”
“Let me guess, sober affairs that last several hours and tell epic tales of the heroes of yore.”
“They’re actually very entertaining. But I’ve never seen an actor who knows how to properly hold his sword. ~ Leigh Bardugo,
820:Kami was too tired to even despair. And from the look of Jared, he was more tired still: bleeding all over the floor could not be good for him.

“You need to go to bed,” Kami decided, and hauled him away and out of Lillian’s room. “Come on. Everything will still be ruined in the morning.”

It was a brief walk down the narrow hall to Jared’s little room. They did not speak until they were at his door.

“Can you believe that we screwed up everything about twice as much in the space of a couple hours?” Kami asked.

“I can,” said Jared. “But only because I truly believe in us, the utter depths of our incompetence, and that it must inevitably lead us to our ultimate epic failure.”

“Aw, sugar flower,” Kami told him. “You always know just what to say.”

“And just how to poison my brother,” said Jared. ~ Sarah Rees Brennan,
821:There are no Western-style property rights in this system, only gradations of proximity to the Kremlin, rituals of bribes and toadying, casual violence. And as the trial wears on, as court assistants wheel in six-foot-high stacks of binders with testimony and witness statements until they fill up all the aisles between the desks, as historians are called by both sides to explain the meanings of “krysha” (“protection”) and “kydalo” (a “backstabber in business”), it becomes apparent just how unsuited the language and rational categories of English law are to evaluate the liquid mass of networks, corruption, and evasion—elusive yet instantly recognizable to members—that orders Russia. And as I observe the trial from my cramped corner among the public seats, it takes on a dimly epic feel: not just a squabble between two men, but a judgment on the era. ~ Peter Pomerantsev,
822:Dude. I’m going to have a baby. A baby cub. What the hell am I going to do?”
Amara hugged her close and kissed her temple. Her friend warmed her when Eliana hadn’t been sure she could ever feel any form of warmth again. “You’re going to be a kickass mom. You and Malik are going to talk and figure out a plan. Whether you are together or apart, you’ll be there for this baby. We all will. I know fate just threw you a curveball of epic proportions, but you can handle it. You’re stronger than you think you are.”
Eliana hoped her friend was right. Because everything had changed once again and now she had to be the rock for not only herself but her baby, as well. Only she was tired of being the rock. She wanted to lean against someone. She wanted a partner.
She just didn‘t think Malik knew what it meant to be a partner. Because she sure as hell didn’t. ~ Carrie Ann Ryan,
823:Hamburg coffee auction: 1000's of sacks of coffee being sold, of different names & places of origin. They talked of price, analyzed merits of packaging and transport, praised the climate of some years & varying abundance of rainfall in some regions of world but not a single word was said of the men and women from whose hands these coffee beans had originated. no mention of the Tanzanian farmer who had discerned from the leaves the right moment to separate beans from branch. Not a single voice spoke of the Guatemalan peasant woman who, carrying a child on her back, climbed to the realm of the clouds to bring down the fruits that would brighten up the mornings in Europe.
Sebastiao Salgado does: restores the epic human sacrifice, the omnipresent dignity of work in the magnificent solemnity of his venture--recounting history of the world in images. ~ Luis Sep lveda,
824:Valdivia's actions symbolize man's indefatigable thirst to take control of a place where he can exercise total authority. That phrase, attributed to Caesar, proclaiming he would rather be first-in-command in some humble Alpine village than second-in-command in Rome, is repeated less pompously, but no less effectively, in the epic campaign that is the conquest of Chile. If, in the moment the conquistador was facing death at the hands of tht invincible Araucanian Caupolican, he had not been overwhelmed with fury, like a hunted animal, I do not doubt that judging his life, Valdivia would have felt death was fully justified. He belonged to that special class of men the species produces every so often, in whom a craving for limitless power is so extreme that any suffering to achieve it seems natural, and he had become the omnipotent ruler of a warrior nation. ~ Ernesto Che Guevara,
825:After ten whole minutes of painful silence, I finally raised my hand and told Mr. O'Hara I loved Miranda Blythe's romance novels, and I decided I liked him immediately when he didn't laugh or reassure me that we'd be reading real books. Like Mrs. Andrews had last year.
He did say, 'I'm afraid Ms. Blythe is not on the curriculum this semester. We'll be starting your education with the epic poets—boring, I know, but necessary building blocks. However, an extra-credit book report is always welcome, and you're free to choose whatever topic you like.'
Then Mr. O'Hara added, 'I think Ms. Blythe's works would be a particularly interesting topic for a report. In fact, if you want an example of the archetypal hero journey—'
'Wait, wait, wait.' Fred raised his hand. 'You read romance novels?'
'My dear boy,' Mr. O'Hara replied, 'I read everything. ~ Caitlen Rubino Bradway,
826:Ciara, you stole my heart without warning. I fell so fast and yet there isn’t a thing I would change. You know me better than anyone else in this world and somehow, you unconditionally accept every part of me. Every day since you said yes to my proposal, I get to laugh with you and share epic and mundane moments with you, care for you and protect you at any cost. Your needs are my only priority. You’ll never have to walk alone again as long as I walk by your side. I’ll never let you fall. I’ll always be there to catch you. I promise to be faithful, loyal and totally yours. There’s still a part of me that can’t believe you’re willing to take this journey with me… especially since I promise to love you for the next hundred years and the next hundred after that. Sweetness, you’re the only one capable of making my heart beat out of my chest. You are my one true love. ~ Scarlett Avery,
827:This too to remember. If a man writes clearly enough any one can see if he fakes. If he mystifies to avoid a straight statement, which is very different from breaking so-called rules of syntax or grammar to make an effect which can be obtained in no other way, the writer takes a longer time to be known as a fake and other writers who are afflicted by the same necessity will praise him in their own defense. True mysticism should not be confused with incompetence in writing which seeks to mystify where there is no mystery but is really only the necessity to fake to cover lack of knowledge or the inability to state clearly. Mysticism implies a mystery and there are many mysteries; but incompetence is not one of them; nor is overwritten journalism made literature by the injection of a false epic quality. Remember this too: all bad writers are in love with the epic. ~ Ernest Hemingway,
828:To write the poem of the human conscience, were it only of a single man, were it only of the most infamous of men, would be to swallow up all epics in a superior and final epic. The conscience is the chaos of chimeras, of lusts and of temptations, the furnace of dreams, the cave of the ideas which are our shame; it is the pandemonium of sophisms, the battlefield of the passions. At certain hours, penetrate within the livid face of a human being who reflects, and look at what lies behind; look into that soul, look into that obscurity. There, beneath the external silence, there are combats of giants as in Homer, mêlées of dragons and hydras, and clouds of phantoms as in Milton, ghostly labyrinths as in Dante. What a gloom enwraps that infinite which each man bears within himself, and by which he measures in despair the desires of his will, and the actions of his life! ~ Victor Hugo,
829:This too to remember. If a man writes clearly enough any one can see if he fakes. If he mystifies to avoid a straight statement, which is very different from breaking so-called rules of syntax or grammar to make an efffect which can be obtained in no other way, the writer takes a longer time to be known as a fake and other writers who are afflicted by the same necessity will praise him in their own defense. True mysticism should not be confused with incompetence in writing which seeks to mystify where there is no mystery but is really only the necessity to fake to cover lack of knowledge or the inability to state clearly. Mysticism implies a mystery and there are many mysteries; but incompetence is not one of them; nor is overwritten journalism made literature by the injection of a false epic qulaity. Remember this too: all bad writers are in love with the epic. ~ Ernest Hemingway,
830:Failure. Never before has a thing gotten such a bad rap as failure. And why wouldn't it? It's failure. In a video game, failure means to fucking die, to drop into a pit of lava while the princess remains unsaved (oh, sexist video games, when will the lady plumber save the prince instead of the other way around?). You fail a class and it's like -- *poop noise* -- you failed, you're held back, time is wasted, money is lost, you suck, you stupid person. Hell with that. Failure is brilliant. Failure is how we learn. Every great success and every kick-ass creator is the product of a hundred failures, a thousand, some epic-big, some micro-tiny. We learn the right moves by taking the wrong turns. Failure should not drag you into the pits of personal despair but rather leave you empowered. Failure is an instructional manual written in scar tissue. ~ Chuck Wendig,
831:The Hawk hired fifty harpers and jesters and taught them new songs. Songs about the puny fairy fool who had been chased away from Dalkeith-Upon-the-Sea by the legendary
Hawk. And being such a legend in his own time, his tales were ceded great truth and staying power. The players
were delighted with the epic grandeur of such a wild tale. When they had rehearsed to perfection the ditties and
refrains portraying the defeat of the fool, the Hawk sent them into the counties of Scotland and England. Grimm
accompanied the group of players traveling to Edinburgh to help spread the tale himself, while Hawk spent late hours by the candle scribbling, crossing out and perfecting his command for when the fool came. Sometimes, in the wee hours of the morning, he would reach for his set of sharp awls and blades and begin carving toy soldiers and dolls, one by one. ~ Karen Marie Moning,
832:I can't get past the strange contradiction that seems to lurk behind everything we do. Because no matter what, or who, we end up choosing, all of us feel like we've failed somehow.
Kayla feels guilty for planning a future with Blake; Dominique feels guilty that she won't with Carlos. LuAnn dropped everything to make it work with her guy, and I'm filled with shame every time I think about how I did the same thing, building my life around Garrett without realizing it then working just as hard to take that version of my life apart, piece by piece.
So how are we supposed to win? On the one hand, the world tells us that capital-L Love is epic, and all conquering, and the meaning of everything, but on the other it drills us with this message that we shouldn't make any sacrifice or effort to pursue it, because that would make us weak, unempowered, desperate, silly girls. ~ Abby McDonald,
833:This instance in particular proves that beneath all that cool pseudo-academic hogwash lurked a very passionate man who knew how important it was to say "fuck" now and then, and say it loud too, relish its syllabic sweetness, its immigrant pride, a great American epic word really, starting at the lower lip , often the very front of the lower lip, before racing all the way to the back of the throat, where it finishes with a great blast, the concussive force of the K catching up then with the hush of the F already on its way, thus loading it with plenty of offense and edge and certainly ambiguity. FUCK. A great by-the-bootstrap prayer or curse of you prefer, depending on how you look at it, or use it, suited perfectly for hurling at the skies or at the world, or sometimes, if said just right, for uttering with enough love and fire, the woman beside you melts inside herself. ~ Mark Z Danielewski,
834:As a child, I read because books–violent and not, blasphemous and not, terrifying and not–were the most loving and trustworthy things in my life. I read widely, and loved plenty of the classics so, yes, I recognized the domestic terrors faced by Louisa May Alcott’s March sisters. But I became the kid chased by werewolves, vampires, and evil clowns in Stephen King’s books. I read books about monsters and monstrous things, often written with monstrous language, because they taught me how to battle the real monsters in my life.

And now I write books for teenagers because I vividly remember what it felt like to be a teen facing everyday and epic dangers. I don’t write to protect them. It’s far too late for that. I write to give them weapons–in the form of words and ideas-that will help them fight their monsters. I write in blood because I remember what it felt like to bleed. ~ Sherman Alexie,
835:Don't panic. Midway through writing a novel, I have regularly experienced moments of bowel-curdling terror, as I contemplate the drivel on the screen before me and see beyond it, in quick succession, the derisive reviews, the friends' embarrassment, the failing career, the dwindling income, the repossessed house, the divorce . . . Working doggedly on through crises like these, however, has always got me there in the end. Leaving the desk for a while can help. Talking the problem through can help me recall what I was trying to achieve before I got stuck. Going for a long walk almost always gets me thinking about my manuscript in a slightly new way. And if all else fails, there's prayer. St Francis de Sales, the patron saint of writers, has often helped me out in a crisis. If you want to spread your net more widely, you could try appealing to Calliope, the muse of epic poetry, too. ~ Sarah Waters,
836:To The Poet Cowper, On His Recovery From An
Indisposition
WRITTEN SOME TIME BACK.
Cowper, I thank my God that thou art healed.
Thine was the sorest malady of all,
And I am sad to think that it should light
Upon the worthy head; but thou art healed,
And thou art yet, we trust, the destined man,
Born to re-animate the lyre, whose chords
Have slumbered, and have idle lain so long;
To the immortal sounding of whose strings
Did Milton frame the stately-paced verse;
Among whose wires with lighter finger playing
Our elder bard, Spenser, a gentler name,
The lady Muses' dearest darling child,
Enticëd forth the deftest tunes yet heard
In hall or bower; taking the delicate ear
Of the brave Sidney, and the Maiden Queen.
Thou, then, take up the mighty epic strain,
Cowper, of England's bards the wisest and the best!
~ Charles Lamb,
837:Vogon poetry is of course the third worst in the Universe. The second worst is that of the Azgoths of Kria. During a recitation by their Poet Master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem “Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning” four of his audience died of internal hemorrhaging, and the President of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council survived by gnawing one of his own legs off. Grunthos is reported to have been “disappointed” by the poem’s reception, and was about to embark on a reading of his twelve-book epic entitled My Favorite Bathtime Gurgles when his own major intestine, in a desperate attempt to save life and civilization, leaped straight up through his neck and throttled his brain. The very worst poetry of all perished along with its creator, Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Greenbridge, Essex, England, in the destruction of the planet Earth. ~ Douglas Adams,
838:Through these stories, I want to explore two ideas. The first is that much of what we consider valuable in our world arises out of these kinds of lopsided conflicts, because the act of facing overwhelming odds produces greatness and beauty. And second, that we consistently get these kinds of conflict wrong. We misread them. We misinterpret them. Giants are now what we think they are. The same qualities that appear to give them strength are often the sources of great weakness. And the fact of being an underdog can change people in ways that we often fail to appreciate: it can open doors and create opportunities and educate and enlighten and make possible what might otherwise have seemed unthinkable. We need a better guide to facing giants-and there is no better place to start that journey than with the epic confrontation between David and Goliath three thousand years ago in the Valley of Elah. ~ Malcolm Gladwell,
839:We are still, now, in much of the world, shorter, sicker, and ding younger than our hunter-gatherer forebears, who were also, by the way, much better custodians of the planet on which we all live. And they watched over it for much longer- nearly all of those 200,000 years. That epic era once derided as "prehistory" accounts for about 95 percent of human history. For nearly all of that time, humans traversed the planet but left no meaningful mark. Which makes the history of mark-making-- the entire history of civilization, the entire history we know as history-- look less like an inevitable crescendo than like an anomaly, or blip. And makes industrialization and economic growth, the two forces that really gave us the modern world and the hurtling sensations of material progress, a blip inside a blip. A blip inside a blip that has brought us to the brink of a never-ending climate catastrophe. ~ David Wallace Wells,
840:Vogon poetry is of course, the third worst in the universe.
The second worst is that of the Azgoths of Kria. During a recitation by their poet master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem "Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning" four of his audience died of internal haemorrhaging and the president of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council survived by gnawing one of his own legs off. Grunthos was reported to have been "disappointed" by the poem's reception, and was about to embark on a reading of his 12-book epic entitled "My Favourite Bathtime Gurgles" when his own major intestine, in a desperate attempt to save humanity, leapt straight up through his neck and throttled his brain.
The very worst poetry of all perished along with its creator, Paul Neil Milne Johnstone of Redbridge, in the destruction of the planet Earth. Vogon poetry is mild by comparison. ~ Douglas Adams,
841:Pasquale considered his friend’s face. It had such an open quality, was such a clearly American face, like Dee’s face, like Michael Deane’s face. He believed he could spot an American anywhere by that quality—that openness, that stubborn belief in possibility, a quality that, in his estimation, even the youngest Italians lacked. Perhaps it was the difference in age between the countries—America with its expansive youth, building all those drive-in movie theaters and cowboy restaurants; Italians living in endless contraction, in the artifacts of generations, in the bones of empires. This reminded him of Alvis Bender’s contention that stories were like nations—Italy a great epic poem, Britain a thick novel, America a brash motion picture in Technicolor—and he remembered, too, Dee Moray saying she’d spent years “waiting for her movie to start,” and that she’d almost missed out on her life waiting for it. ~ Jess Walter,
842:But in the era of global warming, nothing is really far away; there is no place where the orderly expectations of bourgeois life hold unchallenged sway. It is as though our earth had become a literary critic and were laughing at Flaubert, Chatterjee, and their like, mocking their mockery of the “prodigious happenings” that occur so often in romances and epic poems. This, then, is the first of the many ways in which the age of global warming defies both literary fiction and contemporary common sense: the weather events of this time have a very high degree of improbability. Indeed, it has even been proposed that this era should be named the “catastrophozoic” (others prefer such phrases as “the long emergency” and “the Penumbral Period”). It is certain in any case that these are not ordinary times: the events that mark them are not easily accommodated in the deliberately prosaic world of serious prose fiction. ~ Amitav Ghosh,
843:Art has no immediate future because all art is collective and there is no more collective life(there are only dead collections of people), and also because of this breaking of the true pact between the body and the soul. Greek art coincided with the beginning of geometry and with athleticism, the art of the Middle Ages with the craftsmen's guilds, the art of the Renaissance with the beginning of mechanics, etc....Since 1914 there has been a complete cut. Even comedy is almost impossible. There is only room for satire (when was it easier to understand Juvenal?). Art will never be reborn except from amidst a general anarchy - it will be epic no doubt, because affliction will have simplified a great many things...It is therefore quite useless for you to envy Leonardo or Bach. Greatness in our times must take a different course. Moreover it can only be solitary, obscure and without an echo...(but without an echo, no art). ~ Simone Weil,
844:The young man, who does not know the future, sees life as a kind of epic adventure, an Odyssey through strange seas and unknown islands, where he will test and prove his powers, and thereby discover his immortality. The man of middle years, who has lived the future that he onced dreamed, sees life as a tragedy; for he has learned that his power, however great, will not prevail against those forces of accident and nature to which he gives the names of gods, and has learned that he is mortal. But the man of age, if he plays his assigned role properly, must see life as a comedy. For his triumphs and his failures merge, and one is no more the occasion for pride or shame than the other; and he is neither the hero who proves himself against those forces, nor the protagonist who is destroyed by them. Like any poor, pitiable shell of an actor, he comes to see that he has played so many parts that there no longer is himself. ~ John Williams,
845:The Mahabharata reminds us that it is natural and desirable for human beings to want happiness and pleasure as they seek to be good. Kama is one of the legitimate goals of human life. The Christian denial of physical pleasure, especially sexual pleasure, is happily absent from the epic and most ancient Indian texts. So is the ‘thou shalt not’ approach, which makes one feel guilty, and turns one off the moral project. The notion of dharma as it emerges from the Mahabharata is a plural one. Being plural makes greater demands on one’s reason, for human objectives sometimes conflict with each other, and this forces one to choose. The attraction of a clean ethical theory like Utilitarianism is that it attempts to resolve moral issues on the basis of a single criterion. Pluralism is more complex but no less rational. One needs to order different virtues in a hierarchy in order to help one to choose in the case of a conflict. ~ Gurcharan Das,
846:Mr. Blue's way of death was fitting. He had been utterly corrupted by America, and I find it proper that his carotid artery should have been severed by flak from a jumbo-sized can of mentholated shave cream. Like James Joyce, who tried to bend and subjugate the ironmongery of the cosmos with words (wasn't it The Word Joyce was after?), Mr. Blue tried to undo the empyrean mysteries with Seedy and his red carpet, with his elevated alligator shoes, with the ardent push-ups he seemed so sure would make him outlast time's ravages, with his touching search for some golden pussy that would yield to his lips the elixir of eternal life. And like Joyce's Leopold Bloom, like Quixote, Mr. Blue had become the perennial mock-epic hero of his country, the salesman, the boomer who believed that at the end of his American sojourn of demeaning doorbell-ringing, of faking and fawning, he would come to the Ultimate Sale, conquer, and soar. ~ Frederick Exley,
847:Fishing provides time to think, and reason not to. If you have the virtue of patience, an hour or two of casting alone is plenty of time to review all you’ve learned about the grand themes of life. It’s time enough to realize that every generalization stands opposed by a mosaic of exceptions, and that the biggest truths are few indeed. Meanwhile, you feel the wind shift and the temperature change. You might simply decide to be present, and observe a few facts about the drifting clouds…Fishing in a place is a meditation on the rhythm of a tide, a season, the arc of a year, and the seasons of life... I fish to scratch the surface of those mysteries, for nearness to the beautiful, and to reassure myself the world remains. I fish to wash off some of my grief for the peace we so squander. I fish to dip into that great and awesome pool of power that propels these epic migrations. I fish to feel- and steal- a little of that energy. ~ Carl Safina,
848:The Refuge is a mission center and Christian community dedicated to helping hurting and hungry people find faith, hope, and dignity alongside each other. We love to throw parties, tell stories, find hope, and practice the ways of Jesus as best we can. We’re all hurt or hungry in our own ways. We’re at different places on our journey but we share a guiding story, a sweeping epic drama called the Bible. We find faith as we follow Jesus and share a willingness to honestly wrestle with God and our questions and doubts. We find dignity as God’s image-bearers and strive to call out that dignity in one another. We all receive, we all give. We are old, young, poor, rich, conservative, liberal, single, married, gay, straight, evangelicals, progressives, overeducated, undereducated, certain, doubting, hurting, thriving. Yet Christ’s love binds our differences together in unity. At The Refuge, everyone is safe, but no one is comfortable.24 ~ Rachel Held Evans,
849:My dad died, I write. almost a year ago. Car accident. My hand is shaking; my eyes sting and fill. I add Not his fault before pushing the notebook and pen back across the table, wiping a hand across my cheeks.
As he reads, my impulse is to reach out, grab the notebook, run outside, dump it in the trash, bury it in the snow, throw it under the wheels of a passing car - something, something, so I can go back fifteen seconds when this part ofme was still shut away and private. Then I look at Ravi's face again, and the normally white white whites of his eyes are pink. This causes major disruption to my ability to control the flow of my own tears. I see myself when I look at him right now: he's reflecting my sadness, my broken heart, back to me.
He takes the pe, writes, and slides it over. You'd think it's something epic from the way it levels my heart. It isn't.
I'm really sorry, Jill.
Four little words. ~ Sara Zarr,
850:That Spanish woman who lived three hundred years ago, was certainly not the last of her kind. Many Theresas have been born who found for themselves no epic life wherein there was a constant unfolding of far-resonant action; perhaps only a life of mistakes, the offspring of a certain spiritual grandeur ill-matched with the meanness of opportunity; perhaps a tragic failure which found no sacred poet and sank unwept into oblivion. With dim lights and tangled circumstance they tried to shape their thought and deed in noble agreement; but after all, to common eyes their struggles seemed mere inconsistency and formlessness; for these later-born Theresas were helped by no coherent social faith and order which could perform the function of knowledge for the ardently willing soul. Their ardor alternated between a vague ideal and the common yearning of womanhood; so that the one was disapproved as extravagance, and the other condemned as a lapse. ~ George Eliot,
851:Kath Two wondered, as she always did, whether the people of the Epic would have said and done some of what they had, had they known that, five thousand years later, billions of people would be watching them on video screens, citing them as examples, and quoting them from memory. Over the first few decades on Cleft, the cameras had died one by one. Depending on how you felt about ubiquitous surveillance, the result had either been a new Dark Age and an incalculable loss to history, or a liberation from digital tyranny. Either way, it signaled the end of the Epic: the painstakingly recorded account of everything that the people of the Cloud Ark had done from Zero onward. After that it had all been oral history for about a thousand years, since there had been no paper to write on and no ink to write on it with. Memory devices were scarce and jury-rigged. Every single chip had been used for critical functions such as robots and life support. ~ Neal Stephenson,
852:I have been thinking about existence lately. In fact, I have been so full of admiration for existence that I have hardly been able to enjoy it properly . . . I feel sometimes as if I were a child who opens its eyes on the world once and sees amazing things it will never know any names for and then has to close its eyes again. I know this is all mere apparition compared to what awaits us, but it is only lovelier for that. There is a human beauty in it. And I can’t believe that, when we have all been changed and put on incorruptibility, we will forget our fantastic condition of mortality and impermanence, the great bright dream of procreating and perishing that meant the whole world to us. In eternity this world will be Troy, I believe, and all that has passed here will be the epic of the universe, the ballad they sing in the streets. Because I don’t imagine any reality putting this one in the shade entirely, and I think piety forbids me to try. ~ Marilynne Robinson,
853:No one embodied the spirit of the frontier more than Daniel Boone, who faced and defeated countless natural and man-made dangers to literally hand cut the trail west through the wilderness. He marched with then colonel George Washington in the French and Indian War, established one of the most important trading posts in the West, served three terms in the Virginia Assembly, and fought in the Revolution. His exploits made him world famous; he served as the model for James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales and numerous other pioneer stories. He was so well known and respected that even Lord Byron, in his epic poem Don Juan, wrote, “Of the great names which in our faces stare, The General Boon, back-woodsman of Kentucky, Was happiest amongst mortals anywhere …” And yet he was accused of treason—betraying his country—the most foul of all crimes at the time. What really happened to bring him to that courtroom? And was the verdict reached there correct? ~ Bill O Reilly,
854:Byron published the first two cantos of his epic poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, a romanticized account of his wanderings through Portugal, Malta, and Greece, and, as he later remarked, “awoke one morning and found myself famous.” Beautiful, seductive, troubled, brooding, and sexually adventurous, he was living the life of a Byronic hero while creating the archetype in his poetry. He became the toast of literary London and was feted at three parties each day, most memorably a lavish morning dance hosted by Lady Caroline Lamb. Lady Caroline, though married to a politically powerful aristocrat who was later prime minister, fell madly in love with Byron. He thought she was “too thin,” yet she had an unconventional sexual ambiguity (she liked to dress as a page boy) that he found enticing. They had a turbulent affair, and after it ended she stalked him obsessively. She famously declared him to be “mad, bad, and dangerous to know,” which he was. So was she. ~ Walter Isaacson,
855:J. R. R. Tolkien, the near-universally-hailed father of modern epic fantasy, crafted his magnum opus The Lord of the Rings to explore the forces of creation as he saw them: God and country, race and class, journeying to war and returning home. I’ve heard it said that he was trying to create some kind of original British mythology using the structure of other cultures’ myths, and maybe that was true. I don’t know. What I see, when I read his work, is a man trying desperately to dream.

Dreaming is impossible without myths. If we don’t have enough myths of our own, we’ll latch onto those of others — even if those myths make us believe terrible or false things about ourselves. Tolkien understood this, I think because it’s human nature. Call it the superego, call it common sense, call it pragmatism, call it learned helplessness, but the mind craves boundaries. Depending on the myths we believe in, those boundaries can be magnificently vast, or crushingly tight. ~ N K Jemisin,
856:Confession
'To take a homeopathic approach to the soul is to deal with
the darkness in ways that are in tune with the dark.'
---Thomas Moore
It’s taken time
to realise
no one survives.
Not even the ordinary.
Time to own up then
to blue throat
and gall bladder extraordinaire,
to rages pristine,
guilt unsmeared
by mediocrity,
separation traumas
subcontinental
and griefs that dare
to be primordial.
Time to iron out
a face corrugated
by perennial hope,
time to shrug off
the harlotry
and admit
there’s nothing hygienic
about this darkness –
no potted palms,
no elevator music.
I erupt from pillars,
half-lion half-woman.
The ?oor space index I demand
is nothing short
of epic.
I still wait sometimes
for a ?icker of revelation
but for the most part
I’m unbribable.
When I open the coffee percolator
the roof ?ies off.
~ Arundhathi Subramaniam,
857:Ode To Bombay
I had promised you a poem before I died
Diamonds storming out of the blackness of a piano
Piece by piece I fall at my own dead feet
Releasing you like a concerto from my silence
I unfasten your bridges from my insistent bones
Free your railway lines from my desperate veins
Dismantle your crowded tenements and meditating machines
Remove your temples and brothels pinned in my skull
You go out of me in a pure spiral of stars
A funeral progressing towards the end of time
Innumerable petals of flame undress your dark
Continuous stem of growing
I walk out of murders and riots
I fall out of smouldering biographies
I sleep on a bed of burning languages
Sending you up in your essential fire and smoke
Piece by piece at my own feet I fall
Diamonds storm out of a black piano
Once I promised you an epic
And now you have robbed me
You have reduced me to rubble
This concerto ends.
~ Dilip Chitre,
858:Wow,” he muttered, his voice choked with tears. “Here we are, the last night and all, and I can't think of anything to say.”
I pressed my palm to his cheek, feeling the moisture beneath my fingers, and smiled at him. “How about 'goodbye'?”
“Nah.” Puck shook his head. “I make a point of never saying goodbye, princess. Makes it sound like you're never coming back.”
“Puck—”
He bent down and kissed me softly on the lips. Ash stiffened, arms tightening around me, but Puck slid out of reach before either of us could react. “Take care of her, ice-boy,” he said, smiling as he backed up several paces. “I guess I won't be seeing you, either, will I? It was...fun, while it lasted.”
“I'm sorry we didn't get to kill each other,” Ash said quietly.
Puck chuckled and bent to retrieve his fallen dagger. “My one and only regret. Too bad, that would have been an epic fight.” Straightening, he gave us that old, stupid grin, raising a hand in farewell. “See you around, lovebirds. ~ Julie Kagawa,
859:there is a persistent emphasis on religious themes, such as the nature of the Islamic warrior, the role of Islam in training, the importance of Islamic ideology for the army, and the salience of jihad. Pakistan’s military journals frequently take as their subjects famous Quranic battles, such as the Battle of Badr. Ironically, the varied Quranic battles are discussed in more analytical detail in Pakistan’s journals than are Pakistan’s own wars with India. A comparable focus on religion in the Indian army (which shares a common heritage with the Pakistan Army) would be quite scandalous. It is difficult to fathom that any Indian military journal would present an appraisal of the Kurukshetra War, which features the Hindu god Vishnu and is described in the Hindu Vedic epic poem the Mahabharata. Judging by the frequency with which articles on such topics appear in Pakistan’s professional publications, religion is clearly acceptable, and perhaps desirable, as a subject of discussion. ~ C Christine Fair,
860:Two other applicants were talking in the corner of the room. Normally Hope would’ve disregarded the distant chatter, but she had distinctly heard the phrase “Krom’s Canyon.” She swiveled her head to look at them. A fairly good-looking guy in a shirt-and-tie combination just casual enough to look much better than any truly formal clothes ever could was talking with a woman who was working her hardest to look like she was radiating a sexy librarian vibe by accident. “The way you had to work back and forth across the bridges with limited cover, taking out psychos blocking your path while the turret at the end of the canyon tried to gun you down, was just epic. It’s probably my favorite map in the entire series, even though it’s in my least favorite of the games. The writing was just so much better from two onward, though around five it started losing steam again.” Borderlands, Hope thought. They’re talking about the Borderlands games. Why can’t I be over there, talking games with them. ~ Scott Meyer,
861:Welcome true believers, this is Stan Lee. We’re about to embark the exploration of a fantastic new universe and the best part is that you are gonna create it with me. You may know me as a storyteller, but hey on this journey consider me your guide. I provide the widy and wonderful worlds and you create the sights, sounds and adventures. All you need to take part is your brain. So take a listen and think big, no bigger, we make it an epic. Remember when I created characters like the Fantastic Four and the X-Men? We were fascinated by science and awed by the mysteries of the great beyond. Today we consider a nearer deeper unknown one inside ourselves. […] we asked: What is more real? A world that we are born into or the one we create ourselves. As we begin this story, we find humanity lost within is own techno bubble. With each citizen the star of their own digital fantasy. […] But the real conundrum is, just because we have the ability to recreated ourselves, should we? […] Excelsior!”  ~ Stan Lee,
862:Proverbs tells us, “Pride only leads to arguments” (13:10 NCV). The proud are magnetically attracted to conflict. And when the proud get into a squabble, it can become epic, because the hardest thing in the world would be for them to apologize. That requires humility. Some words and phrases just won’t come out of the prideful mouth. “I was wrong. Please forgive me,” for example. It’s agonizing because it feels like defeat, and proud people are obsessive about being undefeated in arguments, class discussions, political conversations, and family disputes. And proud people love to make their point on the Internet. The few, the proud (unfortunately the proud are not few) will wait out the worst disagreements without apologizing. They can hold out for decades, kind of hoping it all blows over. “I was wrong” or “that was my fault” are out of the question. On the very, very rare occasion one of the proud apologizes, he’ll qualify it: “I’m sorry—but …” Qualified apologies never seem to work. ~ Kyle Idleman,
863:To persons standing alone on a hill during a clear midnight such as this, the roll of the world eastward is almost a palpable movement. The sensation may be caused by the panoramic glide of the stars past earthly objects, which is perceptible in a few minutes of stillness, or by the better outlook upon space that a hill affords, or by the wind, or by the solitude; but whatever be its origin the impression of riding along is vivid and abiding. The poetry of motion is a phrase much in use, and to enjoy the epic form of that gratification it is necessary to stand on a hill at a small hour of the night, and, having first expanded with a sense of difference from the mass of civilized mankind, who are dreamwrapt and disregardful of all such proceedings at this time, long and quietly watch your stately progress through the stars. After such a nocturnal reconnoitre it is hard to get back to earth, and to believe that the consciousness of such majestic speeding is derived from a tiny human frame. ~ Thomas Hardy,
864:Meanwhile, the net celebrates kids whose antics are the most sensationalist and, as a result, often reckless and self-destructive. An entire genre of YouTube video known as Epic Fail features amateur footage of wipeouts and other, well, epic failures. "FAIL Blog," part of The Daily What media empire, solicits fail videos from users and features both extreme sports stunts gone awry along with more random humiliations—like the guy who tried to shoplift an electric guitar by shoving it down his pants. Extreme sports clips are competing on the same sensationalist scale and result in popular classics such as "tire off the roof nut shot" and "insane bike crash into sign." Daring quickly overtakes what used to be skill. In "planking" photos and videos, participants seek to stay frozen in a horizontal plank position as they balance on a flagpole, over a cliff, or on top of a sleeping tiger. For "choking" videos, young people strangle one another to the point of collapse and, sometimes, death. ~ Douglas Rushkoff,
865:Human nature really hasn’t changed much throughout history; shame and honor were as big a deal in the ancient world as they are today. Back in the ninth century B.C., the epic poet Homer wrote, “The chief good was to be well spoken of, the chief evil, to be badly spoken of by one’s society.” In the first century A.D., the apostle Paul ministered in a shame-sensitive, honor-seeking culture, shamelessly preaching a shameful message about a publicly shamed person. And so the message was offensive. It was scandalous. It was stupid. It was foolish. It was moronic. Yet, as 1 Corinthians 1:21 says, “it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.” It was this scandalous, offensive, foolish, ridiculous, bizarre, absurd message of the cross that God used to save those who believe. Roman authorities executed His Son, the Lord of the world, by a method they reserved only for the dregs of society; His followers had to be faithful enough to risk meeting the same shameful end. ~ John F MacArthur Jr,
866:But most critically, sweet, never try to change the narrative structure of someone else’s story, though you will certainly be tempted to, as you watch those poor souls in school, in life, heading unwittingly down dangerous tangents, fatal digressions from which they will unlikely be able to emerge. Resist the temptation. Spend your energies on your story. Reworking it. Making it better. Increasing the scale, the depth of content, the universal themes. And I don’t care what those themes are – they’re yours to uncover and stand behind – so long as, at the very least, there is courage. Guts. Mut, in German. Those around you can have their novellas, sweet, their short stories of cliché and coincidence, occasionally spiced up with tricks of the quirky, the achingly mundane, the grotesque. A few will even cook up Greek tragedy, those born into misery, destined to die in misery. But you, my bride of quietness, you will craft nothing less than epic with your life. Out of all of them, your story will be the one to last. ~ Marisha Pessl,
867:as a man comes to know God in the unitive vision, he knows in that some moment, his own true Self. This intriguing fact is expressed most succinctly in a passage from the ancient Indian epic, the Ramayana; in it, Rama, who represents the Godhead incarnate, asks his servant, Hanuman, “How do you regard me?” And Hanuman replies: dehabhavena daso’smi jivabhavena twadamshakah atmabhave twamevaham (When I identify with the body, I am Thy servant; When I identify with the soul, I am a part of Thee; But when I identify with the Self, I am truly Thee.)1 These three attitudes represent progressively subtler stages of self-identification: from the identification with the body, to identification with the soul, until, finally, one comes to know the Divine, and thereby one’s eternal Self. While each of these three relational attitudes finds expression as the prevailing attitude within various individual religious traditions, they are essentially representative of the viewpoint from these different stages of self-awareness. ~ Swami Abhayananda,
868:Talking of lists, we’re here.”

“What? Where?” I turn to look out the window as the car comes to a stop.

“Cam’s—my friend’s bar. We’re eating here, and then you’re going to cross another thing off your list.”

“I am?” I turn back to him, my brow raised in question.

“Yeah—sing in public. Cam has a resident band. Tonight is open mic night, so it’s the perfect opportunity for you to cross it off your list.”

“Oh…I don’t know. I was thinking that I’d maybe do one thing a day. And the hair constitutes as one thing.”

Liam laughs. “Stop being a chicken.”

“I’m not being a chicken. I was the one who put it on my list, wasn’t I?”

“So then, what’s the point in waiting? Do it now.”

He’s right. What’s the point in stalling? It’s not like I have the luxury of time.

“Okay, let’s do it.”

He smiles wide. “This is going to be epic.”

“It’s going to be terrible. I’m a really awful singer.”

“And that’s why it’s going to be epic.” He flashes a grin at me. ~ Samantha Towle,
869:question, albeit speculative, won’t go away. No scholar quarrels with the archaic antiquity of the earliest elements of the Hebrew Bible: the Song of the Sea and of Moses. A strong consensus exists that their form is consistent with other similar archaic ‘song’ literature from the late Bronze Age Near East of the twelfth century BCE. If that’s correct, even though the Song of the Sea has much in common with the Phoenician epic of the storm god Baal’s conquest of the sea, why would early Israelite poets have created, perhaps just a century after the purported event, their own identity-epic, in which the degrading element of enslavement and liberation is entirely distinct from other archetypes, if there was nothing to it lodged in the folk memory? The most sceptical view presupposes an indigenous subset of Canaanites, settled in the Judaean hills, differentiating themselves from the rest of Canaanite tribes and states, through a mythic history of separation, migration and conquest, all with exceptionally detailed topography. Why that story? ~ Simon Schama,
870:The incubi had sensed great power in her, and believed she could destroy them, but if she could speak their language, she’d tell them they had the wrong girl. Mari was what was known as an underachiever, which even an underachiever knew was sociology code for “overfailer.”
She was famous in the Lore for the simple fact that one day she might be worth being famous. All hype—no substance. That was Mari.
Everyone in the covens expected her to do something epic and always kept an eye on her. They wanted her to be worth “awaiting.” Even other factions in the Lore monitored her with anticipation because, while most witches possessed the strength of one, two, or very rarely, three of the five castes of witches, Mari was the only witch ever to possess the strengths of all of them.
In theory, Mari was a witch warrior, healer, conjurer, seeress, and an enchantress.
In reality, Mari had lost her college scholarship, couldn’t manage even the simplest spells, and kept blowing things up. She couldn’t even balance her checkbook. ~ Kresley Cole,
871:By now you've probably noticed that except when safely contained by quotes, Zampanò always steers clear of such questionable four-letter language. This instance in particular proves that beneath all that cool psuedo-academic hogwash lurked a very passionate man who knew how important it was to say "fuck" now and then, and say it loud too, relish its syllabic sweetness, its immigrant pride, a great American epic word really, starting at the lower lip, often the very front of the lower lip, before racing all the way to the back of the throat, where it finishes with a great blast, the concussive force of the K catching up then with the hush of the F already on its way, thus loading it with plenty of offense and edge and certainly ambiguity. FUCK. A great by-the-bootstrap prayer or curse if you prefer, depending on how you look at it, or use it, suited perfectly for hurling at the skies or at the world, or sometimes, if said just right, for uttering with enough love and fire, the woman beside you melts inside herself, immersed in all that word-heat. ~ Mark Z Danielewski,
872:To the extent that Blue had a definable culture, it tended to view technological aids with some ambivalence, a state of mind boiled down into the aphorism “Each enhancement is an amputation.” This was not so much a definable idea or philosophy as it was a prejudice, operant at a nearly subliminal level. It was traceable to certain parts of the Epic. In many of these, Tavistock Prowse played a role; he was seen as its literal embodiment in the sense that he had actually undergone a series of amputations, and been consumed as food, after throwing in his lot with the Swarm. Blue saw itself—according to cultural critics, defined itself—as the inheritors of the traditions of Endurance. By process of elimination, then, Red was the culture of the Swarm. A century and a half ago, Red had sealed itself off behind barriers both physical and cryptographic, so not much was known of its culture, but plenty of circumstantial evidence suggested that it had different Amistics from Blue. Specifically, the Reds were enthusiastic about personal technological enhancement. ~ Neal Stephenson,
873:While I have the floor, here's a question that's been bothering me for some time. Why do so few writers of heroic or epic fantasy ever deal with the fundamental quandary of their novels . . . that so many of them take place in cultures that are rigid, hierarchical, stratified, and in essence oppressive? What is so appealing about feudalism, that so many free citizens of an educated commonwealth like ours love reading about and picturing life under hereditary lords?

Why should the deposed prince or princess in every clichéd tale be chosen to lead the quest against the Dark Lord? Why not elect a new leader by merit, instead of clinging to the inbred scions of a failed royal line? Why not ask the pompous, patronizing, "good" wizard for something useful, such as flush toilets, movable type, or electricity for every home in the kingdom? Given half a chance, the sons and daughters of peasants would rather not grow up to be servants. It seems bizarre for modern folk to pine for a way of life our ancestors rightfully fought desperately to escape. ~ David Brin,
874:There’s nothing else inside the envelope. I turn the photo over and we read the note on the back written in small, careful handwriting.

I miss you, Pipperoni.
-Darren


I swallow the lump in my throat and look up at Morgan. We both have tears in our eyes.
“Why are you crying?” I ask, laughing.
“Because this is the single most romantic thing I’ve ever heard!” she says, swiping at the corner of her eye. “How did he get your address? I thought you never exchanged info.”
“We didn’t.” I sit down on my bed and invent scenarios. “Maybe Chiara really did see him. Maybe she didn’t want me to know, so this could be a surprise?”
“Oh, I would die to have something this epic happen to me,” Morgan squeals. She falls onto the bed with the back of her hand against her forehead as if she’s fainted.
I log into my e-mail and compose a letter to Chiara, telling her to call me right away. Then I stare at Darren’s note some more, especially the “I miss you” part. And the “Darren” part. Which is basically the whole thing.
Darren misses me. ~ Kristin Rae,
875:Was never form and never face
So sweet to SEYD as only grace
Which did not slumber like a stone,
But hovered gleaming and was gone.
Beauty chased he everywhere,
In flame, in storm, in clouds of air.
He smote the lake to feed his eye
With the beryl beam of the broken wave;
He flung in pebbles well to hear
The moment's music which they gave.
Oft pealed for him a lofty tone
From nodding pole and belting zone.
He heard a voice none else could hear
From centred and from errant sphere.
The quaking earth did quake in rhyme,
Seas ebbed and flowed in epic chime.
In dens of passion, and pits of woe,
He saw strong Eros struggling through,
To sun the dark and solve the curse,
And beam to the bounds of the universe.
While thus to love he gave his days
In loyal worship, scorning praise,
How spread their lures for him in vain
Thieving Ambition and paltering Gain!
He thought it happier to be dead,
To die for Beauty, than live for bread.
by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, Beauty
,
876:Becoming a porn star is pretty much exactly like becoming a superhero. One day, an intrepid, fresh-faced young woman discovers that she has a talent. She chooses a new name – something over the top, flamboyant, a little arrogant, with a tinge of the epic. Somebody makes her a costume – skintight – revealing, a flattering color, nothing much left to the imagination. She explores her power, learns a specialty move or two, sweats her way through a training montage, throwing out punny quips here, there, and everywhere. She inhabits an archetype. She takes every blow that comes her way like she doesn’t even feel it. Then she goes out into the big, bad night and saves people from loneliness. From the assorted villanies that plague the common man. From despair and bad dreams. From tedium. Oh, sure, her victories are short-lived. She finishes off her foes in one glorious masterstroke, but the minute she’s gone, all the wickedness and darkness of the scheming, teeming world comes rushing back in. But when you need her, here she comes to save the day, doing it for Truth, Justice, and the American Way. ~ Catherynne M Valente,
877:To the bankrupt poet, to the jilted lover, to anyone who yearns to elude the doubt within and the din without, the tidal strait between Manhattan Island and her favorite suburb offers the specious illusion of easy death. Melville prepared for the plunge from the breakwater on the South Street promenade, Whitman at the railing of the outbound ferry, both men redeemed by some Darwinian impulse, maybe some epic vision, which enabled them to change leaden water into lyric wine. Hart Crane rejected the limpid estuary for the brackish swirl of the Caribbean Sea. In each generation, from Washington Irving’s to Truman Capote’s, countless young men of promise and talent have examined the rippling foam between the nation’s literary furnace and her literary playground, questioning whether the reams of manuscript in their Brooklyn lofts will earn them garlands in Manhattan’s salons and ballrooms, wavering between the workroom and the water. And the city had done everything in its power to assist these men, to ease their affliction and to steer them toward the most judicious of decisions. It has built them a bridge. ~ Jacob M Appel,
878:From the fourth century on, the stelae and monuments of the great kings abound in insensate boasts of power and vain threats against those who might ransack their tombs or deface their inscriptions-events that nevertheless repeatedly took place. Like Marduk in the Akkadian version of the Creation Epic, the new Bronze Age kings mounted their chariots "irresistible and terrifying," "versed in ravage, in destruction skilled...wrapped in an armor of terror." With such sick-making sentiments we are still all too familiar: they are mimicked in the nuclear press releases of the Pentagon.

Such constant assertions of power were doubtless efforts to make conquest easy by terrifying the enemy beforehand. But they also testify to an increase of irrationality, almost proportional to the instruments of destruction that were available: something we have seen again in our own time. This paranoia was so methodical that the conqueror, on more than one occasion, would level a city to the ground, only to build it again immediately on the same site, thus demonstrating his ambivalent role as destroyer-creator, or devil-god, in one. ~ Lewis Mumford,
879:Two other applicants were talking in the corner of the room. Normally Hope would’ve disregarded the distant chatter, but she had distinctly heard the phrase “Krom’s Canyon.” She swiveled her head to look at them. A fairly good-looking guy in a shirt-and-tie combination just casual enough to look much better than any truly formal clothes ever could was talking with a woman who was working her hardest to look like she was radiating a sexy librarian vibe by accident. “The way you had to work back and forth across the bridges with limited cover, taking out psychos blocking your path while the turret at the end of the canyon tried to gun you down, was just epic. It’s probably my favorite map in the entire series, even though it’s in my least favorite of the games. The writing was just so much better from two onward, though around five it started losing steam again.” Borderlands, Hope thought. They’re talking about the Borderlands games. Why can’t I be over there, talking games with them, instead of being stuck with, um, Bill Murray in Caddyshack. What was that character’s name? Carl something? Hmm. Well, I bet I know who’ll know. ~ Scott Meyer,
880:No, I didn't. But I was aware that I was embarked on an epic. In the case of the Bradstreet poem, I didn't know. The situation with that poem was this. I invented the stanza in '48 and wrote the first stanza and the first three lines of the second stanza, and then I stuck. I had in mind a poem roughly the same length as another of mine, “The Statue”—about seven or eight stanzas of eight lines each. Then I stuck. I read and read and read and thought and collected notes and sketched for five years until, although I was still in the second stanza, I had a mountain of notes and draftings—no whole stanzas, but passages as long as five lines. The whole poem was written in about two months, after which I was a ruin for two years. When I finally got going, I had this incredible mass of stuff and a very good idea of the shape of the poem, with the exception of one crucial point, which was this. I'll tell you in a minute why and how I got going. The great exception was this: It did not occur to me to have a dialogue between them—to insert bodily Henry into the poem . . . Me, to insert me, in my own person, John Berryman, I, into the poem . . . ~ John Berryman,
881:Spring Shower
Winked to the birdcherry, gulped amid tears,
Splashed over carriages' varnish, trees' tremble.
Full moon. The musicians are picking their way
To the theatre. More and more people assemble.
Puddles on stone. Like a throat overfilled
With tears are the roses, deep with wet scalding
Diamonds. Showers of gladness thrill,
Eyelashes, stormclouds, and roses enfolding.
The moon for the first time is casting in plaster
An epic poem uncast till today:
The cordons, the flutter of dresses, the speaker
And people enraptured and carried away.
Whose is the heart whose whole blood shot to glory
Drained from the cheeks? We are held in his grip.
The hands of Kerensky are squeezing together
Into a bunch our aortas and lips.
This is not night, not rain, not a chorus
Of tearing acclaim for him, swelled to a roarThis is the blinding leap to the Forum
From catacombs wanting an exit before.
It is not roses, not Ups, not the roaring
Crowd-it's the surf on Theatre Square,
Marking the end of the long sleep of Europe,
Proud of her own reawakening here.
~ Boris Pasternak,
882:We got to the moment when I wake up from being "mostly dead" and say: "I'll beat you both apart! I'll take you both together!", Fezzik cups my mouth with his hand, and answers his own question to Inigo as to how long it might be before Miracle Max's pill begins to take effect by stating: "I guess not very long."
As soon as he delivered that line, there issued forth from Andre' one of the most monumental farts any of us had ever heard. Now I suppose you wouldn't expect a man of Andre's proportions to pass gas quietly or unobtrusively, but this particular one was truly epic, a veritable symphony of gastric distress that roared for more than several seconds and shook the very foundations of the wood and plaster set were now grabbing on to out of sheer fear. It was long enough and loud enough that every member of the crew had time to stop what they were doing and take notice. All I can say is that it was a wind that could have held up in comparison to the one Slim Pickens emitted int eh campfire scene in Mel Brooks's Blazing Saddles, widely acknowledged as the champion of all cinematic farts.
Except of course, this one wasn't in the script. ~ Cary Elwes,
883:We got to the moment when I wake up from being "mostly dead" and say: "I'll beat you both apart! I'll take you both together!", Fezzik cups my mouth with his hand, and answers his own question to Inigo as to how long it might be before Miracle Max's pill begins to take effect by stating: "I guess not very long."
As soon as he delivered that line, there issued forth from Andre' one of the most monumental farts any of us had ever heard. Now I suppose you wouldn't expect a man of Andre's proportions to pass gas quietly or unobtrusively, but this particular one was truly epic, a veritable symphony of gastric distress that roared for more than several seconds and shook the very foundations of the wood and plaster set were now grabbing on to out of sheer fear. It was long enough and loud enough that every member of the crew had time to stop what they were doing and take notice. All I can say is that it was a wind that could have held up in comparison to the one Slim Pickens emitted int eh campfire scene in Mel Brooks's Blazing Saddles, widely acknowledged as the champion of all cinematic farts.
Except of course, this one wasn't in the script. ~ Cary Elwes,
884:And once upon a time I wondered: Is writing epic fantasy not somehow a betrayal? Did I not somehow do a disservice to my own reality by paying so much attention to the power fantasies of disenchanted white men?

But. Epic fantasy is not merely what Tolkien made it.

This genre is rooted in the epic — and the truth is that there are plenty of epics out there which feature people like me. Sundiata’s badass mother. Dihya, warrior queen of the Amazighs. The Rain Queens. The Mino Warriors. Hatshepsut’s reign. Everything Harriet Tubman ever did. And more, so much more, just within the African components of my heritage. I haven’t even begun to explore the non-African stuff. So given all these myths, all these examinations of the possible… how can I not imagine more? How can I not envision an epic set somewhere other than medieval England, about someone other than an awkward white boy? How can I not use every building-block of my history and heritage and imagination when I make shit up?

And how dare I disrespect that history, profane all my ancestors’ suffering and struggles, by giving up the freedom to imagine that they’ve won for me. ~ N K Jemisin,
885:Our genus, Homo, arose two and a half million years ago, and for more than ninety-nine percent of human existence, we all lived like Onwas, in small bands of nomadic hunter-gatherers. Though the groups may have been tight-knit and communal, nearly everyone, anthropologists conjecture, spent significant parts of their lives surrounded by quiet, either alone or with a few others, foraging for edible plants and stalking prey in the wild. This is who we truly are. The agricultural revolution began twelve thousand years ago, in the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East, and the planet was swiftly reorganized into villages and cities and nations, and soon the average person spent virtually no time alone at all. To a thin but steady stream of people, this was unacceptable, so they escaped. Recorded history extends back five thousand years, and for as long as humans have been writing, we have been writing about hermits. It’s a primal fascination. Chinese texts etched on animal bones, as well as the clay tablets containing the Epic of Gilgamesh, a poem from Mesopotamia dating to around 2000 B.C., refer to shamans or wild men residing alone in the woods. People ~ Michael Finkel,
886:...the wincing sunlight, the ragged gorse and the slow-blinking wings of the moths were witness to an epic Trade in Exotic Terms.

Mosca’s opening offer was a number of cant words she had heard pedlars use, words for the drool hanging from a dog’s jaw, words for the greenish sheen on a mouldering strip of bacon.

Eponymous Clent responded with some choice descriptions of ungrateful and treacherous women, culled from ballad and classic myth.

Mosca countered with some from her secret hoard of hidden words, the terms used by smugglers for tell-alls, and soldiers’ words for the worst kind of keyholestooping spy.

Clent answered with crushing and high-sounding examples from the best essays on the natural depravity of unguided youth.

Mosca lowered the bucket deep, and spat out long-winded aspersions which long ago she had discovered in her father’s books, before her uncle had over-zealously burned them all.

Clent stared at her.

‘This is absurd. I refuse to believe that you have even the faintest idea what an “ethically pusillanimous compromise” is, let alone how one would...’ Clent’s voice trailed away... ~ Frances Hardinge,
887:The leap of faith is this: You have to believe, or at least pretend you believe until you really believe it, that you are strong enough to take life face on. Eating disorders, on any level, are a crutch. They are also an addiction and illness, but there is no question at all that they are quite simply a way of avoiding the banal, daily, itchy pain of life. Eating disorders provide a little drama, they feed into the desire for constant excitement, everything becomes life-or-death, everything is terribly grand and crashing, very Sturm and Drang. And they are distracting. You don't have to think about any of the nasty minutiae of the real world, you don't get caught up in that awful boring thing called regular life, with its bills and its breakups and its dishes and laundry and groceries and arguments over whose turn it is to change the litter box and bedtimes and bad sex and all that, because you are having a real drama, not a sitcom but a GRAND EPIC, all by yourself, and why would you bother with those foolish mortals when you could spend hours and hours with the mirror, when you are having the most interesting sado-machistic affair with your own image? ~ Marya Hornbacher,
888:ORIGIN OF HOLLYWOOD On ride the masked men, wrapped in white sheets, bearing white crosses, torches held high: mounted avengers of the virtue of ladies and the honor of gentlemen strike fear into Negroes hungering for damsels’ white flesh. At the height of a wave of lynchings, D. W. Griffith’s film The Birth of a Nation sings a hymn of praise to the Ku Klux Klan. This is Hollywood’s first blockbuster and the greatest box office success ever for a silent movie. It is also the first film to ever open at the White House. President Woodrow Wilson gives it a standing ovation. Applauding it, he applauds himself: freedom’s famous flag-bearer wrote most of the texts that accompany the epic images. The president’s words explain that the emancipation of the slaves was “a veritable overthrow of Civilization in the South, the white South under the heel of the black South.” Ever since, chaos reigns because blacks are “men who knew none of the uses of authority, except its insolences.” But the president lights the lamp of hope: “At last there had sprung into existence a great Ku Klux Klan.” And even Jesus himself comes down from heaven at the end of the movie to give his blessing. ~ Eduardo Galeano,
889:The Poet Ridiculed by Hysterical Academics"

Is it, then, your opinion
Women are putty in your hands?
Is this the face to launch upon
A thousand one night stands?

First, please, would you be so kind
As to define your contribution
To modern verse, the Western mind
And human institutions?

Where, where is the long, flowing hair,
The velvet suit, the broad bow tie;
Where is the other-worldly air,
Where the abstracted eye?

Describe the influence on your verse
Of Oscar Mudwarp’s mighty line,
The theories of Susan Schmersch
Or the spondee’s decline.

You’ve labored to present us with
This mouse-sized volume; shall this equal
The epic glories of Joe Smith?
He’s just brought out a sequel.

Where are the beard, the bongo drums,
Tattered T-shirt and grubby sandals,
As who, released from Iowa, comes
To tell of wondrous scandals?

Have you subversive, out of date,
Or controversial ideas?
And can you really pull your weight
Among such minds as these?

Ah, what avails the tenure race,
Ah, what the Ph.D.,
When all departments have a place
For nincompoops like thee? ~ W D Snodgrass,
890:Napoleon I., whose career had the quality of a duel against the whole
of Europe, disliked duelling between the officers of his army. The great military emperor was not a washbuckler, and had little respect for tradition.

Nevertheless, a story of duelling, which became a legend in the army, runs through the epic of imperial wars. To the surprise and admiration of their fellows, two officers, like insane artists trying to gild refined gold or paint the lily, pursued a private contest through the years of universal carnage.
They were officers of cavalry, and their connection with the high-spirited but fanciful animal which carries men into battle seems particularly appropriate.
It would be difficult to imagine for heroes of this legend two officers of infantry of the line, for example, whose fantasy is tamed by much walking exercise, and whose valour necessarily must be of a more plodding kind. As to gunners or engineers, whose heads are kept cool on a diet of mathematics, it is simply unthinkable.

The names of the two officers were Feraud and D'Hubert, and they were both lieutenants in a regiment of hussars, but not in the same regiment. [The duel] ~ Joseph Conrad,
891:Pregame jitters hadn’t been a part of Myron’s existence for over a decade, and he knew now what he’d always suspected: this nerve-jangled high was directly connected to basketball. Nothing else. He had never experienced anything similar in his business or personal life. Even violent confrontations—a perverted high if ever there was one—were not exactly like this. He had thought this uniquely sports-related sensation would ebb away with age and maturity, when a young man no longer takes a small event like a basketball game and blows it into an entity of near biblical importance, when something so relatively insignificant in the long run is no longer magnified to epic dimensions through the prism of youth. An adult, of course, can see what is useless to explain to a child—that one particular school dance or missed foul shot would be no more than a pang in the future. Yet here Myron was, comfortably ensconced in his thirties and still feeling the same heightened and raw sensations he had known only in youth. They hadn’t gone away with age. They’d just hibernated—as Calvin had warned him—hoping for a chance to stir, a chance that normally never came in one man’s lifetime. Were ~ Harlan Coben,
892:The existence of a temple of YHWH in Upper Egypt means one of two things for our understanding of what Jews were like at this embryonic moment in their collective existence. Either they were pre-biblical, aware only of some of the legal codes of the Torah and some of the elements of the founding epic, but had not yet taken in Deuteronomy, the book written two centuries earlier, ostensibly the 120-year-old dying Moses’ spoken legacy to the Israelites, which codified more rigorously the much looser and often contradictory injunctions of Leviticus. Or the Elephantine Jews did have the Mosaic strictures of Deuteronomy, and perhaps even knew all about the reforms of kings Hezekiah and his great-grandson Josiah making the Jerusalem Temple the sole place of sacrificial ritual and pilgrimage, but had no intention of surrendering to its monopoly. The Elephantine Yahudim were Yahwists who were not going to be held to the letter of observance laid down by Jerusalemites any more than, say, the vast majority of Jews now who believe themselves to be, in their way, observant, will accept instruction on what it means to be Jewish (or worse, who is and who isn’t a Jew) from the ultra-Orthodox. ~ Simon Schama,
893:...a final word to "the children": do you want to get suckered like your big brothers and sisters? Those saps who spent 2008 standing behind the Obamessiah swaying and chanting, "We are the dawning of the Hopeychange" like brainwashed cult extras? Sooner or later you guys have to crawl out from under the social engineering and rediscover the contrarian spirit for which youth was once known...This will be the great battle of the next generation--to reclaim your birthright from those who spent it. If you don't, the entire global order will teeter and fall. But, if you do, you will have won a great victory. Every time a politician proposes new spending, tell him he's already spent your money, get his hand out of your pocket. Every time a politician says you can stay a child until your twenty-seventh birthday, tell him, "No, you're the big baby, not me--you've spent irresponsibly, and me and my pals are the ones who are gonna have to be the adults and clean up your mess. Don't treat met like a kid when your immaturity got us into this hole." This is a battle for the American idea, and it's an epic one, but--to reprise the lamest of lame-o-lines--you can do anything you want to do. So do it. ~ Mark Steyn,
894:This unusual situation is due to the fact that the tablet omits all outbreaks of the conventional literary structure – Anu opened his mouth to speak, saying to the lady Ishtar … followed by Ishtar opened her mouth to speak, saying to her father, Anu … Gilgamesh VI: 87–88; 92–93 – with which Babylonian narrative literature is, not to put too fine a point on it, slightly tiresomely littered. In fact, I cannot come up with another example of Babylonian mythological or epic literature that is devoid of this characteristic speech-linking device. Its repetitive nature at first sight looks like a remnant of oral literature, where things are repeated more than we would repeat them today, which the modern connoisseur of cuneiform literature just has to accept, or appreciate as atmospheric and authentic. On reflection, however, it is just the opposite. The characteristic dependence on this formula originates in the very transition from oral to written literature, for who is speaking at any one time will always be clear in a storyteller’s presentation, but the process of writing down what has previously been spoken aloud creates ambiguity for the reader unless each speaker is clearly identified. ~ Irving Finkel,
895:The chaos came to an abrupt halt as everybody held their breath when Brian pulled the trigger on one of the Nerf guns Paulie had brought and accidentally shot Beth in the forehead. “Brian,” Lisa shouted at her third son. Beth blinked in surprise, then carefully set her gifts to one side and rose from her chair. Kevin stood, too, in case she was going to try to lock herself in the bathroom or make a break for the front door. She did neither. Grabbing a gun from under the tree, she very calmly started loading darts into the clip, and then she smiled at Brian and cocked it. “You are so gonna get it.” Brian screamed and took off toward the dining room, Beth on his heels. Bobby grabbed his gun with a whoop and took after them as the sounds of running headed toward the kitchen. Joey and Danny, being older and wiser, headed in the other direction with stealth, readying to cut the others off. “Epic Nerf Gun Battle of Doom!” Keri shouted, and all the adults laughed. Joe’s new bride had already suffered through the Tandem Cannonballs of Doom and the Annual Kowalski Volleyball Death Match Tournament of Doom over the summer, but she wrestled Stephanie’s gun away from her and took after the crowd. ~ Shannon Stacey,
896:Dear Producers,
Something is radiating deep within me and it must be transmitted or I will implode and the world will suffer a great loss, unawares. Epic are the proportions of my soul, yet without a scope who cares am I? This is why I must but must be one of the inhabitants of MTV's "Real World." Only there, burning brightly into a million dazzled eyes, will my as yet uncontoured self assume the beauteous forms that are not just its own, but an entire market niche's, due.

I am a Kirk Cameron-Kurt Cobain figure, roguishly quirky, dandified but down to earth, kooky but comprehensible; denizen of the growing penumbra between alternative and mainstream culture; angsty prophet of the already bygone apocalypse, yet upbeat, stylish and sexy!

Oscar Wilde wrote, "Good artists exist in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating... [they] live the poetry [they] cannot write." As with Dorian Gray, life is my art! Oh MTV, take me, make me, wake me from my formless slumbers and place me in the dreamy Real World of target marketing. ~ Dave Eggers,
897:extracts from a six-volume set of Plutarch’s Lives. Thereafter, Hamilton always interpreted politics as an epic tale from Plutarch of lust and greed and people plotting for power. Since his political theory was rooted in his study of human nature, he took special delight in Plutarch’s biographical sketches. And he carefully noted the creation of senates, priesthoods, and other elite bodies that governed the lives of the people. Hamilton was already interested in the checks and balances that enabled a government to tread a middle path between despotism and anarchy. From the life of Lycurgus, he noted: Among the many alterations which Lycurgus made, the first and most important was the establishment of the senate, which having a power equal to the kings in matters of consequence did . . . foster and qualify the imperious and fiery genius of monarchy by constantly restraining it within the bounds of equity and moderation. For the state before had no firm basis to stand upon, leaning sometimes towards an absolute monarchy and sometimes towards a pure democracy. But this establishment of the senate was to the commonwealth what the ballast is to a ship and preserved the whole in a just equilibrium. ~ Ron Chernow,
898:The belief in magic trickery for conceiving sons is also illustrated by the legend of the rainbow in Afghanistan. The rainbow, a favorite element in every mythology from the Norse to the Navajo people, often symbolizes wish fulfillment. In Afghanistan, finding a rainbow promises a very special reward: It holds magical powers to turn an unborn child into a boy when a pregnant woman walks under it. Afghan girls are also told that they can become boys by walking under a rainbow, and many little girls have tried. As a child, Setareh did it too, she confesses when I probe her on it. All her girlfriends tried to find the rainbow so they could become boys.
The name for the rainbow, Kaman-e-Rostam, is a reference to the mythical hero Rostam from the Persian epic Shahnameh, which tells the history of greater Persia from that time when Zoroastrianism was the dominant religion and Afghanistan was part of the empire. The Persian epic even has its own bacha posh: the warrior woman Gordafarid, an Amazon who disguises herself as a man to intervene in battle and defend her land. Interestingly, the same rainbow myth of gender-changing is told in parts of Eastern Europe, including Albania and Montenegro. ~ Jenny Nordberg,
899:1) Did the people of Viet Nam
use lanterns of stone?
2) Did they hold ceremonies
to reverence the opening of buds?
3) Were they inclined to quiet laughter?
4) Did they use bone and ivory,
jade and silver, for ornament?
5) Had they an epic poem?
6) Did they distinguish between speech and singing?

1) Sir, their light hearts turned to stone.
It is not remembered whether in gardens
stone lanterns illumined pleasant ways.
2) Perhaps they gathered once to delight in blossom,
but after the children were killed
there were no more buds.
3) Sir, laughter is bitter to the burned mouth.
4) A dream ago, perhaps. Ornament is for joy.
All the bones were charred.
5) It is not remembered. Remember,
most were peasants; their life
was in rice and bamboo.
When peaceful clouds were reflected in the paddies
and the water buffalo stepped surely along terraces,
maybe fathers told their sons old tales.
When bombs smashed those mirrors
there was time only to scream.
6) There is an echo yet
of their speech which was like a song.
It was reported their singing resembled
the flight of moths in moonlight.
Who can say? It is silent now. ~ Denise Levertov,
900:William H. Herndon
There by the window in the old house
Perched on the bluff, overlooking miles of valley,
My days of labor closed, sitting out life's decline,
Day by day did I look in my memory,
As one who gazes in an enchantress' crystal globe,
And I saw the figures of the past,
As if in a pageant glassed by a shining dream,
Move through the incredible sphere of time.
And I saw a man arise from the soil like a fabled giant
And throw himself over a deathless destiny,
Master of great armies, head of the republic,
Bringing together into a dithyramb of recreative song
The epic hopes of a people;
At the same time Vulcan of sovereign fires,
Where imperishable shields and swords were beaten out
From spirits tempered in heaven.
Look in the crystal! See how he hastens on
To the place where his path comes up to the path
Of a child of Plutarch and Shakespeare.
O Lincoln, actor indeed, playing well your part,
And Booth, who strode in a mimic play within the play,
Often and often I saw you,
As the cawing crows winged their way to the wood
Over my house-top at solemn sunsets,
There by my window,
Alone.
~ Edgar Lee Masters,
901:A humpback whale off San Francisco got tangled in dozens of crab traps connected by about a mile of rope, with weights every sixty feet; the whole apparatus ran to well over a thousand pounds. Rope was wrapped at least four times around the whale’s tail, back, mouth, and left front flipper, cutting into the giant’s flesh. Though nearly fifty feet long and weighing about fifty tons, the whale was being pulled down and was having trouble breathing when divers got into the water to see whether they could help. The first diver was so aghast at the extent of the entanglement, he didn’t think they’d be able to free the whale. Further, he feared that the whale’s thrashing could entangle the divers, too. But instead of struggling to break away as soon as possible, the whale remained passive through an entire hour while the divers worked. “When I was cutting the line going through the mouth,” James Moskito said, “its eye was there winking at me, watching me. It was an epic moment of my life.” When the whale realized it was free, it did not swim away. Instead it swam to the closest diver, nuzzled him, then swam to the next one. “It stopped about a foot away from me, pushed me around a little bit and had some fun, ~ Carl Safina,
902:Rather than boasting a doctrinal statement, the Refuge extends an invitation: The Refuge is a mission center and Christian community dedicated to helping hurting and hungry people find faith, hope, and dignity alongside each other. We love to throw parties, tell stories, find hope, and practice the ways of Jesus as best we can. We’re all hurt or hungry in our own ways. We’re at different places on our journey but we share a guiding story, a sweeping epic drama called the Bible. We find faith as we follow Jesus and share a willingness to honestly wrestle with God and our questions and doubts. We find dignity as God’s image-bearers and strive to call out that dignity in one another. We all receive, we all give. We are old, young, poor, rich, conservative, liberal, single, married, gay, straight, evangelicals, progressives, overeducated, undereducated, certain, doubting, hurting, thriving. Yet Christ’s love binds our differences together in unity. At The Refuge, everyone is safe, but no one is comfortable.24 Imagine if every church became a place where everyone is safe, but no one is comfortable. Imagine if every church became a place where we told one another the truth. We might just create sanctuary. ~ Rachel Held Evans,
903:Adam arrived at 735 Monroe Street prepared for the woman to be a bit skittish.
After all, she'd run from him earlier, obviously intimidated by his overwhelming masculinity and epic sexuality. Women often had that reaction to him, especially when he was stripping off his pants. Or kilt, depending on the century.
He was also prepared, however, for her inhibitions to drop swiftly, as did all women's when they got a good, close-up look at him.
After that, many simply launched themselves at him in a full-frontal assault of sexual frenzy. He'd been entertaining himself with just that possibility, his entire body tight with lust, while tracking her down with the information he'd obtained int he room called "Human Resources" at Little & Staller.
But nothing in his vast repertoire of experience had prepared him for Gabrielle O'Callaghan.
The bloodthirsty little hellion didn't react like any woman he'd ever encountered. She took one horrified look at him, drew back her arm, hauled off, and smashed him in the face with some kind of satchel she was holding.
Then slammed the door and locked it.
Leaving him on the doorstep, bleeding. Bleeding, by Danu, blood trickling from his lip! ~ Karen Marie Moning,
904:Gorgeous
Behind the bridge of the human nose
one often strikes the eerie pose
of Ferdinand Flocon, nineteenth century penpusher, who rendered the entire civil code of his country
into an epic poem. How interesting and helpful
his contemporaries were, who now knows?
On Flocon we have enough data to say
tokens of alarm, tidbits.
I offer you a psychic spanking:
be a friend or a loved one or a hero who has died,
see if I care. I’ve been forced to resort to some rough stuff –
lipstick and eyeshadow,
you and your evil Siamese twin –
and pray that in coming weeks
you’ll be exposed as stressful fantasies
in piranha-infested tributaries
in 100-degree heat.
Meanwhile, simply repeat after me
the supposed main feature of the human face – you
may decide to put a helmet on it, or a name to wave
happily at passing strangers. They’ll taunt you for its various
defects, but their taunts will trigger a homing device
in the gorgeous monarch or white admiral
bursting from its cocoon
into this weird miracle of days ahead –
deep-sea diving, coalmining, the forty-nine
elevated levels of torment, Freud,
Persephone, Pluto.
~ Chris Edwards,
905:WHODUNIT BY BRUCE TIERNEY | 838 words A slippery situation in the Gulf Black Horizon (Harper, $25.99, 384 pages, ISBN 9780062109880), the 11th book in James Grippando's popular series featuring Florida attorney Jack Swyteck, opens with the two most important words of the lawyer's life: "I do." (Ha, ha—you thought I was going to say, "Not guilty.") The beach wedding in scenic Key Largo goes wildly awry when an epic storm arises in the Gulf, launching manifold repercussions for Swyteck and his new bride. One of the victims of the storm is a young Cuban oil rig worker whose wife emigrated to the U.S. ahead of him. He had planned to follow, but the deadly combination of high winds and an explosive oil spill have put paid to those plans forever. Now his wife would like Swyteck to file a wrongful death suit against the Chinese/Russian/Venezuelan/Cuban consortium that owns the oil rig. This is no easy feat, since the rig is in Cuban waters, and the only tenuous tie to the U.S. legal system is the wife's residency in Key West. The situation is volatile; the adversaries are lethal; and the backdrop is a toxic oil slick poised to slime the Florida coast. Black Horizon is timely, relentlessly paced and a thrill ride of the first ~ Anonymous,
906:But now, inside the gallery, something happens to him. He finds his emotions gripped by the paintings, the huge, colorful canvases by Diego Rivera, the tiny, agonized self-portraits by Frida Kahlo, the woman Rivera loved. Fabien barely notices the crowds that cluster in front of the pictures.
He stops before a perfect little painting in which she has pictured her spine as a cracked column. There is something about the grief in her eyes that won't let him look away. That is suffering, he thinks. He thinks about how long he's been moping about Sandrine, and it makes him feel embarrassed, self-indulgent. Theirs, he suspects, was not an epic love story like Diego and Frida's.
He finds himself coming back again and again to stand in front of the same pictures, reading about the couple's life, the passion they shared for their art, for workers' rights, for each other. He feels an appetite growing within him for something bigger, better, more meaningful. He wants to live like these people. He has to make his writing better, to keep going. He has to.
He is filled with an urge to go home and write something that is fresh and new and has in it the honesty of these pictures. Most of all he just wants to write. But what? ~ Jojo Moyes,
907:What Were They Like?
Did the people of Viet Nam
use lanterns of stone?
Did they hold ceremonies
to reverence the opening of buds?
Were they inclined to quiet laughter?
Did they use bone and ivory,
jade and silver, for ornament?
Had they an epic poem?
Did they distinguish between speech and singing?
Sir, their light hearts turned to stone.
It is not remembered whether in gardens
stone gardens illumined pleasant ways.
Perhaps they gathered once to delight in blossom,
but after their children were killed
there were no more buds.
Sir, laughter is bitter to the burned mouth.
A dream ago, perhaps. Ornament is for joy.
All the bones were charred.
it is not remembered. Remember,
most were peasants; their life
was in rice and bamboo.
When peaceful clouds were reflected in the paddies
and the water buffalo stepped surely along terraces,
maybe fathers told their sons old tales.
When bombs smashed those mirrors
there was time only to scream.
There is an echo yet
of their speech which was like a song.
It was reported their singing resembled
the flight of moths in moonlight.
Who can say? It is silent now.
~ Denise Levertov,
908:The publisher said of somebody, 'That man will get on; he believes in himself.' [...] I said to him, 'Shall I tell you where the men are who believe most in themselves? For I can tell you. I know of men who believe in themselves more colossally than Napoleon or Caesar. I know where flames the fixed star of certainty and success. I can guide you to the thrones of Supermen. The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums.' He said mildly that there were a good many men after all who believed in themselves and who were not in lunatic asylums. 'Yes, there are,' I retorted, 'and you of all men ought to know them. The drunken poet from whom you would not take a dreary tragedy, he believed in himself. That elderly minister with an epic from whom you were hiding in a back room, he believed in himself. If you consulted your business experiences instead of your ugly individualistic philosophy, you would know that believing in himself is one of the commonest signs of a rotter. Actors who can't act believe in themselves; and debtors who won't pay. It would be much truer to say that a man will certainly fail, because he believes in himself. Complete self confidence is not merely a sin; complete self-confidence is a weakness. ~ G K Chesterton,
909:As he surveyed the world being remade by Silicon Valley, and especially what was once called the sharing economy, he began to see through the fantasy-speak. Here were a handful of companies thriving by serving as middlemen between people who wanted rides and people who offered them, people who wanted their Ikea furniture assembled and people who came over to install it, people who defrayed their costs by renting out a room and people who stayed there. It was no accident, Scholz believed, that these services had taken off at the historical moment that they had. An epic meltdown of the world financial system had cost millions of people their homes, jobs, and health insurance. And as the fallout from the crash spread, many of those cut loose had been drafted into joining a new American servant class. The precariousness at the bottom, which had shown few signs of improving several years after the meltdown, had become the fodder for a bounty of services for the affluent—and, Scholz noted, for the “channeling of wealth in fewer and fewer hands.” Somehow, the technologies celebrated by the Valley as leveling playing fields and emancipating people had fostered a slick new digitally enabled upstairs-downstairs line in American social life. ~ Anand Giridharadas,
910:Her departure left no traces but were speedily repaired by the coming of spring. The sun growing warmer, and the close season putting an end to the Marquess's hunting, it was now Odo's chief pleasure to carry his books to the walled garden between the castle and the southern face of the cliff. This small enclosure, probably a survival of medieval horticulture, had along the upper ledge of its wall a grass walk commanding the flow of the stream, and an angle turret that turned one slit to the valley, the other to the garden lying below like a tranquil well of scent and brightness: its box trees clipped to the shape of peacocks and lions, its clove pinks and simples set in a border of thrift, and a pear tree basking on its sunny wall. These pleasant spaces, which Odo had to himself save when the canonesses walked there to recite their rosary, he peopled with the knights and ladies of the novelle, and the fantastic beings of Pulci's epic: there walked the Fay Morgana, Regulus the loyal knight, the giant Morgante, Trajan the just Emperor and the proud figure of King Conrad; so that, escaping thither from the after-dinner dullness of the tapestry parlour, the boy seemed to pass from the most oppressive solitude to a world of warmth and fellowship. ~ Edith Wharton,
911:Other Verses
Myself—My Song.
HERE, aloof, I take my stand—
Alien, iconoclast—
Poet of a newer land,
Confident, aggressive, lonely,
Product of the present only,
Thinking nothing of the past.
If some word of mine abide,
Yet no immortality
Looks my soul for; satisfied,
Though my voice be evanescent,
If it sing the pregnant present
And the birth that is to be.
All the beauty that has been,
All of wisdom's overplus,
Has been given me to glean;
In Earth's story clear one page is—
This—the widest of the ages—
Virile, vast, tumultuous.
I shall croon no love-song old,
Dream no memory of wrong,
Build no mighty epic bold;
From my forge I send them flying—
Fragments glowing once and dying—
Scattered sparks of molten song.
If I bring no gospel bright,
Still my little stream of song
Quavers thinly through the night,
Burdened with a broken yearning,
Still persistent, though discerning
Life has shadows, sorrow, wrong.
So my life shall be my verse.
Here's my record, stand or fall I
Failure may be mine, or worse,
In the twilight land of living—
With no doubt and no misgiving,
Here's my life-blood, breath and all!
61
~ Arthur Henry Adams,
912:My name is Hazel. Augustus Waters was the great star-crossed love of my life. Ours was an epic love story, and I won’t be able to get more than a sentence into it without disappearing into a puddle of tears. Gus knew. Gus knows. I will not tell you our love story, because—like all real love stories—it will die with us, as it should. I’d hoped that he’d be eulogizing me, because there’s no one I’d rather have…” I started crying. “Okay, how not to cry. How am I—okay. Okay.” I took a few breaths and went back to the page. “I can’t talk about our love story, so I will talk about math. I am not a mathematician, but I know this: There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There’s .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I’m likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I’m grateful. ~ John Green,
913:My name is Hazel. Augustus Waters was the great sat-crossed love of my life. Ours was an epic love story, and I won't be able to get more than a sentence into it without disappearing into a puddle of tears. Gus knew. Gus knows. I will not tell you our love story, because-like all real love stories-it will die with us, as it should. I'd hoped that he'd be eulogizing me, because there's no one I'd rather have..." I started crying. "Okay, how not to cry. How am I-okay. Okay."

I took a few deep breaths and went back to the page. "I can't talk about our love story, so I will talk about math. I am not a mathematician, but I know this: There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There's .1 and .12 and .112 and infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a Bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I'm likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn't trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I'm grateful. ~ John Green,
914:My name is Hazel. Augustus Waters was the great star-crossed love of my life. Ours was an epic love story, and I won't be able to get more than a sentence into it without disappearing into a puddle of tears. Gus knew. Gus knows. I will not tell you our love story, because-like all real love stories-it will die with us, as it should. I'd hoped that he'd be eulogizing me, because there's no one I'd rather have..." I started crying. "Okay, how not to cry. How am I-okay. Okay."

I took a few deep breaths and went back to the page. "I can't talk about our love story, so I will talk about math. I am not a mathematician, but I know this: There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There's .1 and .12 and .112 and infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a Bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I'm likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn't trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I'm grateful. ~ John Green,
915:The eye of the spirit can nowhere find more dazzling brilliance and more shadow than in man; it can fix itself on no other thing which is more formidable, more complicated, more mysterious, and more infinite. There is a spectacle more grand than the sea; it is heaven: there is a spectacle more grand than heaven; it is the inmost recesses of the soul.

To make the poem of the human conscience, were it only with reference to a single man, were it only in connection with the basest of men, would be to blend all epics into one superior and definitive epic. Conscience is the chaos of chimeras, of lusts, and of temptations; the furnace of dreams; the lair of ideas of which we are ashamed; it is the pandemonium of sophisms; it is the battlefield of the passions. Penetrate, at certain hours, past the livid face of a human being who is engaged in reflection, and look behind, gaze into that soul, gaze into that obscurity. There, beneath that external silence, battles of giants, like those recorded in Homer, are in progress; skirmishes of dragons and hydras and swarms of phantoms, as in Milton; visionary circles, as in Dante. What a solemn thing is this infinity which every man bears within him, and which he measures with despair against the caprices of his brain and the actions of his life! ~ Victor Hugo,
916:This time the war was really over.
We were alive. God had saved us.
My injuries themselves were a blessing.
I spent months in a hospital bed, but I had kept my strength and my faith.
I hadn't experienced the bitterness of falling uselessly into the hands of my enemies.
I remained, a witness to my soldiers' deeds. I could defend them from the lies of adversarie~ Leon Degrelle insensible to heroism. I could tell of their epic on the Donets and the Don, in the Caucasus and at Cherkassy, in Estonia, at Stargard, on the Oder.
One day the sacred names of our dead would be repeated with pride. Our people, hearing these tales of glory, would feel their blood quicken. And they would know their sons.
Certainly we had been beaten. We had been dispersed and pursued to the four corners of the world.
But we could look to the future with heads held high. History weighs the merit of men. Above worldly baseness, we had offered our youth against total immolation. We had fought for Europe, its faith, its civilization. We had reached the very height of sincerity and sacrifice. Sooner or later Europe and the world would have to recognize the justice of our cause and the purity of our gift.
For hate dies, dies suffocated by its own stupidity and mediocrity, but grandeur is eternal.
And we lived in grandeur. ~ Leon Degrelle,
917:The Republican Party spent the year of the liberal apotheosis enacting the most unlikely political epic ever told: a right-wing fringe took over the party from the ground up, nominating Barry Goldwater, the radical-right senator from Arizona, while a helpless Eastern establishment-that-was-now-a-fringe looked on in bafflement. Experts, claiming the Republican tradition of progressivism was as much a part of its identity as the elephant, began talking about a party committing suicide. The Goldwaterites didn’t see suicide. They saw redemption. This was part and parcel of their ideology—that Lyndon Johnson’s “consensus” was their enemy in a battle for the survival of civilization. For them, the idea that calamitous liberal nonsense—ready acceptance of federal interference in the economy; Negro “civil disobedience”; the doctrine of “containing” the mortal enemy Communism when conservatives insisted it must be beaten—could be described as a “consensus” at all was symbol and substance of America’s moral rot. They also believed the vast majority of ordinary Americans already agreed with them, whatever spake the polls—“crazy figures,” William F. Buckley harrumphed, doctored “to say, ‘Yes, Mr. President.’” It was their article of faith. And faith, and the uncompromising passions attending it, was key to their political makeup. ~ Rick Perlstein,
918:John Milton (December 9, 1608 – November 8, 1674) was an English poet, prose polemicist, and civil servant for the English Commonwealth. Most famed for his epic poem Paradise Lost, Milton is celebrated as well for his eloquent treatise condemning censorship, Areopagitica. Long considered the supreme English poet, Milton experienced a dip in popularity after attacks by T.S. Eliot and F.R. Leavis in the mid 20th century; but with multiple societies and scholarly journals devoted to his study, Milton’s reputation remains as strong as ever in the 21st century. Very soon after his death – and continuing to the present day – Milton became the subject of partisan biographies, confirming T.S. Eliot’s belief that “of no other poet is it so difficult to consider the poetry simply as poetry, without our theological and political dispositions…making unlawful entry.” Milton’s radical, republican politics and heretical religious views, coupled with the perceived artificiality of his complicated Latinate verse, alienated Eliot and other readers; yet by dint of the overriding influence of his poetry and personality on subsequent generations—particularly the Romantic movement—the man whom Samuel Johnson disparaged as “an acrimonious and surly republican” must be counted one of the most significant writers and thinkers of all time. Source: Wikipedia ~ John Milton,
919:This was it. And it was right. Perfect without the dinner, movies, and flowers, because how could you really plan something like this?
You couldn't
Daemon sat back-
A fist pounded on the door, and Andrew's voice intruded.
"Daemon, are you awake?"
We stared at each other in disbelief. "If I ignore him," he whispered, "do you think he'll go away?"
My hands dropped to my sides. "Maybe"
The pounding came again. "Daemon, I really need you downstairs. Dawson is ready to go back to Mount Weather. Nothing Dee or I are saying to him is making a bit of difference. He's like a suicidal Energizer bunny."
Daemon squeezed his eyes shut. "Son of a bitch..."
"It's okay." I started to sit up. "He needs you."
He let out a ragged sigh. "Stay here and get some rest. I'll talk-or beat some sense into him." He kissed me briefly and then gently pushed me back down. "I'll be back."
Settling in, I smiled. "Try not to kill him."
"No promises." He stood, pulled on his pajama bottoms, and headed for the door. Stopping short, he looked over his shoulder,his intense gaze melting my bones. "Dammit."
A few seconds after he stepped out into the hallway and closed the door behind him, there was a fleshly smack and then Andrew yelling. "Ouch. What in the hell was that for?"
"Your timing sucks on an epic level," Daemon shot back. ~ Jennifer L Armentrout,
920:Whereas the craftsman mindset focuses on what you can offer the world, the passion mindset focuses instead on what the world can offer you. This mindset is how most people approach their working lives. There are two reasons why I dislike the passion mindset (that is, two reasons beyond the fact that, as I argued in Rule #1, it’s based on a false premise). First, when you focus only on what your work offers you, it makes you hyperaware of what you don’t like about it, leading to chronic unhappiness. This is especially true for entry-level positions, which, by definition, are not going to be filled with challenging projects and autonomy—these come later. When you enter the working world with the passion mindset, the annoying tasks you’re assigned or the frustrations of corporate bureaucracy can become too much to handle. Second, and more serious, the deep questions driving the passion mindset—“Who am I?” and “What do I truly love?”—are essentially impossible to confirm. “Is this who I really am?” and “Do I love this?” rarely reduce to clear yes-or-no responses. In other words, the passion mindset is almost guaranteed to keep you perpetually unhappy and confused, which probably explains why Bronson admits, not long into his career-seeker epic What Should I Do With My Life? that “the one feeling everyone in this book has experienced is of missing out on life. ~ Cal Newport,
921:Taking deep breaths, I gathered my power until I could feel it crackling in my fingertips. "Let him go!" I commanded in what I hoped was my most "I am a powerful demon" voice. Probably would've been better if my voice hadn't cracked on the last word. I released the magic in my hands, which felt kind of like snapping a giant rubber band.
A bolt of power flew from my fingertips, crashing into a nearby tree with a thunderous crack. There was a bright flash like lightning, and a branch fell to the ground. The ghouls startled, which meant the one holding Archer jerked his head back even farther. The smallest one made a noise that might have been distress, but they certainly didn't seem under my control.
And they weren't letting Archer go.
Okay, so my first experiment with necromancy was an epic fail.Take two.
I fought panic and frustration. Shooting off my magic at the ghouls was no good, but what else was I supposed to try? "Think,Sophie," I muttered under my breath.
"Yeah,please do that," Archer replied, his voice slightly strangled. The ghoul holding him had wrapped a hand around Archer's throat. The thing's expression wasn't threatening, just curious, like he was little kid trying to see what would happen if he just kept squeezing.
I slammed my eyes shut. Okay, they were dead. Yucky dead things. That smelled like-okay, those thoughts were not helpful. ~ Rachel Hawkins,
922:one like a son of man. In Aramaic and Hebrew the phrase “son of man” is simply a common expression to describe someone or something as human or humanlike. In Ezekiel, God often addresses the prophet as “son of man” to emphasize his humanness (e.g., Eze 2:6). coming with the clouds of heaven. In ancient Near Eastern literature clouds are often associated with the appearances of deities. In the OT it is Yahweh, the God of Israel, who rides on the clouds as his chariot (Ps 104:3; Isa 19:1). In Canaanite mythology Baal, the son of El, is described as “rider/charioteer of the clouds.” After doing battle with, and defeating, Yamm/Sea, Baal is promised an everlasting kingdom and eternal dominion. Some scholars see echoes of this story in Da 7:9–14. Others argue for a background in Mesopotamian cosmic conflict myths (such as the creation epic Enuma Elish and the Myth of Anzu), which depict a deity (Marduk and Ninurta, respectively) defeating the representative of chaos (Tiamat and Anzu, respectively) and regaining authority and dominion for the gods and for himself. Daniel’s vision has no conflict between the “one like a son of man” and the beasts. The interpretation in vv. 17–27, however, makes it clear that the “one like a son of man” in some way represents “the holy people of the Most High” (vv. 18, 22), who are in conflict with the “little horn” that arises out of the fourth beast (v. 8). ~ Anonymous,
923:America WAS the edge of the World. A message for Europe, continent-sized, inescapable. Europe had found the site for its Kingdom of Death, that special Death the West had invented. Savages had their waste regions, Kalaharis, lakes so misty they could not see the other side. But Europe had gone deeper--into obsession, addiction, away from all the savage innocences. America was a gift from the invisible powers, a way of returning. But Europe refused it. It wasn't Europe's Original Sin--the latest name for that is Modern Analysis--but it happens that Subsequent Sin is harder to account for.
In Africa, Asia, Amerindia, Oceania, Europe came and established its order of Analysis and Death. What it could not use, it killed or altered. In time the death-colonies grew strong enough to break away. But the impulse to empire, the mission to propagate death, the structure of it, kept on. Now we are in the last phase. American Death has come to occupy Europe. It has learned empire from its old metropolis. But now we have ONLY the structure left us, none of the great rainbow plumes, no fittings of gold, no epic marches over alkali seas. The savages of other continents, corrupted but still resisting in the name of life, have gone on despite everything...while Death and Europe are separate as ever, their love still unconsummated. Death only rules here. It has never, in love, become ONE WITH... ~ Thomas Pynchon,
924:We have been dreaming of robots since Homer. In Book 18 of the Iliad , Achilles’ mother, the nymph Thetis, wants to order a new suit of armor for her son, and so she pays a visit to the Olympian atelier of the blacksmith-god Hephaestus, whom she finds hard at work on a series of automata: . . . He was crafting twenty tripods to stand along the walls of his well-built manse, affixing golden wheels to the bottom of each one so they might wheel down on their own [automatoi] to the gods’ assembly and then return to his house anon: an amazing sight to see. These are not the only animate household objects to appear in the Homeric epics. In Book 5 of the Iliad we hear that the gates of Olympus swivel on their hinges of their own accord, automatai , to let gods in their chariots in or out, thus anticipating by nearly thirty centuries the automatic garage door. In Book 7 of the Odyssey , Odysseus finds himself the guest of a fabulously wealthy king whose palace includes such conveniences as gold and silver watchdogs, ever alert, never aging. To this class of lifelike but intellectually inert household helpers we might ascribe other automata in the classical tradition. In the Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes, a third-century-BC epic about Jason and the Argonauts, a bronze giant called Talos runs three times around the island of Crete each day, protecting Zeus’s beloved Europa: a primitive home alarm system. ~ Anonymous,
925:This seemed to be happening more and more lately out in Greater Los Angeles, among gatherings of carefree youth and happy dopers, where Doc had begun to notice older men, there and not there, rigid, unsmiling, that he knew he'd seen before, not the faces necessarily but a defiant posture, an unwillingness to blur out, like everyone else at the psychedelic events of those days, beyond official envelopes of skin. Like the operatives who'd dragged away Coy Harlingen the other night at that rally at the Century Plaza. Doc Knew these people, he'd seen enough of them in the course of business. They went out to collect cash debts, they broke rib cages, they got people fired, they kept an unforgiving eye on anything that might become a threat. If everything in this dream of prerevolution was in fact doomed to end and the faithless money-driven world to reassert its control over all the lives it felt entitled to touch, fondle, and molest, it would be agents like these, dutiful and silent, out doing the shitwork, who'd make it happen.
Was it possible, that at every gathering--concert, peace rally, love-in, be-in, and freak-in, here, up north, back east, wherever--those dark crews had been busy all along, reclaiming the music, the resistance to power, the sexual desire from epic to everyday, all they could sweep up, for the ancient forces of greed and fear?
'Gee,' he said to himself out loud, 'I dunno... ~ Thomas Pynchon,
926:...With a religious book it is less what we see in it than what we see through it that matters. J. R. R. Tolkien's fairy-tale epic the Lord of the Rings helps draw the distinction perhaps. Some of its admirers have tried to make it into a religion book by claiming, among other things, that the Ring of Power which must be destroyed is the hydrogen bomb. Tolkien, on the other hand, denied this unequivocally. But intended or otherwise, there can be little doubt that for many it has become a religious book. The "Frodo Lives" buttons are not entirely a joke, because something at least comes to life through those fifteen hundred pages, although inevitably it is hard to say just what. It seems to have something to do with the way Tolkien has of making us see the quididity of things like wood, bread, stone, milk, iron, as though we have never seen them before or not for a long time, which is probably the truth of the matter; his landscapes set deeper echoes going in us than any message could. He gives us back a sense that we have mostly lost of the things of the earth, and because we are ourselves of the earth, whatever else, we are given back too some sense of our own secret. Very possibly again he did not intend it. I may well be axiomatic that, religiously, a writer achieves most when he is least conscious of doing so. Certainly the attempt to be religious is as doomed as the attempt to be poetic is. ~ Frederick Buechner,
927:As a science fiction writer who began as a fan, I do not use my fiction as a disguised way to criticize the reality of the present. I feel that the greatest appeal of science fiction is the creation of numerous imaginary worlds outside of reality. I’ve always felt that the greatest and most beautiful stories in the history of humanity were not sung by wandering bards or written by playwrights and novelists, but told by science. The stories of science are far more magnificent, grand, involved, profound, thrilling, strange, terrifying, mysterious, and even emotional, compared to the stories told by literature. Only, these wonderful stories are locked in cold equations that most do not know how to read.

The creation myths of the various peoples and religions of the world pale when compared to the glory of the big bang. The three-billion-year history of life’s evolution from self-reproducing molecules to civilization contains twists and romances that cannot be matched by any myth or epic. There is also the poetic vision of space and time in relativity, the weird subatomic world of quantum mechanics … these wondrous stories of science all possess an irresistible attraction. Through the medium of science fiction, I seek only to create my own worlds using the power of imagination, and to make known the poetry of Nature in those worlds, to tell the romantic legends that have unfolded between Man and Universe. ~ Liu Cixin,
928:For the week after the man's visit to my work, campus security will assign an officer to stand outside the door of my classroom while I teach, in case he returns. On one of these days, I teach Alice Notley's grouchy epic poem Disobedience. A student complaints, Notley says she wants a dailiness that is free and beautiful, but she's fixated on all the things she hates and fears the most, and then smashes her face and ours in them for four hundred pages. Why bother?

Empirically speaking, we are made of star stuff. Why aren't we talking more about that? Materials never leave this world. They just keep recycling, recombining. That's what you kept telling me when we first met—that in a real, material sense, what is made from where. I didn't have a clue what you were talking about, but I could see you burned for it. I wanted to be near that burning. I still don't understand, but at least now my fingers ride the lip.

Notley knows all this; it's what tears her up. It's why she's a mystic, why she locks herself in a dark closet, why she knocks herself out to have visions. Can she help it if the unconscious is a sewer? At least my student had unwittingly backed us into a crucial paradox, which helps to explain the work of any number of artists: it is sometimes the most paranoid-tending people who are able to, and need to, develop and disseminate the richest reparative practices. ~ Maggie Nelson,
929:Girls like her, my grandfather once warned me, girls like her turn into women with eyes like bullet holes and mouths made of knives. They are always restless. They are always hungry. They are bad news. They will drink you down like a shot
of whisky. Falling in love with them is like falling down a flight of stairs. What no one told me, with all those warnings, is that even after you’ve fallen, even after you know how painful it is, you’d still get in line to do it again.
A girl like that, Grandad said, perfumes herself with ozone and metal filings. She wears trouble like a crown. If she ever falls in love, she’ll fall like a comet, burning the sky as she goes.
She was the epic crush of my childhood. She was the tragedy that made me look inside myself and see my corrupt heart. She was my sin and my salvation, come back from the grave to change me forever. Again. Back then, when she sat on my bed and told me she loved me, I wanted her as much as I have ever wanted anything.
There are no words for how much I will miss her, but I try to kiss her so that she’ll know. I try to kiss her to tell her the whole story of my love, the way I dreamed of her when she was dead, the way that every other girl seemed like a mirror that showed me her face. The way my skin ached for her. The way that kissing her made me feel like I was drowning and like I was being saved all at the same time. I hope she can taste all that, bittersweet, on my tongue. ~ Holly Black,
930:Perhaps the best way to understand the book of Revelation is that it is a prophetic critique of civil religion. By civil religion I mean the religion of state where the state is the actual object of worship. Civil religion is religious patriotism. Christians are called to practice responsible citizenship but to renounce religious patriotism. In the practice of civil religion, the truth that the state is what is actually being deified and worshiped is usually carefully concealed. Instead of directly worshiping the state as God, worship of the state is expressed through sacred symbols, myths, and personifications of the state treated with religious reverence. The tendency to deify the state is particularly pronounced in empires—rich and powerful nations that believe they have a divine right to rule other nations and a manifest destiny to shape history according to their agenda. God’s contention with empire is one of the major themes of the Bible. From Egypt and Assyria to Babylonia and Rome, the prophets constantly critique empire as a direct challenge to the sovereignty of God. This prophetic tradition of empire critique reaches its apex in the book of Revelation. John the Revelator tells us that Rome’s claim of a divine right to rule the nations and of a manifest destiny to shape history is the very thing that God has given to his Son, Jesus Christ. Thus the drama of Revelation is cast as an epic conflict between the Lamb (Jesus) and the Beast (Rome). ~ Brian Zahnd,
931:On The Conduct Of The World Seeking Beauty Against
Government
Is that the only way we can become like Indians, like Rhinoceri,
like Quartz Crystals, like organic farmers, like what we imagine
Adam & Eve to’ve been, caressing each other with trembling limbs
before the Snake of Revolutionary Sex wrapped itself round
The Tree of Knowledge? What would Roque Dalton joke about lately
teeth chattering like a machine gun as he dabated mass tactics
with his Companeros? Necessary to kill the Yanquis with big bomb
Yes but don’t do it by yourself, better consult your mother
to get the Correct Line of Thought, if not consult Rimbaud once he got his leg cut
off
or Lenin after his second stroke sending a message thru Mrs Krupskaya
to the rude Georgian, & just before his deathly fit when the Cheka aides
outside
his door looked in coldly assuring him his affairs were in good hands no need to
move - What sickness at the
pit of his stomach moved up to
his brain?
What thought Khlebnikov on the hungry train exposing his stomach to the
sun?
Or Mayakovsky before the bullet hit his brain, what sharp propaganda for
action
on the Bureaucratic Battlefield in the Ministry of Collective Agriculture in
Ukraine?
What Slogan for Futurist architects or epic hymn for masses of Communist
Party Card holders in Futurity
on the conduct of the world seeking beauty against Government?
~ Allen Ginsberg,
932:Inspiration is always a very uncertain thing; it comes when it chooses, stops suddenly before it has finished its work, refuses to descend when it is called. This is a well-known affliction, perhaps of all artists, but certainly of poets. There are some who can command it at will; those who, I think, are more full of an abundant poetic energy than careful for perfection; others who oblige it to come whenever they put pen to paper but with these the inspiration is either not of a high order or quite unequal in its levels. Again there are some who try to give it a habit of coming by always writing at the same time; Virgil with his nine lines first written, then perfected every morning, Milton with his fifty epic lines a day, are said to have succeeded in regularising their inspiration. It is, I suppose, the same principle which makes Gurus in India prescribe for their disciples a meditation at the same fixed hour every day. It succeeds partially of course, for some entirely, but not for everybody. For myself, when the inspiration did not come with a rush or in a stream,-for then there is no difficulty,-I had only one way, to allow a certain kind of incubation in which a large form of the thing to be done threw itself on the mind and then wait for the white heat in which the entire transcription could rapidly take place. But I think each poet has his own way of working and finds his own issue out of inspiration's incertitudes.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Inspiration and Effort - I,
933:I first read The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit when I was eighteen. It felt as though the author had taken every element I'd ever want in a story and woven them into one huge, seamless narrative; but more important, for me, Tolkien had created a place, a vast, beautiful, awesome landscape, which remained a resource long after the protagonists had finished their battles and gone their separate ways. In illustrating The Lord of the Rings I allowed the landscapes to predominate. In some of the scenes the characters are so small they are barely discernible. This suited my own inclinations and my wish to avoid, as much as possible, interfering with the pictures being built up in the reader's mind, which tends to be more closely focussed on characters and their inter-relationships. I felt my task lay in shadowing the heroes on their epic quest, often at a distance, closing in on them at times of heightened emotion but avoiding trying to re-create the dramatic highpoints of the text. With The Hobbit, however, it didn't seem appropriate to keep such a distance, particularly from the hero himself. I don't think I've ever seen a drawing of a Hobbit which quite convinced me, and I don't know whether I've gotten any closer myself with my depictions of Bilbo. I'm fairly happy with the picture of him standing outside Bag End, before Gandalf arrives and turns his world upside-down, but I've come to the conclusion that one of the reasons Hobbits are so quiet and elusive is to avoid the prying eyes of illustrators. ~ Alan Lee,
934:Do you like Phil Collins? I've been a big Genesis fan ever since the release of their 1980 album, Duke. Before that, I really didn't understand any of their work. Too artsy, too intellectual. It was on Duke where Phil Collins' presence became more apparent. I think Invisible Touch was the group's undisputed masterpiece. It's an epic meditation on intangibility. At the same time, it deepens and enriches the meaning of the preceding three albums. Christy, take off your robe. Listen to the brilliant ensemble playing of Banks, Collins and Rutherford. You can practically hear every nuance of every instrument. Sabrina, remove your dress. In terms of lyrical craftsmanship, the sheer songwriting, this album hits a new peak of professionalism. Sabrina, why don't you, uh, dance a little. Take the lyrics to Land of Confusion. In this song, Phil Collins addresses the problems of abusive political authority. In Too Deep is the most moving pop song of the 1980s, about monogamy and commitment. The song is extremely uplifting. Their lyrics are as positive and affirmative as anything I've heard in rock. Christy, get down on your knees so Sabrina can see your asshole. Phil Collins' solo career seems to be more commercial and therefore more satisfying, in a narrower way. Especially songs like In the Air Tonight and Against All Odds. Sabrina, don't just stare at it, eat it. But I also think Phil Collins works best within the confines of the group, than as a solo artist, and I stress the word artist. This is Sussudio, a great, great song, a personal favorite. ~ Bret Easton Ellis,
935:Creatures of the Darkness
BY VICKI JORDAN

It was world of vampires and demons, where innocence
was rare and so were the living. It was a world of darkness,
where light had been outlawed and nightfall had swallowed
us whole.

An epic war had been fought, and the creatures of the dark
had finally prevailed over the promoters of the light. Finally,
for the first time in existence, the people of the shadows could
come out and freely walk among one another in the rays of the
dying sun, which had once been used to shun them away.

A little girl, a child of the light, had survived the battle and
crawled out from under the ashes of the destruction. She looked
around at her altered world in dismay and confronted a vampire
about the changes, of which she did not approve.

“Why did you turn my world into a world of night, and make
wrong into a new form of right? How could you make all the light
disappear, and with it everyone I once loved so dear? Why are the
shadows now the new sun, and why is everything lost what you have
won?”
The vampire looked down at the little girl with amusement
and delight.

“Because, little girl, this is the real world you see, where there’s no
light to shine on false identities. We didn’t destroy the world just to scare;
we simply uncovered what was already there. What has come out was all the
darkness that was once hidden within, and you’ll soon meet the darkness
in you once my fangs pierce your skin.”

We are our own greatest fears….. ~ Chris Colfer,
936:My darling
Everybody is blaming me for you!
They are saying,
In all his songs
Her picture he is painting
In her ears
He is singing only love songs
Because of his addiction
He is composing
Frivolous words into poesy
And all over the land at the top of his voice
He is raving and shouting.
My darling
For you only me they are blaming.

My queen
With the blots of these scandals
I have smeared my forehead
Hoping
You will remove them smiling,
Who cares if they go on carping
If you protect me with your arms
And in your embrace go on sheltering.

Once I had a fancy to compose an epic
But by a sudden touch of your bangles
It burst into thousand songs
As a result of that accident
That epic is lying at my feet in smithereens.

Alas, those stories of wars and heroes
In as many as eight long cantos
Where have they gone!
Attacked by the chopper of your glances
All of them disappeared like dreams.

My doe-eyed darling,
I have kept an eye on my compensation
In the minds of men
I dont care to remain enthroned
If you condescend to give me
The key to your dear hearts bedroom.
After I am dead and gone
I dont want to be immortal
Only in your love
I would like to be eternal.
My doe-eyed darling
Ignoring my posthumous reputation
I have kept an eye on my compensation.
Transcreation of the poem Kshatipuran from the collection Kshanika by Rabindranath Tagore. Transcreation by Kumud Biswas.
Translated by Kumud Biswas
~ Rabindranath Tagore, Compensation
,
937:Sometimes the most remarkable things seem commonplace. I mean, when you think about it, jet travel is pretty freaking remarkable. You get in a plane, it defies the gravity of an entire planet by exploiting a loophole with air pressure, and it flies across distances that would take months or years to cross by any means of travel that has been significant for more than a century or three. You hurtle above the earth at enough speed to kill you instantly should you bump into something, and you can only breathe because someone built you a really good tin can that has seams tight enough to hold in a decent amount of air. Hundreds of millions of man-hours of work and struggle and research, blood, sweat, tears, and lives have gone into the history of air travel, and it has totally revolutionized the face of our planet and societies.

But get on any flight in the country, and I absolutely promise you that you will find someone who, in the face of all that incredible achievement, will be willing to complain about the drinks.

The drinks, people.

That was me on the staircase to Chicago-Over-Chicago. Yes, I was standing on nothing but congealed starlight. Yes, I was walking up through a savage storm, the wind threatening to tear me off and throw me into the freezing waters of Lake Michigan far below. Yes, I was using a legendary and enchanted means of travel to transcend the border between one dimension and the next, and on my way to an epic struggle between ancient and elemental forces.

But all I could think to say, between panting breaths, was, 'Yeah. Sure. They couldn’t possibly have made this an escalator. ~ Jim Butcher,
938:Musa Spiritus :::

O Word concealed in the upper fire,
Thou who hast lingered through centuries,
Descend from thy rapt white desire,
Plunging through gold eternities.

Into the gulfs of our nature leap,
Voice of the spaces, call of the Light!
Break the seals of Matter's sleep,
Break the trance of the unseen height.

In the uncertain glow of human mind,
Its waste of unharmonied thronging thoughts,
Carve thy epic mountain-lined
Crowded with deep prophetic grots.

Let thy hue-winged lyrics hover like birds
Over the swirl of the heart's sea.
Touch into sight with thy fire-words
The blind indwelling deity.

O Muse of the Silence, the wideness make
In the unplumbed stillness that hears thy voice,
In the vast mute heavens of the spirit awake
Where thy eagles of Power flame and rejoice.

Out, out with the mind and its candles flares,
Light, light the suns that never die.
For my ear the cry of the seraph stars
And the forms of the Gods for my naked eye!

Let the little troubled life-god within
Cast his veils from the still soul,
His tiger-stripes of virtue and sin,
His clamour and glamour and thole and dole;

All make tranquil, all make free.
Let my heart-beats measure the footsteps of God
As He comes from His timeless infinity
To build in their rapture His burning abode.

Weave from my life His poem of days,
His calm pure dawns and His noons of force.
My acts for the grooves of His chariot-race,
My thoughts for the tramp of His great steeds' course! ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems,
939:Over a span of twenty years, Shakespeare churned out an impressively whopping thirty-eight plays, 154 love sonnets, and two epic narrative poems. While most people associate him with his plays, it was his sonnets that likely earned him admiration among his contemporaries. Yes, that’s right: In his lifetime, Shakespeare garnered more acclaim for his sonnets than he did for his plays.
In England during the 1590s, writing plays was considered a bit hackish—a way to pay the bills—and not an intellectual pursuit. Writing sonnets was all the rage— and a way to gain literary prestige. These poems weren’t published for the plebeian public, but were written down and shared among the literati—and aristocrats looking for some intellectual cachet by becoming patrons to brilliant but perhaps financially strapped writers. So, while Shakespeare likely wrote nearly all of his love sonnets in the early to mid 1590s, they weren’t officially collected and published until 1609, well after the fad had passed.
W. H. Auden said of Shakespeare’s sonnets: “They are the work of someone whose ear is unerring.” In today’s less poetry-friendly world, appreciation of these sonnets tends, sadly, to be relegated to classrooms, Valentine’s Day, and anniversaries. Which is too bad, because—though they do indeed rhyme—they are far superior to the ditties found in ninety-nine-cent greeting cards. In fact, they cover the whole gamut of love—the good, the bad, the erotic, and the ugly, including love triangles, being dumped, and jealousy.
There is also speculation as to how autobiographical the sonnets are. The truth is that we know so little about Shakespeare’s private life. ~ William Shakespeare,
940:How about you?” I asked, trying to keep words happening. “Play any sports?”

“I might have.”

“Instruments?”

“No.”

“Did you grow up in a state that starts with the letter A, M, or T?”

Her lips did this twisty thing to the side.

“Isn’t that how we’re doing this? Process of elimination?”

Daryn brushed some sand off her jeans. “The less we do of this, the better it’ll be for both of us.”

I started laughing. I didn’t know what had just hit me. Daryn laughed too, more at me than with me, but it didn’t matter. I enjoyed it.

“You run a pretty good defense, Martin. You know that?”

“I’ve gotten better.”

“Does this mean you’re not going to tell me about the downloads you get? Or how often you get ’em? Or how long you’ve been doing this? Like, is this your first assignment, or have you been seeking—seekering?—your whole life? And, like, when you saw me—you said you saw me—was I excelling at protecting secret powerful objects? Doing epic War shit? How amazing was I, is basically what I want to know. But in specifics. Did I look really-really awesome or just kind of good? Wait, wait—I looked prime. Didn’t I, Martin?”

“Are you done?”

“With my opening questions?”

She shook her head. “Wow.”

“You don’t have to answer.”

“I know I don’t.” She reclined her seat and put her feet up on the dash. I thought the subject was closed because she shut her eyes, but then she said, “It’s not often you meet people who are so persistent.”

“How often do you meet people who are War?”

She peered at me and gave a little shrug, like you’re really not all that special. Then she closed her eyes again. ~ Veronica Rossi,
941:The next thing I knew Jamie was in my lap wrapping her arms around my neck as if she planned on keeping me hostage for eternity. If that were the case, bring on the shackles babe, because no way was I going to be the one to end this epic kiss.

I felt like I was on fire—like warm energy was spilling out of Jamie, washing over me and causing all my hair to stand on end. I started shaking—just a slight tremor in my hands at first, but it quickly progressed to violent, uncontrollable shivers. The energy was filling my body so full I thought I’d literally burst apart at my seams.

Then, when I was ready to combust Jamie finally stilled. She pulled her face back and smiled at me with a cool expression, but I know she was affected as I was. I wasn’t the only one breathing hard and shaking.

“You can keep the gum,” she said, trying to mask her feelings with a smirk. She couldn’t quite manage it though. Her eyes were bright and full of disbelief. She was as surprised as I was.

She climbed off me and with a wink said, “Have fun at the dance.” And then she was gone. She walked out of the cafeteria as if that hadn’t just happened. As if she hadn’t just completely wrecked me.

I had no idea if what I felt meant we were soul mates or something crazy like that, but I knew two things for certain. One: Jamie Baker wasn’t the ice queen she pretended to be. And two: I wanted her more than anything I’d ever wanted in my entire life.

I had a feeling this wasn’t going to be easy, but I knew deep down in my gut it would be worth it. “Game on, Ice Queen,” I muttered as I stumbled back over to Mike to rub my victory in his face. “You’re already mine. You just don’t know it yet. ~ Kelly Oram,
942:On The Steamer
The stir of leaves, the chilly morning air
Were like delirium; half awake
Jaws clamped; the dawn beyond the Kama glared
Blue, as the plumage of a drake.
There was
A yawning
And in the
Within the
a clattering of crockery,
steward taking stock,
depth, as high as candlesticks,
river, glow-worms flocked.
They hung from streets along the waterfront,
A scintillating string; it chimed
Three times; the steward with a napkin tried
To scratch away some candle grime.
Like a grey rumour, crawling from the past,
A mighty epic of the reeds,
With ripples in the beads of street lamps, fast
Towards Perm the Kama ran upon a breeze.
Choking on waves, and almost drowning, but
Still swimming on beyond the boat
A star kept diving and resurfacing
An icon's shining light afloat.
A smell of paint mixed with the galley smells,
And on the Kama all along,
The twilight drifted, secrets gathering,
With not a splash it drifted on…
A glass in hand, your pupils narrowing
You watched the slips of tongue perform
A whirling play on words, at suppertime,
But were not drawn into their swarm.
You called your partner to old happenings,
To waves of days before your day,
To plunge in them, a final residue
Of the last drop, and fade away.
107
The stir of leaves in chilly morning air
Was like delirium; half awake
One yawned; the east beyond the Kama glared
Blue, as the plumage of a drake.
And, like a bloodbath now the morning came,
A flaming flood of oil - to drown
The steamer's gaslights in the stateroom and
The waning street lamps of the town.
~ Boris Pasternak,
943:Darius
The poet Phernazis is composing
the important part of his epic poem.
How Darius, son of Hystaspes,
assumed the kingdom of the Persians. (From him
is descended our glorious king
Mithridates, Dionysus and Eupator). But here
philosophy is needed; he must analyze
the sentiments that Darius must have had:
maybe arrogance and drunkenness; but no -- rather
like an understanding of the vanity of grandeurs.
The poet contemplates the matter deeply.
But he is interrupted by his servant who enters
running, and announces the portendous news.
The war with the Romans has begun.
The bulk of our army has crossed the borders.
The poet is speechless. What a disaster!
No time now for our glorious king
Mithridates, Dionysus and Eupator,
to occupy himself with greek poems.
In the midst of a war -- imagine, greek poems.
Phernazis is impatient. Misfortune!
Just when he was positive that with "Darius"
he would distinguish himself, and shut the mouths
of his critics, the envious ones, for good.
What a delay, what a delay to his plans.
And if it were only a delay, it would still be all right.
But it yet remains to be seen if we have any security
at Amisus. It is not a strongly fortified city.
The Romans are the most horrible enemies.
Can we hold against them
we Cappadocians? It is possible at all?
It is possible to pit ourselves against the legions?
Mighty Gods, protectors of Asia, help us.-But in all his turmoil and trouble,
34
the poetic idea too comes and goes persistently-the most probable, surely, is arrogance and drunkenness;
Darius must have felt arrogance and drunkenness.
~ Constantine P. Cavafy,
944:every grain of sand. Joan Baez sang the mournful yet uplifting spiritual, “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” Each member of the family recounted a few stories or read a poem. “His mind was never a captive of reality,” Laurene said. “He possessed an epic sense of possibility. He looked at things from the standpoint of perfection.” Mona Simpson, as befitting a novelist, had a finely crafted eulogy. “He was an intensely emotional man,” she recalled. “Even ill, his taste, his discrimination, and his judgment held. He went through sixty-seven nurses before finding kindred spirits.” She spoke of her brother’s love of work and noted that “even in the last year, he embarked upon projects and elicited promises from his friends at Apple to finish them.” She also, more personally, stressed his love of Laurene and all four of his children. Although he had achieved his wish of living to see Reed’s graduation, he would not see his daughters’ weddings. “He’d wanted to walk them down the aisle as he’d walked me the day of my wedding,” she said. Those chapters would not be written. “We all—in the end—die in medias res. In the middle of a story. Of many stories.” The corporate memorial on the Apple campus was held three days later. Tim Cook, Al Gore, and Bill Campbell all spoke, but Jony Ive stole the show with a tribute both amusing and emotional. He told the story, as he had at the Stanford memorial, of Jobs being so finicky that whenever they checked into a hotel Ive would sit by the phone waiting for the inevitable call from him saying, “This hotel sucks, let’s go.” But Ive also captured the scattershot brilliance at the core of Jobs’s genius when he described his boss tossing out ideas at a meeting. “Sometimes they were dopey. Sometimes ~ Walter Isaacson,
945:Arin glanced up as she approached. One tree shadowed the knoll, a laran tree, leaves broad and glossy. Their shadows dappled Arin’s face, made it a patchwork of sun and dark. It was hard to read his expression. She noticed for the first time the way he kept the scarred side of his face out of her line of sight. Or rather, what she noticed for the first time was how common this habit was for him in her presence--and what that meant.
She stepped deliberately around him and sat so that he had to face her fully or shift into an awkward, neck-craned position.
He faced her. His brow lifted, not so much in amusement as in his awareness of being studied and translated.
“Just a habit,” he said, knowing what she’d seen.
“You have that habit only with me.”
He didn’t deny it.
“Your scar doesn’t matter to me, Arin.”
His expression turned sardonic and interior, as if he were listening to an unheard voice.
She groped for the right words, worried that she’d get this wrong. She remembered mocking him in the music room of the imperial palace (I wonder what you believe could compel me to go to such epic lengths for your sake. Is it your charm? Your breeding? Not your looks, surely.).
“It matters because it hurts you,” she said. “It doesn’t change how I see you. You’re beautiful. You always have been to me.” Even when she hadn’t realized it, even in the market nearly a year ago. Then later, when she understood his beauty. Again, when she saw his face torn, stitched, fevered. On the tundra, when his beauty terrified her. Now. Now, too. Her throat closed.
The line of his jaw hardened. He didn’t believe her.
“Arin--”
“I’m sorry for what happened in the village.”
She dropped her hand to her lap. She hadn’t been conscious of lifting it. ~ Marie Rutkoski,
946:Woman And War
We women teach our little sons how wrong
And how ignoble blows are; school and church
Support our precepts and inoculate
The growing minds with thoughts of love and peace.
‘Let dogs delight to bark and bite, ’ we say;
But human beings with immortal souls
Must rise above the methods of the brute
And walk with reason and with self-control.
And then – dear God! you men, you wise, strong men,
Our self-announced superiors in brain,
Our peers in judgement, you go forth to war!
You leap at one another, mutilate
And starve and kill your fellow men, and ask
The world’s applause for such heroic deeds.
You boast and strut; and if no song is sung,
No laudatory epic writ in blood,
Telling how many widows you have made,
Why then, penforce, you say our bards are dead
And inspiration sleeps to wake no more.
And we, the women, we whose lives you are –
What can we do but sit in silent homes
And wait and suffer? Not for us the blare
Of trumpets and the bugle’s call to arms –
For us no waving banners, no supreme,
Triumphant hour of conquest. Ours the slow
Dread torture of uncertainty, each day
The bootless battle with the same despair.
And when at best your victories reach our ears,
There reaches with them to our pitying hearts
The thought of countless homes made desolate
And other women weeping for their dead.
O men, wise men, superior beings, say,
Is there no substitute for war in this
Great age and ere? If you answer ‘No’
Then let us rear our children to be wolves
And teach them from the cradle how to kill.
Why should we women take waste our time and work
925
In talking peace, when men declare for war?
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox,
947:It's moments like this, when you need someone the most, that your world seems smallest.


I'm told there's no going back. So I’m choosing forward


The exhaustion of living was just too much for me to talk any longer

It still might be a shock. To realize you are just one story walking among millions

Why is it so much easier to talk to a stranger? Why do we feel we need that disconnect in order to connect?

I had done it. I had embraced danger. The experience might have been an epic disaster, but it was still…an experience

We are reading the story of our lives/ as though we were in it, /as though we had written it

Like dogs and lions, small children can sense fear. The slightest flinch, the slightest disinclination, and they will jump atop you and devour you

I might have liked to share a dance with you. If I may be so bold to say



In a field, I am the absence of field. In a crowd, I am the absence of crowd. In a dream, I am the absence of dream. But I don’t want to live as an absence. I move to keep things whole. Because sometimes I feel drunk on positivity. Sometimes I feel amazement at the tangle of words and lives, and I want to be a part of that tangle…It’s only a game if there is an absence of meaning. And we’ve already gone too far for that

You restore my faith in humanity

Do you want to go get coffee or something tomorrow and discuss and analyze the situation at length?

Let’s just wander and see what happens

It was rather awkward, insofar as we were both teetering between the possibility of something and the possibility of nothing.

Fate has a strange way of making plans

I love a man who doesn’t let go of the leash, even when it leads him to ruin ~ Rachel Cohn,
948:Fat Charlie blew his nose. "I never knew I had a brother," he said.
"I did," said Spider. "I always meant to look you up, but I got distracted. You know how it is."
"Not really."
"Things came up."
"What kind of things?"
"Things. They came up. That's what things do. They come up. I can't be expected to keep track of them all."
"Well, give me a f'rinstance."
Spider drank more wine. "Okay. The last time I decided that you and I should meet, I, well, I spent days planning it. Wanted it to go perfectly. I had to choose my wardrobe. Then I had to decide what I'd say to you when we met. I knew that the meeting of two brothers, well, it's the subject of epics, isn't it? I decided that the only way to treat it with the appropriate gravity would be to do it in verse. But what kind of verse? Am I going to rap it? Declaim it? I mean, I'm not going to greet you with a limerick. So. It had to be something dark, something powerful, rhythmic, epic. And then I had it. The perfect line: Blood calls to blood like sirens in the night. It says so much. I knew I'd be able to get everything in there - people dying in alleys, sweat and nightmares, the power of free spirits uncrushable. Everything was going to be there. And then I had to come up with a second line, and the whole thing completely fell apart. The best I could come up with was Tum-tumpty-tumpty-tumpty got a fright."
Fat Charlie blinked. "Who exactly is Tum-tumpty-tumpty-tumpty?"
"It's not anybody. It's just there to show you where the words ought to be. But I never really got any futher on it than that, and I couldn't turn up with just a first line, some tumpties and three words of an epic poem, could I? That would have been disrespecting you."
"Well...."
"Exactly. So I went to Hawaii for the week instead. Like I said, something came up. ~ Neil Gaiman,
949:The Cynic Of The Woods
Come I from busy haunts of men,
With nature to commune,
Which you, it seems, observe, and then
Laugh out, like some buffoon.
You cease, and through the forest drear
I pace, with sense of awe;
When once again upon my ear
Breaks in your harsh guffaw.
I look aloft to yonder place,
Where placidly you sit,
And tell you to your very face,
I do not like your wit.
I’m in no mood for blatant jest,
I hate your mocking song,
My weary soul demands the rest
Denied to it so long.
Besides, there passes through my brain
The poet’s love of fame—
Why should not an Australian strain
Immortalize my name?
And so I pace the forest drear,
Filled with a sense of awe,
When louder still upon my ear
Breaks in your harsh guffaw.
Yet truly, Jackass, it may be,
My words are all unjust:
You laugh at what you hear and see,
And laugh because you must.
You’ve seen Man civilized and rude,
Of varying race and creed,
The black-skinned savage almost nude,
The Englishman in tweed.
16
And here the lubra oft has strayed,
To rest beneath the boughs,
Where now, perchance, some fair-haired maid
May hear her lover’s vows;
While you from yonder lofty height
Have studied human ways,
And, with a satirist’s delight,
Dissected hidden traits.
Laugh on, laugh on! Your rapturous shout
Again on me intrudes;
But I have found your secret out,
O cynic of the woods!
Well! I confess, grim mocking elf,
Howe’er I rhapsodize,
That I am more in love with self
Than with the earth or skies.
So I will lay the epic by,
That I had just begun:
Why should I scribble? Let me lie
And bask here in the sun.
And let me own, were I endowed
With your fine humorous sense,
I, too, should laugh—ay, quite as loud,
At all Man’s vain pretence.
~ Arthur Patchett Martin,
950:Eton, for all its virtues, seriously lacked girls. (Well, apart from the kitchen girls who we camped out on the roof waiting for night after night.)
But beyond that, and the occasional foxy daughter of a teacher, it was a desert. (Talking of foxy daughters, I did desperately fancy the beautiful Lela, who was the daughter of the clarinet teacher. But she ended up marrying one of my best friends from Eton, Tom Amies--and everyone was very envious. Great couple. Anyway, we digress.)
As I said, apart from that…it was a desert.
All of us wrote to random girls whom we vaguely knew or had maybe met once, but if we were honest, it was all in never-never land.
I did meet one quite nice girl who I discovered went to school relatively nearby to Eton. (Well, about thirty miles nearby, that is.)
I borrowed a friend’s very old, single-geared, rusty bicycle and headed off one Sunday afternoon to meet this girl. It took me hours and hours to find the school, and the bike became steadily more and more of an epic to ride, not only in terms of steering but also just to pedal, as the rust cogs creaked and ground.
But finally I reached the school gates, pouring with sweat.
It was a convent school, I found out, run entirely by nuns.
Well, at least they should be quite mild-natured and easy to give the slip to, I thought.
That was my first mistake.
I met the girl as prearranged, and we wandered off down a pretty, country path through the local woods. I was just summoning up the courage to make a move when I heard this whistle, followed by this shriek, from somewhere behind us.
I turned to see a nun with an Alsatian, running toward us, shouting.
The young girl gave me a look of terror and pleaded with me to run for my life--which I duly did. I managed to escape and had another monster cycle ride back to school, thinking: Flipping Nora, this girl business is proving harder work than I first imagined.
But I persevered. ~ Bear Grylls,
951:If life is a movie most people would consider themselves the star of their own feature. Guys might imagine they're living some action adventure epic. Chicks maybe are in a rose-colored fantasy romance. And homosexuals are living la vida loca in a fabulous musical. Still others may take the indie approach and think of themselves as an anti-hero in a coming of age flick. Or a retro badass in an exploitation B movie. Or the cable man in a very steamy adult picture. Some people's lives are experimental student art films that don't make any sense. Some are screwball comedies. Others resemble a documentary, all serious and educational. A few lives achieve blockbuster status and are hailed as a tribute to the human spirit. Some gain a small following and enjoy cult status. And some never got off the ground due to insufficient funding. I don't know what my life is but I do know that I'm constantly squabbling with the director over creative control, throwing prima donna tantrums and pouting in my personal trailor when things don't go my way.

Much of our lives is spent on marketing. Make-up, exercise, dieting, clothes, hair, money, charm, attitude, the strut, the pose, the Blue Steel look. We're like walking billboards advertising ourselves. A sneak peek of upcoming attractions. Meanwhile our actual production is in disarray--we're over budget, doing poorly at private test screenings and focus groups, creatively stagnant, morale low. So we're endlessly tinkering, touching up, editing, rewriting, tailoring ourselves to best suit a mass audience. There's like this studio executive in our heads telling us to cut certain things out, make it "lighter," give it a happy ending, and put some explosions in there too. Kids love explosions. And the uncompromising artist within protests: "But that's not life!" Thus the inner conflict of our movie life: To be a palatable crowd-pleaser catering to the mainstream... or something true to life no matter what they say? ~ Tatsuya Ishida,
952:And against whom is this censorship directed? By way of answer, think back to the big subcultural debates of 2011 – debates about how gritty fantasy isn’t really fantasy; how epic fantasy written from the female gaze isn’t really fantasy; how women should stop complaining about sexism in comics because clearly, they just hate comics; how trying to incorporate non-Eurocentric settings into fantasy is just political correctness gone wrong and a betrayal of the genre’s origins; how anyone who finds the portrayal of women and relationships in YA novels problematic really just wants to hate on the choices of female authors and readers; how aspiring authors and bloggers shouldn’t post negative reviews online, because it could hurt their careers; how there’s no homophobia in publishing houses, so the lack of gay YA protagonists can only be because the manuscripts that feature them are bad; how there’s nothing problematic about lots of pretty dead girls on YA covers; how there’s nothing wrong with SF getting called ‘dystopia’ when it’s marketed to teenage girls, because girls don’t read SF. Most these issues relate to fear of change in the genre, and to deeper social problems like sexism and racism; but they are also about criticism, and the freedom of readers, bloggers and authors alike to critique SFF and YA novels without a backlash that declares them heretical for doing so.


It’s not enough any more to tiptoe around the issues that matter, refusing to name the works we think are problematic for fear of being ostracized. We need to get over this crushing obsession with niceness – that all fans must act nicely, that all authors must be nice to each other, that everyone must be nice about everything even when it goes against our principles – because it’s not helping us grow, or be taken seriously, or do anything other than throw a series of floral bedspreads over each new room-hogging elephant.


We, all of us, need to get critical.

Blog post: Criticism in SFF and YA ~ Foz Meadows,
953:Certain shapes and patterns hover over different moments in time, haunting and inspiring the individuals living through those periods. The epic clash and subsequent resolution of the dialectic animated the first half of the nineteenth century; the Darwinian and social reform movements scattered web imagery through the second half of the century. The first few decades of the twentieth century found their ultimate expression in the exuberant anarchy of the explosion, while later decades lost themselves in the faceless regimen of the grid. You can see the last ten years or so as a return to those Victorian webs, though I suspect the image that has been burned into our retinas over the past decade is more prosaic: windows piled atop one another on a screen, or perhaps a mouse clicking on an icon. These shapes are shorthand for a moment in time, a way of evoking an era and its peculiar obsessions. For individuals living within these periods, the shapes are cognitive building blocks, tools for thought: Charles Darwin and George Eliot used the web as a way of understanding biological evolution and social struggles; a half century later, the futurists embraced the explosions of machine-gun fire, while Picasso used them to re-create the horrors of war in Guernica. The shapes are a way of interpreting the world, and while no shape completely represents its epoch, they are an undeniable component of the history of thinking. When I imagine the shape that will hover above the first half of the twenty-first century, what comes to mind is not the coiled embrace of the genome, or the etched latticework of the silicon chip. It is instead the pulsing red and green pixels of Mitch Resnick’s slime mold simulation, moving erratically across the screen at first, then slowly coalescing into larger forms. The shape of those clusters—with their lifelike irregularity, and their absent pacemakers—is the shape that will define the coming decades. I see them on the screen, growing and dividing, and I think: That way lies the future. ~ Steven Johnson,
954:[On D. W. Griffith]
Even in Griffith’s best work there is enough that is poor, or foolish, or merely old-fashioned, so that one has to understand, if by no means forgive, those who laugh indiscriminately at his good work and his bad. (With all that “understanding,” I look forward to killing, some day, some specially happy giggler at the exquisite scene in which the veteran comes home, in The Birth of a Nation) But even his poorest work was never just bad. Whatever may be wrong with it, there is in every instant, so well as I can remember, the unique purity and vitality of birth or of a creature just born and first exerting its unprecedented, incredible strength; and there are, besides, Griffith’s overwhelming innocence and magnanimity of spirit; his moral and poetic earnestness; his joy in his work; and his splendid intuitiveness, directness, common sense, daring, and skill as an inventor and as an artist. Aside from his talent or genius as an inventor and artist, he was all heart; and ruinous as his excesses sometimes were in that respect, they were inseparable from his virtues, and small beside them. He was remarkably good, as a rule, in the whole middle range of feeling, but he was at his best just short of his excesses, and he tended in general to work out toward the dangerous edge. He was capable of realism that has never been beaten and he might, if he had been able to appreciate his powers as a realist, have found therein his growth and salvation. But he seems to have been a realist only by accident, hit-and-run; essentially, he was a poet. He doesn’t appear ever to have realized one of the richest promises that movies hold, as the perfect medium for realism raised to the level of high poetry; nor, oddly enough, was he much of a dramatic poet. But in epic and lyrical and narrative visual poetry, I can think of nobody who has surpassed him, and of few to compare with him. And as a primitive tribal poet, combining something of the bard and the seer, he is beyond even Dovshenko, and no others of their kind have worked in movies. ~ James Agee,
955:I know some individuals who make this their daily practice: starting at the beginning and reading a canto or half a canto every day till they reach the end and then starting at the beginning again, and in that way they have gone through the whole of Savitri many times. When this is done in groups there's really no doubt that by this going through the whole soundbody of the epic from beginning to end aloud, there must be built up a very strong force field of vibrations. It is definitely of benefit to the people who participate in it. But again I would say that the effect or benefit of this sacrifice will be richer to the extent that the reading is done with understanding and above all with soul surrender. It shouldn't become a mere ritual.
Sri Aurobindo's mantric lines, repeated one after the other, will always have their power; but the power will be much greater if the mind can participate, and the will and the heart.
I have also heard of some groups who select one line that seems to have a particular mantric power and then within the group they chant that line many, many times. They concentrate on that one special line, and try to take its vibrations deep into themselves. Again I am sure that this is very beneficial to those who practice it.
In that way the words enter very deeply into the consciousness. There they resonate and do their work, and perhaps not just the surface meaning but the deeper meaning and the deeper vibrations may reveal their full depth to those who undertake this exercise if it is done with self-dedication, with a true aspiration to internalise the heart of the meaning, not just as a mere repetition.
At another end of the spectrum of possible approaches to Savitri, we can say there would be the aesthetic approach, the approach of enjoying it for its poetic beauty. I met a gentleman a couple of months ago, who told me, "We have faith in Sri Aurobindo, but it is so difficult to understand his books. We tried with The Life Divine, we tried with The Synthesis of Yoga but we found them so difficult. ~ collab summer & fall 2011,
956:Will we see the human behind the ink? The heart that dared to hold the brush dripping with color. Remember that she was the courageous one. That she was the one who showed up. Took the risk. Braved the secret disappointments of others. And lived. And made her mark.
I love her for doing that.
And therefore I can love her work.....
There is a burst of courage that will explode off the canvas if we don't shrink back afraid. The moment the painter laid down her brush and stepped back, pleased, is when she allowed that painting to steal a few beats of her vey own heart for you.The viewer. Close your eyes and receive this very human gift without any demand for more or better. And just show up and live.

Show up.
People need you. People need me. People need to know God's compassion is alive and winning the epic battle of good verses evil.
Put some paint on the emptiness. Color-correct your perspective. Forget the cravings for comfort zones. Trade your comfort for compassion. Don't welcome hardness of heat as easiness of life. Get wet with paint. Put the brush to the canvas. Own it. Declare yourself a painter. And when someone steals all the lines from your coloring book, determine to color the world anyhow with the same generosity of compassion that God offers every day.
Be like Him. The creator, the Master Artist.
Don't be like them. The hard-hearted haters. The ones who refuse to admit that their coloring books are missing lines too. The ones that refuse to break secrets with their fellow humans. The ones who would rather criticize than comfort. The ones who are loud with their opinions but who have never suffered with a blank canvas.
Grab the brush, and light the world with your color and attempts at creation. Don't try to be perfect. Don't pretend it's even possible. Don't apologize or strategize. And don't minimize that you are crushing fear and judgment with every stroke. You are walking the way of the artist. You are simply showing up with compassion. I love you for that. I love whatever is about to come to life on your canvas to the glory of our Almighty Creator. God. The redeemer of dust. The redeemer of us. ~ Lysa TerKeurst,
957:Early naturalists talked often about “deep time”—the perception they had, contemplating the grandeur of this valley or that rock basin, of the profound slowness of nature. But the perspective changes when history accelerates. What lies in store for us is more like what aboriginal Australians, talking with Victorian anthropologists, called “dreamtime,” or “everywhen”: the semi-mythical experience of encountering, in the present moment, an out-of-time past, when ancestors, heroes, and demigods crowded an epic stage. You can find it already by watching footage of an iceberg collapsing into the sea—a feeling of history happening all at once. It is. The summer of 2017, in the Northern Hemisphere, brought unprecedented extreme weather: three major hurricanes arising in quick succession in the Atlantic; the epic “500,000-year” rainfall of Hurricane Harvey, dropping on Houston a million gallons of water for nearly every single person in the entire state of Texas; the wildfires of California, nine thousand of them burning through more than a million acres, and those in icy Greenland, ten times bigger than those in 2014; the floods of South Asia, clearing 45 million from their homes. Then the record-breaking summer of 2018 made 2017 seem positively idyllic. It brought an unheard-of global heat wave, with temperatures hitting 108 in Los Angeles, 122 in Pakistan, and 124 in Algeria. In the world’s oceans, six hurricanes and tropical storms appeared on the radars at once, including one, Typhoon Mangkhut, that hit the Philippines and then Hong Kong, killing nearly a hundred and wreaking a billion dollars in damages, and another, Hurricane Florence, which more than doubled the average annual rainfall in North Carolina, killing more than fifty and inflicting $17 billion worth of damage. There were wildfires in Sweden, all the way in the Arctic Circle, and across so much of the American West that half the continent was fighting through smoke, those fires ultimately burning close to 1.5 million acres. Parts of Yosemite National Park were closed, as were parts of Glacier National Park in Montana, where temperatures also topped 100. In 1850, the area had 150 glaciers; today, all but 26 are melted. ~ David Wallace Wells,
958:So then let the Adept set this sigil upon all the Words he hath writ in the book of the Works of his Will. And let him then end all, saying: Such are the Words!2 For by this he maketh proclamation before all them that be about his Circle that these Words are true and puissant, binding what he would bind, and loosing what he would loose. Let the Adept perform this ritual right, perfect in every part thereof, once daily for one moon, then twice, at dawn and dusk, for two moons; next thrice, noon added, for three moons; afterwards, midnight making up his course, for four moons four times every day. Then let the Eleventh Moon be consecrated wholly to this Work; let him be instant in constant ardour, dismissing all but his sheer needs to eat and sleep.3 For know that the true Formula4 whose virtue sufficed the Beast in this Attainment, was thus:

INVOKE OFTEN

So may all men come at last to the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel: thus sayeth The Beast, and prayeth his own Angel that this Book be as a burning Lamp, and as a living Spring, for Light and Life to them that read therein.

1. There is an alternative spelling, TzBA-F, where the Root, "an Host," has the value of 93. The Practicus should revise this Ritual throughout in the Light of his personal researches in the Qabalah, and make it his own peculiar property. The spelling here suggested implies that he who utters the Word affirms his allegiance to the symbols 93 and 6; that he is a warrior in the army of Will, and of the Sun. 93 is also the number of AIWAZ and 6 of The Beast.
2. The consonants of LOGOS, "Word," add (Hebrew values) to 93 [reading the Sigma as Samekh = 60; reading it as Shin = 300 gives 333], and ΕΠΗ, "Words" (whence "Epic") has also that value; ΕΙ∆Ε ΤΑ ΕΠΗ might be the phrase here intended; its number is 418. This would then assert the accomplishment of the Great Work; this is the natural conclusion of the Ritual. Cf. CCXX, III, 75.
3. These needs are modified during the process of Initiation both as to quantity and quality. One should not become anxious about one's phyiscal or mental health on à priori grounds, but pay attention only to indubitable symptoms of distress should such arise. ~ Aleister Crowley, Liber Samekh,
959:Language as a Prison

The Philippines did have a written language before the Spanish colonists arrived, contrary to what many of those colonists subsequently claimed. However, it was a language that some theorists believe was mainly used as a mnemonic device for epic poems. There was simply no need for a European-style written language in a decentralized land of small seaside fishing villages that were largely self-sufficient.

One theory regarding language is that it is primarily a useful tool born out of a need for control. In this theory written language was needed once top-down administration of small towns and villages came into being. Once there were bosses there arose a need for written language. The rise of the great metropolises of Ur and Babylon made a common written language an absolute necessity—but it was only a tool for the administrators. Administrators and rulers needed to keep records and know names— who had rented which plot of land, how many crops did they sell, how many fish did they catch, how many children do they have, how many water buffalo? More important, how much then do they owe me? In this account of the rise of written language, naming and accounting seem to be language's primary "civilizing" function. Language and number are also handy for keeping track of the movement of heavenly bodies, crop yields, and flood cycles. Naturally, a version of local oral languages was eventually translated into symbols as well, and nonadministrative words, the words of epic oral poets, sort of went along for the ride, according to this version.

What's amazing to me is that if we accept this idea, then what may have begun as an instrument of social and economic control has now been internalized by us as a mark of being civilized. As if being controlled were, by inference, seen as a good thing, and to proudly wear the badge of this agent of control—to be able to read and write—makes us better, superior, more advanced. We have turned an object of our own oppression into something we now think of as virtuous. Perfect! We accept written language as something so essential to how we live and get along in the world that we feel and recognize its presence as an exclusively positive thing, a sign of enlightenment. We've come to love the chains that bind us, that control us, for we believe that they are us (161-2). ~ David Byrne,
960:When people dis fantasy—mainstream readers and SF readers alike—they are almost always talking about one sub-genre of fantastic literature. They are talking about Tolkien, and Tolkien's innumerable heirs. Call it 'epic', or 'high', or 'genre' fantasy, this is what fantasy has come to mean. Which is misleading as well as unfortunate.

Tolkien is the wen on the arse of fantasy literature. His oeuvre is massive and contagious—you can't ignore it, so don't even try. The best you can do is consciously try to lance the boil. And there's a lot to dislike—his cod-Wagnerian pomposity, his boys-own-adventure glorying in war, his small-minded and reactionary love for hierarchical status-quos, his belief in absolute morality that blurs moral and political complexity. Tolkien's clichés—elves 'n' dwarfs 'n' magic rings—have spread like viruses. He wrote that the function of fantasy was 'consolation', thereby making it an article of policy that a fantasy writer should mollycoddle the reader.

That is a revolting idea, and one, thankfully, that plenty of fantasists have ignored. From the Surrealists through the pulps—via Mervyn Peake and Mikhael Bulgakov and Stefan Grabiński and Bruno Schulz and Michael Moorcock and M. John Harrison and I could go on—the best writers have used the fantastic aesthetic precisely to challenge, to alienate, to subvert and undermine expectations.

Of course I'm not saying that any fan of Tolkien is no friend of mine—that would cut my social circle considerably. Nor would I claim that it's impossible to write a good fantasy book with elves and dwarfs in it—Michael Swanwick's superb ,
961:When people dis fantasy—mainstream readers and SF readers alike—they are almost always talking about one sub-genre of fantastic literature. They are talking about Tolkien, and Tolkien's innumerable heirs. Call it 'epic', or 'high', or 'genre' fantasy, this is what fantasy has come to mean. Which is misleading as well as unfortunate.

Tolkien is the wen on the arse of fantasy literature. His oeuvre is massive and contagious—you can't ignore it, so don't even try. The best you can do is consciously try to lance the boil. And there's a lot to dislike—his cod-Wagnerian pomposity, his boys-own-adventure glorying in war, his small-minded and reactionary love for hierarchical status-quos, his belief in absolute morality that blurs moral and political complexity. Tolkien's clichés—elves 'n' dwarfs 'n' magic rings—have spread like viruses. He wrote that the function of fantasy was 'consolation', thereby making it an article of policy that a fantasy writer should mollycoddle the reader.

That is a revolting idea, and one, thankfully, that plenty of fantasists have ignored. From the Surrealists through the pulps—via Mervyn Peake and Mikhael Bulgakov and Stefan Grabiński and Bruno Schulz and Michael Moorcock and M. John Harrison and I could go on—the best writers have used the fantastic aesthetic precisely to challenge, to alienate, to subvert and undermine expectations.

Of course I'm not saying that any fan of Tolkien is no friend of mine—that would cut my social circle considerably. Nor would I claim that it's impossible to write a good fantasy book with elves and dwarfs in it—Michael Swanwick's superb ,
962:At Sea
When the investing darkness growls,
And deep reverberates to deep;
When keyhole whines and chimney howls,
And all the roofs and windows weep;
Then, through the doorless walls of sleep,
The still-sealed ear and shuttered sight,
Phantoms of memory steal and creep,
The very ghosts of sound and light-Dream-visions and dream-voices of a bygone night.
I see again, I hear again,
Where lightnings flash and house-eaves drip,
A flying swirl of waves and rain-That storm-path between Sound and Rip.
I feel the swaying of the ship
In every gust that rocks the trees,
And taste that brine upon my lip
And smell the freshness of the breeze
That sped us through the welter of those racing seas.
I hear the menace of the call
To rope and rivet, wheel and mast,
In the swift onrush of the squall,
The challenge of the thundering blast
To daring men as it sweeps past;
And in my dream I have no dread.
Rivet and rope are firm and fast,
The clear lights shining, green and red,
The quiet eyes of sentry watching overhead.
What epic battles pass unsung!
It was a war of gods befell
On that wild night when we were young.
They rode, like cavalry of hell,
The mighty winds, the monstrous swell,
On their white horses, fierce and fleet;
They stood at bay, invincible,
69
Where pulsed beneath our sliding feet
The faithful iron heart that never lost a beat.
How the sharp sea-spume lashed and stung!
How the salt sea-wind tugged and tare
And clawed and mauled us where we clung,
With panting breasts and streaming hair,
To our frail eyrie in mid-air!
How we exulted in the fight-With neither haste nor halt to dare
Those Titans furies in their might,
Undaunted and unswerving in our insect flight!
No lap of exquisite repose!
A mortar wherein souls are brayed;
An anvil ringing to the blows
Whereby true men are shaped, and made
Divinely strong and unafraid.
Such gallant sailor-men there be-Never unready or dismayed,
Though 't's the face of death they see
In cyclone, fire and fog, and white surf on the lee.
Not only in the sylvan bower,
On dreaming hill, by sleeping mere,
The holy place--the sacred hour.
Beset by every form of fear,
Darkness ahead and danger near,
Sorely hard-driven and hard-prest,
But still unspent and of good cheer-He finds them who can pass the test,
Who never winks an eye and never stays to rest
~ Ada Cambridge,
963:Hey!” a voice calls out behind us, and we turn to find Ryder standing beside the row of orange lockers outside Mr. Jepsen’s classroom. I have no idea why he’s out of class early, and I don’t care. “I just heard the announcement--congrats.”
“Thanks,” Morgan chirps. “This is epic, right? Both of us.”
Ryder nods, his gaze shifting from Morgan to me.
I duck my head, averting my eyes. This is worse than when I hated him, I realize. At least then, it wasn’t awkward. I could just ignore him and go about my business. Now I feel all queasy and mad and breathless and guilty. I need to get away from him. Fast.
Mercifully, Morgan glances down at her watch. “We gotta get going. There’s a meeting in the media center.”
“Right,” Ryder says. “But, uh…Jemma, could I talk to you for a second after school today? Before practice, maybe?”
My gaze snaps up to meet his. “I…um, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“I’ll be quick,” he says. “Actually, maybe I’ll come over to your house after dinner. That way I can say hi to Nan.”
“She’s…really not up to visitors.”
“Really?” He fixes me with a stare, one brow raised in disbelief. “’Cause your mom said just the opposite.”
Crap. Now what? I’m out of excuses. Besides, the last thing I want to do is pique Morgan’s curiosity. “Oh, fine. Whatever.”
“Great. See you then.” He turns and heads back into the classroom without a backward glance.
I have no clue what he wants to talk about. Things are already uncomfortable enough between us as it is. No use making it worse by discussing things that don’t need to be discussed. We made out, even though I hadn’t bothered to break up with Patrick first. It was a mistake--a big mistake. End of story.
The memory of that night hits me full force--his shirt was off; mine was close to it. My cheeks flare with sudden heat as I recall the feel of his fingertips skimming up my sides, moving beneath my bra as he kissed me like no one’s kissed me before. Ho-ly crap.
Stop.
“What was that about?” Morgan asks me as we continue on our way. “He was acting kinda weird, wasn’t he?”
“I didn’t notice,” I say with a shrug, going for nonchalance. “Anyway, we should hurry. We’re probably late already.”
“Maybe he wants you to ask him to escort you,” she teases, hurrying her step.
I match my pace to hers, needing to take two steps for every one of hers. “Yeah, right,” I say breathlessly.
“Hey, you never know.” She looks at me and winks. “Weirder things have happened.”
Oh, man. She has no idea. ~ Kristi Cook,
964:Whenever people come to a service at your church, they should hear in some way that we are all sinners in need of grace, but that grace has been extended to us in Jesus Christ. His righteousness has been imputed to us, and in His cross God’s wrath toward us has been removed if we will hear, submit, and believe. Every week someone should proclaim the gospel, no matter what the topic is. If we’re talking about holiness, about manhood, about marriage, parenting, money, or any particular biblical command, we need to teach it and talk about it in view of the gospel, always bringing it back to the epic story of God’s redemption.

For this is how we inspire people to seek their place in His bigger story. This is how the desire for multiplication keeps being stirred in the hearts of individuals living in community. This is how the seeds of new relationships are stirred into growth, all the way from personal interactions with people down the street to church-planting projects with people in other parts of the city, state, region or world. As people continually embrace and understand the gospel, His love supernaturally compels them to invest their lives in ensuring the gospel is embraced by others. People who own the gospel themselves don’t want to be the only ones who own the gospel.

A Creature centered on Jesus multiplies both organically and organisationally. People within the church multiply as they live with “a mission of reconciliation” on the forefront of their minds. Typically church leaders long for a program at this point, a method to help people within the church multiply. And while these ideas are grounded in sincere motivations, the answer is not another program. Organic multiplication simply happens as people are constantly and continually refreshed with the gospel and reminded of their part in the greater story.

...

At the same time, a church consumed with Jesus will be driven to rally people around focused multiplication. A church will be driven to organisational multiplication, a leveraging of resources to ensure other Jesus-centered churches around the world are planted. There will always be a deep relationship between churches embracing the gospel and those churches multiplying and planting new churches. For as a church feasts on Christ’s mission, she is driven to multiply. She rallies leaders, leverages resources, and challenges people to participate in the beautiful birth of churches that are grounded in Jesus.

Jesus spoke His Church into existence. She is formed by the Word. When a local church lives as a local Creature of the Word, she is matured as she worships, lives in community, serves and multiplies. ~ Matt Chandler,
965:...while epic fantasy is based on the fairy tale of the just war, that’s not one you’ll find in Grimm or Disney, and most will never recognize the shape of it. I think the fantasy genre pitches its tent in the medieval campground for the very reason that we even bother to write stories about things that never happened in the first place: because it says something subtle and true about our own world, something it is difficult to say straight out, with a straight face. Something you need tools to say, you need cheat codes for the human brain--a candy princess or a sugar-coated unicorn to wash down the sour taste of how bad things can really get.

See, I think our culture has a slash running through the middle of it, too. Past/Future, Conservative/Liberal, Online/Offline. Virgin/Whore. And yes: Classical/Medieval. I think we’re torn between the Classical Narrative of Self and the Medieval Narrative of Self, between the choice of Achilles and Keep Calm and Carry On.

The Classical internal monologue goes like this: do anything, anything, only don’t be forgotten. Yes, this one sacrificed his daughter on a slab at Aulis, that one married his mother and tore out his eyes, and oh that guy ate his kids in a pie. But you remember their names, don’t you? So it’s all good in the end. Give a Greek soul a choice between a short life full of glory and a name echoing down the halls of time and a long, gentle life full of children and a quiet sort of virtue, and he’ll always go down in flames. That’s what the Iliad is all about, and the Odyssey too. When you get to Hades, you gotta have a story to tell, because the rest of eternity is just forgetting and hoping some mortal shows up on a quest and lets you drink blood from a bowl so you can remember who you were for one hour.

And every bit of cultural narrative in America says that we are all Odysseus, we are all Agamemnon, all Atreus, all Achilles. That we as a nation made that choice and chose glory and personal valor, and woe betide any inconvenient “other people” who get in our way. We tell the tales around the campfire of men who came from nothing to run dotcom empires, of a million dollars made overnight, of an actress marrying a prince from Monaco, of athletes and stars and artists and cowboys and gangsters and bootleggers and talk show hosts who hitched up their bootstraps and bent the world to their will. Whose names you all know. And we say: that can be each and every one of us and if it isn’t, it’s your fault. You didn’t have the excellence for it. You didn’t work hard enough. The story wasn’t about you, and the only good stories are the kind that have big, unignorable, undeniable heroes. ~ Catherynne M Valente,
966:Zach: Are you close with your brother? He’s partially to blame for the wrong number thing, isn’t he?

* * *

Me: Kind of. Yeah, we’re close. My mom worked at the hospital so it was usually just us two fending for ourselves.

* * *

Me: Okay, so I shouldn’t say fending for ourselves. That makes me sound like a dick and unappreciative of all my mom did. We just spent many nights just the two of us because my mom was a hardworking single lady and she wasn’t searching for a man to put a ring on it because she. Is. Fierce.

* * *

Zach: I bet your mom is the shit.

* * *

Me: She really is. You should meet her sometime.

* * *

Me: Oh, awkward…I’m talking about meeting the family and we’re not even officially a couple.

* * *

Zach: We’re not?

* * *

Me: We are?

My phone lights up with a call from Zach.

“Are you saying we aren’t dating?” he says before I can say anything.

“We are…”

“Are you saying you’re wanting to see other people?”

“No…”

“So then we’re a couple.”

I’m quiet, unsure what to say. I’m so scared to label this, which is stupid, I know.

“Delia?”

“Yes, Zach?”

“Do you not want to be?”

I take a deep breath and push out the answer I know is right, even though my head is saying otherwise. “No. I want to be a couple.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. I’m just…scared. I know I shouldn’t put that all on you, but you’re kind of the reason I’m scared. I like you, Zach—a lot—but what if this doesn’t work out? What if we jump in too soon?”

He sighs. “Remember when we were talking about our exes? About the lack of fireworks?”

“Yeah.”

“I swear to god, someone is going to swoop in and take my man card for this shit, but I felt them with you. When we first kissed, I knew right then you were worth jumping in with both feet and taking a risk.”

I don’t let myself overthink his words, wanting to keep my head level and clear.

“What if I’m not worth the risk?”

“We’ll never know if we don’t take it.”

“Say you’re a couple already, Dalilah!” Robbie’s voice comes loud through the speaker. “He paused the movie during an epic scene!”

“How many times have I told you that her name is Delia. Deal-ya. Get it?”

“You talk about me with Robbie?” I ask.

“Sometimes.”

“Say yes! He looks like someone kicked his goat!”

“Shut the fuck up, Robbie!”

I laugh. “If I say yes, will he stop shouting?”

“YES!” Robbie shouts again.

“I’ll take the risk, Zach, but you better be worth it.”

“You’ve seen my Harry Potter underwear—you know I’m worth it.” Then he whispers, “Wink. ~ Teagan Hunter,
967:[L]et us not overlook the further great fact, that not only does science underlie sculpture, painting, music, poetry, but that science is itself poetic. The current opinion that science and poetry are opposed is a delusion. ... On the contrary science opens up realms of poetry where to the unscientific all is a blank. Those engaged in scientific researches constantly show us that they realize not less vividly, but more vividly, than others, the poetry of their subjects. Whoever will dip into Hugh Miller's works on geology, or read Mr. Lewes's “Seaside Studies,” will perceive that science excites poetry rather than extinguishes it. And whoever will contemplate the life of Goethe will see that the poet and the man of science can co-exist in equal activity. Is it not, indeed, an absurd and almost a sacrilegious belief that the more a man studies Nature the less he reveres it? Think you that a drop of water, which to the vulgar eye is but a drop of water, loses anything in the eye of the physicist who knows that its elements are held together by a force which, if suddenly liberated, would produce a flash of lightning? Think you that what is carelessly looked upon by the uninitiated as a mere snow-flake, does not suggest higher associations to one who has seen through a microscope the wondrously varied and elegant forms of snow-crystals? Think you that the rounded rock marked with parallel scratches calls up as much poetry in an ignorant mind as in the mind of a geologist, who knows that over this rock a glacier slid a million years ago? The truth is, that those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded. Whoever has not in youth collected plants and insects, knows not half the halo of interest which lanes and hedge-rows can assume. Whoever has not sought for fossils, has little idea of the poetical associations that surround the places where imbedded treasures were found. Whoever at the seaside has not had a microscope and aquarium, has yet to learn what the highest pleasures of the seaside are. Sad, indeed, is it to see how men occupy themselves with trivialities, and are indifferent to the grandest phenomena—care not to understand the architecture of the universe, but are deeply interested in some contemptible controversy about the intrigues of Mary Queen of Scots!—are learnedly critical over a Greek ode, and pass by without a glance that grand epic... upon the strata of the Earth! ~ Herbert Spencer,
968:An imaginary circle of empathy is drawn by each person. It circumscribes the person at some distance, and corresponds to those things in the world that deserve empathy. I like the term "empathy" because it has spiritual overtones. A term like "sympathy" or "allegiance" might be more precise, but I want the chosen term to be slightly mystical, to suggest that we might not be able to fully understand what goes on between us and others, that we should leave open the possibility that the relationship can't be represented in a digital database.

If someone falls within your circle of empathy, you wouldn't want to see him or her killed. Something that is clearly outside the circle is fair game. For instance, most people would place all other people within the circle, but most of us are willing to see bacteria killed when we brush our
teeth, and certainly don't worry when we see an inanimate rock tossed aside to keep a trail clear.

The tricky part is that some entities reside close to the edge of the circle. The deepest controversies often involve whether something or someone should lie just inside or just outside the circle. For instance, the idea of slavery depends on the placement of the slave outside the circle, to make some people nonhuman. Widening the circle to include all people and end slavery has been one of the epic strands of the human story - and it isn't quite over yet.

A great many other controversies fit well in the model. The fight over abortion asks whether a fetus or embryo should be in the circle or not, and the animal rights debate asks the same about animals.

When you change the contents of your circle, you change your conception of yourself. The center of the circle shifts as its perimeter is changed. The liberal impulse is to expand the circle, while conservatives tend to want to restrain or even contract the circle.

Empathy Inflation and Metaphysical Ambiguity

Are there any legitimate reasons not to expand the circle as much as possible?

There are.

To expand the circle indefinitely can lead to oppression, because the rights of potential entities (as perceived by only some people) can conflict with the rights of indisputably real people. An obvious example of this is found in the abortion debate. If outlawing abortions did not involve commandeering control of the bodies of other people (pregnant women, in this case), then there wouldn't be much controversy. We would find an easy accommodation.

Empathy inflation can also lead to the lesser, but still substantial, evils of incompetence, trivialization, dishonesty, and narcissism. You cannot live, for example, without killing bacteria. Wouldn't you be projecting your own fantasies on single-cell organisms that would be indifferent to them at best? Doesn't it really become about you instead of the cause at that point? ~ Jaron Lanier,
969:Failures in Infinitives
why am i doing this? Failure
to keep my work in order so as
to be able to find things
to paint the house
to earn enough money to live on
to reorganize the house so as
to be able to paint the house &
to be able to find things and
earn enough money so as
to be able to put books together
to publish works and books
to have time
to answer mail & phone calls
to wash the windows
to make the kitchen better to work in
to have the money to buy a simple radio
to listen to while working in the kitchen
to know enough to do grownups work in the world
to transcend my attitude
to an enforced poverty
to be able to expect my checks
to arrive on time in the mail
to not always expect that they will not
to forget my mother's attitudes on humility or
to continue
to assume them without suffering
to forget how my mother taunted my father
about money, my sister about i cant say it
failure to forget mother and father enough
to be older, to forget them
to forget my obsessive uncle
to remember them some other way
to remember their bigotry accurately
to cease to dream about lions which always is
to dream about them, I put my hand in the lion's mouth
to assuage its anger, this is not a failure
to notice that's how they were; failure
to repot the plants
to be neat
15
to create & maintain clear surfaces
to let a couch or a chair be a place for sitting down
and not a table
to let a table be a place for eating & not a desk
to listen to more popular music
to learn the lyrics
to not need money so as
to be able to write all the time
to not have to pay rent, con ed or telephone bills
to forget parents' and uncle's early deaths so as
to be free of expecting care; failure
to love objects
to find them valuable in any way; failure
to preserve objects
to buy them and
to now let them fall by the wayside; failure
to think of poems as objects
to think of the body as an object; failure
to believe; failure
to know nothing; failure
to know everything; failure
to remember how to spell failure; failure
to believe the dictionary & that there is anything
to teach; failure
to teach properly; failure
to believe in teaching
to just think that everybody knows everything
which is not my failure; I know everyone does; failure
to see not everyone believes this knowing and
to think we cannot last till the success of knowing
to wash all the dishes only takes ten minutes
to write a thousand poems in an hour
to do an epic, open the unwashed window
to let in you know who and
to spirit thoughts and poems away from concerns
to just let us know, we will
to paint your ceilings & walls for free
~ Bernadette Mayer,
970:St. Clair tucks the tips of his fingers into his pockets and kicks the cobblestones with the toe of his boots. "Well?" he finally asks.
"Thank you." I'm stunned. "It was really sweet of you to bring me here."
"Ah,well." He straightens up and shrugs-that full-bodied French shrug he does so well-and reassumes his usual, assured state of being. "Have to start somewhere. Now make a wish."
"Huh?" I have such a way with words. I should write epic poetry or jingles for cat food commercials.
He smiles. "Place your feet on the star, and make a wish."
"Oh.Okay,sure." I slide my feet together so I'm standing in the center. "I wish-"
"Don't say it aloud!" St. Clair rushes forward, as if to stop my words with his body,and my stomach flips violently. "Don't you know anything about making wishes? You only get a limited number in life. Falling stars, eyelashes,dandelions-"
"Birthday candles."
He ignores the dig. "Exactly. So you ought to take advantage of them when they arise,and superstition says if you make a wish on that star, it'll come true." He pauses before continuing. "Which is better than the other one I've heard."
"That I'll die a painful death of poisoning, shooting,beating, and drowning?"
"Hypothermia,not drowning." St. Clair laughs. He has a wonderful, boyish laugh. "But no. I've heard anyone who stands here is destined to return to Paris someday. And as I understand it,one year for you is one year to many. Am I right?"
I close my eyes. Mom and Seany appear before me. Bridge.Toph.I nod.
"All right,then.So keep your eyes closed.And make a wish."
I take a deep breath. The cool dampness of the nearby trees fills my lungs. What do I want? It's a difficult quesiton.
I want to go home,but I have to admit I've enjoyed tonight. And what if this is the only time in my entire life I visit Paris? I know I just told St. Clair that I don't want to be here, but there's a part of me-a teeny, tiny part-that's curious. If my father called tomorrow and ordered me home,I might be disappointed. I still haven't seen the Mona Lisa. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower.Walked beneath the Arc de Triomphe.
So what else do I want?
I want to feel Toph's lips again.I want him to wait.But there's another part of me,a part I really,really hate,that knows even if we do make it,I'd still move away for college next year.So I'd see him this Christmas and next summer,and then...would that be it?
And then there's the other thing.
The thing I'm trying to ignore. The thing I shouldn't want,the thing I can't have.
And he's standing in front of me right now.
So what do I wish for? Something I'm not sure I want? Someone I'm not sure I need? Or someone I know I can't have?
Screw it.Let the fates decide.
I wish for the thing that is best for me.
How's that for a generalization? I open my eyes,and the wind is blowing harder. St. Clair pushes a strand of hair from his eyes. "Must have been a good one," he says. ~ Stephanie Perkins,
971:The Conference Of The (Underemployed) Birds
"It shows the top half of the workforce enjoying permanent, well-paid, fulltime jobs,
while the bottom half can find only casual, poorly-paid, part-time work which, as
Labour
market economist Professor Sue Richardson warned this week, was creating a
class of
"excluded and dangerous" men with incomes to low to support a
family." - The Age, October 04, 2003.
"My discourse is sans words, sans tongue, sans sound: understand it then,
sans mind, sans ear."
- Farid Ud-Din Attar, The Conference of the Birds
(i)
A Willy-Wagtails' call intercepts the morning. Birds were real once, like jobs.
The modem's dial-up scream is cut short; why is our technology suffering so?
Fake, Australian accents in the call centre aviary: Calcutta nest robbers gloat.
A taxidermy of outsourced work: ditto, we're all stuffed on the global floor.
39
Bottom of the bird market. This new flu's crashed like tech stocks, Acme trap
For the Roadrunner managerial class, the coyote - disenfranchised American?
(ii)
Magpies don't attack in the open anymore, have you noticed: phenomena?
Phone tab's the way forward. Keep an eye on your receiver, not the skies.
There are new powers afoot for dealing with these full employment refos,
Our government issues wide-brimmed hats with strings of corks attached.
The contemporary job market has a thin eggshell; depleted proteins crack.
An excluded & dangerous class birthed? They backed job terrorism not us.
(iii)
I saw a hoopoe once. Was it Jaipur? Its crown of truth strutted on the lawn,
Painted a post-colonial green. What good is spiritual knowledge without law?
40
You will play an integral role in this dynamic environment by fudging your
Work history for sure. Service orientate your brain - lively, world class, lame.
Dangerous as ideas? There's a metal storm inside your head. Try Sufism?
Was it John Lennon or Steve McQueen who went on about "ism ism ism?
"
(iv)
There are nightingales here reputedly. Wasn't it someone from myth who
Couldn't stand being unemployed anymore & turned themselves into one?
Hit an epic glass ceiling probably. Better to be amorous than under-employed?
There's no new twist in the figures though. The virtual exclusion of women
From net growth in full-time job mythology is eons old. Sumerians started it.
Gilgamesh's entrapment of Enkidu needed a woman's art: ‘Wanted Harlot.'
(v)
41
Australia has plenty of parrots, but cockatiels inhabit our universal currency
Of shame. See them locked up in Athens, Rome, Madrid, Delhi & Bangkok.
Feathered service economies, budgerigars tell beak fortunes in Iranian streets.
Collars of gold chained to human profit. Flocks flee drought & agricultural rut.
We even killed off one sub-species called ‘Paradise', cleared full-time underbrush.
& if they were flightless, then we paid out redundancies see: dodo, puffin & moa.
~ B. R. Dionysius,
972:It is a painful irony that silent movies were driven out of existence just as they were reaching a kind of glorious summit of creativity and imagination, so that some of the best silent movies were also some of the last ones. Of no film was that more true than Wings, which opened on August 12 at the Criterion Theatre in New York, with a dedication to Charles Lindbergh. The film was the conception of John Monk Saunders, a bright young man from Minnesota who was also a Rhodes scholar, a gifted writer, a handsome philanderer, and a drinker, not necessarily in that order. In the early 1920s, Saunders met and became friends with the film producer Jesse Lasky and Lasky’s wife, Bessie. Saunders was an uncommonly charming fellow, and he persuaded Lasky to buy a half-finished novel he had written about aerial combat in the First World War. Fired with excitement, Lasky gave Saunders a record $39,000 for the idea and put him to work on a script. Had Lasky known that Saunders was sleeping with his wife, he might not have been quite so generous. Lasky’s choice for director was unexpected but inspired. William Wellman was thirty years old and had no experience of making big movies—and at $2 million Wings was the biggest movie Paramount had ever undertaken. At a time when top-rank directors like Ernst Lubitsch were paid $175,000 a picture, Wellman was given a salary of $250 a week. But he had one advantage over every other director in Hollywood: he was a World War I flying ace and intimately understood the beauty and enchantment of flight as well as the fearful mayhem of aerial combat. No other filmmaker has ever used technical proficiency to better advantage. Wellman had had a busy life already. Born into a well-to-do family in Brookline, Massachusetts, he had been a high school dropout, a professional ice hockey player, a volunteer in the French Foreign Legion, and a member of the celebrated Lafayette Escadrille flying squad. Both France and the United States had decorated him for gallantry. After the war he became friends with Douglas Fairbanks, who got him a job at the Goldwyn studios as an actor. Wellman hated acting and switched to directing. He became what was known as a contract director, churning out low-budget westerns and other B movies. Always temperamental, he was frequently fired from jobs, once for slapping an actress. He was a startling choice to be put in charge of such a challenging epic. To the astonishment of everyone, he now made one of the most intelligent, moving, and thrilling pictures ever made. Nothing was faked. Whatever the pilot saw in real life the audiences saw on the screen. When clouds or exploding dirigibles were seen outside airplane windows they were real objects filmed in real time. Wellman mounted cameras inside the cockpits looking out, so that the audiences had the sensation of sitting at the pilots’ shoulders, and outside the cockpit looking in, allowing close-up views of the pilots’ reactions. Richard Arlen and Buddy Rogers, the two male stars of the picture, had to be their own cameramen, activating cameras with a remote-control button. ~ Bill Bryson,
973:believe that this way of living, this focus on the present, the daily, the tangible, this intense concentration not on the news headlines but on the flowers growing in your own garden, the children growing in your own home, this way of living has the potential to open up the heavens, to yield a glittering handful of diamonds where a second ago there was coal. This way of living and noticing and building and crafting can crack through the movie sets and soundtracks that keep us waiting for our own life stories to begin, and set us free to observe the lives we have been creating all along without ever realizing it.
I don’t want to wait anymore. I choose to believe that there is nothing more sacred or profound than this day. I choose to believe that there may be a thousand big moments embedded in this day, waiting to be discovered like tiny shards of gold. The big moments are the daily, tiny moments of courage and forgiveness and hope that we grab on to and extend to one another. That’s the drama of life, swirling all around us, and generally I don’t even see it, because I’m too busy waiting to become whatever it is I think I am about to become. The big moments are in every hour, every conversation, every meal, every meeting.
The Heisman Trophy winner knows this. He knows that his big moment was not when they gave him the trophy. It was the thousand times he went to practice instead of going back to bed. It was the miles run on rainy days, the healthy meals when a burger sounded like heaven. That big moment represented and rested on a foundation of moments that had come before it.
I believe that if we cultivate a true attention, a deep ability to see what has been there all along, we will find worlds within us and between us, dreams and stories and memories spilling over. The nuances and shades and secrets and intimations of love and friendship and marriage an parenting are action-packed and multicolored, if you know where to look.
Today is your big moment. Moments, really. The life you’ve been waiting for is happening all around you. The scene unfolding right outside your window is worth more than the most beautiful painting, and the crackers and peanut butter that you’re having for lunch on the coffee table are as profound, in their own way, as the Last Supper. This is it. This is life in all its glory, swirling and unfolding around us, disguised as pedantic, pedestrian non-events. But pull of the mask and you will find your life, waiting to be made, chosen, woven, crafted.
Your life, right now, today, is exploding with energy and power and detail and dimension, better than the best movie you have ever seen. You and your family and your friends and your house and your dinner table and your garage have all the makings of a life of epic proportions, a story for the ages. Because they all are. Every life is.
You have stories worth telling, memories worth remembering, dreams worth working toward, a body worth feeding, a soul worth tending, and beyond that, the God of the universe dwells within you, the true culmination of super and natural.
You are more than dust and bones.
You are spirit and power and image of God.
And you have been given Today. ~ Shauna Niequist,
974:It’s taboo to admit that you’re lonely. You can make jokes about it, of course. You can tell people that you spend most of your time with Netflix or that you haven’t left the house today and you might not even go outside tomorrow. Ha ha, funny. But rarely do you ever tell people about the true depths of your loneliness, about how you feel more and more alienated from your friends each passing day and you’re not sure how to fix it. It seems like everyone is just better at living than you are.

A part of you knew this was going to happen. Growing up, you just had this feeling that you wouldn’t transition well to adult life, that you’d fall right through the cracks. And look at you now. La di da, it’s happening.

Your mother, your father, your grandparents: they all look at you like you’re some prized jewel and they tell you over and over again just how lucky you are to be young and have your whole life ahead of you. “Getting old ain’t for sissies,” your father tells you wearily.

You wish they’d stop saying these things to you because all it does is fill you with guilt and panic. All it does is remind you of how much you’re not taking advantage of your youth.

You want to kiss all kinds of different people, you want to wake up in a stranger’s bed maybe once or twice just to see if it feels good to feel nothing, you want to have a group of friends that feels like a tribe, a bonafide family. You want to go from one place to the next constantly and have your weekends feel like one long epic day. You want to dance to stupid music in your stupid room and have a nice job that doesn’t get in the way of living your life too much. You want to be less scared, less anxious, and more willing. Because if you’re closed off now, you can only imagine what you’ll be like later.

Every day you vow to change some aspect of your life and every day you fail. At this point, you’re starting to question your own power as a human being. As of right now, your fears have you beat. They’re the ones that are holding your twenties hostage.

Stop thinking that everyone is having more sex than you, that everyone has more friends than you, that everyone out is having more fun than you. Not because it’s not true (it might be!) but because that kind of thinking leaves you frozen. You’ve already spent enough time feeling like you’re stuck, like you’re watching your life fall through you like a fast dissolve and you’re unable to hold on to anything.

I don’t know if you ever get better. I don’t know if a person can just wake up one day and decide to be an active participant in their life. I’d like to think so. I’d like to think that people get better each and every day but that’s not really true. People get worse and it’s their stories that end up getting forgotten because we can’t stand an unhappy ending. The sick have to get better. Our normalcy depends upon it.

You have to value yourself. You have to want great things for your life. This sort of shit doesn’t happen overnight but it can and will happen if you want it.

Do you want it bad enough? Does the fear of being filled with regret in your thirties trump your fear of living today?

We shall see. ~ Ryan O Connell,
975:Blakeborough has never struck me as the kind of man to overlook criminal behavior, even in his brother.”
“True. He has a strong moral sense, even if he does hide it beneath an equally strong aversion to people.”
He drew back to stare at her. “Forgive me, sweeting, but I cannot imagine you married to him. His melancholy would give you fits within a month.”
“Right,” she teased, “because I’m much better off married to a man who follows plans so slavishly that he stays awake half the night for fear of oversleeping and missing the coronation.”
He arched an eyebrow. “I couldn’t sleep for watching you nurse Ambrose. It’s been some time since I…well…saw your charms unveiled in any other capacity. I have to take my pleasures where I may.”
“Aw, my poor dear,” she said in mock concern. Deciding to put him out of his misery, she added, “I ought to say that’s what you get for being so unfashionable as to share a bedchamber with your wife, but as it happens, Dr. Worth--”
The music abruptly ended, and the sound of a gong being struck broke into everyone’s conversations. They fell silent as Max went to stand at the entrance to the room with Victor and Isabella at his side.
“Attention, everyone!” Max clapped his cousin on the back. “I am proud and pleased to introduce to you the new owner of Manton’s Investigations.”
Cheers and applause ensued.
When it died down, Tristan called out, “So the legal machinations are finally done? Dom has actually let go of the thing at last?”
“I signed the papers yesterday,” Dom told his brother. He gazed fondly at Jane. “I decided I’d lost enough of my life to finding other people’s families. Now I’d rather spend time with my own.”
“I’ll bet that didn’t stop you from writing a contract of epic proportions.” Lisette grinned at her husband. “How many stipulations did Dom make before he agreed to complete the sale?”
“Only one, actually,” Max said.
Everyone’s jaw dropped, including Jane’s. She gaped at her husband. “Only one? You didn’t dictate how Victor is to run the thing and when and where and--”
“As you once said so eloquently, my love, ‘you can set a plan in motion, but as soon as it involves people, it will rarely commence exactly as you wish.’ There didn’t seem much point in setting forth a plan that wouldn’t be followed.” Dom smirked at her. “I do heed your trenchant observations, you know. Sometimes I even act on them.”
She was still staring at him incredulously when he shifted his gaze to Victor. “Besides, Victor is a good man. I trust him to uphold the reputation of Manton’s Investigations.”
Jane glanced at Victor. “You’re not going to change the name to ‘Cale Investigations’?”
Victor snorted. “I’d have to be mad. Who wants to start from scratch to build a company’s reputation? It’s known for excellence as Manton’s, and it will always be known as Manton’s, as long as I have anything to say about it.”
“So what was the one stipulation that Dom required?” Tristan asked.
Dom scowled. “That it never, in any official capacity, whether in interviews or correspondence or consultation, be referred to as ‘the Duke’s Men.’”
As everyone burst into laughter, Jane stretched up to kiss his cheek. “Now, that sounds more like you, my darling. ~ Sabrina Jeffries,
976:Coup D'Etat
I’m comfortable with your confronting me
hurling, albeit politely, the epic query
haunting your ‘tolerance’ and a fever
to my soul. It’s frankly a relief
decoding the cryptic cause of my exile
in the context of considering your phobia. So
here, the facts: boys of my generation
marching in front of our tanks to eat into
the landmines. Women not unlike my mother
buried neck-deep for transgression
before having their heads smashed with rocks.
Your tongue has already tried obfuscations
avoiding the ‘sensitive’ appellation; I put
our minds at (some) ease by offering the term
‘Muslim’, and using direct monosyllables
to terminate the confluence of innuendo:
“What went wrong?” I briefly catalogue
the points of my suppressed pride: Persian
poets, those geniuses; Islamic civilisation
an absolute paragon of the Middle Ages. ‘We’
achieved so much: algebra, alchemy, Alhambra
Aviccena, Omar Khayam, Rumi and Andalusia
and now beheaded journalists, banished feminists
persecuted writers and pulverised regimes. What
did go wrong? You don’t require my noting
British divide-and-conquer, Russian missiles
15
US uranium-depleted and cluster bombs; and let’s
please avoid Israel. So I propose a date: 19 August
1953; and the place, Tehran. The event
the calculated abortion of the incipient democracy
of my native land. You know about
the coup that crushed our future, engineered
by the CIA with the mullahs’ collusion
and our king’s utter complicity? You’re right
dismissing my narration as apologia
for a nation’s impotence. Why didn’t my
grandparents oppose the US-backed generals
in the streets of Tehran on the day our chosen
Prime Minister Mosaddegh was toppled? Where
were our prodigious poets and philosophers
when Eisenhower’s operatives signalled
to venal clerics and commanded the junta? Here,
more facts: hurt by the grotesque perfidy
Iranians of my parents’ generation mounted
a Revolution against the coup’s beneficiary
the Shah; then the Islamic Republic; Sharia law; war
with the US protégé Saddam; and now
terrorism, terror against terrorism, and the terrors
of a nuclear war between Iran and, yes, Israel. You
find my discourse cogent yet, or predictably
tendentious? A history lecture in need of
an addendum of objectivity? You’ve finally
terminated the small talk, tightened
your grimace. I repeat my own morose
16
volition to locate an answer. Yes, we will
otherwise be prey to perennial fears and
contemporaneous wars. What went wrong
with noble hopes, ‘religion of peace’ and all
the bridge-building and culture-crossing?
The soulfulness of Sufi poets and the magic
of Scheherazade’s stories. I feel your
disappointment. A romantic quest narrative
crusading knights vs. ardent Saracens
instead of Cold War intrigue and Third World
servitude. I grant something went wrong
all those years ago, and continues to afflict.
Things will keep going wrong. But what would I
know. I’m only traumatised and feverish
by the event’s effects, forced into perpetual
exile. I’ve only survived. What do you think?
~ Ali Alizadeh,
977:How did you even get in here?” I asked him. “Would you believe they leave the door open all night?” Gus asked. “Um, no,” I said. “As well you shouldn’t.” Gus smiled. “Anyway, I know it’s a bit self-aggrandizing.” “Hey, you’re stealing my eulogy,” Isaac said. “My first bit is about how you were a self-aggrandizing bastard.” I laughed. “Okay, okay,” Gus said. “At your leisure.” Isaac cleared his throat. “Augustus Waters was a self-aggrandizing bastard. But we forgive him. We forgive him not because he had a heart as figuratively good as his literal one sucked, or because he knew more about how to hold a cigarette than any nonsmoker in history, or because he got eighteen years when he should have gotten more.” “Seventeen,” Gus corrected. “I’m assuming you’ve got some time, you interrupting bastard. “I’m telling you,” Isaac continued, “Augustus Waters talked so much that he’d interrupt you at his own funeral. And he was pretentious: Sweet Jesus Christ, that kid never took a piss without pondering the abundant metaphorical resonances of human waste production. And he was vain: I do not believe I have ever met a more physically attractive person who was more acutely aware of his own physical attractiveness. “But I will say this: When the scientists of the future show up at my house with robot eyes and they tell me to try them on, I will tell the scientists to screw off, because I do not want to see a world without him.” I was kind of crying by then. “And then, having made my rhetorical point, I will put my robot eyes on, because I mean, with robot eyes you can probably see through girls’ shirts and stuff. Augustus, my friend, Godspeed.” Augustus nodded for a while, his lips pursed, and then gave Isaac a thumbs-up. After he’d recovered his composure, he added, “I would cut the bit about seeing through girls’ shirts.” Isaac was still clinging to the lectern. He started to cry. He pressed his forehead down to the podium and I watched his shoulders shake, and then finally, he said, “Goddamn it, Augustus, editing your own eulogy.” “Don’t swear in the Literal Heart of Jesus,” Gus said. “Goddamn it,” Isaac said again. He raised his head and swallowed. “Hazel, can I get a hand here?” I’d forgotten he couldn’t make his own way back to the circle. I got up, placed his hand on my arm, and walked him slowly back to the chair next to Gus where I’d been sitting. Then I walked up to the podium and unfolded the piece of paper on which I’d printed my eulogy. “My name is Hazel. Augustus Waters was the great star-crossed love of my life. Ours was an epic love story, and I won’t be able to get more than a sentence into it without disappearing into a puddle of tears. Gus knew. Gus knows. I will not tell you our love story, because—like all real love stories—it will die with us, as it should. I’d hoped that he’d be eulogizing me, because there’s no one I’d rather have…” I started crying. “Okay, how not to cry. How am I—okay. Okay.” I took a few breaths and went back to the page. “I can’t talk about our love story, so I will talk about math. I am not a mathematician, but I know this: There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There’s .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. ~ John Green,
978:HOW CAN I READ SAVITRI?
An open reply by Dr Alok Pandey to a fellow devotee

A GIFT OF LOVE TO THE WORLD
Most of all enjoy Savitri. It is Sri Aurobindo's gift of Love to the world. Read it from the heart with love and gratitude as companions and drown in its fiery bliss. That is the true understanding rather than one that comes by a constant churning of words in the head.

WHEN
Best would be to fix a time that works for you. One can always take out some time for the reading, even if it be late at night when one is done with all the daily works. Of course, a certain receptivity is needed. If one is too tired or the reading becomes too mechanical as a ritual routine to be somehow finished it tends to be less effective, as with anything else. Hence the advice is to read in a quiet receptive state.

THE PACE
As to the pace of reading it is best to slowly build up and keep it steady. To read a page or a passage daily is better than reading many pages one day and then few lines or none for days. This brings a certain discipline in the consciousness which makes one receptive. What it means is that one should fix up that one would read a few passages or a page or two daily, and then if an odd day one is enjoying and spontaneously wants to read more then one can go by the flow.

COMPLETE OR SELECTIONS?
It is best to read at least once from cover to cover. But if one is not feeling inclined for that do read some of the beautiful cantos and passages whose reference one can find in various places. This helps us familiarise with the epic and the style of poetry. Later one can go for the cover to cover reading.

READING ALOUD, SILENTLY, OR WRITING DOWN?
One can read it silently. Loud reading is needed only if one is unable to focus with silent reading. A mantra is more potent when read subtly. I am aware that some people recommend reading it aloud which is fine if that helps one better. A certain flexibility in these things is always good and rigid rules either ways are not helpful.

One can also write some of the beautiful passages with which one feels suddenly connected. It is a help in the yoga since such a writing involves the pouring in of the consciousness of Savitri through the brain and nerves and the hand.

Reflecting upon some of these magnificent lines and passages while one is engaged in one\s daily activities helps to create a background state for our inner being to get absorbed in Savitri more and more.

HOW DO I UNDERSTAND THE MEANING? DO I NEED A DICTIONARY?
It is helpful if a brief background about the Canto is known. This helps the mind top focus and also to keep in sync with the overall scene and sense of what is being read.

But it is best not to keep referring to the dictionary while reading. Let the overall sense emerge. Specifics can be done during a detailed reading later and it may not be necessary at all. Besides the sense that Sri Aurobindo has given to many words may not be accurately conveyed by the standard dictionaries. A flexibility is required to understand the subtle suggestions hinted at by the Master-poet.

In this sense Savitri is in the line of Vedic poetry using images that are at once profound as well as commonplace. That is the beauty of mystic poetry. These are things actually experienced and seen by Sri Aurobindo, and ultimately it is Their Grace that alone can reveal the intrinsic sense of this supreme revelation of the Supreme. ~ Dr Alok Pandey,
979:From La Pucelle: The Epic Of Joan Of Arc
––Listen my Prince. This is important. I could feel
the dew setting on the leaves and petals of lilies and camellias.
I was aware of the soil’s moisture being
absorbed by the roots of hollies and cedars. I could smell
the aroma of blooming jasmine and carnations. I could
taste the sweetness of wild berries and apples that hadn’t
ripened yet. My finger could already stroke the creeping
ivy that had not yet covered the oaks. And the immense moon
the heart of the vast mother nature, vitality
desire filling the universe from it…by God I was
so terrified to be there, alone, a lost little girl
in the presence of such greatness, and the white circle
was getting larger, expanding, devouring me
I was drowning in the heavenly brightness. What was
happening to me? The moon was now the shape
of an infinitely huge person’s face. No, don’t look at me
like that! By God I’m not lying. I saw this
huge face before me, a ghost, or a fairy, or a monster
whose eyes were a hundred stars, whose smile
the entire horizon, and I was on my knees by now
shivering, about to faint. I was screaming. Brightness
above the thing’s head, I couldn’t tell horns or
***
halo, glistening. Had a gigantic sword. And I
closed my eyes. I can’t believe how horrified I was. I thought
23
this thing, a demon, would kill me with its sword
but when I closed my eyes I saw, my Prince, I tell you
the truth: I saw houses burning, cities burning, countries
burning I saw hundreds of hundreds of soldiers of an unholy
empire destroying me, destroying the village, and
the whole world. I can’t remember if I saw anything more
that night before I collapsed after the first visitation
by Catherine of Alexandria herself, Matron Saint of Maidens.
II
––Well, no, I’m not mad. That’s what Mama thought
after one of my brothers found me passed out. She
became so angry. And vicious. When she found out
I hadn’t been to the stupid ceremony at the Hermitage
she lost her mind. She first broke a wooden ladle
on my back, then started whacking me with a broom
screaming: Jeannette, useless girl. Sick girl.
Shameful girl. After all I’ve done for you. Of course
I didn’t tell her what exactly I’d seen in the woods.
She would’ve said I was possessed by the Devil. I cried
for so many days, weeks, because now beautiful
Marguerite, all my friends, had been confirmed
as young women, started going to the village dances
without their parents, and they never took me. I don’t
know why I was all of a sudden so hated by everyone
and I kept getting so, so many pimples . . . no, I won’t
***
bore you with that my Prince. But you need to know
that I started going to the church frequently, and
24
started praying to the statue of Saint Catherine. I took
flowers, bread and wool to the alter, fasted every Friday
and said Pater Noster, Ave Maria and Credo in Mass
every Sunday. I confessed to our priest every week, then
every day. I spoke to Saint Catherine when there was
no one in the church. I knelt on the altar floor in the weak,
shimmering light of the votive candles and begged Her
to guide me. I wanted Mama to love me again. I wanted
Marguerite to stop flirting with idiot boys and ask me
over to her house to spin wool. And the serene statue
of Saint Catherine remained silent and looked on
as I cried. I tried to imagine what it’d be like if Her spirit
could hear me. I didn’t know I had just been visited by
the noble Saint. I was so sad, my Prince, so lonely
~ Ali Alizadeh,
980:O: You’re quite a writer. You’ve a gift for language, you’re a deft hand at plotting, and your books seem to have an enormous amount of attention to detail put into them. You’re so good you could write anything. Why write fantasy?

Pratchett: I had a decent lunch, and I’m feeling quite amiable. That’s why you’re still alive. I think you’d have to explain to me why you’ve asked that question.

O: It’s a rather ghettoized genre.

P: This is true. I cannot speak for the US, where I merely sort of sell okay. But in the UK I think every book— I think I’ve done twenty in the series— since the fourth book, every one has been one the top ten national bestsellers, either as hardcover or paperback, and quite often as both. Twelve or thirteen have been number one. I’ve done six juveniles, all of those have nevertheless crossed over to the adult bestseller list. On one occasion I had the adult best seller, the paperback best-seller in a different title, and a third book on the juvenile bestseller list. Now tell me again that this is a ghettoized genre.

O: It’s certainly regarded as less than serious fiction.

P: (Sighs) Without a shadow of a doubt, the first fiction ever recounted was fantasy. Guys sitting around the campfire— Was it you who wrote the review? I thought I recognized it— Guys sitting around the campfire telling each other stories about the gods who made lightning, and stuff like that. They did not tell one another literary stories. They did not complain about difficulties of male menopause while being a junior lecturer on some midwestern college campus. Fantasy is without a shadow of a doubt the ur-literature, the spring from which all other literature has flown. Up to a few hundred years ago no one would have disagreed with this, because most stories were, in some sense, fantasy. Back in the middle ages, people wouldn’t have thought twice about bringing in Death as a character who would have a role to play in the story. Echoes of this can be seen in Pilgrim’s Progress, for example, which hark back to a much earlier type of storytelling. The epic of Gilgamesh is one of the earliest works of literature, and by the standard we would apply now— a big muscular guys with swords and certain godlike connections— That’s fantasy. The national literature of Finland, the Kalevala. Beowulf in England. I cannot pronounce Bahaghvad-Gita but the Indian one, you know what I mean. The national literature, the one that underpins everything else, is by the standards that we apply now, a work of fantasy.

Now I don’t know what you’d consider the national literature of America, but if the words Moby Dick are inching their way towards this conversation, whatever else it was, it was also a work of fantasy. Fantasy is kind of a plasma in which other things can be carried. I don’t think this is a ghetto. This is, fantasy is, almost a sea in which other genres swim. Now it may be that there has developed in the last couple of hundred years a subset of fantasy which merely uses a different icongraphy, and that is, if you like, the serious literature, the Booker Prize contender. Fantasy can be serious literature. Fantasy has often been serious literature. You have to fairly dense to think that Gulliver’s Travels is only a story about a guy having a real fun time among big people and little people and horses and stuff like that. What the book was about was something else. Fantasy can carry quite a serious burden, and so can humor. So what you’re saying is, strip away the trolls and the dwarves and things and put everyone into modern dress, get them to agonize a bit, mention Virginia Woolf a few times, and there! Hey! I’ve got a serious novel. But you don’t actually have to do that.

(Pauses) That was a bloody good answer, though I say it myself. ~ Terry Pratchett,
981:The Elders spoke to Gilgamesh, saying:
"Gilgamesh, do not put your trust in (just) your vast strength,
but keep a sharp eye out, make each blow strike in mark!
'The one who goes on ahead saves the comrade."
'The one who knows the route protects his friend.'
Let Enkidu go ahead of you;
he knows the road to the Cedar Forest,
he has seen fighting, has experienced battle.
Enkidu will protect the friend, will keep the comrade safe.
Let his body urge him back to the wives ())."
"in our Assembly we have entrusted the King to you (Enkidu),
and on your return you must entrust the King back to us!"
Gilgamesh spoke to Enkidu, raying:
"Come on, my friend, let us go to the Egalmah Temple,
to Ninsun, the Great Queen;
Ninsun is wise, all-knowing.
She will put the advisable path at our feet."
Taking each other by the hand,
Gilgamesh and Enkidu walked to the Egalmah ("Great Palace"),
to Ninsun, the Great Queen.
Gilgamesh arose and went to her.
"Ninsun, (even though) I am extraordinarily strong (!)
I must now travel a long way to where Humbaba is,
I must face fighting such as I have not known,
and I must travel on a road that I do not know!
Until the time that I go and return,
until I reach the Cedar Forest,
until I kill Humbaba the Terrible,
and eradicate from the land something baneful that Shamash hates,
intercede with Shamash on my behalf' (!)
If I kill Humbaba and cut his Cedar
let there be rejoicing all over the land ,
and I will erect a monument of the victory (?) before you!"
The words of Gilgamesh, her son,
grieving, Queen Ninsun heard over and over.
Ninsun went into her living quarters.
She washed herself with the purity plant,
she donned a robe worthy of her body,
she donned jewels worthy of her chest,
she donned her sash, and put on her crown.
She sprinkled water from a bowl onto the ground.
She and went up to the roof.
She went up to the roof and set incense in front of Shamash,
.I she offered fragrant cuttings, and raised her arms to Shamash.
"Why have you imposednay, inflicted!a restless heart on
my son, Gilgamesh!
Now you have touched him so that he wants to travel
a long way to where Humbaba is!
He will face fighting such as he has not known,
and will travel on a road that he does not know!
Until he goes away and returns,
until he reaches the Cedar Forest,
until he kills Humbaba the Terrible,
and eradicates from the land something baneful that you hate,
on the day that you see him on the road(?)
may Aja, the Bride, without fear remind you,
and command also the Watchmen of the Night,
the stars, and at night your father, Sin."

She banked up the incense and uttered the ritual words.'
She called to Enkidu and would give him instructions:
"Enkidu the Mighty, you are not of my womb,
but now I speak to you along with the sacred votaries of Gilgamesh,
the high priestesses, the holy women, the temple servers."
She laid a pendant(?) on Enkidu's neck,
the high-priestesses took
and the "daughters-of-the-gods"
"I have taken Enkidu
Enkidu to Gilgamesh I have taken."
"Until he goes and returns,
until he reaches the Cedar Forest,
be it a month
be it a year.. ."
[About 11 lines are missing here, and the placement of the following fragment is uncertain.]
the gate of cedar
Enkidu in the Temple of Shamash,
(and) Gilgamesh in the Egalmah.
He made an offering of cuttings
the sons of the king(!)
[Perhaps some 60 lines are missing here.]
"Enkidu will protect the friend, will keep the comrade safe,
Let his body urge him back to the wives (?).
In our Assembly we have entrusted the King to you,
and on your return you must entrust the King back to us!"
Enkidu spoke to Gilgamesh saying:
"My Friend, turn back!
The road"
[The last lines are missing.]


~ Anonymous, The Epic of Gilgamesh Tablet III
,
982:What rhymes with insensitive?” I tap my pen on the kitchen table, beyond frustrated with my current task. Who knew rhyming was so fucking difficult?

Garrett, who’s dicing onions at the counter, glances over. “Sensitive,” he says helpfully.

“Yes, G, I’ll be sure to rhyme insensitive with sensitive. Gold star for you.”

On the other side of the kitchen, Tucker finishes loading the dishwasher and turns to frown at me. “What the hell are you doing over there, anyway? You’ve been scribbling on that notepad for the past hour.”

“I’m writing a love poem,” I answer without thinking. Then I slam my lips together, realizing what I’ve done.

Dead silence crashes over the kitchen.

Garrett and Tucker exchange a look. An extremely long look. Then, perfectly synchronized, their heads shift in my direction, and they stare at me as if I’ve just escaped from a mental institution. I may as well have. There’s no other reason for why I’m voluntarily writing poetry right now. And that’s not even the craziest item on Grace’s list.

That’s right. I said it. List. The little brat texted me not one, not two, but six tasks to complete before she agrees to a date. Or maybe gestures is a better way to phrase it...

“I just have one question,” Garrett starts.

“Really?” Tuck says. “Because I have many.”

Sighing, I put my pen down. “Go ahead. Get it out of your systems.”

Garrett crosses his arms. “This is for a chick, right? Because if you’re doing it for funsies, then that’s just plain weird.”

“It’s for Grace,” I reply through clenched teeth.

My best friend nods solemnly.

Then he keels over. Asshole. I scowl as he clutches his side, his broad back shuddering with each bellowing laugh. And even while racked with laughter, he manages to pull his phone from his pocket and start typing.

“What are you doing?” I demand.

“Texting Wellsy. She needs to know this.”

“I hate you.”

I’m so busy glaring at Garrett that I don’t notice what Tucker’s up to until it’s too late. He snatches the notepad from the table, studies it, and hoots loudly. “Holy shit. G, he rhymed jackass with Cutlass.”

“Cutlass?” Garrett wheezes. “Like the sword?”

“The car,” I mutter. “I was comparing her lips to this cherry-red Cutlass I fixed up when I was a kid. Drawing on my own experience, that kind of thing.”

Tucker shakes his head in exasperation. “You should have compared them to cherries, dumbass.”

He’s right. I should have. I’m a terrible poet and I do know it.

“Hey,” I say as inspiration strikes. “What if I steal the words to “Amazing Grace”? I can change it to…um…Terrific Grace.”

“Yup,” Garrett cracks. “Pure gold right there. Terrific Grace.”

I ponder the next line. “How sweet…”

“Your ass,” Tucker supplies.

Garrett snorts. “Brilliant minds at work. Terrific Grace, how sweet your ass.” He types on his phone again.

“Jesus Christ, will you quit dictating this conversation to Hannah?” I grumble. “Bros before hos, dude.”

“Call my girlfriend a ho one more time and you won’t have a bro.”

Tucker chuckles. “Seriously, why are you writing poetry for this chick?”

“Because I’m trying to win her back. This is one of her requirements.”

That gets Garrett’s attention. He perks up, phone poised in hand as he asks, “What are the other ones?”

“None of your fucking business.”

“Golly gee, if you do half as good a job on those as you’re doing with this epic poem, then you’ll get her back in no time!”

I give him the finger. “Sarcasm not appreciated.” Then I swipe the notepad from Tuck’s hand and head for the doorway. “PS? Next time either of you need to score points with your ladies? Don’t ask me for help. Jackasses.”

Their wild laughter follows me all the way upstairs. I duck into my room and kick the door shut, then spend the next hour typing up the sorriest excuse for poetry on my laptop. Jesus. I’m putting more effort into this damn poem than for my actual classes. ~ Elle Kennedy,
983:What rhymes with insensitive?” I tap my pen on the kitchen table, beyond frustrated with my current task. Who knew rhyming was so fucking difficult?

Garrett, who’s dicing onions at the counter, glances over. “Sensitive,” he says helpfully.

“Yes, G, I’ll be sure to rhyme insensitive with sensitive. Gold star for you.”

On the other side of the kitchen, Tucker finishes loading the dishwasher and turns to frown at me. “What the hell are you doing over there, anyway? You’ve been scribbling on that notepad for the past hour.”

“I’m writing a love poem,” I answer without thinking. Then I slam my lips together, realizing what I’ve done.

Dead silence crashes over the kitchen.

Garrett and Tucker exchange a look. An extremely long look. Then, perfectly synchronized, their heads shift in my direction, and they stare at me as if I’ve just escaped from a mental institution. I may as well have. There’s no other reason for why I’m voluntarily writing poetry right now. And that’s not even the craziest item on Grace’s list.

That’s right. I said it. List. The little brat texted me not one, not two, but six tasks to complete before she agrees to a date. Or maybe gestures is a better way to phrase it...

“I just have one question,” Garrett starts.

“Really?” Tuck says. “Because I have many.”

Sighing, I put my pen down. “Go ahead. Get it out of your systems.”

Garrett crosses his arms. “This is for a chick, right? Because if you’re doing it for funsies, then that’s just plain weird.”

“It’s for Grace,” I reply through clenched teeth.

My best friend nods solemnly.

Then he keels over. Asshole. I scowl as he clutches his side, his broad back shuddering with each bellowing laugh. And even while racked with laughter, he manages to pull his phone from his pocket and start typing.

“What are you doing?” I demand.

“Texting Wellsy. She needs to know this.”

“I hate you.”

I’m so busy glaring at Garrett that I don’t notice what Tucker’s up to until it’s too late. He snatches the notepad from the table, studies it, and hoots loudly. “Holy shit. G, he rhymed jackass with Cutlass.”

“Cutlass?” Garrett wheezes. “Like the sword?”

“The car,” I mutter. “I was comparing her lips to this cherry-red Cutlass I fixed up when I was a kid. Drawing on my own experience, that kind of thing.”

Tucker shakes his head in exasperation. “You should have compared them to cherries, dumbass.”

He’s right. I should have. I’m a terrible poet and I do know it.

“Hey,” I say as inspiration strikes. “What if I steal the words to “Amazing Grace”? I can change it to…um…Terrific Grace.”

“Yup,” Garrett cracks. “Pure gold right there. Terrific Grace.”

I ponder the next line. “How sweet…”

“Your ass,” Tucker supplies.

Garrett snorts. “Brilliant minds at work. Terrific Grace, how sweet your ass.” He types on his phone again.

“Jesus Christ, will you quit dictating this conversation to Hannah?” I grumble. ��Bros before hos, dude.”

“Call my girlfriend a ho one more time and you won’t have a bro.”

Tucker chuckles. “Seriously, why are you writing poetry for this chick?”

“Because I’m trying to win her back. This is one of her requirements.”

That gets Garrett’s attention. He perks up, phone poised in hand as he asks, “What are the other ones?”

“None of your fucking business.”

“Golly gee, if you do half as good a job on those as you’re doing with this epic poem, then you’ll get her back in no time!”

I give him the finger. “Sarcasm not appreciated.” Then I swipe the notepad from Tuck’s hand and head for the doorway. “PS? Next time either of you need to score points with your ladies? Don’t ask me for help. Jackasses.”

Their wild laughter follows me all the way upstairs. I duck into my room and kick the door shut, then spend the next hour typing up the sorriest excuse for poetry on my laptop. Jesus. I’m putting more effort into this damn poem than for my actual classes. ~ Elle Kennedy,
984:Diana” was the first thing out of her mouth. “I’m dying,” the too familiar voice on the other end moaned.

I snorted, locking the front door behind me as I held the phone up to my face with my shoulder. “You’re pregnant. You’re not dying.”

“But it feels like I am,” the person who rarely ever complained whined. We’d been best friends our entire lives, and I could only count on one hand the number of times I’d heard her grumble about something that wasn’t her family. I’d had the title of being the whiner in our epic love affair that had survived more shit than I was willing to remember right then.

I held up a finger when Louie tipped his head toward the kitchen as if asking if I was going to get started on dinner or not. “Well, nobody told you to get pregnant with the Hulk’s baby. What did you expect? He’s probably going to come out the size of a toddler.”

The laugh that burst out of her made me laugh too. This fierce feeling of missing her reminded me it had been months since we’d last seen each other. “Shut up.”

“You can’t avoid the truth forever.” Her husband was huge. I didn’t understand why she wouldn’t expect her unborn baby to be a giant too.

“Ugh.” A long sigh came through the receiver in resignation. “I don’t know what I was thinking—”

“You weren’t thinking.”

She ignored me. “We’re never having another one. I can’t sleep. I have to pee every two minutes. I’m the size of Mars—”

“The last time I saw you”—which had been two months ago—“you were the size of Mars. The baby is probably the size of Mars now. I’d probably say you’re about the size of Uranus.”

She ignored me again. “Everything makes me cry and I itch. I itch so bad.”

“Do I… want to know where you’re itching?”

“Nasty. My stomach. Aiden’s been rubbing coconut oil on me every hour he’s here.”

I tried to imagine her six-foot-five-inch, Hercules-sized husband doing that to Van, but my imagination wasn’t that great. “Is he doing okay?” I asked, knowing off our past conversations that while he’d been over the moon with her pregnancy, he’d also turned into mother hen supreme. It made me feel better knowing that she wasn’t living in a different state all by herself with no one else for support. Some people in life got lucky and found someone great, the rest of us either took a long time… or not ever.

“He’s worried I’m going to fall down the stairs when he isn’t around, and he’s talking about getting a one-story house so that I can put him out of his misery.”

“You know you can come stay with us if you want.”

She made a noise.

“I’m just offering, bitch. If you don’t want to be alone when he starts traveling more for games, you can stay here as long as you need. Louie doesn’t sleep in his room half the time anyway, and we have a one-story house. You could sleep with me if you really wanted to. It’ll be like we’re fourteen all over again.”

She sighed. “I would. I really would, but I couldn’t leave Aiden.”

And I couldn’t leave the boys for longer than a couple of weeks, but she knew that. Well, she also knew I couldn’t not work for that long, too.

“Maybe you can get one of those I’ve-fallen-and-I-can’t-get-up—”

Vanessa let out another loud laugh. “You jerk.”

“What? You could.”

There was a pause. “I don’t even know why I bother with you half the time.”

“Because you love me?”

“I don’t know why.”

“Tia,” Louie hissed, rubbing his belly like he was seriously starving.

“Hey, Lou and Josh are making it seem like they haven’t eaten all day. I’m scared they might start nibbling on my hand soon. Let me feed them, and I’ll call you back, okay?”

Van didn’t miss a beat. “Sure, Di. Give them a hug from me and call me back whenever. I’m on the couch, and I’m not going anywhere except the bathroom.”

“Okay. I won’t call Parks and Wildlife to let them know there’s a beached whale—”

“Goddammit, Diana—”

I laughed. “Love you. I’ll call you back. Bye!”

“Vanny has a whale?” Lou asked. ~ Mariana Zapata,
985:I THE DARK

In a worldless timeless lightless great emptiness
   Four-faced Brahma broods.

nasad asin, no sad asit tadanim;
nasid raja no vioma paro yat.
kim avarivah? kuha? kasya sarmann?
Ambhah kim asid, gahanam gabhiram?

na mytur asid, amrtam na tarhi.
na ratria ahna asit pratekh.
anid avatam svadhaya tad ekam.
tasmad dhanyan na parah kim canasa.

tama asit tamasa gudham agre;
apraketam salilam sarvam a idam.
tuchyenabhu apihitam yad asit,
tapasas tan mahinajayataikam.

Of a sudden sea of joy surges through his heart
   The ur-god opens his eyes.
   Speech from four mouths
   Speeds from each quarter.
   Through infinite dark,
   Through limitless sky,
   Like a growing sea-storm,
   Like hope never sated,
   His Word starts to move.

Stirred by joy         his breathing quickens,
   His eight eyes quiver with flame.
His fire-matted hair    sweeps the horizon,
   Bright as a million suns.

From the towering source of the world
   In a thousand streams
Cascades the primeval blazing fountain,
   Fragmenting silence,
   Splitting its stone heart.

kamas tad agre sam avartatadhi
manaso retah prathamam yad asit?
sato bandhum asati nir avindan
hrdi pratisya kavayo manisa

II THE MUSIC

   In a universe rampant
   With new life exhalant,
   With new life exultant,
   Vishnu spreads wide
   His four-handed blessing.
   He raises his conch
   And all things quake
   At its booming sound.
   The frenzy dies down,
   The furnace expires,
   The planets douse
   Their flames with tears,
   The worlds Divine Poet
   Constructs its history,
   From wild cosmic song
   Its epic is formed.
   Stars in their orbits,
   Moon sun and planets
   He binds with his mace
   All things to Law,
   Imposes the discipline
   Of metre and rhyme.

   In the Manasa depths
   Vishnu watches -
   Beauties arise
   From the light of lotuses.
   Lakshmi strews smiles -
   Clouds show a rainbow,
   Gardens show flowers.
   The roar of Creation
   Resolves into music.
   Softness hides rigour,
   Forms cover power.

tirascino vitato rasmir esam:
adhah svid asid, upari svid asit?
retodha asan, mahimana asan;
svadha avasat, prayatih parastat.

Age after age after age is slave to a mighty rhythm
   At last the world-frame
   Tires in its body,
   Sleep in its eyes
   Slackens its structure,
   Diffuses its energy.
   From the heart of all matter
   Comes the anguished cry
   Wake, wake, great Shiva,
   Our body grows weary
   Of its law-fixed path,
   Give us new form.
   Sing our destruction,
   That we gain new life.

III THE FIRE

   The great god awakes,
   His three eyes open,
   He surveys all horizons.
He lifts his bow,      his fell pinaka,
   He pounds the world with his tread.
From first things to last  it trembles and shakes
         And shudders.
The bonds of nature are ripped.
The sky is rocked by the roar
Of a wave of ecstatic release.
   An inferno soars
   The pyre of the universe.

Shattered sun and moon, smashed stars and planets,
   Rain down from all angles,
   A blackness of all particles
   To be swallowed by flame,
   Absorbed in an instant.
   At the start of Creation
   There was a dark without origin,
   At the breaking of Creation
   There is fire without end
In an all-pervading sky-engulfing sea of burning
   Shiva shuts his three eyes.
   He begins his great trance.

ko adha veda? Ka iha pravocat,
kuta ajata, kuta iyam visrstih?
arvag deva asya visajanena:
atha ko veda yata ababhuva?

iyam visrstir yata ababhuva;
yadi vasa dadhe yadi van na:
yo asyadhyaksah parame vioman
so anga veda, yadi va na veda.

~ Rabindranath Tagore, Brahm, Viu, iva
,
986:Just as day began to dawn
Gilgamesh addressed his friend, saying:
"Enkidu, your mother, the gazelle,
and your father, the wild donkey, engendered you,
four wild asses raised you on their milk,
and the herds taught you all the grazing lands.
May the Roads of Enkidu to the Cedar Forest
mourn you
and not fall silent night or day.
May the Elders of the broad city of Uruk-Haven
mourn you.
May the peoples who gave their blessing after us
mourn you.
May the men of the mountains and hills
mourn you.
May the
May the pasture lands shriek in mourning as if it were your mother.
May the, the cypress, and the cedar which we destroyed (?) in our anger
mourn you.
May the bear, hyena, panther, tiger, water buffalo(?), jackal,
lion, wild bull, stag, ibex, all the creatures of the plains
mourn you.
May the holy River Ulaja, along whose banks we grandly used to stroll,
mourn you.
May the pure Euphrates, to which we would libate water from our waterskins,
mourn you.
May the men of Uruk-Haven, whom we saw in our battle when
      we killed the Bull of Heaven,
mourn you.
May the farmer,who extols your name in his sweet work song,
mourn you.
May the of the broad city, who exalted your name,
               mourn you.
May the herder, who prepared butter and light beer for your mouth,
mourn you.
May, who put ointments on your back,
mourn you.
May, who prepared fine beer for your mouth,
mourn you.
May the harlot, you rubbed yourself with oil and felt good,
           mourn you.
May, of the wife placed(!) a ring on you,
mourn you
May the brothers go into mourning over you like sisters;
  the lamentation priests, may their hair be shorn off on
               your behalf.
Enkidu, your mother and your father are in the wastelands,
I mourn you"
"Hear me, O Elders of Uruk, hear me, O men!
I mourn for Enkidu, my friend,
I shriek in anguish like a mourner.
You, axe at my side, so trusty at my hand
you, sword at my waist, shield in front of me,
you, my festal garment, a sash over my loins
an evil demon!) appeared and took him away from me!
My friend, the swift mule, fleet wild **** of the mountain,
panther of the wilderness,
Enkidu, my friend, the swift mule, fleet wild **** of the mountain,
panther of the wilderness,
after we joined together and went up into the mountain,
fought the Bull of Heaven and killed it,
and overwhelmed Humbaba, who lived in the Cedar Forest,
now what is this sleep which has seized you?
You have turned dark and do not hear me!"
But his (Enkidu's) eyes do not move,
he touched his heart, but it beat no longer.
He covered his friend's face like a bride,
swooping down over him like an eagle,
and like a lioness deprived of her cubs
he keeps pacing to and fro.
He shears off his curls and heaps them onto the ground,
ripping off his finery and casting it away as an abomination.
Just as day began to dawn, Gilgamesh
and issued a call to the land:
"You, blacksmith! You, lapidary! You, coppersmith!
You, goldsmith! You, jeweler!
Create 'My Friend,' fashion a statue of him.
  he fashioned a statue of his friend.
His features
,your chest will be of lapis lazuli, your skin will be of gold."

[10 lines are missing here.']

"I had you recline on the great couch,
indeed, on the couch of honor I let you recline,
1 had you sit in the position of ease, the seat at the left, so the
       princes of the world kissed your feet.
I had the people of Uruk mourn and moan for you,
I filled happy people with woe over you,
and after you (died) I let a filthy mat of hair grow over my body,
and donned the skin of a lion and roamed the wilderness."
Just as day began to dawn,
he undid his straps
I carnelian,

[85 lines are missing here.']

to my friend.
your dagger
to Bibbi"

[40 lines are missing here.]

" the judge of the Anunnaki."
When Gilgamesh heard this
the zikru of the river(!) he created'
Just as day began to dawn Gilgamesh opened(!)
and brought out a big table of sissoo wood.
A carnelian bowl he filled with honey,
a lapis lazuli bowl he filled with butter.
He provided and displayed it before Shamash.

[All of the last column, some 40-50 lines, is missing.]


~ Anonymous, The Epic of Gilgamesh Tablet VIII
,
987:Over his friend, Enkidu, Gilgamesh cried bitterly, roaming the wilderness.
"I am going to die!am I not like Enkidu?!
Deep sadness penetrates my core,
I fear death, and now roam the wilderness
I will set out to the region of Utanapishtim, son of Ubartutu,
        and will go with utmost dispatch!
When I arrived at mountain passes at nightfall,'
I saw lions, and I was terrified!
I raised my head in prayer to Sin,
to the Great Lady of the gods my supplications poured
          forth, 'Save me from !"'
He was sleeping in the night, but awoke with a start with a dream:
A warrior(!) enjoyed his life
he raised his axe in his hand,
drew the dagger from his sheath,
and fell into their midst like an arrow.
He struck and he scattered them,
The name of the former
The name of the second

(26 lines are missing here, telling of the beginning of his quest.]

The Scorpion-Beings
The mountain is called Mashu.
Then he reached Mount Mashu,
which daily guards the rising and setting of the Sun,
above which only the dome of the heavens reaches,
and whose flank reaches as far as the Netherworld below,
there were Scorpion-beings watching over its gate.
Trembling terror they inspire, the sight of them is death,
their frightening aura sweeps over the mountains.
At the rising and setting they watch over the Sun.
When Gilgamesh saw them, trembling terror blanketed his face,
but he pulled himself together and drew near to them.
The scorpion-being called out to his female:
"He who comes to us, his body is the flesh of gods!"
The scorpion-being, his female, answered him:
"(Only) two-thirds of him is a god, one-third is human."
The male scorpion-being called out,
saying to the offspring of the gods:
"Why have you traveled so distant a journey?
Why have you come here to me,
over rivers whose crossing is treacherous!
I want to learn your
I want to learn"

[16 lines are missing here. When the text resumes Gilgamesh is speaking.]

"I have come on account of my ancestor Utanapishtim,
who joined the Assembly of the Gods, and was given eternal life.
About Death and Life I must ask him!"
The scorpion-being spoke to Gilgamesh, saying:
"Never has there been, Gilgamesh, a mortal man who could do that(?).
No one has crossed through the mountains,
for twelve leagues it is darkness throughout
dense is the darkness, and light there is none.
To the rising of the sun
To the setting of the sun
To the setting of the sun
They caused to go out"

[67 lines are missing, in which Gilgamesh convinces the scorpion-being to allow him
passage.]

"Though it be in deep sadness and pain,
in cold or heat
gasping after breath I will go on!
Now! Open the Gate!"
The scorpion-being spoke to Gilgamesh, saying:
"Go on, Gilgamesh, fear not!
The Mashu mountains I give to you freely (!),
the mountains, the ranges, you may traverse
In safety may your feet carry you.
The gate of the mountain"
To the rising of the sun
To the setting of the sun
To the setting of the sun
They caused to go out"

[67 lines are missing, in which Gilgamesh convinces the scorpion-being to allow him
passage.]

"Though it be in deep sadness and pain,
in cold or heat
gasping after breath I will go on!
Now! Open the Gate!"
The scorpion-being spoke to Gilgamesh, saying:
"Go on, Gilgamesh, fear not!
The Mashu mountains I give to you freely (!),
the mountains, the ranges, you may traverse
In safety may your feet carry you.
The gate of the mountain"
As soon as Gilgamesh heard this
he heeded the utterances of the scorpion-being.
Along the Road of the Sun L he journeyed
one league he traveled,
dense was the darkness, light there was none.
Neither what lies ahead nor behind does it allow him to see.
Two leagues he traveled,
dense was the darkness, light there was none,
neither what lies ahead nor behind does it allow him to see.

[22 lines are missing here.]

Four leagues he traveled,
dense was the darkness, light there was none,
neither what lies ahead nor behind does it allow him to see.
Five leagues he traveled,
dense was the darkness, light there was none,
neither what lies ahead nor behind does it allow him to see.
Six leagues he traveled,
dense was the darkness, light there was none,
neither what lies ahead nor behind does it allow him to see.
Seven leagues he traveled ..
dense was the darkness, light there was none,
neither what lies ahead nor behind does it allow him to see.
Eight leagues he traveled and cried out (!),
dense was the darkness, light there was none,
neither what lies ahead nor behind does it allow him to see.
Nine leagues he traveled the North Wind.
It licked at his face,
dense was the darkness, light there was none,
neither what lies ahead nor behind does it allow him to see.
Ten leagues he traveled
is near,
four leagues.
Eleven leagues he traveled and came out before the sun(rise).
Twelve leagues he traveled and it grew brilliant.
it bears lapis lazuli as foliage,
bearing fruit, a delight to look upon.

(25 lines are missing here, describing the garden in detail.]

cedar
agate
of the sea lapis lazuli,
like thorns and briars carnelian,
rubies, hematite,
like emeralds (!)
of the sea,
Gilgamesh on walking onward,
raised his eyes and saw


~ Anonymous, The Epic of Gilgamesh TabletIX
,
988:If this were a world
in which there were no such thing
  as false promises,
how great would be my delight
as I listen to your words!

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The Epic of Gilgamesh Tablet V
They stood at the forest's edge,
gazing at the top of the Cedar Tree,
gazing at the entrance to the forest.
Where Humbaba would walk there was a trail,
the roads led straight on, the path was excellent.
Then they saw the Cedar Mountain, the Dwelling of the Gods, the
throne dais of Imini.
Across the face of the mountain the Cedar brought forth luxurious
foliage,
its shade was good, extremely pleasant.
The thornbushes were matted together, the woods(?) were a thicket
among the Cedars, the boxwood,
the forest was surrounded by a ravine two leagues long,
and again for two-thirds (of that distance),
Suddenly the swords,
and after the sheaths,
the axes were smeared
dagger and sword
alone
Humbaba spoke to Gilgamesh saying:"He does not come (?)

Enlil.. ."
Enkidu spoke to Humbaba, saying:
"Humbaba'One alone..
'Strangers
'A slippery path is not feared by two people who help each other.
'Twice three times
'A three-ply rope cannot be cut.
'The mighty liontwo cubs can roll him over."'

Humbaba spoke to Gilgamesh, saying:
..An idiot' and a moron should give advice to each other,
but you, Gilgamesh, why have you come to me!
Give advice, Enkidu, you 'son of a fish,' who does not even
know his own father,
to the large and small turtles which do not suck their mother's milk!
When you were still young I saw you but did not go over to you;
you, in my belly.
,you have brought Gilgamesh into my presence,
you stand.., an enemy, a stranger.
Gilgamesh, throat and neck,
I would feed your flesh to the screeching vulture, the eagle, and
the vulture!"
Gilgamerh spoke to Enkidu, saying: "My Friend, Humbaba's face keeps changing!
Enkddu spoke to Gilgamesh, saying:'
"Why, my friend, are you whining so pitiably, hiding behind your whimpering?
Now there, my friend,
in the cuppersmith's channel,
again to blow (the bellows) for an hour, the glowing (metal)(?)
for an hour.
To send the Flood, to crack the Whip."
Do not snatch your feet away, do not turn your back,
strike even harder!"
may they be expelled. head fell and it/he confronted him
The ground split open with the heels of their feet,
as they whirled around in circles Mt. Hermon and Lebanon split.
The white clouds darkened,
death rained down on them like fog.
Shamash raised up against Humbaba mighty tempests'
Southwind, Northwind, Eastwind, Westwind, Whistling Wind, Piercing Wind, Blizzard, Bad Wind, Wind of Simurru,
Demon Wind, Ice Wind, Storm, Sandstorm
thirteen winds rose up against him and covered Humbaba's face.
He could nor butt through the front, and could not scramble out
the back,
so that Gilgamesh'a weapons were in reach of Humbaba.
Humbaba begged for his life, saying to Gilgamesh:
"You are young yet, Gilgamesh, your mother gave birth to you,
and you are the offspring of Rimnt-Nlnsun (?)
(It was) at the word of Shamash, Lord of the Mountain,
that you were roused (to this expedition).
O scion of the heart of Uruk, King Gilgamesh!
Gilgamesh
Gilgamesh, let me go (?), I will dwell with you as your servant (?)
As many trees as you command me I will cut down for you,
I will guard for you myrtle wood,
wood fine enough for your palace!"
Enkidu addressed Gilgamesh, saying:
"My friend, do not listen to Humbaba,
[io lines are misring Apparently Humbaba sees thar Gilgamrsh is influenced by Enkidu, and moves to dissuade Enkidu.]
"You understand the rules of my forest, the rules,
further, you are aware of all the things so ordered (by Enlil)."
I should have carried you up, and killed you
at the very entrance to the branches of my forest.
I should have fed your flesh to the screeching vulture, the eagle,
and the vulture.
So now, Enkidu, clemency is up to you.
Speak to Gilgamesh to spare my life!"
Enkidu addressed Gilgamesh, saying:
My friend, Humbaba, Guardian of the Cedar Forest,
grind up, kill, pulverize(?), and destroy him!
Humbaba, Guardian of the Forest, grind up, kill, pulverize(?),
and destroy him!
Before the Preeminent God Enlil hears
and thegods be filled with rage against us.
Enlil is in Nippur, Shamash is in Sippar.
Erect an eternal monument proclaiming
how Gilgamesh killed(?) Humbaba."
When Humbaba heard
[Abour l0 linrs are misiing.]
the forest.
and denunciations(?) have been made.
But you are sitting there like a shepherd
and like a 'hireling of his mouth.'
Now, Enkidu, clemency is up to you.
Speak to Gilgamesh that he spare my life!"
Enkidu spoke to Gilgamesh, saying:
"My friend, Humbaba, Guardian of the Forest,
grind up, kill, pulverize(?), and destroy him!
Before the Preeminent God Enlil hears,
and the gods are full of rage at us.
Enlil is in Nippur, Shamash is in Sippar.
Erect an eternal monument proclaiming
how Gilgamesh killed(?) Humbaba."
Humbaba heard
[About 10 lines are missing.]
"May he not live the longer of the two,
may Enkidu not have any 'share'(?) more than his friend
Gilgamesh!"
Enkidu spoke to Gilgamesh, saying:
"My friend, 1 have been talking to you but you have not been
listening to me,"
You have been listening to the curse of Humbaba!"
his friend
by his side
.. they pulled out his insides including his tongue.
he jumped(?).
abundance fell over the mountain,
abundance fell over the mountain.
They cut through the Cedar,
While Gilgamesh cuts down the trees, Enkidu searches through
the urmazallu.
Enkidu addressed Gilgamesh, saying:
"My friend, we have cut down the towering Cedar whose top
scrapes the sky.
Make from it a door 72 cubits high, 24 cubits wide,
one cubit thick, its fixture, its lower and upper pivots will be out of one piece.
Let them carry it to Nippur, the Euphrates will carry it down, Nippur will rejoice.
"
They tied together a raft
Enkidu steered it
while Gilgamesh held the head of Humbaba.


~ Anonymous, If this were a world
,
989:Raging storms, evil gods are they
Ruthless demons, who in heaven's vault were created, are they,
Workers of evil are they,
They lift up the head to evil, every day to evil
Destruction to work.
Of these seven the first is the South wind
The second is a dragon, whose mouth is opened
That none can measure.
The third is a grim leopard, which carries off the young
The fourth is a terrible Shibbu
The fifth is a furious Wolf, who knoweth not to flee,
The sixth is a rampant which marches against god and king.
The seventh is a storm, an evil wind, which takes vengeance,
Seven are they, messengers to King Anu are they,
From city to city darkness work they,
A hurricane, which mightily hunts in the heavens, are they
Thick clouds, that bring darkness in heaven, are they,
Gusts of wind rising, which cast gloom over the bright day, are they,
With the Imkhullu [2] the evil wind, forcing their way, are they,
The overflowing of Adad [3] mighty destroyers, are they,
At the right of Adad stalking, are they,
In the height of heaven, like lightning flashing, are they,
To wreak destruction forward go they ,
In the broad heaven, the home of Anu, the King, evilly do they arise, and none to oppose.
When Enlil heard these tidings, a plan in his heart he pondered,
With Ea, exalted Massu of the gods, be took counsel. Sin, Shamash, and Ishtar, whom he had set to order the vault of heaven,
With Anu he divided the lordship of the whole heaven,
To these three gods, his offspring
Day and night, without ceasing, he ordained to stand,
When the seven evil gods stormed the vault of heaven,
Before the gleaming Sin, they set themselves angrily, [4]
The mighty Shamash, Adad the warrior, they brought on their side,
Ishtar, with Anu the King, moved into a shining dwelling, exercising dominion over the heavens,

[Nearly ten lines here are unreadable.]

Day and night he was dark (i.e., Sin), in the dwelling of his dominion he sat not down,
The evil gods, the messengers of Anu, the King, are they,
Raising their evil heads, in the night shaking themselves, are they,
Evil searching out, are they,
From the heaven, like a wind, over the land rush they.
Enlil saw the darkening of the hero Sin in heaven,
The lord spoke to his minister Nusku,
O My minister Nusku, my message unto the ocean bring,
The tidings of my son Sin, who in heaven has been sadly darkened,
Unto Ea, in the ocean, announce it."
Nusku exalted the word of his lord,
To Ea, in the ocean, he went quickly,
To the prince, the exalted Massu the lord Nudimmud.[5]
Nusku, the word of his lord there announced Ea in the ocean heard that word,
He bit his lip and filled his mouth with wailing;
Ea called his son Marduk, and gave him the message:
"Go, my son Marduk,
Son of a prince, the gleaming Sin has been sadly darkened in heaven,
His darkening is seen in the heavens,
The seven evil gods, death-dealing, fearless are they,
The seven evil gods, like a flood, rush on, the land they fall upon, do they,
Against the land, like a storm, they rise, do they,
Before the gleaming Sin, they set themselves angrily;
The mighty Shamash, Adad the warrior, they brought on their side."

NOTES:
[1] This story is the sixteenth tablet of a series called the "Evil Demon Series," of which we have an Assyrian with a parallel Sumerian text. Presumably, therefore, it was a very ancient legend.
[2] The Imkhullu appears also in the Creation Epic.
[3] Adad is god of storm, Anu of heaven, Enlil of storm, Sin of the Moon, Shamash of the Sun, and Ishtar of love and fruitfulness. The meaning of Massu is unknown; but Ea was long the chief ruler.
[4] The evil gods darken the moon by an eclipse, Shamash helping them by withdrawing his light from the moon, and Adad by sending cloudy weather.
[5] A name for Ea.

DESCRIPTIONS OF "THE SEVEN"

I
Destructive storms and evil winds are they,
A storm of evil, presaging the baneful storm,
A storm of evil, forerunner of the baneful storm.
Mighty children, mightv sons are they,
Messengers of Namtar are they,
Throne-bearers of Ereshkigal. [1]
The flood driving through the land are they.
Seven gods of the wide heavens,
Seven gods of the broad earth,
Seven robber-gods are they.
Seven gods of universal sway,
Seven evil gods,
Seven evil demons,
Seven evil and violent demons,
Seven in heaven, seven on earth.

II
Neither male nor female are they.
Destructive whirlwinds they,
Having neither wife nor offspring.
Compassion and mercy they do not know.
Prayer and supplication they do not hear.
Horses reared in the mountains, Hostile to Ea.
Throne-bearers of the gods are they.
Standing on the highway, befouling the street. Evil are they, evil are they,
Seven they are, seven they are, Twice seven they are.

III
The high enclosures, the broad enclosures like a flood they pass through.
From house to house they dash along.
No door can shut them out,
No bolt can turn them back.
Through the door, like a snake, they glide,
Through the hinge, like the wind, they storm.
Tearing the wife from the embrace of the man,
Snatching the child from the knees of a man,
Driving the freedman from his family home.

[1 ]The mistress of the netherworld, while Namtar is the god of pestilence.

CHARM AGAINST THE SEVEN EVIL SPIRITS

Seven are they, seven are they!
In the channel of the deep seven are they!
In the radiance of heaven seven are they!
In the channel of the deep in a palace grew they up.
Male they are not, female they are not.
In the midst of the deep are their paths.
Wife they have not, son they have not.
Order and kindness know they not.
Prayer and supplication hear they not.
The cavern in the mountain they enter.
Unto Hea are they hostile.
The throne-bearers of the gods are they.
Disturbing the lily in the torrents are they set.
Baleful are they, baleful are they.
Seven are they, seven are they, seven twice again are they.
May the spirits of heaven remember, may the spirits of earth remember.
R.C. Thompson, translator [The Devils and Evil Spirits of Babylonia, London 1903]

~ Anonymous, The Seven Evil Spirits
,
990:Plutonian Ode
What new element before us unborn in nature? Is there
a new thing under the Sun?
At last inquisitive Whitman a modern epic, detonative,
Scientific theme
First penned unmindful by Doctor Seaborg with poisonous hand, named for Death's planet through the
sea beyond Uranus
whose chthonic ore fathers this magma-teared Lord of
Hades, Sire of avenging Furies, billionaire HellKing worshipped once
with black sheep throats cut, priests's face averted from
underground mysteries in single temple at Eleusis,
Spring-green Persephone nuptialed to his inevitable
Shade, Demeter mother of asphodel weeping dew,
her daughter stored in salty caverns under white snow,
black hail, grey winter rain or Polar ice, immemorable seasons before
Fish flew in Heaven, before a Ram died by the starry
bush, before the Bull stamped sky and earth
or Twins inscribed their memories in clay or Crab'd
flood
washed memory from the skull, or Lion sniffed the
lilac breeze in Eden-Before the Great Year began turning its twelve signs,
ere constellations wheeled for twenty-four thousand
sunny years
slowly round their axis in Sagittarius, one hundred
sixty-seven thousand times returning to this night
Radioactive Nemesis were you there at the beginning
black dumb tongueless unsmelling blast of Disillusion?
I manifest your Baptismal Word after four billion years
I guess your birthday in Earthling Night, I salute your
dreadful presence last majestic as the Gods,
Sabaot, Jehova, Astapheus, Adonaeus, Elohim, Iao,
Ialdabaoth, Aeon from Aeon born ignorant in an
64
Abyss of Light,
Sophia's reflections glittering thoughtful galaxies, whirlpools of starspume silver-thin as hairs of Einstein!
Father Whitman I celebrate a matter that renders Self
oblivion!
Grand Subject that annihilates inky hands & pages'
prayers, old orators' inspired Immortalities,
I begin your chant, openmouthed exhaling into spacious
sky over silent mills at Hanford, Savannah River,
Rocky Flats, Pantex, Burlington, Albuquerque
I yell thru Washington, South Carolina, Colorado,
Texas, Iowa, New Mexico,
Where nuclear reactors creat a new Thing under the
Sun, where Rockwell war-plants fabricate this death
stuff trigger in nitrogen baths,
Hanger-Silas Mason assembles the terrified weapon
secret by ten thousands, & where Manzano Mountain boasts to store
its dreadful decay through two hundred forty millenia
while our Galaxy spirals around its nebulous core.
I enter your secret places with my mind, I speak with
your presence, I roar your Lion Roar with mortal
mouth.
One microgram inspired to one lung, ten pounds of
heavy metal dust adrift slow motion over grey
Alps
the breadth of the planet, how long before your radiance
speeds blight and death to sentient beings?
Enter my body or not I carol my spirit inside you,
Unnaproachable Weight,
O heavy heavy Element awakened I vocalize your consciousness to six worlds
I chant your absolute Vanity. Yeah monster of Anger
birthed in fear O most
Ignorant matter ever created unnatural to Earth! Delusion
of metal empires!
Destroyer of lying Scientists! Devourer of covetous
Generals, Incinerator of Armies & Melter of Wars!
Judgement of judgements, Divine Wind over vengeful
nations, Molester of Presidents, Death-Scandal of
Capital politics! Ah civilizations stupidly industrious!
65
Canker-Hex on multitudes learned or illiterate! Manufactured Spectre of human reason! O solidified
imago of practicioner in Black Arts
I dare your reality, I challenge your very being! I
publish your cause and effect!
I turn the wheel of Mind on your three hundred tons!
Your name enters mankind's ear! I embody your
ultimate powers!
My oratory advances on your vaunted Mystery! This
breath dispels your braggart fears! I sing your
form at last
behind your concrete & iron walls inside your fortress
of rubber & translucent silicon shields in filtered
cabinets and baths of lathe oil,
My voice resounds through robot glove boxes & ignot
cans and echoes in electric vaults inert of atmosphere,
I enter with spirit out loud into your fuel rod drums
underground on soundless thrones and beds of
lead
O density! This weightless anthem trumpets transcendent
through hidden chambers and breaks through
iron doors into the Infernal Room!
Over your dreadful vibration this measured harmony
floats audible, these jubilant tones are honey and
milk and wine-sweet water
Poured on the stone black floor, these syllables are
barley groats I scatter on the Reactor's core,
I call your name with hollow vowels, I psalm your Fate
close by, my breath near deathless ever at your
side
to Spell your destiny, I set this verse prophetic on your
mausoleum walls to seal you up Eternally with
Diamond Truth! O doomed Plutonium.
II
The Bar surveys Plutonian history from midnight
lit with Mercury Vapor streetlamps till in dawn's
early light
he contemplates a tranquil politic spaced out between
Nations' thought-forms proliferating bureaucratic
66
& horrific arm'd, Satanic industries projected sudden
with Five Hundred Billion Dollar Strength
around the world same time this text is set in Boulder,
Colorado before front range of Rocky Mountains
twelve miles north of Rocky Flats Nuclear Facility in
United States of North America, Western Hemisphere
of planet Earth six months and fourteen days around
our Solar System in a Spiral Galaxy
the local year after Dominion of the last God nineteen
hundred seventy eight
Completed as yellow hazed dawn clouds brighten East,
Denver city white below
Blue sky transparent rising empty deep & spacious to a
morning star high over the balcony
above some autos sat with wheels to curb downhill
from Flatiron's jagged pine ridge,
sunlit mountain meadows sloped to rust-red sandstone
cliffs above brick townhouse roofs
as sparrows waked whistling through Marine Street's
summer green leafed trees.
III
This ode to you O Poets and Orators to come, you
father Whitman as I join your side, you Congress
and American people,
you present meditators, spiritual friends & teachers,
you O Master of the Diamond Arts,
Take this wheel of syllables in hand, these vowels and
consonants to breath's end
take this inhalation of black poison to your heart, breath
out this blessing from your breast on our creation
forests cities oceans deserts rocky flats and mountains
in the Ten Directions pacify with exhalation,
enrich this Plutonian Ode to explode its empty thunder
through earthen thought-worlds
Magnetize this howl with heartless compassion, destroy
this mountain of Plutonium with ordinary mind
and body speech,
thus empower this Mind-guard spirit gone out, gone
out, gone beyond, gone beyond me, Wake space,
67
so Ah!
~ Allen Ginsberg,
991:Oft have you seen a swan superbly frowning,
And with proud breast his own white shadow crowning;
He slants his neck beneath the waters bright
So silently, it seems a beam of light
Come from the galaxy: anon he sports,--
With outspread wings the Naiad Zephyr courts,
Or ruffles all the surface of the lake
In striving from its crystal face to take
Some diamond water drops, and them to treasure
In milky nest, and sip them off at leisure.
But not a moment can he there insure them,
Nor to such downy rest can he allure them;
For down they rush as though they would be free,
And drop like hours into eternity.
Just like that bird am I in loss of time,
Whene'er I venture on the stream of rhyme;
With shatter'd boat, oar snapt, and canvass rent,
I slowly sail, scarce knowing my intent;
Still scooping up the water with my fingers,
In which a trembling diamond never lingers.

By this, friend Charles, you may full plainly see
Why I have never pennd a line to thee:
Because my thoughts were never free, and clear,
And little fit to please a classic ear;
Because my wine was of too poor a savour
For one whose palate gladdens in the flavour
Of sparkling Helicon:--small good it were
To take him to a desert rude, and bare,
Who had on Baiae's shore reclin'd at ease,
While Tasso's page was floating in a breeze
That gave soft music from Armida's bowers,
Mingled with fragrance from her rarest flowers:
Small good to one who had by Mulla's stream
Fondled the maidens with the breasts of cream;
Who had beheld Belphoebe in a brook,
And lovely Una in a leafy nook,
And Archimago leaning o'er his book:
Who had of all that's sweet tasted, and seen,
From silv'ry ripple, up to beauty's queen;
From the sequester'd haunts of gay Titania,
To the blue dwelling of divine Urania:
One, who, of late, had ta'en sweet forest walks
With him who elegantly chats, and talks--
The wrong'd Libertas,--who has told you stories
Of laurel chaplets, and Apollos glories;
Of troops chivalrous prancing through a city,
And tearful ladies made for love, and pity:
With many else which I have never known.
Thus have I thought; and days on days have flown
Slowly, or rapidly--unwilling still
For you to try my dull, unlearned quill.
Nor should I now, but that I've known you long;
That you first taught me all the sweets of song:
The grand, the sweet, the terse, the free, the fine;
What swell'd with pathos, and what right divine:
Spenserian vowels that elope with ease,
And float along like birds o'er summer seas;
Miltonian storms, and more, Miltonian tenderness;
Michael in arms, and more, meek Eves fair slenderness.
Who read for me the sonnet swelling loudly
Up to its climax and then dying proudly?
Who found for me the grandeur of the ode,
Growing, like Atlas, stronger from its load?
Who let me taste that more than cordial dram,
The sharp, the rapier-pointed epigram?
Shew'd me that epic was of all the king,
Round, vast, and spanning all like Saturn's ring?
You too upheld the veil from Clio's beauty,
And pointed out the patriot's stern duty;
The might of Alfred, and the shaft of Tell;
The hand of Brutus, that so grandly fell
Upon a tyrant's head. Ah! had I never seen,
Or known your kindness, what might I have been?
What my enjoyments in my youthful years,
Bereft of all that now my life endears?
And can I e'er these benefits forget?
And can I e'er repay the friendly debt?
No, doubly no;--yet should these rhymings please,
I shall roll on the grass with two-fold ease:
For I have long time been my fancy feeding
With hopes that you would one day think the reading
Of my rough verses not an hour mis[s]pent;
Should it e'er be so, what a rich content!
Some weeks have pass'd since last I saw the spires
In lucent Thames reflected:warm desires
To see the sun o'er peep the eastern dimness,
And morning shadows streaking into slimness
Across the lawny fields, and pebbly water;
To mark the time as they grow broad, and shorter;
To feel the air that plays about the hills,
And sips its freshness from the little rills;
To see high, golden corn wave in the light
When Cynthia smiles upon a summer's night,
And peers among the cloudlet's jet and white,
As though she were reclining in a bed
Of bean blossoms, in heaven freshly shed.
No sooner had I stepp'd into these pleasures
Than I began to think of rhymes and measures:
The air that floated by me seemd to say
"Write! thou wilt never have a better day."
And so I did. When many lines Id written,
Though with their grace I was not oversmitten,
Yet, as my hand was warm, I thought Id better
Trust to my feelings, and write you a letter.
Such an attempt required an inspiration
Of a peculiar sort,--a consummation;--
Which, had I felt, these scribblings might have been
Verses from which the soul would never wean:
But many days have past since last my heart
Was warmd luxuriously by divine Mozart;
By Arne delighted, or by Handel madden'd;
Or by the song of Erin piercd and sadden'd:
What time you were before the music sitting,
And the rich notes to each sensation fitting.
Since I have walk'd with you through shady lanes
That freshly terminate in open plains,
And revel'd in a chat that ceased not
When at night-fall among your books we got:
No, nor when supper came, nor after that,--
Nor when reluctantly I took my hat;
No, nor till cordially you shook my hand
Mid-way between our homes:--your accents bland
Still sounded in my ears, when I no more
Could hear your footsteps touch the gravly floor.
Sometimes I lost them, and then found again;
You chang'd the footpath for the grassy plain.
In those still moments I have wish'd you joys
That well you know to honour:--"Life's very toys
"With him," said I, "will take a pleasant charm;
"It cannot be that ought will work him harm."
These thoughts now come oer me with all their might:--
Again I shake your hand,--friend Charles, good night.
Written in September, 1816.

'Charles Cowden Clarke was born at Enfield on the 15th of December 1787; so that he was in his twenty-ninth year when the young poet addressed this epistle to him. He died at Villa Novello, Genoa, on the 13th of March 1877, in his ninetieth year.

(line 44): 'Mrs. Charles Cowden Clarke, speaking from knowledge derived from her husband, tells me there is no doubt whatever about Libertas being, as one would naturally imagine, a name for Leigh Hunt.'

(line 130): 'Hunt says ... in evident allusion to Keats's prowess as a boxer and readiness to back his friends -- "we can only add, without any disrespect to the graver warmth of our young poet, that if Ought attempted it, Ought would find he had stout work to do with more than one person." The student will probably turn to the posthumous poems and compare these epistles with that to John Hamilton Reynolds written in 1818.' ~~ Poetical Works of John Keats, ed. H. Buxton Forman, Crowell publ. 1895. by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes
~ John Keats, To Charles Cowden Clarke
,
992:Enkidu sits in front of her.

[The next 30 lines are missing; some of the fragmentary lines from 35 on are restored
from parallels in the Old Babylonian.]

"Why"(?)
His own counsel
At his instruction
Who knows his heart
Shamhat pulled off her clothing,
and clothed him with one piece
while she clothed herself with a second.
She took hold of him as the gods do'
and brought him to the hut of the shepherds.
The shepherds gathered all around about him,
they marveled to themselves:
"How the youth resembles Gilgamesh
tall in stature, towering up to the battlements over the wall!
Surely he was born in the mountains;
his strength is as mighty as the meteorite(!) of Anu!"
They placed food in front of him,
they placed beer in front of him;
Enkidu knew nothing about eating bread for food,
and of drinking beer he had not been taught.
The harlot spoke to Enkidu, saying:
"Eat the food, Enkidu, it ii the way one lives.
Drink the beer, as is the custom of the land."
Enkidu ate the food until he was sated,
he drank the beer-seven jugs! and became expansive and sang with joy!
He was elated and his face glowed.
He splashed his shaggy body with water,
and rubbed himself with oil, and turned into a human.
He put on some clothing and became like a warrior(!).
He took up his weapon and chased lions so that the shepherds could eat
He routed the wolves, and chased the lions.
With Enkidu as their guard, the herders could lie down.
A wakeful man, a singular youth, he was twice as tall (?) (as normal men

[The next 33 lines are missing in the Standard Version; lines 57-86 are taken from the
Old Babylonian.]

Then he raised his eyes and saw a man.
He said to the harlot:
"Shamhat, have that man go away!
Why has he come'? I will call out his name!"
The harlot called out to the man
and went over to him and spoke with him.
"Young man, where are you hurrying!
Why this arduous pace!"
The young man spoke, saying to Enkidu:
"They have invited me to a wedding,
as is the custom of the people.
the selection(!) of brides(!) ..
I have heaped up tasty delights for the wedding on the ceremonial(!) platter.
For the King of Broad-Marted Uruk,
open is the veil(!) of the people for choosing (a girl).
For Gilgamesh, the King of Broad-Marted Uruk,
open is the veil(?) of the people for choosing.
He will have intercourse with the 'destined wife,'
he first, the husband afterward.
This is ordered by the counsel of Anu,
from the severing of his umbilical cord it has been destined
for him."
At the young man's speech his (Enkidu's) face flushed (with anger).
[Several lines are missing.]
Enkidu walked in front, and Shamhat after him.
[The Standard Version resumes.]
He (Enkidu) walked down the street of Uruk-Haven,
mighty
He blocked the way through Uruk the Sheepfold.
The land of Uruk stood around him,
the whole land assembled about him,
the populace was thronging around him,
the men were clustered about him,
and kissed his feet as if he were a little baby(!).
Suddenly a handsome young man
For Ishara the bed of night(?)/marriage(?) is ready,
for Gilgamesh as for a god a counterpart(!) is set up.
Enkidu blocked the entry to the marital chamber,
and would not allow Gilgamreh to be brought in.
They grappled with each other at the entry to the marital chamber,
in the street they attacked each other, the public square of the land.
The doorposts trembled and the wall shook,

[About 42 lines are missing from the Standard Version; lines 103-129 are taken from
the Old Babylonian version.]

Gilgamesh bent his knees, with his other foot on the ground,
his anger abated and he turned his chest away.
After he turned his chest Enkidu said to Gilgamesh:
"Your mother bore you ever unique(!),
the Wild Cow of the Enclosure, Ninsun,
your head is elevated over (other) men,
Enlil has destined for you the kingship over the people."
[19 lines are missing here.]

They kissed each other and became friends.
[The Old Babylonian becomes fragmentary. The Standard Version resumes]
"His strength is the mightiest in the land!
His strength is as mighty as the meteorite(?) of Anu,
The mother of Gilgamesh spoke to Gilgamesh, saying;
Rimat-Ninsun said to her son:
"(I!), Rimar-Ninsun
My son
Plaintively
She went up into his (Shamash's) gateway,
plaintively she implored:
"Enkidu has no father or mother,
his shaggy hair no one cuts.
He was horn in the wilderness, no one raised him."
Enkidu was standing there, and heard the speech.
He and sat down and wept,
his eyes filled with tears,
his arms felt limp, his strength weakened.
They took each other by the hand,
and.., their hands like
Enkidu made a declaration to (Gilgamesh').
[32 lines are missing here.]
"in order to protect the Cedar Forest
Enlil assigned (Humbaba) as a terror to human beings,
Humbaba's roar is a Flood, his mouth is Fire, and his breath is Death!
He can hear 100 leagues away any rustling(?) in his forest!
Who would go down into his forest!
Enlil assigned him as a terror to human beings,
and whoever goes down into his forest paralysis(?) will strike!"
Gilgamesh spoke to Enkidu saying:
"What you say .. ."
[About 42 lines are missing here in the Standard Version; lines 228-249 are taken from
the Old Babylonian.]
"Who, my Friend, can ascend to the heavens!"
(Only) the gods can dwell forever with Shamash.
As for human beings, their days are numbered,
and whatever they keep trying to achieve is but wind!
Now you are afraid of death
what has become of your bold strength!
I will go in front of you,
and your mouth can call out: 'Go on closer, do not be afraid!'
Should I fall, I will have established my fame.
(They will say 'It was Gilgamesh who locked in battle with Humbaba the Terrible!'
You were born and raised in the wilderness,
a lion leaped up on you, so you have experienced it all!'
[5 lines are fragmentary]
I will undertake it and I will cut down the Cedar.
It is I who will establish fame for eternity!
Come, my friend, I will go over to the forge
and have them cast the weapons in our presence!"
Holding each other by the hand they went over to the forge.
[The Standard Version resumes at this point.]
The craftsmen sat and discussed with one another.
"We should fashion the axe
The hatchet should he one talent in weight
Their swords should be one talent
Their armor one talent, their armor"
Gilgamesh said to the men of Uruk:
"Listen to me, men
[5 lines are missing here.
You, men of Uruk, who know
I want to make myself more mighty, and will go on a distant(!) journey!
I will face fighting such as I have never known,
I will set out on a road I have never traveled!
Give me your blessings!
I will enter the city gate of Uruk
I will devote(?) myself to the New Year's Festival.
I will perform the New Year's (ceremonies) in
The New Year's Festival will take place, celebrations
They will keep shouting 'Hurrah!' in""
Enkidu spoke to the Elders:
"What the men of Uruk
Say to him that he must not go to the Cedar Forest
the journey is not to be made!
A man who
The Guardian of the Cedar Forest
The Noble Counselors of Uruk arose and
delivered their advice toGilgamesh:
"You are young, Gilgamesh, your heart carries you off
you do not know what you are talking about!
gave birth to you.
Humbaba's roar is a Flood,
his mouth is Fire, his breath Death!
He can hear any rustling(!) in his forest 100 leagues away!
Who would go down into his forest!
Who among (even!) the Igigi gods can confront him?
In order to keep the Cedar safe, Enlil assigned him as a terror
to human beings."
Gilgamesh listened to the statement of his Noble Counselors.
[About 5 lines are missing to the end of Tablet II.]


~ Anonymous, The Epic of Gilgamesh Tablet II
,
993:Less profitable
than writing on the waters
  of a flowing stream
such is the futility
of unrequited passion.

Like (0) 0
The Epic of Gilgamesh Tablet VI
He washed out his marred hair and cleaned up his equipment(?),
shaking out his locks down over his back,
throwing off his dirty clothes and putting on clean ones.
He wrapped himself in regal garments and fastened the sash.
When Gilgamesh placed his crown on his head,
a princess Ishtar raised her eyes to the beauty of Gilgamesh.
"Come along, Gilgamesh, be you my husband,
to me grant your lusciousness.'
Be you my husband, and I will be your wife.
I will have harnessed for you a chariot of lapis lazuli and gold,
with wheels of gold and 'horns' of electrum(?).
It will he harnessed with great storming mountain mules!
Come into our house, with the fragrance of cedar.
And when you come into our house the doorpost(?) and throne dais(?)'will kiss your feet.
Bowed down beneath you will be kings, lords, and princes.
The Lullubu people' will bring you the produce of the mountains and countryside as tribute.
Your she-goats will bear triplets, your ewes twins,
your donkey under burden will overtake the mule,
your steed at the chariot will be bristling to gallop,
your ax at the yoke will have no match."
Gilgamesh addressed Princess Ishtar saying:
"What would I have to give you if I married you!
Do you need oil or garments for your body! Do you lack anything for food or drink!
I would gladly feed you food fit far a god,
I would gladly give you wine fit for a king,
may the street(?) be your home(?), may you be clothed in a garment,
and may any lusting man (?) marry you!
an oven who ice,
a half-door that keeps out neither breeze nor blast,
a palace that crushes down valiant warriors,
an elephant who devours its own covering,
pitch that blackens the hands of its bearer,
a waterskin that soaks its bearer through,
limestone that buckles out the stone wall,
a battering ram that attracts the enemy land,
a shoe that bites its owner's feet!
Where are your bridegrooms that you keep forever'
Where is your 'Little Shepherd' bird that went up over you!
See here now, I will recite the list of your lovers.
Of the shoulder (?) his hand,
Tammuz, the lover of your earliest youth,
for him you have ordained lamentations year upon year!
You loved the colorful 'Little Shepherd' bird
and then hit him, breaking his wing, so
now he stands in the forest crying 'My Wing'!
You loved the supremely mighty lion,
yet you dug for him seven and again seven pits.
You loved the stallion, famed in battle,
yet you ordained for him the whip, the goad, and the lash,
ordained for him to gallop for seven and seven hours,
ordained for him drinking from muddled waters,'
you ordained far his mother Silili to wail continually.
You loved the Shepherd, the Master Herder,
who continually presented you with bread baked in embers,
and who daily slaughtered for you a kid.
Yet you struck him, and turned him into a wolf,
so his own shepherds now chase him
and his own dogs snap at his shins.
You loved Ishullanu, your father's date gardener,
who continually brought you baskets of dates,
and brightened your table daily.
You raised your eyes to him, and you went to him:
'Oh my Ishullanu, let us taste of your strength,
stretch out your hand to me, and touch our vulva.
Ishullanu said to you:
'Me! What is it you want from me!
Has my mother not baked, and have I not eaten
that I should now eat food under contempt and curses
and that alfalfa grass should be my only cover against
the cold?
As you listened to these his words
you struck him, turning him into a dwarf(?),
and made him live in the middle of his (garden of) labors,
where the mihhu do not go up, nor the bucket of dates (?) down.
And now me! It is me you love, and you will ordain for me as
for them!"
When Ishtar heard this, in a fury she went up to the heavens,
going to Anu, her father, and crying,
going to Anrum, her mother, and weeping:
"Father, Gilgamesh has insulted me over and over,
Gilgamesh has recounted despicable deeds about me,
despicable deeds and curses!"
Anu addressed Princess Ishtar, saying: "What is the matter?
Was it not you who provoked King Gilgamesh?
So Gilgamesh recounted despicable deeds about you,
despicable deeds and curses!"
Ishtar spoke to her father, Anu, saying:
"Father, give me the Bull of Heaven,
so he can kill Gilgamesh in his dwelling.
If you do not give me the Bull of Heaven,
I will knock down the Gates of the Netherworld,
I will smash the door posts, and leave the doors flat down,
and will let the dead go up to eat the living!
And the dead will outnumber the living!"
Anu addressed princess Ishtar, saying:
"If you demand the Bull of Heaven from me,
there will be seven years of empty husks for the land of Uruk.
Have you collected grain for the people!
Have you made grasses grow for the animals?"
Ishtar addressed Anu, her father, saying:
"I have heaped grain in the granaries for the people,
I made grasses grow for the animals,
in order that they might eat in the seven years of empty husks.
I have collected grain for the people,
I have made grasses grow for the animals."
When Anu heard her words, he placed the noserope of the Bull of Heaven in her hand.
Ishtar led the Bull of Heaven down to the earth.
When it reached Uruk It climbed down to the Euphrates
At the snort of the Bull of Heaven a huge pit opened up,
and 100 Young Men of Uruk fell in.
At his second snort a huge pit opened up,
and 200 Young Men of Uruk fell in.
At his third snort a huge pit opened up,
and Enkidu fell in up to his waist.
Then Enkidu jumped out and seized the Bull of Heaven by its horns.
the Bull spewed his spittle in front of him,
with his thick tail he flung his dung behind him (?).
Enkidu addressed Gilgamesh, saying:
"My friend, we can be bold(?)
How shall we respond
My friend, I saw
And my strength
I will rip out
I and you, we must share (?)
I shall grasp the Bull
I will fill my hands (?) ..
In front

between the nape, the horns, and thrust your sword."
Enkidu stalked and hunted down the Bull of Heaven.
He grasped it by the thick of its tail
and held onto it with both his hands (?),
while Gilgamesh, like an expert butcher,
boldly and surely approached the Bull of Heaven.
Between the nape, the horns, and he thrust his sword.
After they had killed the Bull of Heaven,
they ripped out its heart and presented it to Shamash.
They withdrew bowing down humbly to Shamash.
Then the brothers sat down together.
Ishtar went up onto the top of the Wall of Uruk-Haven,
cast herself into the pose of mourning, and hurled her woeful curse:
"Woe unto Gilgamesh who slandered me and killed the Bull of
Heaven!"
When Enkidu heard this pronouncement of Ishtar,
he wrenched off the Bull's hindquarter and flung it in her face:
"If I could only get at you I would do the same to you!
I would drape his innards over your arms!"
Ishtar assembled the (cultic women) of lovely-locks, joy-girls, and harlots,
and set them to mourning over the hindquarter of the Bull.
Gilgamesh summoned all the artisans and craftsmen.
(All) the artisans admired the thickness of its horns,
each fashioned from 30 minas of lapis lazuli!
Two fingers thick is their casing(?).
Six vats of oil the contents of the two
he gave as ointment to his (personal) god Lugalbanda.
He brought the horns in and hung them in the bedroom of the family
head (Lugalbanda?).
They washed their hands in the Euphrates,
and proceeded hand in hand,
striding through the streets of Uruk.
The men of Uruk gathered together, staring at them.
Gilgamesh said to the palace retainers:
"Who is the bravest of the men)
Who is the boldest of the males!
Gilgamesh is the bravest of the men,
the boldest of the males!
She at whom we flung the hindquarter of the Bull of Heaven in
anger,
Ishtar has no one that pleases her in the street (?)
Gilgamesh held a celebration in his palace.
The Young Men dozed off, sleeping on the couches of the night.
Enkidu was sleeping, and had a dream.
He woke up and revealed his dream to his friend.


~ Anonymous, Less profitable
,
994:When on high the heaven had not been named,
Firm ground below had not been called by name,
Naught but primordial Apsu, their begetter,
(And) Mummu-Tiamat, she who bore them all,
Their waters commingling as a single body;
No reed hut had been matted, no marsh land had appeared,
When no gods whatever had been brought into being,
Uncalled by name, their destinies undetermined-
Then it was that the gods were formed within them.
Lahmu and Lahamu were brought forth, by name they were called.
For aeons they grew in age and stature.
Anshar and Kishar were formed, surpassing the others.
They prolonged the days, added on the years.
Anu was their son, of his fathers the rival;
Yea, Anshar's first born, Anu was his equal.
Anu begot in his image Nudimmud.
This Nudimmud was of his fathers the master;
Of broad wisdom, understanding, mighty in strength,
Mightier by far than his grandfather, Anshar.
He had no rival among the gods, his brothers.
The divine brothers banded together,
They disturbed Tiamat as they surged back and forth,
Yea, they troubled the mood of Tiamat
By their hilarity in the Abode of Heaven.
Apsu could not lessen their clamour
And Tiamat was speechless at their ways.
Their doings were loathsome unto (. . .).
Unsavory were their ways; they were overbearing.
Then Apsu, the begetter of the great gods,
Cried out, addressing Mummu, his vizier:
"O Mummu. my vizier, who rejoicest my spirit,
Come hither and let us go to Tiamat!"
They went and sat down before Tiamat,
Exchanging counsel about the gods, their first born.
Apsu, opening his mouth,
Said unto resplendent Tiamat:
"Their ways are verily loathsome unto me.
By day I find no relief, nor repose by night.
I will destroy, I will wreck their ways,
That quiet may be restored. Let us have rest!"
As soon as Tiamat heard this,
She was wroth and called out to her husband.
She cried out aggrieved, as she raged all alone,
Injecting woe into her mood:
"What? Should we destroy what we have built?
Their ways are indeed troublesome, but let us attend kindly!"
Ill wishing and ungracious was Mummu's advice:
"Do destroy, my father, the mutinous ways.
Then shalt thou have relief by day and rest by night!"
When Apsu heard this, his face grew radiant
Because of the evil he planned against the gods, his sons.
As for Mummu, by the neck he embraced him
As (that one) sat down on his knees to kiss him.
(Now) whatever they plotted between them
Was repeated unto the gods, their first born.
When the gods heard (this), they were astir,
(Then) lapsed into silence and remained speechless,
Surpassing in wisdom, accomplished, resourceful,
Ea, the all wise, saw through their scheme.
A master design against it he devised and setup,
Made artful his spell against it, surpassing and holy.
He recited it and made it subsist in the deep,
As he poured sleep upon him. Sound asleep he lay.
When Apsu he made prone, drenched with sleep,
Mummu, the adviser, was impotent to move,
He loosened his band, tore off his tiara,
Removed his halo (and) put it on himself.
Having fettered Apsu, he slew him.
Mummu he bound and left behind lock.
Having thus upon Apsu established his dwelling,
He laid hold on Mummu, holding him by the nose rope.
After he vanquished and trodden down his foes,
Ea, his triumph over his enemies secured,
In his sacred chamber in profound sleep he rested.
He named it "Apsu," for shrines he assigned (it).
In that same place his cult hut he founded.
Ea and Damkina, his wife, dwelled (there) in splendor.
In the chamber of fates, the abode of destinies,
A god was engendered, most potent and wisest of gods.
In the heart of Apsu was Marduk created,
In the heart of holy Apsu was Marduk created.
He who begot him was Ea, his father;
She who conceived him was Damkina, his mother.
The breast of goddesses did she suck.
The nurse that nursed him filled him with awesomeness.
Alluring was his figure, sparkling the lift in his eyes.
Lordly was his gait, commanding from of old.
When Ea saw him, the father who begot him,
He exulted and glowed, his heart filled with gladness.
He rendered him perfect and endowed him with a double godhead.
Greatly exalted was he above them, exceeding throughout.
Perfect were his members beyond comprehension,
Unsuited for understanding, difficult to perceive.
Four were his eyes, four were his ears;
When he moved his lips, fire blazed forth.
Large were all hearing organs,
And the eyes, in like number, scanned all things.
He was the loftiest of the gods, surpassing was his stature;
His members were enormous, he was exceedingly tall.
"My little son, my little son!
My son, the Sun! Sun of the heavens!"
Clothed with the halo of the ten gods, he was strong to the utmost,
As their awesome flashes were heaped upon him.

Disturbed was Tiamat, astir night and day.
The gods, in malice, contributed to the storm.
Their insides having plotted evil.
To Tiamat these brothers said:
"When they slew Apsu, thy consort,
Thou didst not aid him but remaindest still.
Although he fashioned the awesome Saw,
Thy insides are diluted and so we can have no rest.
Let Apsu, thy consort, be in thy mind
And Mummu, who has been vanquished! Thou are left alone.

Then joined issue Tiamat and Marduk, wisest of gods,
They swayed in single combat, locked in battle.
The lord spread out his net to enfold her,
The Evil Wind, which followed behind, he let loose in her face.
When Tiamat opened her mouth to consume him,
He drove the Evil Wind that she close not her lips.
As the fierce winds charged her belly,
Her body was distended and her mouth was wide open.
He released the arrow, it tore her belly,
It cut through her insides, splitting the heart.
Having thus subdued her, he extinguished her life.
He cast down her carcass to stand upon it
The lord trod on the legs of Tiamat,
With his unsparing mace he crushed her skull.
When the arteries of her blood he had severed,
The North Wind bore (it) to places undisclosed.
On seeing this, his fathers were joyful and jubilant,
They brought gifts of homage, they to him.
Then the lord paused to view her dead body,
That he might divide the monster and do artful works.
He split her like a shellfish into two parts:
Half of her he set up and ceiled as sky,
Pulled down the bar and posted guards.
He bade them to allow not her waters to escape.
He crossed the heavens and surveyed (its) regions.
He squared Apsu's quarter, the abode of Nudimmud,
As the lord measured the dimensions of Apsu.
The Great Abode, its likeness, he fixed as Esharra,
The Great Abode, Esharra, which he made as the firmament.
Anu, Enlil, and Ea he made occupy their places.

When Marduk hears the words of the gods,
His heart prompts (him) to fashion artful works.
Opening his mouth he addresses EA
To impart the plan he addresses EA
To impart the plan he had conceived in his heart:
"Blood I will mass and cause boned to be.
I will establish a savage, 'man' shall be his name.
Verily, savage man I will create.
He shall be charged with the service of the gods
That they might be at ease! The ways of the gods I will artfully alter.
Though alike revered, into two (groups) they shall be divided."
Ea answered him, speaking a word to him.
To relate to him a scheme for the relief of the gods:
"Let but one of their brothers be handed over;"
He alone shall perish that mankind may be fashioned.
Let the great gods be here in Assembly,
Let the guilty be handed over that they may endure."
Marduk summoned the great gods to Assembly;
Presiding graciously, he issued instructions.
This utterance the gods pay heed.
The king addresses a word to the Anunnaki:
"If your former statement was true,
Do (now) the truth on oath by me declare!
Who was it that contrived the uprising,
And made Tiamat rebel, and joined battle?
Let him be handed over who contrived the uprising.
His guilt I will make him bear that you may dwell in peace!"
The Igigi, the great gods, replied to him,
To Lugaldimmerankia, counsellor of the gods, their lord:
"It was Kingu who contrived the uprising,
And made Tiamat rebel, and joined battle."
The bound him holding him before Ea.
They imposed on him his guilt and severed his blood (vessels).
Out of his blood they fashioned mankind.
He imposed the service and let free the gods.

The origin of this The Babylonian Epic of Creation and its translator are both unknown. The original story is from the time of the Sumerians. This was written about the time of Nebuchadrezzar in the 12th century B.C.


~ Anonymous, Enuma Elish (When on high)
,
995:At twenty leagues they broke for some food,
at thirty leagues they stopped for the night,
walking Fifty leagues in a whole day,
a walk of a month and a half.
On the third day they drew near to the Lebanon.
They dug a well facing Shamash (the setting sun),
Gilgamesh climbed up a mountain peak,
made a libation of flour, and said:
"Mountain, bring me a dream, a favorable message from
Shamash."
Enkidu prepared a sleeping place for him for the night;
a violent wind passed through so he attached a covering.
He made him lie down, and in a circle.
they like grain from the mountain
While Gilgamesh rested his chin on his knees,
sleep that pours over mankind overtook him.
in the middle of the night his sleep came to an end,
so he got up and said to his friend:
"My friend, did you not call out to me? Why did I wake up?
Did you not touch me? Why am I so disturbed?
Did a god pass by? Why are my muscles trembling?
Enkidu, my friend, I have had a dream
and the dream I had was deeply disturbing(?)
in the mountain gorges
the mountain fell down on me (us?)
Wet(?) like flies(?)
He who was born in the wilderness,

Enkidu, interpreted the dream for his friend:
"My friend, your dream is favorable.
The dream is extremely important.
My friend, the mountain which you saw in the dream is
Humbaba.
"It means we will capture Humbaba, and kill him
and throw his corpse into the wasteland.
In the morning there will be a favorable message from Shamash.
At twenty leagues they broke for some food,
at thirty leagues they stopped for the night,
walking fifty leagues in a whole day,
a walk of a month and a half.
They dug a well facing Shamash
Gilgamesh climbed up a mountain peak,
made a libation of flour, and said,
"Mountain, bring me a dream, a favorable message from
Shamash."
Enkidu prepared a sleeping place for him for the night;
a violent wind passed through so he attached a covering.
He made him lie down, and in a circle.
They like grain from the mountain
While Gilgamesh rested his chin on his knees,
sleep that pours over mankind overtook him.
,, in the middle of the night his sleep came to an end,
so he got up and said to his friend:
My friend, did you not call out to me? Why did I wake up?
Did you not touch me? Why am I so disturbed?
Did a god pass by? Why are my muscles trembling?
Enkidu, my friend, I have had a dream,
besides my first dream, a second.
And the dream I hadso striking, so,so disturbing!' I was grappling with a wild bull of the wilderness,
with his bellow he split the ground, a cloud of dustto
the sky.
I sank to my knees in front of him.
He holds that encircled(?) my arm.
(My?) tongue(?) hung out(?)
My temples throbbed(?)
He gave me water to drink from his waterskin."
"My friend, the god to whom we go
is not the wild bull? He is totally different?
The wild bull that you saw is Shamash, the protector,
in difficulties he holds our hand.
The one who gave you water to drink from his waterskin
is your personal) god, who brings honor to you, Lugalbanda.
We should join together and do one thing,
a deed such as has never (before) been done in the land."
At twenty leagues they broke for some food,
at thirty leagues they stopped for the night,
walking fifty leagues in a whole day,
a walk of a month and a half.
They dug a well facing Shamash,
Gilgamesh climbed up a mountain peak,
made a libation of flour, and said:
"Mountain, bring me a dream, a favorable message from
Shamash."
Enkidu prepared a sleeping place for him for the night;
a violent wind passed through so he attached a covering.
He made him lie dawn, and in a circle.
They like grain from the mountain
While Gilgamesh rested his chin on his knees,
sleep that pours over mankind overtook him.
In the middle of the night his sleep came to an end,
so he got up and said to his friend:
"My friend, did you nor call out to me? Why did I wake up?
Did you not touch me? Why am I so disturbed?
Did a god pass by) Why are my muscles trembling?
Enkidu, my friend, I have had a third dream,
and the dream I had was deeply disturbing.
,,     The heavens roared and the earth rumbled;
(then) it became deathly still, and darkness loomed.
A bolt of lightning cracked and a fire broke out,
and where(?) it kept thickening, there rained death.
Then the white-hot name dimmed, and the fire went out,
and everything that had been falling around turned to ash.
Let us go down into the plain so we can talk it over."
,,, Enkidu heard the dream that he had presented and said to Gilgamesh
(About 40 lines are missing here.)
At twenty leagues they broke for some food, at thirty leagues they stopped for the night,
walking fifty leagues in a whole day,
a walk of a month and a half.
They dug a well facing Shamash,
Gilgamesh climbed up a mountain peak, made a libation of flour, and said:
"Mountain, bring me a dream, a favorable message from
Shamash."
Enkidu prepared a sleeping place for him for the night;
a violent wind passed through so he attached a covering.
He made him lie down, and in a circle.
They like grain from the mountain
While Gilgamesh rested his chin on his knees,
sleep that pours over mankind overtook him.
in the middle of the night his sleep came to an end, so he got up and said to his friend:
"My friend, did you not call out to me? Why did I wake up?
Did you nor touch me? Why am I so disturbed?
Did a god pass by? Why are my muscles trembling)
Enkidu, my friend, I have had a fourthi(?) dream,
and the dream I had was deeply disturbing (?).
(About 11 lines are missing)
"He was cubits tall
Gilgamesh
Enkidu listened to his dream
"The dream that you had is favorable, it is extremely important? My friend, this
Humbaba Eke
Before it becomes light
We will achieve (victory?) over him,
Humbaba, against whom we rage,
we will.., and triumph over him.
In the morning there will be a favorable message from Shamash.
At twenty leagues they broke for some food, at thirty leagues they stopped for the night,
walking fifty leagues in a whole day,
a walk of a month and a half.
They dug a well facing Shamash,
Gilgamesh climbed up a mountain peak, made a libation of flour, and said:
"Mountain, bring me a dream, a favorable message from
Shamash."
Enkidu prepared a sleepmg place for him for the night;
a violent wind passed through so he attached a covering.
He made him lie down, and in a circle. They like grain from the mountain
While Gilgamerh rested his chin on his knees,
sleep that pours over mankind overtook him.
,, in the middle of the night his sleep came to an end,
so he got up and said to his friend:
"My friend, did you not call out to me? Why did I wake up? Did you not touch me? Why am I so disturbed?
Did a god pass by? Why are my muscles trembling?
Enkidu, my friend, I had a fifth(?) dream,
and the dream I had was deeply disturbing (?).
His tears were running in the presence of Shamash. 'What you said in Uruk,
be mindful of it, stand by me ?"
Gilgamesh, the offspring of Uruk-Hauen,
Shamash heard what issued from his mouth,
and suddenly there resounded a warning sound from the sky.
"Hurry, stand by him so that he (Humhaba) does nor enter
the forest,
and does not go down into the thickets and hide (?)
He has not put on his seven coats of armor(?)
he is wearing only one, but has taken off six."
,,, They(Gilgamesh and Enkidu ')
They lunge at each other like raging wild bulls
One name he bellowed full of
The Guardian of the Forest bellowedHumbaha like
"'One alone cannot
'Strangers
'A slippery path is not feared by two people who help each
other.'
'Twice three times
'A three-ply rope cannot be cut.'
'The mighty lioness cubs can roll him over."'
Enkidu spoke to Gilgamesh, saying:
"As soon as we have gone down into the Cedar Forest,
let us split open the tree (?) and strip off its branches(?)."
Gilgamesh spoke to Enkidu, saying:
"Why, my friend, weso wretchedly (?)
We have crossed over all the mountarns together,
in front of us, before we have cut down the Cedar.
My friend, you who are so experienced in battle,
who fighting,
you' and (need) not fear death.
Let your voice bellow forth like the kettledrum, let the stiffness in your arms depart,
let the paralysis in your legs go away.
Take my hand, my friend, we will go on together.
Your heart should burn to do battle
pay no heed to death, do not lose heart!
The one who watches from the side is a careful man,
but the one who walks in front protects himself and saves his
comrade,
and through their fighting they establish fame'"
As the two of them reached the evergreen forest
they cut off their talk, and stood still.


~ Anonymous, The Epic of Gilgamesh Tablet IV
,
996:"My friend, why are the Great Gods in conference?
(In my dream) Anu, Enlil, and Shamash held a council,
and Anu spoke to Enlil:
'Because they killed the Bull of Heaven and have also slain
Humbaba,
the one of them who pulled up the Cedar of the Mountain
must die!'
Enlil said:'Let Enkidu die, but Gilgamesh must not die!'
Bur the Sun God of Heavenl replied to valiant Enlil:
'Was it not at my command that they killed the Bull of
Heaven and Humbaba!
Should now innocent Enkidu die!'
Then Enlil became angry at Shamash, saying:
'it is you who are responsible because you traveled daily
with them as their friend!"'
Enkidu was lying (sick) in front of Gilgamesh.
His tears flowing like canals, he (Gilgamesh) said:
"O brother, dear brother, why are they absolving me instead of
my brother)"
Then Enkidu said "So now must 1 become a ghost,
to sit with the ghosts of the dead, to see my dear brother
nevermore!"
In the Cedar Forest where the Great (Gods dwell, I did not kill the Cedar."
Enkidu addressed Gilgamesh,
saying to Gilgamesh, his Friend:
"Come, Friend,
The door
Enkidu raised his eyes,and spoke to the door as if it were human:
"You stupid wooden door,
with no ability to understand !
Already at 10 leagues I selected the wood for you,
until I saw the towering Cedar
Your wood was without compare in my eyes.
Seventy-two cubits was your height, 14 cubits your width, one
cubit your thickness,
your door post, pivot stone, and post cap
I fashioned you, and I carried you; to Nippur
Had I known, O door, that this would he your gratitude
and this your gratitude,
I would have taken an axe and chopped you up,
and lashed your planks into
in its I erected the
and in Urukthey heard
But yet, O door, I fashioned you, and I carried you to Nippur!
May a king who comes after me reject you, may the god
may he remove my name and set his own name there!"
He ripped out.., threw down.
He(Gilgamesh) kept listening to his words, and retorted quickly,
Gilgamcsh listened to the words of Enkidu, his Friend, and his tears flowed.
Gilgamesh addressed Enkidu, raying:
'Frend, the gods have given you a mind broad and
Though it behooves you to be sensible, you keep uttering
improper things!
Why, my Friend, does your mind utter improper things?
The dream is important but very frightening,
your lips are buzzing like flies.
Though there is much fear, the dream is very important.
To the living they (the gods) leave sorrow,
to the living the dream leaves pain.
I will pray, and beseech the Great Gods,
I will seek, and appeal to your god.
Enlil, the Father of the Gods,
Enlil the Counseloryou.
I will fashion a statue of you of gold without measure,
do nor worry, gold
What Enlil says is not
What he has said cannot go back, cannot,
What he has laid down cannot go back, cannot
My friend, of fate goes to mankind."
a lust as dawn hegan to glow, Enkidu raised his head and cried out to Shamash,
at the (first) gleam of the sun his tears poured forth.
"I appeal to you, O Shamash, on behalf of my precious life (?),
because of that notorious trapper
who did not let me attain the same as my friend
May the trapper not get enough to feed himself .
May his profit be slashed, and his wages decrease,
may be his share before you,
may he not enter but go our of it like vapor(?)!"
After he had cursed the trapper to his satisfaction,
his heart prompted him to curse the Harlot.
"Come now, Harlot, I am going to decree your fate,
a fate that will never come to an end for eternity!
I will curse you with a Great Curse,
may my curses overwhelm you suddenly, in an instant!
May you not be able to make a household,
and not be able to love a child of your own (?)!
May you not dwell in the of girls,
may dregs of beer (?) stain your beautiful lap,
may a drunk soil your festal robe with vomit(?),
the beautiful (?)
of the potter.
May you never acquire anything of bright alabaster,
may the judge. ..
may shining silver(?), man's delight, not be cast into your house,
may a gateway be where you rake your pleasure,'
may a crossroad be your home
may a wasteland be your sleeping place,
may the shadow of the city wall be your place to stand,
may the thorns and briars skin your feet,
may both the drunk and the dry slap you on the cheek,
in your city's streets (?),
may owls nest in the cracks of your walls!
may no parties take place
present(?).
and your filthy "lap" may.., be his(?)
Because of me
while I, blameless, you have against me.
When Shamash heard what his mouth had uttered,
he suddenly called out to him from the sky:
"Enkidu, why are you cursing the harlot, Shamhat,
she who fed you bread fit for a god,
she who gave you wine fit for a king,
she who dressed you in grand garments,
and she who allowed you to make beautiful Gilgamesh your
comrade!
Now Gilgamesh is your beloved brother-friend!
He will have you lie on a grand couch,
will have you lie on a couch of honor.
He will seat you in the seat of ease, the seat at his left,
so that the princes of the world kiss your feet.
He will have the people of Uruk go into mourning and moaning over you,
will fill the happy people with woe over you.
And after you he will let his body bear a filthy mat of hair,
will don the skin of a lion and roam the wilderness."
As soon as Enkidu heard the words of valiant Shamash,
his agitated heart grew calm, his anger abated.
Enkidu spoke to the harlot, saying:
"Come, Shamhat, I will decree your fate for you.
Let my mouth which has cursed you, now turn to bless you!
May governors and nobles love you,
May he who is one league away bite his lip (in anticipation of you),
may he who is two leagues away shake our his locks (in preparation)!
May the soldier not refuse you, but undo his buckle for you,
may he give you rock crystal(!), lapis lazuli, and gold,
may his gift to you be earrings of filigree(?).
May his supplies be heaped up.
May he bring you into the of the gods.
May the wife, the mother of seven (children),
be abandoned because of you!"
Enkidu's innards were churning,
lying there so alone.
He spoke everything he felt, saying to his friend:
"Listen, my friend, to the dream that I had last night.
The heavens cried out and the earth replied,
and I was standing between them.
There appeared a man of dark visage
his face resembled the Anzu,"
his hands were the paws of a lion,
his nails the talons of an eagle!
he seized me by my hair and overpowered me.
I struck him a blow, but he skipped about like a jump rope,
and then he struck me and capsizcd me like a raft,
and trampled on me like a wild bull.
He encircled my whole body in a clamp.
'Help me, my friend" (I cried),
but you did not rescue me, you were afraid and did not.. ."
"Then he and turned me into a dove,
so that my arms were feathered like a bird.
Seizing me, he led me down to the House of Darkness,
the dwelling of Irkalla,
to the house where those who enter do not come out,
along the road of no return,
to the house where those who dwell, do without light,
where dirt is their drink, their food is of clay,
where, like a bird, they wear garments of feathers,
and light cannot be seen, they dwell in the dark,
and upon the door and bolt, there lies dust.
On entering the House of Dust,
everywhere I looked there were royal crowns gathered in heaps,
everywhere I listened, it was the bearers of crowns,
who, in the past, had ruled the land,
but who now served Anu and Enlil cooked meats,
served confections, and poured cool water from waterskins.
In the house of Dust that I entered
there sat the high priest and acolyte,
there sat the purification priest and ecstatic,
there sat the anointed priests of the Great Gods.
There sat Etana, there sat Sumukan,
there sat Ereshkigal, the Queen of the Netherworld.
Beletseri, the Scribe of the Netherworld, knelt before her,
she was holding the tablet and was reading it out to her Ereshkigal.
She raised her head when she saw me
'Who has taken this man?'

[50 lines are missing here]
I (?) who went through every difficulty,
remember me and forget(?) not all that I went through with you.
"My friend has had a dream that bodes ill?"
The day he had the dream came to an end.
Enkidu lies down a first day, a second day,
that Enkidu in his bed;
a third day and fourth day, that Enkidu in his bed;
a fifth, a sixth, and seventh, that Enkidu in his bed;
an eighth, a ninth, a tenth, that Enkidu in his bed.
Enkidu's illness grew ever worse.
Enkidu drew up from his bed,
and called out to Gilgamesh:
"My friend hates me
while he talked with me in Uruk
as I was afraid of the battle he encouraged me.
My friend who saved me in battle has now abandoned me!
I and you

[About 20 lines are missing]

At his noises Gilgamesh was roused
Like a dove he moaned
"May he not be held, in death
O preeminent among men"
To his friend
"I will mourn him (?)
I at his side"


~ Anonymous, The Epic of Gilgamesh Tablet VII
,
997:financially and employed him as his unofficial secretary.
In March 768, he began his journey again and got as far as Hunan province,
where he died in Tanzhou (now Changsha) in November or December 770, in his
58th year. He was survived by his wife and two sons, who remained in the area
for some years at least. His last known descendant is a grandson who requested
a grave inscription for the poet from Yuan Zhen in 813.
Hung summarises his life by concluding that, "He appeared to be a filial son, an
affectionate father, a generous brother, a faithful husband, a loyal friend, a
dutiful official, and a patriotic subject."
Works
Criticism of ~ Du Fu



's works has focused on his strong sense of history, his moral
engagement, and his technical excellence.
History
Since the Song dynasty, critics have called ~ Du Fu



the "poet historian". The most
directly historical of his poems are those commenting on military tactics or the
successes and failures of the government, or the poems of advice which he wrote
to the emperor. Indirectly, he wrote about the effect of the times in which he
lived on himself, and on the ordinary people of China. As Watson notes, this is
information "of a kind seldom found in the officially compiled histories of the
era".
~ Du Fu



's political comments are based on emotion rather than calculation: his
prescriptions have been paraphrased as, "Let us all be less selfish, let us all do
what we are supposed to do". Since his views were impossible to disagree with,
his forcefully expressed truisms enabled his installation as the central figure of
Chinese poetic history.
Moral engagement
A second favourite epithet of Chinese critics is that of "poet sage" (?? shi shèng),
a counterpart to the philosophical sage, Confucius. One of the earliest surviving
works, The Song of the Wagons (from around 750), gives voice to the sufferings
of a conscript soldier in the imperial army, even before the beginning of the
rebellion; this poem brings out the tension between the need of acceptance and
fulfilment of one's duties, and a clear-sighted consciousness of the suffering
which this can involve. These themes are continuously articulated in the poems
on the lives of both soldiers and civilians which ~ Du Fu



produced throughout his
life.
Although ~ Du Fu



's frequent references to his own difficulties can give the
impression of an all-consuming solipsism, Hawkes argues that his "famous
compassion in fact includes himself, viewed quite objectively and almost as an
afterthought". He therefore "lends grandeur" to the wider picture by comparing it
to "his own slightly comical triviality".
~ Du Fu



's compassion, for himself and for others, was part of his general
broadening of the scope of poetry: he devoted many works to topics which had
previously been considered unsuitable for poetic treatment. Zhang Jie wrote that
for ~ Du Fu



, "everything in this world is poetry", and he wrote extensively on
subjects such as domestic life, calligraphy, paintings, animals, and other poems.
Technical excellence
~ Du Fu



's work is notable above all for its range. Chinese critics traditionally used
the term txt (jídàchéng- "complete symphony"), a reference to Mencius'
description of Confucius. Yuan Zhen was the first to note the breadth of ~ Du Fu



's
achievement, writing in 813 that his predecessor, "united in his work traits which
previous men had displayed only singly". He mastered all the forms of Chinese
poetry: Chou says that in every form he "either made outstanding advances or
contributed outstanding examples". Furthermore, his poems use a wide range of
registers, from the direct and colloquial to the allusive and self-consciously
literary. This variety is manifested even within individual works: Owen identifies
the, "rapid stylistic and thematic shifts" in poems which enable the poet to
represent different facets of a situation, while Chou uses the term "juxtaposition"
as the major analytical tool in her work. ~ Du Fu



is noted for having written more
on poetics and painting than any other writer of his time. He wrote eighteen
poems on painting alone, more than any other Tang poet. ~ Du Fu



's seemingly
negative commentary on the prized horse paintings of Han Gan ignited a
controversy that has persisted to the present day.
The tenor of his work changed as he developed his style and adapted to his
surroundings ("chameleon-like" according to Watson): his earliest works are in a
relatively derivative, courtly style, but he came into his own in the years of the
rebellion. Owen comments on the "grim simplicity" of the Qinzhou poems, which
mirrors the desert landscape; the works from his Chengdu period are "light, often
finely observed"; while the poems from the late Kuizhou period have a "density
and power of vision".
Influence
According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, ~ Du Fu



's writings are considered by
many literary critics to be among the greatest of all time, and it states "his
dense, compressed language makes use of all the connotative overtones of a
phrase and of all the intonational potentials of the individual word, qualities that
no translation can ever reveal."
In his lifetime and immediately following his death, ~ Du Fu



was not greatly
appreciated. In part this can be attributed to his stylistic and formal innovations,
some of which are still "considered extremely daring and bizarre by Chinese
critics." There are few contemporary references to him—only eleven poems from
six writers—and these describe him in terms of affection, but not as a paragon of
poetic or moral ideals. ~ Du Fu



is also poorly represented in contemporary
anthologies of poetry.
However, as Hung notes, he "is the only Chinese poet whose influence grew with
time", and his works began to increase in popularity in the ninth century. Early
positive comments came from Bai Juyi, who praised the moral sentiments of
some of ~ Du Fu



's works (although he found these in only a small fraction of the
poems), and from Han Yu, who wrote a piece defending ~ Du Fu



and Li Bai on
aesthetic grounds from attacks made against them. Both these writers showed
the influence of ~ Du Fu



in their own poetic work. By the beginning of the 10th
century, Wei Zhuang constructed the first replica of his thatched cottage in
Sichuan.
It was in the 11th century, during the Northern Song era that ~ Du Fu



's reputation
reached its peak. In this period a comprehensive re-evaluation of earlier poets
took place, in which Wang Wei, Li Bai and ~ Du Fu



came to be regarded as
representing respectively the Buddhist, Daoist and Confucian strands of Chinese
culture. At the same time, the development of Neo-Confucianism ensured that
~ Du Fu



, as its poetic exemplar, occupied the paramount position. Su Shi famously
expressed this reasoning when he wrote that ~ Du Fu



was "preeminent...
because... through all his vicissitudes, he never for the space of a meal forgot his
sovereign". His influence was helped by his ability to reconcile apparent
opposites: political conservatives were attracted by his loyalty to the established
order, while political radicals embraced his concern for the poor. Literary
conservatives could look to his technical mastery, while literary radicals were
inspired by his innovations. Since the establishment of the People's Republic of
China, ~ Du Fu



's loyalty to the state and concern for the poor have been
interpreted as embryonic nationalism and socialism, and he has been praised for
his use of simple, "people's language".
~ Du Fu



's popularity grew to such an extent that it is as hard to measure his
influence as that of Shakespeare in England: it was hard for any Chinese poet not
to be influenced by him. While there was never another ~ Du Fu



, individual poets
followed in the traditions of specific aspects of his work: Bai Juyi's concern for the
poor, Lu You's patriotism, and Mei Yaochen's reflections on the quotidian are a
few examples. More broadly, ~ Du Fu



's work in transforming the lushi from mere
word play into "a vehicle for serious poetic utterance" set the stage for every
subsequent writer in the genre.
~ Du Fu



has also been influential beyond China, although in common with the other
High Tang poets, his reception into the Japanese literary culture was relatively
late. It was not until the 17th century that he was accorded the same level of
fame in Japan as in China, but he then had a profound influence on poets such as
Matsuo Basho. In the 20th century, he was the favourite poet of Kenneth
Rexroth, who has described him as "the greatest non-epic, non-dramatic poet
who has survived in any language", and commented that, "he has made me a
better man, as a moral agent and as a perceiving organism".
A Homeless Man's Departure
After the Rebellion of 755, all was silent wasteland,
gardens and cottages turned to grass and thorns.
My village had over a hundred households,
but the chaotic world scattered them east and west.
No information about the survivors;
the dead are dust and mud.
I, a humble soldier, was defeated in battle.
I ran back home to look for old roads
and walked a long time through the empty lanes.
The sun was thin, the air tragic and dismal.
I met only foxes and raccoons,
their hair on end as they snarled in rage.
Who remains in my neighborhood?
One or two old widows.
A returning bird loves its old branches,
how could I give up this poor nest?
In spring I carry my hoe all alone,
yet still water the land at sunset.
The county governor's clerk heard I'd returned
and summoned me to practice the war-drum.
This military service won't take me from my state.
I look around and have no one to worry about.
It's just me alone and the journey is short,
but I will end up lost if I travel too far.
Since my village has been washed away,
near or far makes no difference.
I will forever feel pain for my long-sick mother.
I abandoned her in this valley five years ago.
She gave birth to me, yet I could not help her.
We cry sour sobs till our lives end.
In my life I have no family to say farewell to,
so how can I be called a human being?
~ Du Fu,
998:The Princess (Prologue)
Sir Walter Vivian all a summer's day
Gave his broad lawns until the set of sun
Up to the people: thither flocked at noon
His tenants, wife and child, and thither half
The neighbouring borough with their Institute
Of which he was the patron. I was there
From college, visiting the son,--the son
A Walter too,--with others of our set,
Five others: we were seven at Vivian-place.
And me that morning Walter showed the house,
Greek, set with busts: from vases in the hall
Flowers of all heavens, and lovelier than their names,
Grew side by side; and on the pavement lay
Carved stones of the Abbey-ruin in the park,
Huge Ammonites, and the first bones of Time;
And on the tables every clime and age
Jumbled together; celts and calumets,
Claymore and snowshoe, toys in lava, fans
Of sandal, amber, ancient rosaries,
Laborious orient ivory sphere in sphere,
The cursed Malayan crease, and battle-clubs
From the isles of palm: and higher on the walls,
Betwixt the monstrous horns of elk and deer,
His own forefathers' arms and armour hung.
And 'this' he said 'was Hugh's at Agincourt;
And that was old Sir Ralph's at Ascalon:
A good knight he! we keep a chronicle
With all about him'--which he brought, and I
Dived in a hoard of tales that dealt with knights,
Half-legend, half-historic, counts and kings
Who laid about them at their wills and died;
And mixt with these, a lady, one that armed
Her own fair head, and sallying through the gate,
Had beat her foes with slaughter from her walls.
'O miracle of women,' said the book,
'O noble heart who, being strait-besieged
798
By this wild king to force her to his wish,
Nor bent, nor broke, nor shunned a soldier's death,
But now when all was lost or seemed as lost-Her stature more than mortal in the burst
Of sunrise, her arm lifted, eyes on fire-Brake with a blast of trumpets from the gate,
And, falling on them like a thunderbolt,
She trampled some beneath her horses' heels,
And some were whelmed with missiles of the wall,
And some were pushed with lances from the rock,
And part were drowned within the whirling brook:
O miracle of noble womanhood!'
So sang the gallant glorious chronicle;
And, I all rapt in this, 'Come out,' he said,
'To the Abbey: there is Aunt Elizabeth
And sister Lilia with the rest.' We went
(I kept the book and had my finger in it)
Down through the park: strange was the sight to me;
For all the sloping pasture murmured, sown
With happy faces and with holiday.
There moved the multitude, a thousand heads:
The patient leaders of their Institute
Taught them with facts. One reared a font of stone
And drew, from butts of water on the slope,
The fountain of the moment, playing, now
A twisted snake, and now a rain of pearls,
Or steep-up spout whereon the gilded ball
Danced like a wisp: and somewhat lower down
A man with knobs and wires and vials fired
A cannon: Echo answered in her sleep
From hollow fields: and here were telescopes
For azure views; and there a group of girls
In circle waited, whom the electric shock
Dislinked with shrieks and laughter: round the lake
A little clock-work steamer paddling plied
And shook the lilies: perched about the knolls
A dozen angry models jetted steam:
A petty railway ran: a fire-balloon
Rose gem-like up before the dusky groves
And dropt a fairy parachute and past:
And there through twenty posts of telegraph
799
They flashed a saucy message to and fro
Between the mimic stations; so that sport
Went hand in hand with Science; otherwhere
Pure sport; a herd of boys with clamour bowled
And stumped the wicket; babies rolled about
Like tumbled fruit in grass; and men and maids
Arranged a country dance, and flew through light
And shadow, while the twangling violin
Struck up with Soldier-laddie, and overhead
The broad ambrosial aisles of lofty lime
Made noise with bees and breeze from end to end.
Strange was the sight and smacking of the time;
And long we gazed, but satiated at length
Came to the ruins. High-arched and ivy-claspt,
Of finest Gothic lighter than a fire,
Through one wide chasm of time and frost they gave
The park, the crowd, the house; but all within
The sward was trim as any garden lawn:
And here we lit on Aunt Elizabeth,
And Lilia with the rest, and lady friends
From neighbour seats: and there was Ralph himself,
A broken statue propt against the wall,
As gay as any. Lilia, wild with sport,
Half child half woman as she was, had wound
A scarf of orange round the stony helm,
And robed the shoulders in a rosy silk,
That made the old warrior from his ivied nook
Glow like a sunbeam: near his tomb a feast
Shone, silver-set; about it lay the guests,
And there we joined them: then the maiden Aunt
Took this fair day for text, and from it preached
An universal culture for the crowd,
And all things great; but we, unworthier, told
Of college: he had climbed across the spikes,
And he had squeezed himself betwixt the bars,
And he had breathed the Proctor's dogs; and one
Discussed his tutor, rough to common men,
But honeying at the whisper of a lord;
And one the Master, as a rogue in grain
Veneered with sanctimonious theory.
But while they talked, above their heads I saw
800
The feudal warrior lady-clad; which brought
My book to mind: and opening this I read
Of old Sir Ralph a page or two that rang
With tilt and tourney; then the tale of her
That drove her foes with slaughter from her walls,
And much I praised her nobleness, and 'Where,'
Asked Walter, patting Lilia's head (she lay
Beside him) 'lives there such a woman now?'
Quick answered Lilia 'There are thousands now
Such women, but convention beats them down:
It is but bringing up; no more than that:
You men have done it: how I hate you all!
Ah, were I something great! I wish I were
Some might poetess, I would shame you then,
That love to keep us children! O I wish
That I were some great princess, I would build
Far off from men a college like a man's,
And I would teach them all that men are taught;
We are twice as quick!' And here she shook aside
The hand that played the patron with her curls.
And one said smiling 'Pretty were the sight
If our old halls could change their sex, and flaunt
With prudes for proctors, dowagers for deans,
And sweet girl-graduates in their golden hair.
I think they should not wear our rusty gowns,
But move as rich as Emperor-moths, or Ralph
Who shines so in the corner; yet I fear,
If there were many Lilias in the brood,
However deep you might embower the nest,
Some boy would spy it.'
At this upon the sward
She tapt her tiny silken-sandaled foot:
'That's your light way; but I would make it death
For any male thing but to peep at us.'
Petulant she spoke, and at herself she laughed;
A rosebud set with little wilful thorns,
And sweet as English air could make her, she:
But Walter hailed a score of names upon her,
And 'petty Ogress', and 'ungrateful Puss',
801
And swore he longed at college, only longed,
All else was well, for she-society.
They boated and they cricketed; they talked
At wine, in clubs, of art, of politics;
They lost their weeks; they vext the souls of deans;
They rode; they betted; made a hundred friends,
And caught the blossom of the flying terms,
But missed the mignonette of Vivian-place,
The little hearth-flower Lilia. Thus he spoke,
Part banter, part affection.
'True,' she said,
'We doubt not that. O yes, you missed us much.
I'll stake my ruby ring upon it you did.'
She held it out; and as a parrot turns
Up through gilt wires a crafty loving eye,
And takes a lady's finger with all care,
And bites it for true heart and not for harm,
So he with Lilia's. Daintily she shrieked
And wrung it. 'Doubt my word again!' he said.
'Come, listen! here is proof that you were missed:
We seven stayed at Christmas up to read;
And there we took one tutor as to read:
The hard-grained Muses of the cube and square
Were out of season: never man, I think,
So mouldered in a sinecure as he:
For while our cloisters echoed frosty feet,
And our long walks were stript as bare as brooms,
We did but talk you over, pledge you all
In wassail; often, like as many girls-Sick for the hollies and the yews of home-As many little trifling Lilias--played
Charades and riddles as at Christmas here,
And ~what's my thought~ and ~when~ and ~where~ and ~how~,
As here at Christmas.'
She remembered that:
A pleasant game, she thought: she liked it more
Than magic music, forfeits, all the rest.
But these--what kind of tales did men tell men,
She wondered, by themselves?
A half-disdain
Perched on the pouted blossom of her lips:
802
And Walter nodded at me; '~He~ began,
The rest would follow, each in turn; and so
We forged a sevenfold story. Kind? what kind?
Chimeras, crotchets, Christmas solecisms,
Seven-headed monsters only made to kill
Time by the fire in winter.'
'Kill him now,
The tyrant! kill him in the summer too,'
Said Lilia; 'Why not now?' the maiden Aunt.
'Why not a summer's as a winter's tale?
A tale for summer as befits the time,
And something it should be to suit the place,
Heroic, for a hero lies beneath,
Grave, solemn!'
Walter warped his mouth at this
To something so mock-solemn, that I laughed
And Lilia woke with sudden-thrilling mirth
An echo like a ghostly woodpecker,
Hid in the ruins; till the maiden Aunt
(A little sense of wrong had touched her face
With colour) turned to me with 'As you will;
Heroic if you will, or what you will,
Or be yourself you hero if you will.'
'Take Lilia, then, for heroine' clamoured he,
'And make her some great Princess, six feet high,
Grand, epic, homicidal; and be you
The Prince to win her!'
'Then follow me, the Prince,'
I answered, 'each be hero in his turn!
Seven and yet one, like shadows in a dream.-Heroic seems our Princess as required-But something made to suit with Time and place,
A Gothic ruin and a Grecian house,
A talk of college and of ladies' rights,
A feudal knight in silken masquerade,
And, yonder, shrieks and strange experiments
For which the good Sir Ralph had burnt them all-This ~were~ a medley! we should have him back
Who told the "Winter's tale" to do it for us.
No matter: we will say whatever comes.
And let the ladies sing us, if they will,
803
From time to time, some ballad or a song
To give us breathing-space.'
So I began,
And the rest followed: and the women sang
Between the rougher voices of the men,
Like linnets in the pauses of the wind:
And here I give the story and the songs.
~ Alfred Lord Tennyson,
999:The Spooniad
[The late Mr. Jonathan Swift Somers, laureate of Spoon River, planned The
Spooniad as an epic in twenty-four books, but unfortunately did not live to
complete even the first book. The fragment was found among his papers by
William Marion Reedy and was for the first time published in Reedy's Mirror of
December 18th, 1914.]
Of John Cabanis' wrath and of the strife
Of hostile parties, and his dire defeat
Who led the common people in the cause
Of freedom for Spoon River, and the fall
Of Rhodes' bank that brought unnumbered woes
And loss to many, with engendered hate
That flamed into the torch in Anarch hands
To burn the court-house, on whose blackened wreck
A fairer temple rose and Progress stood -Sing, muse, that lit the Chian's face with smiles,
Who saw the ant-like Greeks and Trojans crawl
About Scamander, over walls, pursued
Or else pursuing, and the funeral pyres
And sacred hecatombs, and first because
Of Helen who with Paris fled to Troy
As soul-mate; and the wrath of Peleus' son,
Decreed to lose Chryseis, lovely spoil
Of war, and dearest concubine.
Say first,
Thou son of night, called Momus, from whose eyes
No secret hides, and Thalia, smiling one,
What bred 'twixt Thomas Rhodes and John Cabanis
The deadly strife? His daughter Flossie, she,
Returning from her wandering with a troop
Of strolling players, walked the village streets,
Her bracelets tinkling and with sparkling rings
And words of serpent wisdom and a smile
Of cunning in her eyes. Then Thomas Rhodes,
Who ruled the church and ruled the bank as well,
Made known his disapproval of the maid;
And all Spoon River whispered and the eyes
Of all the church frowned on her, till she knew
285
They feared her and condemned.
But them to flout
She gave a dance to viols and to flutes,
Brought from Peoria, and many youths,
But lately made regenerate through the prayers
Of zealous preachers and of earnest souls,
Danced merrily, and sought her in the dance,
Who wore a dress so low of neck that eyes
Down straying might survey the snowy swale
Till it was lost in whiteness.
With the dance
The village changed to merriment from gloom.
The milliner, Mrs. Williams, could not fill
Her orders for new hats, and every seamstress
Plied busy needles making gowns; old trunks
And chests were opened for their store of laces
And rings and trinkets were brought out of hiding
And all the youths fastidious grew of dress;
Notes passed, and many a fair one's door at eve
Knew a bouquet, and strolling lovers thronged
About the hills that overlooked the river.
Then, since the mercy seats more empty showed,
One of God's chosen lifted up his voice:
"The woman of Babylon is among us; rise,
Ye sons of light, and drive the wanton forth!"
So John Cabanis left the church and left
The hosts of law and order with his eyes
By anger cleared, and him the liberal cause
Acclaimed as nominee to the mayoralty
To vanquish A. D. Blood.
But as the war
Waged bitterly for votes and rumors flew
About the bank, and of the heavy loans
Which Rhodes' son had made to prop his loss
In wheat, and many drew their coin and left
The bank of Rhodes more hollow, with the talk
Among the liberals of another bank
Soon to be chartered, lo, the bubble burst
'Mid cries and curses; but the liberals laughed
And in the hall of Nicholas Bindle held
Wise converse and inspiriting debate.
High on a stage that overlooked the chairs
286
Where dozens sat, and where a pop-eyed daub
Of Shakespeare, very like the hired man
Of Christian Dallmann, brow and pointed beard,
Upon a drab proscenium outward stared,
Sat Harmon Whitney, to that eminence,
By merit raised in ribaldry and guile,
And to the assembled rebels thus he spake:
"Whether to lie supine and let a clique
Cold-blooded, scheming, hungry, singing psalms,
Devour our substance, wreck our banks and drain
Our little hoards for hazards on the price
Of wheat or pork, or yet to cower beneath
The shadow of a spire upreared to curb
A breed of lackeys and to serve the bank
Coadjutor in greed, that is the question.
Shall we have music and the jocund dance,
Or tolling bells? Or shall young romance roam
These hills about the river, flowering now
To April's tears, or shall they sit at home,
Or play croquet where Thomas Rhodes may see,
I ask you? If the blood of youth runs o'er
And riots 'gainst this regimen of gloom,
Shall we submit to have these youths and maids
Branded as libertines and wantons?"
Ere
His words were done a woman's voice called "No!"
Then rose a sound of moving chairs, as when
The numerous swine o'er-run the replenished troughs;
And every head was turned, as when a flock
Of geese back-turning to the hunter's tread
Rise up with flapping wings; then rang the hall
With riotous laughter, for with battered hat
Tilted upon her saucy head, and fist
Raised in defiance, Daisy Fraser stood.
Headlong she had been hurled from out the hall
Save Wendell Bloyd, who spoke for woman's rights,
Prevented, and the bellowing voice of Burchard.
Then 'mid applause she hastened toward the stage
And flung both gold and silver to the cause
And swiftly left the hall.
Meantime upstood
287
A giant figure, bearded like the son
Of Alcmene, deep-chested, round of paunch,
And spoke in thunder: "Over there behold
A man who for the truth withstood his wife -Such is our spirit -- when that A. D. Blood
Compelled me to remove Dom Pedro --"
Quick
Before Jim Brown could finish, Jefferson Howard
Obtained the floor and spake: "Ill suits the time
For clownish words, and trivial is our cause
If naught's at stake but John Cabanis' wrath,
He who was erstwhile of the other side
And came to us for vengeance. More's at stake
Than triumph for New England or Virginia.
And whether rum be sold, or for two years
As in the past two years, this town be dry
Matters but little -- Oh yes, revenue
For sidewalks, sewers; that is well enough!
I wish to God this fight were now inspired
By other passion than to salve the pride
Of John Cabanis or his daughter. Why
Can never contests of great moment spring
From worthy things, not little? Still, if men
Must always act so, and if rum must be
The symbol and the medium to release
From life's denial and from slavery,
Then give me rum!"
Exultant cries arose.
Then, as George Trimble had o'ercome his fear
And vacillation and begun to speak,
The door creaked and the idiot, Willie Metcalf,
Breathless and hatless, whiter than a sheet,
Entered and cried: "The marshal's on his way
To arrest you all. And if you only knew
Who's coming here to-morrow; I was listening
Beneath the window where the other side
Are making plans."
So to a smaller room
To hear the idiot's secret some withdrew
Selected by the Chair; the Chair himself
And Jefferson Howard, Benjamin Pantier,
And Wendell Bloyd, George Trimble, Adam Weirauch,
288
Imanuel Ehrenhardt, Seth Compton, Godwin James
And Enoch Dunlap, Hiram Scates, Roy Butler,
Carl Hamblin, Roger Heston, Ernest Hyde
And Penniwit, the artist, Kinsey Keene,
And E. C. Culbertson and Franklin Jones,
Benjamin Fraser, son of Benjamin Pantier
By Daisy Fraser, some of lesser note,
And secretly conferred.
But in the hall
Disorder reigned and when the marshal came
And found it so, he marched the hoodlums out
And locked them up.
Meanwhile within a room
Back in the basement of the church, with Blood
Counseled the wisest heads. Judge Somers first,
Deep learned in life, and next him, Elliott Hawkins
And Lambert Hutchins; next him Thomas Rhodes
And Editor Whedon; next him Garrison Standard,
A traitor to the liberals, who with lip
Upcurled in scorn and with a bitter sneer:
"Such strife about an insult to a woman -A girl of eighteen" -- Christian Dallman too,
And others unrecorded. Some there were
Who frowned not on the cup but loathed the rule
Democracy achieved thereby, the freedom
And lust of life it symbolized.
Now morn with snowy fingers up the sky
Flung like an orange at a festival
The ruddy sun, when from their hasty beds
Poured forth the hostile forces, and the streets
Resounded to the rattle of the wheels
That drove this way and that to gather in
The tardy voters, and the cries of chieftains
Who manned the battle. But at ten o'clock
The liberals bellowed fraud, and at the polls
The rival candidates growled and came to blows.
Then proved the idiot's tale of yester-eve
A word of warning. Suddenly on the streets
Walked hog-eyed Allen, terror of the hills
That looked on Bernadotte ten miles removed.
No man of this degenerate day could lift
The boulders which he threw, and when he spoke
289
The windows rattled, and beneath his brows,
Thatched like a shed with bristling hair of black,
His small eyes glistened like a maddened boar.
And as he walked the boards creaked, as he walked
A song of menace rumbled. Thus he came,
The champion of A. D. Blood, commissioned
To terrify the liberals. Many fled
As when a hawk soars o'er the chicken yard.
He passed the polls and with a playful hand
Touched Brown, the giant, and he fell against,
As though he were a child, the wall; so strong
Was hog-eyed Allen. But the liberals smiled.
For soon as hog-eyed Allen reached the walk,
Close on his steps paced Bengal Mike, brought in
By Kinsey Keene, the subtle-witted one,
To match the hog-eyed Allen. He was scarce
Three-fourths the other's bulk, but steel his arms,
And with a tiger's heart. Two men he killed
And many wounded in the days before,
And no one feared.
But when the hog-eyed one
Saw Bengal Mike his countenance grew dark,
The bristles o'er his red eyes twitched with rage,
The song he rumbled lowered. Round and round
The court-house paced he, followed stealthily
By Bengal Mike, who jeered him every step:
"Come, elephant, and fight! Come, hog-eyed coward!
Come, face about and fight me, lumbering sneak!
Come, beefy bully, hit me, if you can!
Take out your gun, you duffer, give me reason
To draw and kill you. Take your billy out;
I'll crack your boar's head with a piece of brick!"
But never a word the hog-eyed one returned
But trod about the court-house, followed both
By troops of boys and watched by all the men.
All day, they walked the square. But when Apollo
Stood with reluctant look above the hills
As fain to see the end, and all the votes
Were cast, and closed the polls, before the door
Of Trainor's drug store Bengal Mike, in tones
That echoed through the village, bawled the taunt:
290
"Who was your mother, hog-eyed?" In a trice,
As when a wild boar turns upon the hound
That through the brakes upon an August day
Has gashed him with its teeth, the hog-eyed one
Rushed with his giant arms on Bengal Mike
And grabbed him by the throat. Then rose to heaven
The frightened cries of boys, and yells of men
Forth rushing to the street. And Bengal Mike
Moved this way and now that, drew in his head
As if his neck to shorten, and bent down
To break the death grip of the hog-eyed one;
'Twixt guttural wrath and fast-expiring strength
Striking his fists against the invulnerable chest
Of hog-eyed Allen. Then, when some came in
To part them, others stayed them, and the fight
Spread among dozens; many valiant souls
Went down from clubs and bricks.
But tell me, Muse,
What god or goddess rescued Bengal Mike?
With one last, mighty struggle did he grasp
The murderous hands and turning kick his foe.
Then, as if struck by lightning, vanished all
The strength from hog-eyed Allen, at his side
Sank limp those giant arms and o'er his face
Dread pallor and the sweat of anguish spread.
And those great knees, invincible but late,
Shook to his weight. And quickly as the lion
Leaps on its wounded prey, did Bengal Mike
Smite with a rock the temple of his foe,
And down he sank and darkness o'er his eyes
Passed like a cloud.
As when the woodman fells
Some giant oak upon a summer's day
And all the songsters of the forest shrill,
And one great hawk that has his nestling young
Amid the topmost branches croaks, as crash
The leafy branches through the tangled boughs
Of brother oaks, so fell the hog-eyed one
Amid the lamentations of the friends
Of A. D. Blood.
Just then, four lusty men
Bore the town marshal, on whose iron face
291
The purple pall of death already lay,
To Trainor's drug store, shot by Jack McGuire.
And cries went up of "Lynch him!" and the sound
Of running feet from every side was heard
Bent on the
~ Edgar Lee Masters,
1000:It does not matter if you do not understand it - Savitri, read it always. You will see that every time you read it, something new will be revealed to you. Each time you will get a new glimpse, each time a new experience; things which were not there, things you did not understand arise and suddenly become clear. Always an unexpected vision comes up through the words and lines. Every time you try to read and understand, you will see that something is added, something which was hidden behind is revealed clearly and vividly. I tell you the very verses you have read once before, will appear to you in a different light each time you re-read them. This is what happens invariably. Always your experience is enriched, it is a revelation at each step.

But you must not read it as you read other books or newspapers. You must read with an empty head, a blank and vacant mind, without there being any other thought; you must concentrate much, remain empty, calm and open; then the words, rhythms, vibrations will penetrate directly to this white page, will put their stamp upon the brain, will explain themselves without your making any effort.

Savitri alone is sufficient to make you climb to the highest peaks. If truly one knows how to meditate on Savitri, one will receive all the help one needs. For him who wishes to follow this path, it is a concrete help as though the Lord himself were taking you by the hand and leading you to the destined goal. And then, every question, however personal it may be, has its answer here, every difficulty finds its solution herein; indeed there is everything that is necessary for doing the Yoga.

*He has crammed the whole universe in a single book.* It is a marvellous work, magnificent and of an incomparable perfection.

You know, before writing Savitri Sri Aurobindo said to me, *I am impelled to launch on a new adventure; I was hesitant in the beginning, but now I am decided. Still, I do not know how far I shall succeed. I pray for help.* And you know what it was? It was - before beginning, I warn you in advance - it was His way of speaking, so full of divine humility and modesty. He never... *asserted Himself*. And the day He actually began it, He told me: *I have launched myself in a rudderless boat upon the vastness of the Infinite.* And once having started, He wrote page after page without intermission, as though it were a thing already complete up there and He had only to transcribe it in ink down here on these pages.

In truth, the entire form of Savitri has descended "en masse" from the highest region and Sri Aurobindo with His genius only arranged the lines - in a superb and magnificent style. Sometimes entire lines were revealed and He has left them intact; He worked hard, untiringly, so that the inspiration could come from the highest possible summit. And what a work He has created! Yes, it is a true creation in itself. It is an unequalled work. Everything is there, and it is put in such a simple, such a clear form; verses perfectly harmonious, limpid and eternally true. My child, I have read so many things, but I have never come across anything which could be compared with Savitri. I have studied the best works in Greek, Latin, English and of course French literature, also in German and all the great creations of the West and the East, including the great epics; but I repeat it, I have not found anywhere anything comparable with Savitri. All these literary works seems to me empty, flat, hollow, without any deep reality - apart from a few rare exceptions, and these too represent only a small fraction of what Savitri is. What grandeur, what amplitude, what reality: it is something immortal and eternal He has created. I tell you once again there is nothing like in it the whole world. Even if one puts aside the vision of the reality, that is, the essential substance which is the heart of the inspiration, and considers only the lines in themselves, one will find them unique, of the highest classical kind. What He has created is something man cannot imagine. For, everything is there, everything.

It may then be said that Savitri is a revelation, it is a meditation, it is a quest of the Infinite, the Eternal. If it is read with this aspiration for Immortality, the reading itself will serve as a guide to Immortality. To read Savitri is indeed to practice Yoga, spiritual concentration; one can find there all that is needed to realise the Divine. Each step of Yoga is noted here, including the secret of all other Yogas. Surely, if one sincerely follows what is revealed here in each line one will reach finally the transformation of the Supramental Yoga. It is truly the infallible guide who never abandons you; its support is always there for him who wants to follow the path. Each verse of Savitri is like a revealed Mantra which surpasses all that man possessed by way of knowledge, and I repeat this, the words are expressed and arranged in such a way that the sonority of the rhythm leads you to the origin of sound, which is OM.

My child, yes, everything is there: mysticism, occultism, philosophy, the history of evolution, the history of man, of the gods, of creation, of Nature. How the universe was created, why, for what purpose, what destiny - all is there. You can find all the answers to all your questions there. Everything is explained, even the future of man and of the evolution, all that nobody yet knows. He has described it all in beautiful and clear words so that spiritual adventurers who wish to solve the mysteries of the world may understand it more easily. But this mystery is well hidden behind the words and lines and one must rise to the required level of true consciousness to discover it. All prophesies, all that is going to come is presented with the precise and wonderful clarity. Sri Aurobindo gives you here the key to find the Truth, to discover the Consciousness, to solve the problem of what the universe is. He has also indicated how to open the door of the Inconscience so that the light may penetrate there and transform it. He has shown the path, the way to liberate oneself from the ignorance and climb up to the superconscience; each stage, each plane of consciousness, how they can be scaled, how one can cross even the barrier of death and attain immortality. You will find the whole journey in detail, and as you go forward you can discover things altogether unknown to man. That is Savitri and much more yet. It is a real experience - reading Savitri. All the secrets that man possessed, He has revealed, - as well as all that awaits him in the future; all this is found in the depth of Savitri. But one must have the knowledge to discover it all, the experience of the planes of consciousness, the experience of the Supermind, even the experience of the conquest of Death. He has noted all the stages, marked each step in order to advance integrally in the integral Yoga.

All this is His own experience, and what is most surprising is that it is my own experience also. It is my sadhana which He has worked out. Each object, each event, each realisation, all the descriptions, even the colours are exactly what I saw and the words, phrases are also exactly what I heard. And all this before having read the book. I read Savitri many times afterwards, but earlier, when He was writing He used to read it to me. Every morning I used to hear Him read Savitri. During the night He would write and in the morning read it to me. And I observed something curious, that day after day the experiences He read out to me in the morning were those I had had the previous night, word by word. Yes, all the descriptions, the colours, the pictures I had seen, the words I had heard, all, all, I heard it all, put by Him into poetry, into miraculous poetry. Yes, they were exactly my experiences of the previous night which He read out to me the following morning. And it was not just one day by chance, but for days and days together. And every time I used to compare what He said with my previous experiences and they were always the same. I repeat, it was not that I had told Him my experiences and that He had noted them down afterwards, no, He knew already what I had seen. It is my experiences He has presented at length and they were His experiences also. It is, moreover, the picture of Our joint adventure into the unknown or rather into the Supermind.

These are experiences lived by Him, realities, supracosmic truths. He experienced all these as one experiences joy or sorrow, physically. He walked in the darkness of inconscience, even in the neighborhood of death, endured the sufferings of perdition, and emerged from the mud, the world-misery to breathe the sovereign plenitude and enter the supreme Ananda. He crossed all these realms, went through the consequences, suffered and endured physically what one cannot imagine. Nobody till today has suffered like Him. He accepted suffering to transform suffering into the joy of union with the Supreme. It is something unique and incomparable in the history of the world. It is something that has never happened before, He is the first to have traced the path in the Unknown, so that we may be able to walk with certitude towards the Supermind. He has made the work easy for us. Savitri is His whole Yoga of transformation, and this Yoga appears now for the first time in the earth-consciousness.

And I think that man is not yet ready to receive it. It is too high and too vast for him. He cannot understand it, grasp it, for it is not by the mind that one can understand Savitri. One needs spiritual experiences in order to understand and assimilate it. The farther one advances on the path of Yoga, the more does one assimilate and the better. No, it is something which will be appreciated only in the future, it is the poetry of tomorrow of which He has spoken in The Future Poetry. It is too subtle, too refined, - it is not in the mind or through the mind, it is in meditation that Savitri is revealed.

And men have the audacity to compare it with the work of Virgil or Homer and to find it inferior. They do not understand, they cannot understand. What do they know? Nothing at all. And it is useless to try to make them understand. Men will know what it is, but in a distant future. It is only the new race with a new consciousness which will be able to understand. I assure you there is nothing under the blue sky to compare with Savitri. It is the mystery of mysteries. It is a *super-epic,* it is super-literature, super-poetry, super-vision, it is a super-work even if one considers the number of lines He has written. No, these human words are not adequate to describe Savitri. Yes, one needs superlatives, hyperboles to describe it. It is a hyper-epic. No, words express nothing of what Savitri is, at least I do not find them. It is of immense value - spiritual value and all other values; it is eternal in its subject, and infinite in its appeal, miraculous in its mode and power of execution; it is a unique thing, the more you come into contact with it, the higher will you be uplifted. Ah, truly it is something! It is the most beautiful thing He has left for man, the highest possible. What is it? When will man know it? When is he going to lead a life of truth? When is he going to accept this in his life? This yet remains to be seen.

My child, every day you are going to read Savitri; read properly, with the right attitude, concentrating a little before opening the pages and trying to keep the mind as empty as possible, absolutely without a thought. The direct road is through the heart. I tell you, if you try to really concentrate with this aspiration you can light the flame, the psychic flame, the flame of purification in a very short time, perhaps in a few days. What you cannot do normally, you can do with the help of Savitri. Try and you will see how very different it is, how new, if you read with this attitude, with this something at the back of your consciousness; as though it were an offering to Sri Aurobindo. You know it is charged, fully charged with consciousness; as if Savitri were a being, a real guide. I tell you, whoever, wanting to practice Yoga, tries sincerely and feels the necessity for it, will be able to climb with the help of Savitri to the highest rung of the ladder of Yoga, will be able to find the secret that Savitri represents. And this without the help of a Guru. And he will be able to practice it anywhere. For him Savitri alone will be the guide, for all that he needs he will find Savitri. If he remains very quiet when before a difficulty, or when he does not know where to turn to go forward and how to overcome obstacles, for all these hesitations and incertitudes which overwhelm us at every moment, he will have the necessary indications, and the necessary concrete help. If he remains very calm, open, if he aspires sincerely, always he will be as if lead by the hand. If he has faith, the will to give himself and essential sincerity he will reach the final goal.

Indeed, Savitri is something concrete, living, it is all replete, packed with consciousness, it is the supreme knowledge above all human philosophies and religions. It is the spiritual path, it is Yoga, Tapasya, Sadhana, in its single body. Savitri has an extraordinary power, it gives out vibrations for him who can receive them, the true vibrations of each stage of consciousness. It is incomparable, it is truth in its plenitude, the Truth Sri Aurobindo brought down on the earth. My child, one must try to find the secret that Savitri represents, the prophetic message Sri Aurobindo reveals there for us. This is the work before you, it is hard but it is worth the trouble. - 5 November 1967

~ The Mother, Sweet Mother, The Mother to Mona Sarkar, [T0],
1001:Tasker Norcross
“Whether all towns and all who live in them—
So long as they be somewhere in this world
That we in our complacency call ours—
Are more or less the same, I leave to you.
I should say less. Whether or not, meanwhile,
We’ve all two legs—and as for that, we haven’t—
There were three kinds of men where I was born:
The good, the not so good, and Tasker Norcross.
Now there are two kinds.”
“Meaning, as I divine,
Your friend is dead,” I ventured.
Ferguson,
Who talked himself at last out of the world
He censured, and is therefore silent now,
Agreed indifferently: “My friends are dead—
Or most of them.”
“Remember one that isn’t,”
I said, protesting. “Honor him for his ears;
Treasure him also for his understanding.”
Ferguson sighed, and then talked on again:
“You have an overgrown alacrity
For saying nothing much and hearing less;
And I’ve a thankless wonder, at the start,
How much it is to you that I shall tell
What I have now to say of Tasker Norcross,
And how much to the air that is around you.
But given a patience that is not averse
To the slow tragedies of haunted men—
Horrors, in fact, if you’ve a skilful eye
To know them at their firesides, or out walking,—”
“Horrors,” I said, “are my necessity;
And I would have them, for their best effect,
Always out walking.”
Ferguson frowned at me:
265
“The wisest of us are not those who laugh
Before they know. Most of us never know—
Or the long toil of our mortality
Would not be done. Most of us never know—
And there you have a reason to believe
In God, if you may have no other. Norcross,
Or so I gather of his infirmity,
Was given to know more than he should have known,
And only God knows why. See for yourself
An old house full of ghosts of ancestors,
Who did their best, or worst, and having done it,
Died honorably; and each with a distinction
That hardly would have been for him that had it,
Had honor failed him wholly as a friend.
Honor that is a friend begets a friend.
Whether or not we love him, still we have him;
And we must live somehow by what we have,
Or then we die. If you say chemistry,
Then you must have your molecules in motion,
And in their right abundance. Failing either,
You have not long to dance. Failing a friend,
A genius, or a madness, or a faith
Larger than desperation, you are here
For as much longer than you like as may be.
Imagining now, by way of an example,
Myself a more or less remembered phantom—
Again, I should say less—how many times
A day should I come back to you? No answer.
Forgive me when I seem a little careless,
But we must have examples, or be lucid
Without them; and I question your adherence
To such an undramatic narrative
As this of mine, without the personal hook.”
“A time is given in Ecclesiastes
For divers works,” I told him. “Is there one
For saying nothing in return for nothing?
If not, there should be.” I could feel his eyes,
And they were like two cold inquiring points
Of a sharp metal. When I looked again,
To see them shine, the cold that I had felt
Was gone to make way for a smouldering
266
Of lonely fire that I, as I knew then,
Could never quench with kindness or with lies.
I should have done whatever there was to do
For Ferguson, yet I could not have mourned
In honesty for once around the clock
The loss of him, for my sake or for his,
Try as I might; nor would his ghost approve,
Had I the power and the unthinking will
To make him tread again without an aim
The road that was behind him—and without
The faith, or friend, or genius, or the madness
That he contended was imperative.
After a silence that had been too long,
“It may be quite as well we don’t,” he said;
“As well, I mean, that we don’t always say it.
You know best what I mean, and I suppose
You might have said it better. What was that?
Incorrigible? Am I incorrigible?
Well, it’s a word; and a word has its use,
Or, like a man, it will soon have a grave.
It’s a good word enough. Incorrigible,
May be, for all I know, the word for Norcross.
See for yourself that house of his again
That he called home: An old house, painted white,
Square as a box, and chillier than a tomb
To look at or to live in. There were trees—
Too many of them, if such a thing may be—
Before it and around it. Down in front
There was a road, a railroad, and a river;
Then there were hills behind it, and more trees.
The thing would fairly stare at you through trees,
Like a pale inmate out of a barred window
With a green shade half down; and I dare say
People who passed have said: ‘There’s where he lives.
We know him, but we do not seem to know
That we remember any good of him,
Or any evil that is interesting.
There you have all we know and all we care.’
They might have said it in all sorts of ways;
And then, if they perceived a cat, they might
Or might not have remembered what they said.
267
The cat might have a personality—
And maybe the same one the Lord left out
Of Tasker Norcross, who, for lack of it,
Saw the same sun go down year after year;
All which at last was my discovery.
And only mine, so far as evidence
Enlightens one more darkness. You have known
All round you, all your days, men who are nothing—
Nothing, I mean, so far as time tells yet
Of any other need it has of them
Than to make sextons hardy—but no less
Are to themselves incalculably something,
And therefore to be cherished. God, you see,
Being sorry for them in their fashioning,
Indemnified them with a quaint esteem
Of self, and with illusions long as life.
You know them well, and you have smiled at them;
And they, in their serenity, may have had
Their time to smile at you. Blessed are they
That see themselves for what they never were
Or were to be, and are, for their defect,
At ease with mirrors and the dim remarks
That pass their tranquil ears.”
“Come, come,” said I;
“There may be names in your compendium
That we are not yet all on fire for shouting.
Skin most of us of our mediocrity,
We should have nothing then that we could scratch.
The picture smarts. Cover it, if you please,
And do so rather gently. Now for Norcross.”
Ferguson closed his eyes in resignation,
While a dead sigh came out of him. “Good God!”
He said, and said it only half aloud,
As if he knew no longer now, nor cared,
If one were there to listen: “Have I said nothing—
Nothing at all—of Norcross? Do you mean
To patronize him till his name becomes
A toy made out of letters? If a name
Is all you need, arrange an honest column
Of all the people you have ever known
268
That you have never liked. You’ll have enough;
And you’ll have mine, moreover. No, not yet.
If I assume too many privileges,
I pay, and I alone, for their assumption;
By which, if I assume a darker knowledge
Of Norcross than another, let the weight
Of my injustice aggravate the load
That is not on your shoulders. When I came
To know this fellow Norcross in his house,
I found him as I found him in the street—
No more, no less; indifferent, but no better.
‘Worse’ were not quite the word: he was not bad;
He was not… well, he was not anything.
Has your invention ever entertained
The picture of a dusty worm so dry
That even the early bird would shake his head
And fly on farther for another breakfast?”
“But why forget the fortune of the worm,”
I said, “if in the dryness you deplore
Salvation centred and endured? Your Norcross
May have been one for many to have envied.”
“Salvation? Fortune? Would the worm say that?
He might; and therefore I dismiss the worm
With all dry things but one. Figures away,
Do you begin to see this man a little?
Do you begin to see him in the air,
With all the vacant horrors of his outline
For you to fill with more than it will hold?
If so, you needn’t crown yourself at once
With epic laurel if you seem to fill it.
Horrors, I say, for in the fires and forks
Of a new hell—if one were not enough—
I doubt if a new horror would have held him
With a malignant ingenuity
More to be feared than his before he died.
You smile, as if in doubt. Well, smile again.
Now come into his house, along with me:
The four square sombre things that you see first
Around you are four walls that go as high
As to the ceiling. Norcross knew them well,
269
And he knew others like them. Fasten to that
With all the claws of your intelligence;
And hold the man before you in his house
As if he were a white rat in a box,
And one that knew himself to be no other.
I tell you twice that he knew all about it,
That you may not forget the worst of all
Our tragedies begin with what we know.
Could Norcross only not have known, I wonder
How many would have blessed and envied him!
Could he have had the usual eye for spots
On others, and for none upon himself,
I smile to ponder on the carriages
That might as well as not have clogged the town
In honor of his end. For there was gold,
You see, though all he needed was a little,
And what he gave said nothing of who gave it.
He would have given it all if in return
There might have been a more sufficient face
To greet him when he shaved. Though you insist
It is the dower, and always, of our degree
Not to be cursed with such invidious insight,
Remember that you stand, you and your fancy,
Now in his house; and since we are together,
See for yourself and tell me what you see.
Tell me the best you see. Make a slight noise
Of recognition when you find a book
That you would not as lief read upside down
As otherwise, for example. If there you fail,
Observe the walls and lead me to the place,
Where you are led. If there you meet a picture
That holds you near it for a longer time
Than you are sorry, you may call it yours,
And hang it in the dark of your remembrance,
Where Norcross never sees. How can he see
That has no eyes to see? And as for music,
He paid with empty wonder for the pangs
Of his infrequent forced endurance of it;
And having had no pleasure, paid no more
For needless immolation, or for the sight
Of those who heard what he was never to hear.
To see them listening was itself enough
270
To make him suffer; and to watch worn eyes,
On other days, of strangers who forgot
Their sorrows and their failures and themselves
Before a few mysterious odds and ends
Of marble carted from the Parthenon—
And all for seeing what he was never to see,
Because it was alive and he was dead—
Here was a wonder that was more profound
Than any that was in fiddles and brass horns.
“He knew, and in his knowledge there was death.
He knew there was a region all around him
That lay outside man’s havoc and affairs,
And yet was not all hostile to their tumult,
Where poets would have served and honored him,
And saved him, had there been anything to save.
But there was nothing, and his tethered range
Was only a small desert. Kings of song
Are not for thrones in deserts. Towers of sound
And flowers of sense are but a waste of heaven
Where there is none to know them from the rocks
And sand-grass of his own monotony
That makes earth less than earth. He could see that,
And he could see no more. The captured light
That may have been or not, for all he cared,
The song that is in sculpture was not his,
But only, to his God-forgotten eyes,
One more immortal nonsense in a world
Where all was mortal, or had best be so,
And so be done with. ‘Art,’ he would have said,
‘Is not life, and must therefore be a lie;’
And with a few profundities like that
He would have controverted and dismissed
The benefit of the Greeks. He had heard of them,
As he had heard of his aspiring soul—
Never to the perceptible advantage,
In his esteem, of either. ‘Faith,’ he said,
Or would have said if he had thought of it,
‘Lives in the same house with Philosophy,
Where the two feed on scraps and are forlorn
As orphans after war. He could see stars,
On a clear night, but he had not an eye
271
To see beyond them. He could hear spoken words,
But had no ear for silence when alone.
He could eat food of which he knew the savor,
But had no palate for the Bread of Life,
That human desperation, to his thinking,
Made famous long ago, having no other.
Now do you see? Do you begin to see?”
I told him that I did begin to see;
And I was nearer than I should have been
To laughing at his malign inclusiveness,
When I considered that, with all our speed,
We are not laughing yet at funerals.
I see him now as I could see him then,
And I see now that it was good for me,
As it was good for him, that I was quiet;
For Time’s eye was on Ferguson, and the shaft
Of its inquiring hesitancy had touched him,
Or so I chose to fancy more than once
Before he told of Norcross. When the word
Of his release (he would have called it so)
Made half an inch of news, there were no tears
That are recorded. Women there may have been
To wish him back, though I should say, not knowing,
The few there were to mourn were not for love,
And were not lovely. Nothing of them, at least,
Was in the meagre legend that I gathered
Years after, when a chance of travel took me
So near the region of his nativity
That a few miles of leisure brought me there;
For there I found a friendly citizen
Who led me to his house among the trees
That were above a railroad and a river.
Square as a box and chillier than a tomb
It was indeed, to look at or to live in—
All which had I been told. “Ferguson died,”
The stranger said, “and then there was an auction.
I live here, but I’ve never yet been warm.
Remember him? Yes, I remember him.
I knew him—as a man may know a tree—
For twenty years. He may have held himself
A little high when he was here, but now …
Yes, I remember Ferguson. Oh, yes.”
272
Others, I found, remembered Ferguson,
But none of them had heard of Tasker Norcross.
~ Edwin Arlington Robinson,
1002:Others have told me
quiet pools are to be found
in the swiftest stream.
Why, then, is this love of mine
all unrelieved turbulence?

Like (0) 3
The Epic of Gilgamesh Tablet I
He who has seen everything, I will make known (?) to the lands.
I will teach (?) about him who experienced all things,
alike,
Anu granted him the totality of knowledge of all.
He saw the Secret, discovered the Hidden,
he brought information of (the time) before the Flood.
He went on a distant journey, pushing himself to exhaustion,
but then was brought to peace.
He carved on a stone stela all of his toils,
and built the wall of Uruk-Haven,
the wall of the sacred Eanna Temple, the holy sanctuary.
Look at its wall which gleams like copper(?),
inspect its inner wall, the likes of which no one can equal!
Take hold of the threshold stoneit dates from ancient times!
Go close to the Eanna Temple, the residence of Ishtar,
such as no later king or man ever equaled!
Go up on the wall of Uruk and walk around,
examine its foundation, inspect its brickwork thoroughly.
Is not (even the core of) the brick structure made of kiln-fired brick,
and did not the Seven Sages themselves lay out its plans?
One league city, one league palm gardens, one league lowlands, the open area(?) of the Ishtar Temple,
three leagues and the open area(?) of Uruk it (the wall) encloses.
Find the copper tablet box,
open the of its lock of bronze,
undo the fastening of its secret opening.
Take and read out from the lapis lazuli tablet
how Gilgamesh went through every hardship.
Supreme over other kings, lordly in appearance,
he is the hero, born of Uruk, the goring wild bull.
He walks our in front, the leader,
and walks at the rear, trusted by his companions.
Mighty net, protector of his people,
raging flood-wave who destroys even walls of stone!
Offspring of Lugalbanda, Gilgamesh is strong to perfection,
son of the august cow, Rimat-Ninsun; Gilgamesh is awesome to perfection.
It was he who opened the mountain passes,
who dug wells on the flank of the mountain.
It was he who crossed the ocean, the vast seas, to the rising sun,
who explored the world regions, seeking life.
It was he who reached by his own sheer strength Utanapishtim, the Faraway,
who restored the sanctuaries (or: cities) that the Flood had destroyed!
for teeming mankind.
Who can compare with him in kingliness?
Who can say like Gilgamesh: "I am King!"?
Whose name, from the day of his birth, was called "Gilgamesh"?
Two-thirds of him is god, one-third of him is human.
The Great Goddess [Aruru] designed(?) the model for his body,
she prepared his form
beautiful, handsomest of men,
perfect

He walks around in the enclosure of Uruk,
Like a wild bull he makes himself mighty, head raised (over others).
There is no rival who can raise his weapon against him.
His fellows stand (at the alert), attentive to his (orders ?),
and the men of Uruk become anxious in
Gilgamesh does not leave a son to his father,
day and night he arrogant[y(?)
[The following lines are interpreted as rhetorical, perhaps spoken by the oppressed citizens of Uruk.]
Is Gilgamesh the shepherd of Uruk-Haven,
is he the shepherd.
bold, eminent, knowing, and wise!
Gilgamesh does not leave a girl to her mother(?)
The daughter of the warrior, the bride of the young man,
the gods kept hearing their complaints, so
the gods of the heavens implored the Lord of Uruk [Anu]
   "You have indeed brought into being a mighty wild bull, head raised!
   "There is no rival who can raise a weapon against him.
   "His fellows stand (at the alert), attentive to his (orders !),
   "Gilgamesh does not leave a son to his father,
   "day and night he arrogantly
   "Is he the shepherd of Uruk-Haven,
   "is he their shepherd
   "bold, eminent, knowing, and wise,
   "Gilgamesh does not leave a girl to her mother(?)!"
The daughter of the warrior, the bride of the young man,
Anu listened to their complaints,
and (the gods) called out to Aruru:
   "it was you, Aruru, who created mankind(?),
   now create a zikru to it/him.
   Let him be equal to his (Gilgamesh's) stormy heart,
   let them be a match for each other so that Uruk may find peace!"
When Aruru heard this she created within herself the zikrtt of Anu.
Aruru washed her hands, she pinched off some clay, and threw it into the wilderness.
In the wildness(?) she created valiant Enkidu,
born of Silence, endowed with strength by Ninurta.
His whole body was shaggy with hair,
he had a full head of hair like a woman,
his locks billowed in profusion like Ashnan.
He knew neither people nor settled living,
but wore a garment like Sumukan."
He ate grasses with the gazelles,
and jostled at the watering hole with the animals;
as with animals, his thirst was slaked with (mere) water.
A notorious trapper came face-to-face with him opposite the watering hole.
A first, a second, and a third day
he came face-to-face with him opposite the watering hole.
On seeing him the trapper's face went stark with fear,
and he (Enkidu?) and his animals drew back home.
He was rigid with fear; though stock-still
his heart pounded and his face drained of color.
He was miserable to the core,
and his face looked like one who had made a long journey.
The trapper addressed his father saying:"
   "Father, a certain fellow has come from the mountains.
   He is the mightiest in the land,
   his strength is as mighty as the meteorite(?) of Anu!
   He continually goes over the mountains,
   he continually jostles at the watering place with the animals,
   he continually plants his feet opposite the watering place.
   I was afraid, so I did not go up to him.
   He filled in the pits that I had dug,
   wrenched out my traps that I had spread,
   released from my grasp the wild animals.
   He does not let me make my rounds in the wilderness!"
The trapper's father spoke to him saying:
   "My son, there lives in Uruk a certain Gilgamesh.
   There is no one stronger than he,
   he is as strong as the meteorite(?) of Anu.
   Go, set off to Uruk,
   tell Gilgamesh of this Man of Might.
   He will give you the harlot Shamhat, take her with you.
   The woman will overcome the fellow (?) as if she were strong.
   When the animals are drinking at the watering place
   have her take off her robe and expose her sex.
   When he sees her he will draw near to her,
   and his animals, who grew up in his wilderness, will be alien to him."
He heeded his father's advice.
The trapper went off to Uruk,
he made the journey, stood inside of Uruk,
and declared to Gilgamesh:
   "There is a certain fellow who has come from the mountains
   he is the mightiest in the land,
   his strength is as mighty as the meteorite(?) of Anu!
   He continually goes over the mountains,
   he continually jostles at the watering place with the animals,
   he continually plants his feet opposite the watering place.
   I was afraid, so I did not go up to him.
   He filled in the pits that I had dug,
   wrenched out my traps that I had spread,
   released from my grasp the wild animals.
   He does not let me make my rounds in the wilderness!"
Gilgamesh said to the trapper:
   "Go, trapper, bring the harlot, Shamhat, with you.
   When the animals are drinking at the watering place
   have her take off her robe and expose her sex.
   When he sees her he will draw near to her,
   and his animals, who grew up in his wilderness, will be alien to him."
The trapper went, bringing the harlot, Shamhat, with him.
They set off on the journey, making direct way.
On the third day they arrived at the appointed place,
and the trapper and the harlot sat down at their posts(?).
A first day and a second they sat opposite the watering hole.
The animals arrived and drank at the watering hole,
the wild beasts arrived and slaked their thirst with water.
Then he, Enkidu, offspring of the mountains,
who eats grasses with the gazelles,
came to drink at the watering hole with the animals,
with the wild beasts he slaked his thirst with water.
Then Shamhat saw hima primitive,
a savage fellow from the depths of the wilderness!
   "That is he, Shamhat! Release your clenched arms,
   expose your sex so he can take in your voluptuousness.
   Do not be restrainedtake his energy!
   When he sees you he will draw near to you.
   Spread out your robe so he can lie upon you,
   and perform for this primitive the task of womankind!
   His animals, who grew up in his wilderness, will become alien to him,
   and his lust will groan over you."
Shamhat unclutched her bosom, exposed her sex, and he took in her voluptuousness.
She was not restrained, but took his energy.
She spread out her robe and he lay upon her,
she performed for the primitive the task of womankind.
His lust groaned over her;
for six days and seven nights Enkidu stayed aroused,
and had intercourse with the harlot
until he was sated with her charms.
But when he turned his attention to his animals,
the gazelles saw Enkidu and darted off,
the wild animals distanced themselves from his body.
Enkidu his utterly depleted(?) body,
his knees that wanted to go off with his animals went rigid;
Enkidu was diminished, his running was not as before.
But then he drew himself up, for his understanding had broadened.
Turning around, he sat down at the harlot's feet,
gazing into her face, his ears attentive as the harlot spoke.
The harlot said to Enkidu:
   "You are beautiful," Enkidu, you are become like a god.
   Why do you gallop around the wilderness with the wild beasts?
   Come, let me bring you into Uruk-Haven,
   to the Holy Temple, the residence of Anu and Ishtar,
   the place of Gilgamesh, who is wise to perfection,
   but who struts his power over the people like a wild bull."
What she kept saying found favor with him.
Becoming aware of himself, he sought a friend.
Enkidu spoke to the harlot:
   "Come, Shamhat, take me away with you
   to the sacred Holy Temple, the residence of Anu and Ishtar,
   the place of Gilgamesh, who is wise to perfection,
   but who struts his power over the people like a wild bull.
   I will challenge him
   Let me shout out in Uruk: I am the mighty one!'
   Lead me in and I will change the order of things;
   he whose strength is mightiest is the one born in the wilderness!"
[Shamhat to Enkidu:]
   "Come, let us go, so he may see your face.
   I will lead you to GilgameshI know where he will be.
   Look about, Enkidu, inside Uruk-Haven,
   where the people show off in skirted finery,
   where every day is a day for some festival,
   where the lyre(?) and drum play continually,
   where harlots stand about prettily,
   exuding voluptuousness, full of laughter
   and on the couch of night the sheets are spread (!)."
   Enkidu, you who do not know, how to live,
   I will show you Gilgamesh, a man of extreme feelings (!).
   Look at him, gaze at his face
   he is a handsome youth, with freshness(!),
   his entire body exudes voluptuousness
   He has mightier strength than you,
   without sleeping day or night!
   Enkidu, it is your wrong thoughts you must change!
   It is Gilgamesh whom Shamhat loves,
   and Anu, Enlil, and La have enlarged his mind."
   Even before you came from the mountain
   Gilgamesh in Uruk had dreams about you.""
Gilgamesh got up and revealed the dream, saying to his mother:
   "Mother, I had a dream last night.
   Stars of the sky appeared,
   and some kind of meteorite(?) of Anu fell next to me.
   I tried to lift it but it was too mighty for me,
   I tried to turn it over but I could not budge it.
   The Land of Uruk was standing around it,
   the whole land had assembled about it,
   the populace was thronging around it,
   the Men clustered about it,
   and kissed its feet as if it were a little baby (!).
   I loved it and embraced it as a wife.
   I laid it down at your feet,
   and you made it compete with me."
The mother of Gilgamesh, the wise, all-knowing, said to her Lord;
Rimat-Ninsun, the wise, all-knowing, said to Gilgamesh:
   "As for the stars of the sky that appeared
   and the meteorite(?) of Anu which fell next to you,
   you tried to lift but it was too mighty for you,
   you tried to turn it over but were unable to budge it,
   you laid it down at my feet,
   and I made it compete with you,
   and you loved and embraced it as a wife."
   "There will come to you a mighty man, a comrade who saves his friend
   he is the mightiest in the land, he is strongest,
   his strength is mighty as the meteorite(!) of Anu!
   You loved him and embraced him as a wife;
   and it is he who will repeatedly save you.
   Your dream is good and propitious!"
A second time Gilgamesh said to his mother:   "Mother, I have had another dream:
   "At the gate of my marital chamber there lay an axe,
   "and people had collected about it.
   "The Land of Uruk was standing around it,
   "the whole land had assembled about it,
   "the populace was thronging around it.
   "I laid it down at your feet,
   "I loved it and embraced it as a wife,
   "and you made it compete with me."
The mother of Gilgamesh, the wise, all-knowing, said to her son;
Rimat-Ninsun, the wise, all-knowing, said to Gilgamesh:
   ""The axe that you saw (is) a man.
   " (that) you love him and embrace as a wife,
   "but (that) I have compete with you."
   "" There will come to you a mighty man,
   "" a comrade who saves his friend
   "he is the mightiest in the land, he is strongest,
   "he is as mighty as the meteorite(!) of Anu!"
Gilgamesh spoke to his mother saying:
   ""By the command of Enlil, the Great Counselor, so may it to pass!
   "May I have a friend and adviser, a friend and adviser may I have!
   "You have interpreted for me the dreams about him!"
After the harlot recounted the dreams of Gilgamesh to Enkidu
the two of them made love.


~ Anonymous, Others have told me
,
1003:The Dunciad: Book I.
The Mighty Mother, and her son who brings
The Smithfield muses to the ear of kings,
I sing. Say you, her instruments the great!
Called to this work by Dulness, Jove, and Fate;
You by whose care, in vain decried and cursed,
Still Dunce the second reigns like Dunce the first;
Say how the Goddess bade Britannia sleep,
And poured her spirit o’er the land and deep.
In eldest time, e’er mortals writ or read,
E’er Pallas issued from the Thunderer’s head,
Dulness o’er all possessed her ancient right,
Daughter of Chaos and eternal Night:
Fate in their dotage this fair idiot gave,
Gross as her sire, and as her mother grave,
Laborious, heavy, busy, bold, and blind,
She ruled, in native anarchy, the mind.
Still her old empire to restore she tries,
For, born a goddess, Dulness never dies.
O thou! whatever title please thine ear,
Dean, Drapier, Bickerstaff, or Gulliver!
Whether thou choose Cervantes’ serious air,
Or laugh and shake in Rabelais’ easy chair,
Or praise the court, or magnify mankind,
Or thy grieved country’s copper chains unbind;
From thy Boeotia though her power retires,
Mourn not, my SWIFT, at ought our realm acquires,
Here pleased behold her mighty wings out-spread
To hatch a new Saturnian age of lead.
Close to those walls where Folly holds her throne,
And laughs to think Monroe would take her down,
Where o’er the gates, by his famed by father’s hand
Great Cibber’s brazen, brainless brothers stand;
One cell there is, concealed from vulgar eye,
The cave of poverty and poetry.
Keen, hollow winds howl through the bleak recess,
Emblem of music caused by emptiness.
Hence bards, like Proteus long in vain tied down,
Escape in monsters, and amaze the town.
Hence miscellanies spring, the weekly boast
170
Of Curll’s chaste press, and Lintot’s rubric post :
Hence hymning Tyburn’s elegiac lines,
Hence Journals, Medleys, Merc’ries, Magazines:
Sepulchral lies, our holy walls to grace,
And new Year odes, and all the Grub Street race.
In clouded majesty here Dulness shone;
Four guardian virtues, round, support her throne:
Fierce champion Fortitude, that knows no fears
Of hisses, blows, or want, or loss of ears:
Calm Temperance, whose blessings those partake
Who hunger, and who thirst for scribbling sake:
Prudence, whose glass presents th’ approaching goal.
Poetic justice, with her lifted scale,
Where, in nice balance, truth with gold she weighs,
And solid pudding against empty praise.
Here she beholds the chaos dark and deep,
Where nameless somethings in their causes sleep,
Till genial Jacob, or a warm third day,
Call forth each mass, a poem, or a play:
How hints, like spawn, scarce quick in embryo lie,
How new-born nonsense first is taught to cry.
Maggots half-formed in rhyme exactly meet,
And learn to crawl upon poetic feet.
Here one poor word an hundred clenches makes,
And ductile dullness new meanders takes;
There motley images her fancy strike,
Figures ill paired, and similes unlike.
She sees a mob of metaphors advance,
Pleased with the madness of the mazy dance:
How tragedy and comedy embrace;
How farce and epic get a jumbled race;
How time himself stands still at her command,
Realms shift their place, and ocean turns to land.
Here gay description Egypt glads with showers,
Or gives to Zembla fruits, to Barca flowers;
Glittering with ice here hoary hills are seen,
There painted valleys of eternal green,
In cold December fragrant chaplets blow,
And heavy harvests nod beneath the snow.
All these, and more, the cloud-compelling Queen
Beholds through fogs, that magnify the scene.
She, tinselled o’er in robes of varying hues,
171
With self-applause her wild creation views;
Sees momentary monsters rise and fall,
And with her own fools-colours gilds them all.
’Twas on the day, when
rich and grave,
Like Cimon, triumphed both on land and wave:
(Pomps without guilt, of bloodless swords and maces,
Glad chains, warm furs, broad banners, and broad faces)
Now night descending, the proud scene was o’er,
But lived, in Settle’s numbers, one day more.
Now mayors and shrieves all hushed and satiate lay,
Yet eat, in dreams, the custard of the day;
While pensive poets painful vigils keep,
Sleepless themselves, to give their readers sleep.
Much to the mindful Queen the feast recalls
What city swans once sung within the walls;
Much she revolves their arts, their ancient praise,
And sure succession down from Heywood’s days.
She saw, with joy, the line immortal run,
Each sire impressed and glaring in his son:
So watchful Bruin forms, with plastic care,
Each growing lump, and brings it to a bear.
She saw old Prynne in restless Daniel shine,
And Eusden eke out Blackmore’s endless line;
She saw slow Philips creep like Tate’s poor page,
And all the mighty mad in Dennis rage.
In each she marks her image full expressed,
But chief in BAY’S monster-breeding breast;
Bays, formed by nature stage and town to bless,
And act, and be, a coxcomb with success.
Dulness with transport eyes the lively dunce,
Remembering she herself was pertness once.
Now (shame to fortune!) an ill run at play
Blanked his bold visage, and a thin third day:
Swearing and supperless the hero sate,
Blasphemed his gods, the dice, and damned his fate.
Then gnawed his pen, then dashed it on the ground,
Sinking from thought to thought, a vast profound!
Plunged for his sense, but found no bottom there,
Yet wrote and floundered on, in mere despair.
Round him much embryo, much abortion lay,
172
Much future ode, and abdicated play;
Nonsense precipitate, like running lead,
That slipped through cracks and zigzags of the head;
All that on folly frenzy could beget,
Fruits of dull heat, and sooterkins of wit.
Next, o’er his books his eyes began to roll,
In pleasing memory of all he stole,
How here he sipped, how there he plundered snug
And sucked all o’er, like an industrious bug.
Here lay poor Fletcher’s half-eat scenes, and here
The frippery of crucified Molière;
There hapless Shakespeare, yet of Tibbald sore,
Wished he had blotted for himself before.
The rest on outside merit but presume,
Or serve (like other fools) to fill a room;
Such with their shelves as due proportion hold,
Or their fond parents dressed in red and gold;
Or where the pictures for the page atone,
And Quarles is saved by beauties not his own.
Here swells the shelf with Ogibly the great;
There, stamped with arms, Newcastle shines complete:
Here all his suffering brotherhood retire,
And ’scape the martyrdom of jakes and fire:
A Gothic library! Of Greece and Rome
Well purged, and worthy Settle, Banks, and Broome.
But, high above, more solid learning shone,
The classics of an age that heard of none;
There Caxton slept, with Wynkyn at his side,
One clasped in wood, and one in strong cow-hide;
There, saved by spice, like mummies, many a year,
Dry bodies of divinity appear:
De Lyra there a dreadful front extends,
And here the groaning shelves Philemon bends.
Of these twelve volumes, twelve of amplest size,
Redeemed from tapers and defrauded pies,
Inspired he seizes: these an altar raise:
An hetatomb of pure, unsullied lays
That altar crowns: a folio commonplace
Founds the whole pile, of all his works the base:
Quartos, octavos, shape the lessening pyre;
A twisted birthday ode completes the spire.
Then he: ‘Great tamer of all human art!
173
First in my care, and ever at my heart;
Dulness! Whose good old cause I yet defend,
With whom my muse began, with whom shall end;
E’er since Sir Fopling’s periwig was praise
To the last honours of the butt and bays:
O thou! of business the directing soul!
To this our head like bias to the bowl,
Which, as more ponderous, made its aim more true,
Obliquely waddling to the mark in view:
O! ever gracias to perplexed mankind,
Still spread a healing mist before the mind;
And lest we err by wit’s wild dancing light,
Secure us kindly in our native night.
Or, if to wit a coxcomb make pretence,
Guard the sure barrier between that and sense;
Or quite unravel all the reasoning thread,
And hang some curious cobweb in its stead!
As, forced from wind-guns, lead itself can fly,
And ponderous slugs cut swiftly through the sky;
As clocks to weight their nimble motion owe,
The wheels above urged by the load below:
Me emptiness, and Dulness could inspire,
And were my elasticity, and fire.
Some daemon stole my pen(forgive th’offence)
And once betrayed me into common sense:
Else all my prose and verse were much the same;
This, prose on stilts, that, poetry fallen lame.
Did on the stage my fops appear confined?
My life gave ampler lessons to mankind.
Did the dead letter unsuccessful prove?
The brisk example never failed to move.
Yet sure had heaven decreed to save the state,
Heaven had decreed these works a longer date.
Could Troy be saved by any single hand,
This grey-goose weapon must have made her stand.
What can I now? my Fletcher cast aside,
Take up the Bible, once my better guide?
Or tread the path by venturous heroes trod,
This box my thunder, this right hand my god?
Or chaired at White’s amidst the doctors sit,
Teach oaths to gamesters, and to nobles wit?
Or bidst thou rather party to embrace?
174
(A friend to party thou, and all her race;
’Tis the same rope at different ends they twist;
To Dulness Ridpath is as dear as Mist.)
Shall I, like Curtius, desperate in my zeal,
O’er head and ears plunge for the commonweal?
Or rob Rome’s ancient geese of all their glories,
And cackling save the monarchy of Tories?
Hold—to the minister I more incline;
To serve his cause, O Queen! is serving thine.
And see! Thy very gazetteers give o’er,
Ev’n Ralph repents, and Henley writes no more.
What then remains? Ourself. Still, still remain
Cibberian forehead, and Cibberian brain.
This brazen brightness, to the ‘squire so dear;
This polished hardness, that reflects the peer;
This arch absurd, that sit and fool delights;
This mess, tossed up of Hockley Hole and White’s;
Where dukes and butchers join to wreathe my crown,
At once the bear and fiddle of the town.
O born in sin, and forth in folly brought!
Works damned, or to be damned! (your father’s fault)
Go, purified by flames ascend the sky,
My better and more Christian progeny!
Unstained, untouched, and yet in maiden sheets;
While all your smutty sisters walk the streets.
Ye shall not beg, like gratis-given Bland,
Sent with a pass, and vagrant through the land;
Not sail, with Ward, to ape-and-monkey climes,
Where vile mundungus trucks for viler rhymes;
Not sulphur-tipped, emblaze an alehouse fire;
Not wrap up oranges, to pelt your sire!
O! pass more innocent, in infant state,
To the mild limbo of our father Tate:
Or peaceably forgot, at once be blessed
In Shadwell’s bosom with eternal rest!
Soon to that mass of nonsense to return,
Where things destroyed are swept to things unborn.’
With that, a tear (portentous sign of grace!)
Stole from the master of the sevenfold face:
And thrice he lifted high the birthday brand,
And thrice he dropped it from his quivering hand;
Then lights the structure, with averted eyes:
175
The rolling smokes involve the sacrifice.
The opening clouds disclose each work by turns,
Now flames the Cid, and now Perolla burns;
Great Ceasar roars, and hisses in the fires;
King John in silence modestly expires:
No merit now the dear Nonjuror claims,
Molière’s old stubble in a moment flames.
Tears gushed again, as from pale Priam’s eyes
When the last blaze sent Ilion to the skies.
Roused by the light, old Dulness heaved the head;
Then snatched a sheet of Thulè from her bed,
Sudden she flies, and whelms it o’er the pyre;
Down sink the flames, and with a hiss expire.
Her ample presence fills up all the place;
A veil of fogs dilates her awful face;
Great in her charms! as when on shrieves and mayors
She looks, and breathes herself into their airs.
She bids him wait her to her sacred dome:
Well pleased he entered, and confessed his home.
So spirits ending their terrestrial race,
Ascend, and recognize their native place.
This the Great Mother dearer held than all
The clubs of quidnuncs, or her own Guildhall:
Here stood her opium, here she nursed her owls,
And here she planned th’ imperial seat of Fools.
Here to her chosen all her works she shows;
Prose swelled to verse, verse loitering into prose:
How random thoughts now meaning chance to find,
Now leave all memory of sense behind:
How prologues into prefaces decay,
And these to notes are frittered quite away:
How index-learning turns no student pale,
Yet holds the eel of science by the tail:
How, with less reading than makes felons ’scape,
Less human genius than God gives an ape,
Small thanks to France, and none to Rome or Greece,
A past, vamped, future, old, revived, new piece,
’Twixt Plautus, Fletcher, Shakespeare, and Corneille,
Can make a Cibber, Tibbald, or Ozell.
The Goddess then, o’er his anointed head,
With mystic words, the sacred opium shed.
And lo! her bird, (a monster of a fowl,
176
Something betwixt a Heidegger and owl,)
Perched on his crown: ‘ All hail! and hail again,
My son! The promised land expects thy reign.
Know, Eusden thirsts no more for sack or praise;
He sleeps among the dull of ancient days;
Safe, where no critics damn, no duns molest,
Where wretched Withers, Ward, and Gildon rest,
And high-born Howard, more majestic sire,
With fool of quality completes the quire.
Thou Cibber! thou, his laurel shalt support,
Folly, my son, has still a friend at court.
Lift up your gates, ye princes, see him come!
Sound, sound ye viols, be the catcall dumb!
Bring, bring the madding bay, the drunken vine;
The creeping, dirty, courtly ivy join.
And thou! his aide de camp, lead on my sons,
Light-armed with points, antitheses, and puns.
Let bawdry, Billingsgate, my daughters dear,
Support his front, and oaths bring up the rear:
And under his, and under Archer’s wing,
Gaming and Grub Street skulk behind the king.
O! when shall rise a monarch all our own,
And I, a nursing-mother, rock the throne,
’Twixt prince and people close the curtain draw,
Shade him from light, and cover him from law;
Fatten the courtier, starve the learned band,
And suckle armies, and dry-nurse the land:
Till senates nod to lullabies divine,
And all be asleep, as at an ode of thine.’
She ceased. Then swells the Chapel Royal throat:
‘God save King Cibber!’ mounts in every note.
Familiar White’s, ‘God save king Colley!’ cries;
‘God save King Colley!’ Drury Lane replies:
To Needham’s quick the voice triumphal rode,
But pious Needham dropped the name of God;
Back to the Devil the last echoes roll,
And ‘Coll!’ each butcher roars at Hockley Hole.
So when Jove’s block descended from on high
(As sings thy great forefather Ogilby)
Loud thunder to its bottom shook the bog,
And the hoarse nation croaked, ‘God save King Log!
177
~ Alexander Pope,
1004:The tavern-keeper Siduri who lives by the seashore,
she lives
the pot-stand was made for her, the golden fermenting vat was made for her.
She is covered with a veil
Gilgamesh was roving about
wearing a skin,
having the flesh of the gods in his body,
but sadness deep within him,
looking like one who has been traveling a long distance.
The tavern-keeper was gazing off into the distance,
puzzling to herself, she said,
wondering to herself:
"That fellow is surely a murderer(!)!
Where is he heading!"
As soon as the tavern-keeper saw him, she bolted her door,
bolted her gate, bolted the lock.
But at her noise Gilgamesh pricked up his ears,
lifted his chin (to look about) and then laid his eyes on her.
Gilgamesh spoke to the tavern-keeper, saying:
"Tavern-keeper, what have you seen that made you bolt
               your door,
bolt your gate, bolt the lock!
if you do not let me in I will break your door, and smash
                the lock!
the wilderness."
Gilgamesh
The tavern-keeper Siduri who lives by the seashore,
she lives
the pot-stand was made for her, the golden fermenting vat was made
                 for her.
She is covered with a veil
Gilgamesh was roving about
wearing a skin,
having the flesh of the gods in his body,
but sadness deep within him,
looking like one who has been traveling a long distance.
The tavern-keeper was gazing off into the distance,
puzzling to herself, she said,
wondering to herself:
"That fellow is surely a murderer(!)!
Where is he heading!"
As soon as the tavern-keeper saw him, she bolted her door,
bolted her gate, bolted the lock.
But at her noise Gilgamesh pricked up his ears,
lifted his chin (to look about) and then laid his eyes on her.
Gilgamesh spoke to the tavern-keeper, saying:
"Tavern-keeper, what have you seen that made you bolt
               your door,
bolt your gate, bolt the lock!
if you do not let me in I will break your door, and smash
                the lock!
the wilderness."
Gilgamesh
gate
Gilgamesh said to the tavern-keeper:
"I am Gilgamesh, I killed the Guardian!
I destroyed Humbaba who lived in the Cedar Forest,
I slew lions in the mountain passes!
I grappled with the Bull that came down from heaven, and
               killed him."
The tavern-keeper spoke to Gilgamesh, saying:
"lf you are Gilgamesh, who killed the Guardian,
who destroyed Humbaba who lived in the Cedar Forest,
who slew lions in the mountain passes,
who grappled with the Bull that came down from heaven, and
               killed him,
why are your cheeks emaciated, your expression desolate!
Why is your heart so wretched, your features so haggard!
Why is there such sadness deep within you!
Why do you look like one who has been traveling a long
                 distance
so that ice and heat have seared your face!
you roam the wilderness!"
Gilgamesh spoke to her, to the tavern-keeper he said:
"Tavern-keeper, should not my cheeks be emaciated?
Should my heart not be wretched, my features not haggard?
Should there not be sadness deep within me!
Should I not look like one who has been traveling a long
                distance,
and should ice and heat not have seared my face!
, should I not roam the wilderness?
My friend, the wild **** who chased the wild donkey, panther of
              the wilderness,
Enkidu, the wild **** who chased the wild donkey, panther of
               the wilderness,
we joined together, and went up into the mountain.
We grappled with and killed the Bull of Heaven,
we destroyed Humbaba who lived in the Cedar Forest,
we slew lions in the mountain passes!
My friend, whom I love deeply, who went through every hard-
             ship with me,
Enkidu, whom I love deeply, who went through every hardship
               with me,
the fate of mankind has overtaken him.
Six days and seven nights I mourned over him
and would not allow him to be buried
until a maggot fell out of his nose.
I was terrified by his appearance(!),
I began to fear death, and so roam the wilderness.
The issue of my friend oppresses me,
so I have been roaming long trails through the wilderness.
The issue of Enkidu, my friend, oppresses me,
so I have been roaming long roads through the wilderness.
How can I stay silent, how can 1 be still!
My friend whom I love has turned to clay.
Am I not like him? Will I lie down, never to get up again?"'
Gilgamesh spoke to the tavern-keeper, saying:
"So now, tavern-keeper, what is the way to Utanapishtim!
What are its markers Give them to me! Give me the markers!
If possible, I will cross the sea;
if not, I will roam through the wilderness."
The tavern-keeper spoke to Gilgamesh, saying:
"There has never been, Gilgamesh, any passage whatever,
there has never been anyone since days of yore who crossed
                 the sea.
The (only) one who crosses the sea is valiant Shamash, except
            for him who can cross!
The crossing is difficult, its ways are treacherous
and in between are the Waters of Death that bar its approaches!
And even if, Gilgamesh, you should cross the sea,
when you reach the Waters of Death what would you do!
Gilgamesh, over there is Urshanabi, the ferryman of Utanapishtim.
'The stone things' L are with him, he is in the woods picking
                 mint( !).
Go on, let him see your face.
If possible, cross with him;
if not, you should turn back."
When Gilgamesh heard this
he raised the axe in his hand,
drew the dagger from his belt,
and slipped stealthily away after them.
Like an arrow he fell among them ("the stone things").
From the middle of the woods their noise could be heard.
Urshanabi, the sharp-eyed, saw
When he heard the axe, he ran toward it.
He struck his head Gilgamesh.'
He clapped his hands and his chest,
while "the stone things" the boat
Waters of Death
broad sea
in the Waters of Death
to the river
the boat
on the shore.
Gilgamesh spoke to Urshanabi (?), the ferryman,
   you."
Urshanabi spoke to Gilgamesh, saying:'
   "Why are your cheeks emaciated, your expression desolate!
   Why is your heart so wretched, your features so haggard?
   Why is there such sadness deep within you!
   Why do you look like one who has been traveling a long
                  distance
   so that ice and heat have seared your face!
   Why you roam the wilderness!"
Gilgamesh spoke to Urshanabi, saying:
   "Urshanabi, should not my cheeks be emaciated, my expression
                 desolate!
   Should my heart not be wretched, my features not haggard
   Should there not be sadness deep within me?
   Should I not look like one who has been traveling a long
                 distance,
and should ice and heat not have seared my face!
   should I not roam the wilderness?
   My friend who chased wild asses in the mountain, the panther
               of the wilderness,
   Enkidu, my friend, who chased wild asses in the mountain, the
            panther of the wilderness,
   we joined together, and went up into the mountain.
   We grappled with and killed the Bull of Heaven,
   we destroyed Humbaba who dwelled in the Cedar Forest,
   we slew lions in the mountain passes!
   My friend, whom I love deeply, who went through every hard-
                ship with me,
   Enkidu, my friend, whom I love deeply, who went through
             every hardship with me,
   the fate of mankind has overtaken him.
Six days and seven nights I mourned over him
   and would not allow him to be buried
   until a maggot fell out of his nose.
   I was terrified by his appearance(!),
   I began to fear death, and so roam the wilderness.
   The issue of my friend oppresses me,
   so I have been roaming long trails through the wilderness.
   The issue of Enkidu, my friend, oppresses me,
   so 1 have been roaming long roads through the wilderness.
   How can I stay silent, how can I be still!
   My friend whom I love has turned to clay;
   Enkidu, my friend whom I love, has turned to clay!
   Am I not like him! Will I lie down, never to get up again!"
  Gilgamesh spoke to Urshanabi, saying:
   "Now, Urshanabi! What is the way to Utanapishtim?
   What are its markers! Give them to me! Give me the markers!
   If possible, I will cross the sea;
   if not, I will roam through the wilderness!"
Urshanabi spoke to Gilgamesh, saying:
"It is your hands, Gilgamesh, that prevent the crossing!
You have smashed the stone things,' you have pulled out their
             retaining ropes (?).
'The stone things' have been smashed, their retaining ropes (!)
              pulled out!
Gilgamesh, take the axe in your hand, go down into the woods,
and cut down 300 punting poles each 60 cubits in length.
Strip them, attach caps(?), and bring them to the boat!"
When Gilgamesh heard this
he took up the axe in his hand, drew the dagger from his belt,
and went down into the woods,
and cut 300 punting poles each 60 cubits in length.
He stripped them and attached caps(!), and brought them to
                 the boat.
Gilgamesh and Urshanabi bearded the boat,
Gilgamesh launched the magillu-boat' and they sailed away.
By the third day they had traveled a stretch of a month and a
                 half, and
Urshanabi arrived at the Waters of Death.
Urshanabi said to Gilgamesh:
"Hold back, Gilgamesh, take a punting pole,
but your hand must not pass over the Waters of Death !
Take a second, Gilgamesh, a third, and a fourth pole,
take a fifth, Gilgamesh, a sixth, and a seventh pole,
take an eighth, Gilgamesh, a ninth, and a tenth pole,
take an eleventh, Gilgamesh, and a twelfth pole!"
In twice 60 rods Gilgamesh had used up the punting poles.
Then he loosened his waist-cloth(?) for
Gilgamesh stripped off his garment
and held it up on the mast(!) with his arms.
Utanapishtim was gazing off into the distance,
puzzling to himself he said, wondering to himself:
"Why are 'the stone things' of the boat smashed to pieces!
And why is someone not its master sailing on it?
The one who is coming is not a man of mine,
I keep looking but not
I keep looking but not
I keep looking"
lines are missing here.]
Utanapishtim said to Gilgamesh:
"Why are your cheeks emaciated, your expression desolate!
Why is your heart so wretched, your features so haggard!
Why is there such sadness deep within you!
Why do you look like one who has been traveling a long distance
so that ice and heat have seared your face!
you roam the wilderness!"
Gilgamesh spoke to Utanapishtim saying:
"Should not my cheeks be emaciated, my expression desolate!
Should my heart not be wretched, my features not haggard!
Should there not be sadness deep within me!
Should I not look like one who has been traveling a long distance,
and should ice and heat not have seared my face!
should I not roam the wilderness)
My friend who chased wild asses in the mountain, the panther
             of the wilderness,
Enkidu, my friend, who chased wild asses in the mountain, the
           panther of the wilderness,
we joined together, and went up into the mountain.
We grappled with and killed the Bull of Heaven,
we destroyed Humbaba who dwelled in the Cedar Forest,
we slew lions in the mountain passes!
My friend, whom I love deeply, who went through every hard-
               shin with me
Enkidu, my friend, whom I love deeply, who went through
           every hardship with me,
the fate of mankind has overtaken him.
Six days and seven nights I mourned over him
and would not allow him to be buried
until a maggot fell out of his nose.
I was terrified by his appearance(!),
I began to fear death, and so roam the wilderness.
The issue of my friend oppresses me,
so I have been roaming long trails through the wilderness.
The issue of Enkidu, my friend, oppresses me,
so I have been roaming long roads through the wilderness.
How can I stay silent, how can I be still!
My friend whom I love has turned to clay;
Enkidu, my friend whom I love, has turned to clay!
Am I not like him! Will I lie down never to get up again!"
Gilgamesh spoke to Utanapishtim, saying:
"That is why (?) I must go on, to see Utanapishtim whom they
             call 'The Faraway.'"
I went circling through all the mountains,
I traversed treacherous mountains, and crossed all the seas
that is why (!) sweet sleep has not mellowed my face,
through sleepless striving I am strained,
my muscles are filled with pain.
I had not yet reached the tavern-keeper's area before my
             clothing gave out.
I killed bear, hyena, lion, panther, tiger, stag, red-stag, and
           beasts of the wilderness;
I ate their meat and wrapped their skins around me.'
The gate of grief must be bolted shut, sealed with pitch and
                bitumen !
As for me, dancing
For me unfortunate(!) it(?) will root out"
Utanapishtim spoke to Gilgamesh, saying:
"Why, Gilgamesh, do you sadness?
You who were created (!) from the flesh of gods and mankind
who made like your father and mother?
Have you ever Gilgamesh to the fool
They placed a chair in the Assembly,
But to the fool they gave beer dregs instead of butter,
bran and cheap flour which like
Clothed with a loincloth (!) like
And in place of a sash,
because he does not have
does not have words of counsel
Take care about it, Gilgamesh,
their master
Sin
eclipse of the moon
The gods are sleepless
They are troubled, restless(!)
Long ago it has been established
You trouble yourself
your help
If Gilgamesh the temple of the gods
the temple of the holy gods,
the gods
mankind,
they took for his fate.
You have toiled without cease, and what have you got!
Through toil you wear yourself out,
you fill your body with grief,
your long lifetime you are bringing near (to a premature end)!
Mankind, whose offshoot is snapped off like a reed in a
              canebreak,
the fine youth and lovely girl
death.
No one can see death,
no one can see the face of death,
no one can hear the voice of death,
yet there is savage death that snaps off mankind.
For how long do we build a household?
For how long do we seal a document!
For how long do brothers share the inheritance?
For how long is there to be jealousy in the land(!)!
For how long has the river risen and brought the overflowing
               waters,
so that dragonflies drift down the river!'
The face that could gaze upon the face of the Sun
has never existed ever.
How alike are the sleeping(!) and the dead.
The image of Death cannot be depicted.
(Yes, you are a) human being, a man (?)!
After Enlil had pronounced the blessing,'"
the Anunnaki, the Great Gods, assembled.
Mammetum, she who forms destiny, determined destiny with them.
They established Death and Life,
but they did not make known 'the days of death'".


~ Anonymous, The Epic of Gilgamesh Tablet X
,
1005:Gilgamesh spoke to Utanapishtim, the Faraway:
"I have been looking at you,
but your appearance is not strangeyou are like me!
You yourself are not differentyou are like me!
My mind was resolved to fight with you,
(but instead?) my arm lies useless over you.
Tell me, how is it that you stand in the Assembly of the Gods,
             and have found life!"
Utanapishtim spoke to Gilgamesh, saying:
"I will reveal to you, Gilgamesh, a thing that is hidden,
a secret of the gods I will tell you!
Shuruppak, a city that you surely know,
situated on the banks of the Euphrates,
that city was very old, and there were gods inside it.
The hearts of the Great Gods moved them to inflict the Flood.
Their Father Anu uttered the oath (of secrecy),
Valiant Enlil was their Adviser,
Ninurta was their Chamberlain,
Ennugi was their Minister of Canals.
Ea, the Clever Prince(?), was under oath with them
so he repeated their talk to the reed house:
  'Reed house, reed house! Wall, wall!
O man of Shuruppak, son of Ubartutu:
Tear down the house and build a boat!
Abandon wealth and seek living beings!
Spurn possessions and keep alive living beings!
Make all living beings go up into the boat.
The boat which you are to build,
its dimensions must measure equal to each other:
its length must correspond to its width.
Roof it over like the Apsu.
I understood and spoke to my lord, Ea:
'My lord, thus is the command which you have uttered
I will heed and will do it.
But what shall I answer the city, the populace, and the
               Elders!'
Ea spoke, commanding me, his servant:
'You, well then, this is what you must say to them:
"It appears that Enlil is rejecting me
so I cannot reside in your city (?),
nor set foot on Enlil's earth.
I will go down to the Apsu to live with my lord, Ea,
and upon you he will rain down abundance,
a profusion of fowl, myriad(!) fishes.
He will bring to you a harvest of wealth,
in the morning he will let loaves of bread shower down,
and in the evening a rain of wheat!"'
Just as dawn began to glow
the land assembled around me-
the carpenter carried his hatchet,
the reed worker carried his (flattening) stone,
the men
The child carried the pitch,
the weak brought whatever else was needed.
On the fifth day I laid out her exterior.
It was a field in area,
its walls were each 10 times 12 cubits in height,
the sides of its top were of equal length, 10 times 12 cubits each.
I laid out its (interior) structure and drew a picture of it (?).
I provided it with six decks,
thus dividing it into seven (levels).
The inside of it I divided into nine (compartments).
I drove plugs (to keep out) water in its middle part.
I saw to the punting poles and laid in what was necessary.
Three times 3,600 (units) of raw bitumen I poured into the
             bitumen kiln,
three times 3,600 (units of) pitchinto it,
there were three times 3,600 porters of casks who carried (vege-
               table) oil,
apart from the 3,600 (units of) oil which they consumed (!)
and two times 3,600 (units of) oil which the boatman stored
               away.
I butchered oxen for the meat(!),
and day upon day I slaughtered sheep.
I gave the workmen(?) ale, beer, oil, and wine, as if it were
              river water,
so they could make a party like the New Year's Festival.
and I set my hand to the oiling(!).
The boat was finished by sunset.
The launching was very difficult.
They had to keep carrying a runway of poles front to back,
until two-thirds of it had gone into the water(?).
Whatever I had I loaded on it:
whatever silver I had 1 loaded on it,
whatever gold I had I loaded on it.
All the living beings that I had I loaded on it,
I had all my kith and kin go up into the boat,
all the beasts and animals of the field and the craftsmen I
              had go up.
Shamash had set a stated time:
'In the morning I will let loaves of bread shower down,
and in the evening a rain of wheat!
Go inside the boat, seal the entry!'
That stated time had arrived.
In the morning he let loaves of bread shower down,
and in the evening a rain of wheat.
I watched the appearance of the weather
the weather was frightful to behold!
I went into the boat and sealed the entry.
For the caulking of the boat, to Puzuramurri, the boatman,
I gave the palace together with its contents.
Just as dawn began to glow
there arose from the horizon a black cloud.
Adad rumbled inside of it,
before him went Shullat and Hanish,
heralds going over mountain and land.
Erragal pulled out the mooring poles,
forth went Ninurta and made the dikes overflow.
The Anunnaki lifted up the torches,
setting the land ablaze with their flare.
Stunned shock over Adad's deeds overtook the heavens,
and turned to blackness all that had been light.
The land shattered like a pot.
All day long the South Wind blew,
blowing fast, submerging the mountain in water,
overwhelming the people like an attack.
No one could see his fellow,
they could not recognize each other in the torrent.
The gods were frightened by the Flood,
and retreated, ascending to the heaven of Anu.
The gods were cowering like dogs, crouching by the outer wall.
Ishtar shrieked like a woman in childbirth,
the sweet-voiced Mistress of the Gods wailed:
'The olden days have alas turned to clay,
because I said evil things in the Assembly of the Gods!
How could I say evil things in the Assembly of the Gods,
ordering a catastrophe to destroy my people!!
No sooner have I given birth to my dear people
than they fill the sea like so many fish!'
The godsthose of the Anunnakiwere weeping with her,
the gods humbly sat weeping, sobbing with grief(?),
their lips burning, parched with thirst.
Six days and seven nights
came the wind and flood, the storm flattening the land.
When the seventh day arrived, the storm was pounding,
the flood was a warstruggling with itself like a woman
           writhing (in labor).
The sea calmed, fell still, the whirlwind (and) flood stopped up.
I looked around all day longquiet had set in
and all the human beings had turned to clay!
The terrain was as flat as a roof.
I opened a vent and fresh air (daylight!) fell upon the side of
               my nose.
I fell to my knees and sat weeping,
tears streaming down the side of my nose.
I looked around for coastlines in the expanse of the sea,
and at twelve leagues there emerged a region (of land).
On Mt. Nimush the boat lodged firm,
Mt. Nimush held the boat, allowing no sway.
One day and a second Mt. Nimush held the boat, allowing
               no sway.
A third day, a fourth, Mt. Nimush held the boat, allowing
               no sway.
A fifth day, a sixth, Mt. Nimush held the boat, allowing
               no sway.
When a seventh day arrived
I sent forth a dove and released it.
The dove went off, but came back to me;
no perch was visible so it circled back to me.
I sent forth a swallow and released it.
The swallow went off, but came back to me;
no perch was visible so it circled back to me.
I sent forth a raven and released it.
The raven went off, and saw the waters slither back.
It eats, it scratches, it bobs, but does not circle back to me.
Then I sent out everything in all directions and sacrificed
               (a sheep).
I offered incense in front of the mountain-ziggurat.
Seven and seven cult vessels I put in place,
and (into the fire) underneath (or: into their bowls) I poured
         reeds, cedar, and myrtle.
The gods smelled the savor,
the gods smelled the sweet savor,
and collected like flies over a (sheep) sacrifice.
Just then Beletili arrived.
She lifted up the large flies (beads) which Anu had made for
           his enjoyment(!):
'You gods, as surely as I shall not forget this lapis lazuli
           around my neck,
may I be mindful of these days, and never forget them!
The gods may come to the incense offering,
but Enlil may not come to the incense offering,
because without considering he brought about the Flood
and consigned my people to annihilation.'
Just then Enlil arrived.
He saw the boat and became furious,
he was filled with rage at the Igigi gods:
'Where did a living being escape?
No man was to survive the annihilation!'
Ninurta spoke to Valiant Enlil, saying:
'Who else but Ea could devise such a thing?
It is Ea who knows every machination!'
La spoke to Valiant Enlil, saying:
'It is yours, O Valiant One, who is the Sage of the Gods.
How, how could you bring about a Flood without consideration
Charge the violation to the violator,
charge the offense to the offender,
but be compassionate lest (mankind) be cut off,
be patient lest they be killed.
Instead of your bringing on the Flood,
would that a lion had appeared to diminish the people!
Instead of your bringing on the Flood,
would that a wolf had appeared to diminish the people!
Instead of your bringing on the Flood,
would that famine had occurred to slay the land!
Instead of your bringing on the Flood,
would that (Pestilent) Erra had appeared to ravage the land!
It was not I who revealed the secret of the Great Gods,
I (only) made a dream appear to Atrahasis, and (thus) he
         heard the secret of the gods.
Now then! The deliberation should be about him!'
Enlil went up inside the boat
and, grasping my hand, made me go up.
He had my wife go up and kneel by my side.
He touched our forehead and, standing between us, he
             blessed us:
'Previously Utanapishtim was a human being.
But now let Utanapishtim and his wife become like us,
               the gods!
Let Utanapishtim reside far away, at the Mouth of the Rivers.'
They took us far away and settled us at the Mouth of the Rivers."
"Now then, who will convene the gods on your behalf,
that you may find the life that you are seeking!
Wait! You must not lie down for six days and seven nights."
soon as he sat down (with his head) between his legs
sleep, like a fog, blew upon him.
Utanapishtim said to his wife:
"Look there! The man, the youth who wanted (eternal) life!
Sleep, like a fog, blew over him."
his wife said to Utanapishtim the Faraway:
"Touch him, let the man awaken.
Let him return safely by the way he came.
Let him return to his land by the gate through which he left."
Utanapishtim said to his wife:
"Mankind is deceptive, and will deceive you.
Come, bake leaves for him and keep setting them by his head
and draw on the wall each day that he lay down."
She baked his leaves and placed them by his head
and marked on the wall the day that he lay down.
The first loaf was dessicated,
the second stale, the third moist(?), the fourth turned white,
                its,
the fifth sprouted gray (mold), the sixth is still fresh.
the seventhsuddenly he touched him and the man awoke.
Gilgamesh said to Utanapishtim:
"The very moment sleep was pouring over me
you touched me and alerted me!"
Utanapishtim spoke to Gilgamesh, saying:
"Look over here, Gilgamesh, count your loaves!
You should be aware of what is marked on the wall!
Your first loaf is dessicated,
the second stale, the third moist, your fourth turned white,
                 its
the fifth sprouted gray (mold), the sixth is still fresh.
The seventhsuddenly he touched him and the man awoke.
Gilgamesh said to Utanapishtim:
"The very moment sleep was pouring over me
you touched me and alerted me!"
Utanapishtim spoke to Gilgamesh, saying:
"Look over here, Gilgamesh, count your leaves!
You should be aware of what is marked on the wall!
Your first loaf is dessicated,
the second stale, the third moist, your fourth turned white,
                 its
the fifth sprouted gray (mold), the sixth is still fresh.
The seventhat that instant you awoke!"
Gilgamesh said to Utanapishtim the Faraway:
"O woe! What shall I do, Utanapishtim, where shall I go!
The Snatcher has taken hold of my flesh,
in my bedroom Death dwells,
and wherever I set foot there too is Death!"
       Home Empty-Handed
Utanapishtim said to Urshanabi, the ferryman:
"May the harbor reject you, may the ferry landing reject you!
May you who used to walk its shores be denied its shores!
The man in front of whom you walk, matted hair chains
                 his body,
animal skins have ruined his beautiful skin.
Take him away, Urshanabi, bring him to the washing place.
Let him wash his matted hair in water like ellu.
Let him cast away his animal skin and have the sea carry it off,
let his body be moistened with fine oil,
let the wrap around his head be made new,
let him wear royal robes worthy of him!
Until he goes off to his city,
until he sets off on his way,
let his royal robe not become spotted, let it be perfectly new!"
Urshanabi took him away and brought him to the washing place.
He washed his matted hair with water like ellu.
He cast off his animal skin and the sea carried it oh.
He moistened his body with fine oil,
and made a new wrap for his head.
He put on a royal robe worthy of him.
Until he went away to his city,
until he set off on his way,
his royal robe remained unspotted, it was perfectly clean.
Gilgamesh and Urshanabi bearded the boat,
they cast off the magillu-boat, and sailed away.
The wife of Utanapishtim the Faraway said to him:
"Gilgamesh came here exhausted and worn out.
What can you give him so that he can return to his land (with
                 honor) !"
Then Gilgamesh raised a punting pole
and drew the boat to shore.
Utanapishtim spoke to Gilgamesh, saying:
"Gilgamesh, you came here exhausted and worn out.
What can I give you so you can return to your land?
I will disclose to you a thing that is hidden, Gilgamesh,
a I will tell you.
There is a plant like a boxthorn,
whose thorns will prick your hand like a rose.
If your hands reach that plant you will become a young
                man again."
Hearing this, Gilgamesh opened a conduit(!) (to the Apsu)
and attached heavy stones to his feet.
They dragged him down, to the Apsu they pulled him.
He took the plant, though it pricked his hand,
and cut the heavy stones from his feet,
letting the waves(?) throw him onto its shores.
Gilgamesh spoke to Urshanabi, the ferryman, saying:
"Urshanabi, this plant is a plant against decay(!)
by which a man can attain his survival(!).
I will bring it to Uruk-Haven,
and have an old man eat the plant to test it.
The plant's name is 'The Old Man Becomes a Young Man.'"
Then I will eat it and return to the condition of my youth."
At twenty leagues they broke for some food,
at thirty leagues they stopped for the night.
Seeing a spring and how cool its waters were,
Gilgamesh went down and was bathing in the water.
A snake smelled the fragrance of the plant,
silently came up and carried off the plant.
While going back it sloughed off its casing.'
At that point Gilgamesh sat down, weeping,
his tears streaming over the side of his nose.
"Counsel me, O ferryman Urshanabi!
For whom have my arms labored, Urshanabi!
For whom has my heart's blood roiled!
I have not secured any good deed for myself,
but done a good deed for the 'lion of the ground'!"
Now the high waters are coursing twenty leagues distant,'
as I was opening the conduit(?) I turned my equipment over
               into it (!).
What can I find (to serve) as a marker(?) for me!
I will turn back (from the journey by sea) and leave the boat by
               the shore!"
At twenty leagues they broke for some food,
at thirty leagues they stopped for the night.
They arrived in Uruk-Haven.
Gilgamesh said to Urshanabi, the ferryman:
"Go up, Urshanabi, onto the wall of Uruk and walk around.
Examine its foundation, inspect its brickwork thoroughly
is not (even the core of) the brick structure of kiln-fired brick,
and did not the Seven Sages themselves lay out its plan!
One league city, one league palm gardens, one league lowlands, the open area(?) of the Ishtar Temple,
three leagues and the open area(?) of Uruk it encloses.


~ Anonymous, The Epic of Gilgamesh Tablet XI The Story of the Flood
,
1006:Imitations Of Horace: The First Epistle Of The Second
Book
Ne Rubeam, Pingui donatus Munere
(Horace, Epistles II.i.267)
While you, great patron of mankind, sustain
The balanc'd world, and open all the main;
Your country, chief, in arms abroad defend,
At home, with morals, arts, and laws amend;
How shall the Muse, from such a monarch steal
An hour, and not defraud the public weal?
Edward and Henry, now the boast of fame,
And virtuous Alfred, a more sacred name,
After a life of gen'rous toils endur'd,
The Gaul subdu'd, or property secur'd,
Ambition humbled, mighty cities storm'd,
Or laws establish'd, and the world reform'd;
Clos'd their long glories with a sigh, to find
Th' unwilling gratitude of base mankind!
All human virtue, to its latest breath
Finds envy never conquer'd, but by death.
The great Alcides, ev'ry labour past,
Had still this monster to subdue at last.
Sure fate of all, beneath whose rising ray
Each star of meaner merit fades away!
Oppress'd we feel the beam directly beat,
Those suns of glory please not till they set.
To thee the world its present homage pays,
The harvest early, but mature the praise:
Great friend of liberty! in kings a name
Above all Greek, above all Roman fame:
Whose word is truth, as sacred and rever'd,
As Heav'n's own oracles from altars heard.
Wonder of kings! like whom, to mortal eyes
None e'er has risen, and none e'er shall rise.
Just in one instance, be it yet confest
Your people, Sir, are partial in the rest:
Foes to all living worth except your own,
105
And advocates for folly dead and gone.
Authors, like coins, grow dear as they grow old;
It is the rust we value, not the gold.
Chaucer's worst ribaldry is learn'd by rote,
And beastly Skelton heads of houses quote:
One likes no language but the Faery Queen ;
A Scot will fight for Christ's Kirk o' the Green:
And each true Briton is to Ben so civil,
He swears the Muses met him at the Devil.
Though justly Greece her eldest sons admires,
Why should not we be wiser than our sires?
In ev'ry public virtue we excel:
We build, we paint, we sing, we dance as well,
And learned Athens to our art must stoop,
Could she behold us tumbling through a hoop.
If time improve our wit as well as wine,
Say at what age a poet grows divine?
Shall we, or shall we not, account him so,
Who died, perhaps, an hundred years ago?
End all dispute; and fix the year precise
When British bards begin t'immortalize?
"Who lasts a century can have no flaw,
I hold that wit a classic, good in law."
Suppose he wants a year, will you compound?
And shall we deem him ancient, right and sound,
Or damn to all eternity at once,
At ninety-nine, a modern and a dunce?
"We shall not quarrel for a year or two;
By courtesy of England, he may do."
Then by the rule that made the horsetail bare,
I pluck out year by year, as hair by hair,
And melt down ancients like a heap of snow:
While you, to measure merits, look in Stowe,
And estimating authors by the year,
Bestow a garland only on a bier.
106
Shakespeare (whom you and ev'ry playhouse bill
Style the divine, the matchless, what you will)
For gain, not glory, wing'd his roving flight,
And grew immortal in his own despite.
Ben, old and poor, as little seem'd to heed
The life to come, in ev'ry poet's creed.
Who now reads Cowley? if he pleases yet,
His moral pleases, not his pointed wit;
Forgot his epic, nay Pindaric art,
But still I love the language of his heart.
"Yet surely, surely, these were famous men!
What boy but hears the sayings of old Ben?
In all debates where critics bear a part,
Not one but nods, and talks of Jonson's art,
Of Shakespeare's nature, and of Cowley's wit;
How Beaumont's judgment check'd what Fletcher writ;
How Shadwell hasty, Wycherley was slow;
But, for the passions, Southerne sure and Rowe.
These, only these, support the crowded stage,
From eldest Heywood down to Cibber's age."
All this may be; the people's voice is odd,
It is, and it is not, the voice of God.
To Gammer Gurton if it give the bays,
And yet deny the Careless Husband praise,
Or say our fathers never broke a rule;
Why then, I say, the public is a fool.
But let them own, that greater faults than we
They had, and greater virtues, I'll agree.
Spenser himself affects the obsolete,
And Sidney's verse halts ill on Roman feet:
Milton's strong pinion now not Heav'n can bound,
Now serpent-like, in prose he sweeps the ground,
In quibbles, angel and archangel join,
And God the Father turns a school divine.
Not that I'd lop the beauties from his book,
Like slashing Bentley with his desp'rate hook,
Or damn all Shakespeare, like th' affected fool
At court, who hates whate'er he read at school.
107
But for the wits of either Charles's days,
The mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease;
Sprat, Carew, Sedley, and a hundred more,
(Like twinkling stars the Miscellanies o'er)
One simile, that solitary shines
In the dry desert of a thousand lines,
Or lengthen'd thought that gleams through many a page,
Has sanctified whole poems for an age.
I lose my patience, and I own it too,
When works are censur'd, not as bad, but new;
While if our elders break all reason's laws,
These fools demand not pardon, but applause.
On Avon's bank, where flow'rs eternal blow,
If I but ask if any weed can grow?
One tragic sentence if I dare deride,
Which Betterton's grave action dignified,
Or well-mouth'd Booth with emphasis proclaims
(Though but, perhaps, a muster-roll of names)
How will our fathers rise up in a rage,
And swear, all shame is lost in George's age!
You'd think no fools disgrac'd the former reign,
Did not some grave examples yet remain,
Who scorn a lad should teach his father skill,
And, having once been wrong, will be so still.
He, who to seem more deep than you or I,
Extols old bards, or Merlin's Prophecy,
Mistake him not; he envies, not admires,
And to debase the sons, exalts the sires.
Had ancient times conspir'd to disallow
What then was new, what had been ancient now?
Or what remain'd, so worthy to be read
By learned critics, of the mighty dead?
In days of ease, when now the weary sword
Was sheath'd, and luxury with Charles restor'd;
In ev'ry taste of foreign courts improv'd,
"All, by the King's example, liv'd and lov'd."
108
Then peers grew proud in horsemanship t'excel,
Newmarket's glory rose, as Britain's fell;
The soldier breath'd the gallantries of France,
And ev'ry flow'ry courtier writ romance.
Then marble, soften'd into life, grew warm,
And yielding metal flow'd to human form:
Lely on animated canvas stole
The sleepy eye, that spoke the melting soul.
No wonder then, when all was love and sport,
The willing Muses were debauch'd at court:
On each enervate string they taught the note
To pant or tremble through an eunuch's throat.
But Britain, changeful as a child at play,
Now calls in princes, and now turns away:
Now Whig, now Tory, what we lov'd we hate;
Now all for pleasure, now for Church and state;
Now for prerogative, and now for laws;
Effects unhappy! from a noble cause.
Time was, a sober Englishman would knock
His servants up, and rise by five o'clock,
Instruct his family in ev'ry rule,
And send his wife to church, his son to school.
To worship like his fathers was his care;
To teach their frugal virtues to his heir;
To prove that luxury could never hold,
And place, on good security, his gold.
Now times are chang'd, and one poetic itch
Has seiz'd the court and city, poor and rich:
Sons, sires, and grandsires, all will wear the bays,
Our wives read Milton, and our daughters plays,
To theatres, and to rehearsals throng,
And all our grace at table is a song.
I, who so oft renounce the Muses, lie,
Not {-}{-}{-}{-}{-}'s self e'er tells more fibs than I;
When sick of Muse, our follies we deplore,
And promise our best friends to rhyme no more;
We wake next morning in a raging fit,
And call for pen and ink to show our wit.
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He serv'd a 'prenticeship who sets up shop;
Ward tried on puppies and the poor, his drop;
Ev'n Radcliffe's doctors travel first to France,
Nor dare to practise till they've learn'd to dance.
Who builds a bridge that never drove a pile?
(Should Ripley venture, all the world would smile)
But those who cannot write, and those who can,
All rhyme, and scrawl, and scribble, to a man.
Yet, Sir, reflect, the mischief is not great;
These madmen never hurt the Church or state:
Sometimes the folly benefits mankind;
And rarely av'rice taints the tuneful mind.
Allow him but his plaything of a pen,
He ne'er rebels, or plots, like other men:
Flight of cashiers, or mobs, he'll never mind;
And knows no losses while the Muse is kind.
To cheat a friend, or ward, he leaves to Peter;
The good man heaps up nothing but mere metre,
Enjoys his garden and his book in quiet;
And then--a perfect hermit in his diet.
Of little use the man you may suppose,
Who says in verse what others say in prose:
Yet let me show, a poet's of some weight,
And (though no soldier) useful to the state.
What will a child learn sooner than a song?
What better teach a foreigner the tongue?
What's long or short, each accent where to place,
And speak in public with some sort of grace.
I scarce can think him such a worthless thing,
Unless he praise some monster of a king;
Or virtue or religion turn to sport,
To please a lewd, or unbelieving court.
Unhappy Dryden!--In all Charles's days,
Roscommon only boasts unspotted bays;
And in our own (excuse some courtly stains)
No whiter page than Addison remains.
He, from the taste obscene reclaims our youth,
And sets the passions on the side of truth,
Forms the soft bosom with the gentlest art,
And pours each human virtue in the heart.
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Let Ireland tell, how wit upheld her cause,
Her trade supported, and supplied her laws;
And leave on Swift this grateful verse engrav'd,
"The rights a court attack'd, a poet sav'd."
Behold the hand that wrought a nation's cure,
Stretch'd to relieve the idiot and the poor,
Proud vice to brand, or injur'd worth adorn,
And stretch the ray to ages yet unborn.
Not but there are, who merit other palms;
Hopkins and Sternhold glad the heart with psalms:
The boys and girls whom charity maintains,
Implore your help in these pathetic strains:
How could devotion touch the country pews,
Unless the gods bestow'd a proper Muse?
Verse cheers their leisure, verse assists their work,
Verse prays for peace, or sings down Pope and Turk.
The silenc'd preacher yields to potent strain,
And feels that grace his pray'r besought in vain;
The blessing thrills through all the lab'ring throng,
And Heav'n is won by violence of song.
Our rural ancestors, with little blest,
Patient of labour when the end was rest,
Indulg'd the day that hous'd their annual grain,
With feasts, and off'rings, and a thankful strain:
The joy their wives, their sons, and servants share,
Ease of their toil, and part'ners of their care:
The laugh, the jest, attendants on the bowl,
Smooth'd ev'ry brow, and open'd ev'ry soul:
With growing years the pleasing licence grew,
And taunts alternate innocently flew.
But times corrupt, and nature, ill-inclin'd,
Produc'd the point that left a sting behind;
Till friend with friend, and families at strife,
Triumphant malice rag'd through private life.
Who felt the wrong, or fear'd it, took th' alarm,
Appeal'd to law, and justice lent her arm.
At length, by wholesome dread of statutes bound,
The poets learn'd to please, and not to wound:
Most warp'd to flatt'ry's side; but some, more nice,
Preserv'd the freedom, and forbore the vice.
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Hence satire rose, that just the medium hit,
And heals with morals what it hurts with wit.
We conquer'd France, but felt our captive's charms;
Her arts victorious triumph'd o'er our arms;
Britain to soft refinements less a foe,
Wit grew polite, and numbers learn'd to flow.
Waller was smooth; but Dryden taught to join
The varying verse, the full-resounding line,
The long majestic march, and energy divine.
Though still some traces of our rustic vein
And splayfoot verse remain'd, and will remain.
Late, very late, correctness grew our care,
When the tir'd nation breath'd from civil war.
Exact Racine, and Corneille's noble fire
Show'd us that France had something to admire.
Not but the tragic spirit was our own,
And full in Shakespeare, fair in Otway shone:
But Otway fail'd to polish or refine,
And fluent Shakespeare scarce effac'd a line.
Ev'n copious Dryden wanted, or forgot,
The last and greatest art, the art to blot.
Some doubt, if equal pains, or equal fire
The humbler Muse of comedy require.
But in known images of life, I guess
The labour greater, as th' indulgence less.
Observe how seldom ev'n the best succeed:
Tell me if Congreve's fools are fools indeed?
What pert, low dialogue has Farqu'ar writ!
How Van wants grace, who never wanted wit!
The stage how loosely does Astr{ae}ea tread,
Who fairly puts all characters to bed!
And idle Cibber, how he breaks the laws,
To make poor Pinky eat with vast applause!
But fill their purse, our poet's work is done,
Alike to them, by pathos or by pun.
O you! whom vanity's light bark conveys
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On fame's mad voyage by the wind of praise,
With what a shifting gale your course you ply,
For ever sunk too low, or borne too high!
Who pants for glory finds but short repose,
A breath revives him, or a breath o'erthrows.
Farewell the stage! if just as thrives the play,
The silly bard grows fat, or falls away.
There still remains, to mortify a wit,
The many-headed monster of the pit:
A senseless, worthless, and unhonour'd crowd;
Who, to disturb their betters mighty proud,
Clatt'ring their sticks before ten lines are spoke,
Call for the farce, the bear, or the black-joke.
What dear delight to Britons farce affords!
Farce once the taste of mobs, but now of lords;
(For taste, eternal wanderer, now flies
From heads to ears, and now from ears to eyes.)
The play stands still; damn action and discourse,
Back fly the scenes, and enter foot and horse;
Pageants on pageants, in long order drawn,
Peers, heralds, bishops, ermine, gold, and lawn;
The champion too! and, to complete the jest,
Old Edward's armour beams on Cibber's breast.
With laughter sure Democritus had died,
Had he beheld an audience gape so wide.
Let bear or elephant be e'er so white,
The people, sure, the people are the sight!
Ah luckless poet! stretch thy lungs and roar,
That bear or elephant shall heed thee more;
While all its throats the gallery extends,
And all the thunder of the pit ascends!
Loud as the wolves on Orcas' stormy steep,
Howl to the roarings of the Northern deep.
Such is the shout, the long-applauding note,
At Quin's high plume, or Oldfield's petticoat,
Or when from Court a birthday suit bestow'd
Sinks the lost actor in the tawdry load.
Booth enters--hark! the universal peal!
"But has he spoken?" Not a syllable.
"What shook the stage, and made the people stare?"
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Cato's long wig, flow'r'd gown, and lacquer'd chair.
Yet lest you think I rally more than teach,
Or praise malignly arts I cannot reach,
Let me for once presume t'instruct the times,
To know the poet from the man of rhymes:
'Tis he, who gives my breast a thousand pains,
Can make me feel each passion that he feigns;
Enrage, compose, with more than magic art,
With pity and with terror tear my heart;
And snatch me o'er the earth or thro' the air,
To Thebes, to Athens, when he will, and where.
But not this part of the poetic state
Alone, deserves the favour of the great:
Think of those authors, Sir, who would rely
More on a reader's sense, than gazer's eye.
Or who shall wander where the Muses sing?
Who climb their mountain, or who taste their spring?
How shall we fill a library with wit,
When Merlin's Cave is half unfurnish'd yet?
My Liege! why writers little claim your thought,
I guess: and, with their leave, will tell the fault:
We poets are (upon a poet's word)
Of all mankind, the creatures most absurd:
The season, when to come, and when to go,
To sing, or cease to sing, we never know;
And if we will recite nine hours in ten,
You lose your patience, just like other men.
Then too we hurt ourselves, when to defend
A single verse, we quarrel with a friend;
Repeat unask'd; lament, the wit's too fine
For vulgar eyes, and point out ev'ry line.
But most, when straining with too weak a wing,
We needs will write epistles to the king;
And from the moment we oblige the town,
Expect a place, or pension from the Crown;
Or dubb'd historians by express command,
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T'enroll your triumphs o'er the seas and land,
Be call'd to court to plan some work divine,
As once for Louis, Boileau and Racine.
Yet think, great Sir! (so many virtues shown)
Ah think, what poet best may make them known?
Or choose at least some minister of grace,
Fit to bestow the laureate's weighty place.
Charles, to late times to be transmitted fair,
Assign'd his figure to Bernini's care;
And great Nassau to Kneller's hand decreed
To fix him graceful on the bounding steed;
So well in paint and stone they judg'd of merit:
But kings in wit may want discerning spirit.
The hero William, and the martyr Charles,
One knighted Blackmore, and one pension'd Quarles;
Which made old Ben, and surly Dennis swear,
"No Lord's anointed, but a Russian bear."
Not with such majesty, such bold relief,
The forms august, of king, or conqu'ring chief,
E'er swell'd on marble; as in verse have shin'd
(In polish'd verse) the manners and the mind.
Oh! could I mount on the M{ae}onian wing,
Your arms, your actions, your repose to sing!
What seas you travers'd! and what fields you fought!
Your country's peace, how oft, how dearly bought!
How barb'rous rage subsided at your word,
And nations wonder'd while they dropp'd the sword!
How, when you nodded, o'er the land and deep,
Peace stole her wing, and wrapp'd the world in sleep;
Till earth's extremes your mediation own,
And Asia's tyrants tremble at your throne-But verse, alas! your Majesty disdains;
And I'm not us'd to panegyric strains:
The zeal of fools offends at any time,
But most of all, the zeal of fools in rhyme,
Besides, a fate attends on all I write,
115
That when I aim at praise, they say I bite.
A vile encomium doubly ridicules:
There's nothing blackens like the ink of fools;
If true, a woeful likeness; and if lies,
"Praise undeserv'd is scandal in disguise."
Well may he blush, who gives it, or receives;
And when I flatter, let my dirty leaves
(Like journals, odes, and such forgotten things
As Eusden, Philips, Settle, writ of kings)
Clothe spice, line trunks, or flutt'ring in a row,
Befringe the rails of Bedlam and Soho.
~ Alexander Pope,
1007:The Princess (Part 2)
At break of day the College Portress came:
She brought us Academic silks, in hue
The lilac, with a silken hood to each,
And zoned with gold; and now when these were on,
And we as rich as moths from dusk cocoons,
She, curtseying her obeisance, let us know
The Princess Ida waited: out we paced,
I first, and following through the porch that sang
All round with laurel, issued in a court
Compact of lucid marbles, bossed with lengths
Of classic frieze, with ample awnings gay
Betwixt the pillars, and with great urns of flowers.
The Muses and the Graces, grouped in threes,
Enringed a billowing fountain in the midst;
And here and there on lattice edges lay
Or book or lute; but hastily we past,
And up a flight of stairs into the hall.
There at a board by tome and paper sat,
With two tame leopards couched beside her throne,
All beauty compassed in a female form,
The Princess; liker to the inhabitant
Of some clear planet close upon the Sun,
Than our man's earth; such eyes were in her head,
And so much grace and power, breathing down
From over her arched brows, with every turn
Lived through her to the tips of her long hands,
And to her feet. She rose her height, and said:
'We give you welcome: not without redound
Of use and glory to yourselves ye come,
The first-fruits of the stranger: aftertime,
And that full voice which circles round the grave,
Will rank you nobly, mingled up with me.
What! are the ladies of your land so tall?'
'We of the court' said Cyril. 'From the court'
She answered, 'then ye know the Prince?' and he:
'The climax of his age! as though there were
One rose in all the world, your Highness that,
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He worships your ideal:' she replied:
'We scarcely thought in our own hall to hear
This barren verbiage, current among men,
Light coin, the tinsel clink of compliment.
Your flight from out your bookless wilds would seem
As arguing love of knowledge and of power;
Your language proves you still the child. Indeed,
We dream not of him: when we set our hand
To this great work, we purposed with ourself
Never to wed. You likewise will do well,
Ladies, in entering here, to cast and fling
The tricks, which make us toys of men, that so,
Some future time, if so indeed you will,
You may with those self-styled our lords ally
Your fortunes, justlier balanced, scale with scale.'
At those high words, we conscious of ourselves,
Perused the matting: then an officer
Rose up, and read the statutes, such as these:
Not for three years to correspond with home;
Not for three years to cross the liberties;
Not for three years to speak with any men;
And many more, which hastily subscribed,
We entered on the boards: and 'Now,' she cried,
'Ye are green wood, see ye warp not. Look, our hall!
Our statues!--not of those that men desire,
Sleek Odalisques, or oracles of mode,
Nor stunted squaws of West or East; but she
That taught the Sabine how to rule, and she
The foundress of the Babylonian wall,
The Carian Artemisia strong in war,
The Rhodope, that built the pyramid,
Clelia, Cornelia, with the Palmyrene
That fought Aurelian, and the Roman brows
Of Agrippina. Dwell with these, and lose
Convention, since to look on noble forms
Makes noble through the sensuous organism
That which is higher. O lift your natures up:
Embrace our aims: work out your freedom. Girls,
Knowledge is now no more a fountain sealed:
Drink deep, until the habits of the slave,
The sins of emptiness, gossip and spite
727
And slander, die. Better not be at all
Than not be noble. Leave us: you may go:
Today the Lady Psyche will harangue
The fresh arrivals of the week before;
For they press in from all the provinces,
And fill the hive.'
She spoke, and bowing waved
Dismissal: back again we crost the court
To Lady Psyche's: as we entered in,
There sat along the forms, like morning doves
That sun their milky bosoms on the thatch,
A patient range of pupils; she herself
Erect behind a desk of satin-wood,
A quick brunette, well-moulded, falcon-eyed,
And on the hither side, or so she looked,
Of twenty summers. At her left, a child,
In shining draperies, headed like a star,
Her maiden babe, a double April old,
Aglaïa slept. We sat: the Lady glanced:
Then Florian, but not livelier than the dame
That whispered 'Asses' ears', among the sedge,
'My sister.' 'Comely, too, by all that's fair,'
Said Cyril. 'Oh hush, hush!' and she began.
'This world was once a fluid haze of light,
Till toward the centre set the starry tides,
And eddied into suns, that wheeling cast
The planets: then the monster, then the man;
Tattooed or woaded, winter-clad in skins,
Raw from the prime, and crushing down his mate;
As yet we find in barbarous isles, and here
Among the lowest.'
Thereupon she took
A bird's-eye-view of all the ungracious past;
Glanced at the legendary Amazon
As emblematic of a nobler age;
Appraised the Lycian custom, spoke of those
That lay at wine with Lar and Lucumo;
Ran down the Persian, Grecian, Roman lines
Of empire, and the woman's state in each,
How far from just; till warming with her theme
She fulmined out her scorn of laws Salique
728
And little-footed China, touched on Mahomet
With much contempt, and came to chivalry:
When some respect, however slight, was paid
To woman, superstition all awry:
However then commenced the dawn: a beam
Had slanted forward, falling in a land
Of promise; fruit would follow. Deep, indeed,
Their debt of thanks to her who first had dared
To leap the rotten pales of prejudice,
Disyoke their necks from custom, and assert
None lordlier than themselves but that which made
Woman and man. She had founded; they must build.
Here might they learn whatever men were taught:
Let them not fear: some said their heads were less:
Some men's were small; not they the least of men;
For often fineness compensated size:
Besides the brain was like the hand, and grew
With using; thence the man's, if more was more;
He took advantage of his strength to be
First in the field: some ages had been lost;
But woman ripened earlier, and her life
Was longer; and albeit their glorious names
Were fewer, scattered stars, yet since in truth
The highest is the measure of the man,
And not the Kaffir, Hottentot, Malay,
Nor those horn-handed breakers of the glebe,
But Homer, Plato, Verulam; even so
With woman: and in arts of government
Elizabeth and others; arts of war
The peasant Joan and others; arts of grace
Sappho and others vied with any man:
And, last not least, she who had left her place,
And bowed her state to them, that they might grow
To use and power on this Oasis, lapt
In the arms of leisure, sacred from the blight
Of ancient influence and scorn.
At last
She rose upon a wind of prophecy
Dilating on the future; 'everywhere
Who heads in council, two beside the hearth,
Two in the tangled business of the world,
Two in the liberal offices of life,
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Two plummets dropt for one to sound the abyss
Of science, and the secrets of the mind:
Musician, painter, sculptor, critic, more:
And everywhere the broad and bounteous Earth
Should bear a double growth of those rare souls,
Poets, whose thoughts enrich the blood of the world.'
She ended here, and beckoned us: the rest
Parted; and, glowing full-faced welcome, she
Began to address us, and was moving on
In gratulation, till as when a boat
Tacks, and the slackened sail flaps, all her voice
Faltering and fluttering in her throat, she cried
'My brother!' 'Well, my sister.' 'O,' she said,
'What do you here? and in this dress? and these?
Why who are these? a wolf within the fold!
A pack of wolves! the Lord be gracious to me!
A plot, a plot, a plot to ruin all!'
'No plot, no plot,' he answered. 'Wretched boy,
How saw you not the inscription on the gate,
LET NO MAN ENTER IN ON PAIN OF DEATH?'
'And if I had,' he answered, 'who could think
The softer Adams of your Academe,
O sister, Sirens though they be, were such
As chanted on the blanching bones of men?'
'But you will find it otherwise' she said.
'You jest: ill jesting with edge-tools! my vow
Binds me to speak, and O that iron will,
That axelike edge unturnable, our Head,
The Princess.' 'Well then, Psyche, take my life,
And nail me like a weasel on a grange
For warning: bury me beside the gate,
And cut this epitaph above my bones;
~Here lies a brother by a sister slain,
All for the common good of womankind.~'
'Let me die too,' said Cyril, 'having seen
And heard the Lady Psyche.'
I struck in:
'Albeit so masked, Madam, I love the truth;
Receive it; and in me behold the Prince
Your countryman, affianced years ago
To the Lady Ida: here, for here she was,
730
And thus (what other way was left) I came.'
'O Sir, O Prince, I have no country; none;
If any, this; but none. Whate'er I was
Disrooted, what I am is grafted here.
Affianced, Sir? love-whispers may not breathe
Within this vestal limit, and how should I,
Who am not mine, say, live: the thunderbolt
Hangs silent; but prepare: I speak; it falls.'
'Yet pause,' I said: 'for that inscription there,
I think no more of deadly lurks therein,
Than in a clapper clapping in a garth,
To scare the fowl from fruit: if more there be,
If more and acted on, what follows? war;
Your own work marred: for this your Academe,
Whichever side be Victor, in the halloo
Will topple to the trumpet down, and pass
With all fair theories only made to gild
A stormless summer.' 'Let the Princess judge
Of that' she said: 'farewell, Sir--and to you.
I shudder at the sequel, but I go.'
'Are you that Lady Psyche,' I rejoined,
'The fifth in line from that old Florian,
Yet hangs his portrait in my father's hall
(The gaunt old Baron with his beetle brow
Sun-shaded in the heat of dusty fights)
As he bestrode my Grandsire, when he fell,
And all else fled? we point to it, and we say,
The loyal warmth of Florian is not cold,
But branches current yet in kindred veins.'
'Are you that Psyche,' Florian added; 'she
With whom I sang about the morning hills,
Flung ball, flew kite, and raced the purple fly,
And snared the squirrel of the glen? are you
That Psyche, wont to bind my throbbing brow,
To smoothe my pillow, mix the foaming draught
Of fever, tell me pleasant tales, and read
My sickness down to happy dreams? are you
That brother-sister Psyche, both in one?
You were that Psyche, but what are you now?'
'You are that Psyche,' said Cyril, 'for whom
I would be that for ever which I seem,
731
Woman, if I might sit beside your feet,
And glean your scattered sapience.'
Then once more,
'Are you that Lady Psyche,' I began,
'That on her bridal morn before she past
From all her old companions, when the kind
Kissed her pale cheek, declared that ancient ties
Would still be dear beyond the southern hills;
That were there any of our people there
In want or peril, there was one to hear
And help them? look! for such are these and I.'
'Are you that Psyche,' Florian asked, 'to whom,
In gentler days, your arrow-wounded fawn
Came flying while you sat beside the well?
The creature laid his muzzle on your lap,
And sobbed, and you sobbed with it, and the blood
Was sprinkled on your kirtle, and you wept.
That was fawn's blood, not brother's, yet you wept.
O by the bright head of my little niece,
You were that Psyche, and what are you now?'
'You are that Psyche,' Cyril said again,
'The mother of the sweetest little maid,
That ever crowed for kisses.'
'Out upon it!'
She answered, 'peace! and why should I not play
The Spartan Mother with emotion, be
The Lucius Junius Brutus of my kind?
Him you call great: he for the common weal,
The fading politics of mortal Rome,
As I might slay this child, if good need were,
Slew both his sons: and I, shall I, on whom
The secular emancipation turns
Of half this world, be swerved from right to save
A prince, a brother? a little will I yield.
Best so, perchance, for us, and well for you.
O hard, when love and duty clash! I fear
My conscience will not count me fleckless; yet-Hear my conditions: promise (otherwise
You perish) as you came, to slip away
Today, tomorrow, soon: it shall be said,
These women were too barbarous, would not learn;
They fled, who might have shamed us: promise, all.'
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What could we else, we promised each; and she,
Like some wild creature newly-caged, commenced
A to-and-fro, so pacing till she paused
By Florian; holding out her lily arms
Took both his hands, and smiling faintly said:
'I knew you at the first: though you have grown
You scarce have altered: I am sad and glad
To see you, Florian. ~I~ give thee to death
My brother! it was duty spoke, not I.
My needful seeming harshness, pardon it.
Our mother, is she well?'
With that she kissed
His forehead, then, a moment after, clung
About him, and betwixt them blossomed up
From out a common vein of memory
Sweet household talk, and phrases of the hearth,
And far allusion, till the gracious dews
Began to glisten and to fall: and while
They stood, so rapt, we gazing, came a voice,
'I brought a message here from Lady Blanche.'
Back started she, and turning round we saw
The Lady Blanche's daughter where she stood,
Melissa, with her hand upon the lock,
A rosy blonde, and in a college gown,
That clad her like an April daffodilly
(Her mother's colour) with her lips apart,
And all her thoughts as fair within her eyes,
As bottom agates seen to wave and float
In crystal currents of clear morning seas.
So stood that same fair creature at the door.
Then Lady Psyche, 'Ah--Melissa--you!
You heard us?' and Melissa, 'O pardon me
I heard, I could not help it, did not wish:
But, dearest Lady, pray you fear me not,
Nor think I bear that heart within my breast,
To give three gallant gentlemen to death.'
'I trust you,' said the other, 'for we two
Were always friends, none closer, elm and vine:
But yet your mother's jealous temperament-Let not your prudence, dearest, drowse, or prove
733
The Danaïd of a leaky vase, for fear
This whole foundation ruin, and I lose
My honour, these their lives.' 'Ah, fear me not'
Replied Melissa; 'no--I would not tell,
No, not for all Aspasia's cleverness,
No, not to answer, Madam, all those hard things
That Sheba came to ask of Solomon.'
'Be it so' the other, 'that we still may lead
The new light up, and culminate in peace,
For Solomon may come to Sheba yet.'
Said Cyril, 'Madam, he the wisest man
Feasted the woman wisest then, in halls
Of Lebanonian cedar: nor should you
(Though, Madam, ~you~ should answer, ~we~ would ask)
Less welcome find among us, if you came
Among us, debtors for our lives to you,
Myself for something more.' He said not what,
But 'Thanks,' she answered 'Go: we have been too long
Together: keep your hoods about the face;
They do so that affect abstraction here.
Speak little; mix not with the rest; and hold
Your promise: all, I trust, may yet be well.'
We turned to go, but Cyril took the child,
And held her round the knees against his waist,
And blew the swollen cheek of a trumpeter,
While Psyche watched them, smiling, and the child
Pushed her flat hand against his face and laughed;
And thus our conference closed.
And then we strolled
For half the day through stately theatres
Benched crescent-wise. In each we sat, we heard
The grave Professor. On the lecture slate
The circle rounded under female hands
With flawless demonstration: followed then
A classic lecture, rich in sentiment,
With scraps of thunderous Epic lilted out
By violet-hooded Doctors, elegies
And quoted odes, and jewels five-words-long
That on the stretched forefinger of all Time
Sparkle for ever: then we dipt in all
That treats of whatsoever is, the state,
734
The total chronicles of man, the mind,
The morals, something of the frame, the rock,
The star, the bird, the fish, the shell, the flower,
Electric, chemic laws, and all the rest,
And whatsoever can be taught and known;
Till like three horses that have broken fence,
And glutted all night long breast-deep in corn,
We issued gorged with knowledge, and I spoke:
'Why, Sirs, they do all this as well as we.'
'They hunt old trails' said Cyril 'very well;
But when did woman ever yet invent?'
'Ungracious!' answered Florian; 'have you learnt
No more from Psyche's lecture, you that talked
The trash that made me sick, and almost sad?'
'O trash' he said, 'but with a kernel in it.
Should I not call her wise, who made me wise?
And learnt? I learnt more from her in a flash,
Than in my brainpan were an empty hull,
And every Muse tumbled a science in.
A thousand hearts lie fallow in these halls,
And round these halls a thousand baby loves
Fly twanging headless arrows at the hearts,
Whence follows many a vacant pang; but O
With me, Sir, entered in the bigger boy,
The Head of all the golden-shafted firm,
The long-limbed lad that had a Psyche too;
He cleft me through the stomacher; and now
What think you of it, Florian? do I chase
The substance or the shadow? will it hold?
I have no sorcerer's malison on me,
No ghostly hauntings like his Highness. I
Flatter myself that always everywhere
I know the substance when I see it. Well,
Are castles shadows? Three of them? Is she
The sweet proprietress a shadow? If not,
Shall those three castles patch my tattered coat?
For dear are those three castles to my wants,
And dear is sister Psyche to my heart,
And two dear things are one of double worth,
And much I might have said, but that my zone
Unmanned me: then the Doctors! O to hear
The Doctors! O to watch the thirsty plants
735
Imbibing! once or twice I thought to roar,
To break my chain, to shake my mane: but thou,
Modulate me, Soul of mincing mimicry!
Make liquid treble of that bassoon, my throat;
Abase those eyes that ever loved to meet
Star-sisters answering under crescent brows;
Abate the stride, which speaks of man, and loose
A flying charm of blushes o'er this cheek,
Where they like swallows coming out of time
Will wonder why they came: but hark the bell
For dinner, let us go!'
And in we streamed
Among the columns, pacing staid and still
By twos and threes, till all from end to end
With beauties every shade of brown and fair
In colours gayer than the morning mist,
The long hall glittered like a bed of flowers.
How might a man not wander from his wits
Pierced through with eyes, but that I kept mine own
Intent on her, who rapt in glorious dreams,
The second-sight of some Astræan age,
Sat compassed with professors: they, the while,
Discussed a doubt and tost it to and fro:
A clamour thickened, mixt with inmost terms
Of art and science: Lady Blanche alone
Of faded form and haughtiest lineaments,
With all her autumn tresses falsely brown,
Shot sidelong daggers at us, a tiger-cat
In act to spring.
At last a solemn grace
Concluded, and we sought the gardens: there
One walked reciting by herself, and one
In this hand held a volume as to read,
And smoothed a petted peacock down with that:
Some to a low song oared a shallop by,
Or under arches of the marble bridge
Hung, shadowed from the heat: some hid and sought
In the orange thickets: others tost a ball
Above the fountain-jets, and back again
With laughter: others lay about the lawns,
Of the older sort, and murmured that their May
Was passing: what was learning unto them?
736
They wished to marry; they could rule a house;
Men hated learned women: but we three
Sat muffled like the Fates; and often came
Melissa hitting all we saw with shafts
Of gentle satire, kin to charity,
That harmed not: then day droopt; the chapel bells
Called us: we left the walks; we mixt with those
Six hundred maidens clad in purest white,
Before two streams of light from wall to wall,
While the great organ almost burst his pipes,
Groaning for power, and rolling through the court
A long melodious thunder to the sound
Of solemn psalms, and silver litanies,
The work of Ida, to call down from Heaven
A blessing on her labours for the world.
Sweet and low, sweet and low,
Wind of the western sea,
Low, low, breathe and blow,
Wind of the western sea!
Over the rolling waters go,
Come from the dying moon, and blow,
Blow him again to me;
While my little one, while my pretty one, sleeps.
Sleep and rest, sleep and rest,
Father will come to thee soon;
Rest, rest, on mother's breast,
Father will come to thee soon;
Father will come to his babe in the nest,
Silver sails all out of the west
Under the silver moon:
Sleep, my little one, sleep, my pretty one, sleep.
~ Alfred Lord Tennyson,
1008:The Botanic Garden (Part Vi)
THE LOVES OF THE PLANTS.
CANTO II.
Again the Goddess strikes the golden lyre,
And tunes to wilder notes the warbling wire;
With soft suspended step Attention moves,
And Silence hovers o'er the listening groves;
Orb within orb the charmed audience throng,
And the green vault reverberates the song.
'Breathe soft, ye Gales!' the fair CARLINA cries,
Bear on broad wings your Votress to the skies.
How sweetly mutable yon orient hues,
As Morn's fair hand her opening roses strews;
How bright, when Iris blending many a ray
Binds in embroider'd wreath the brow of Day;
Soft, when the pendant Moon with lustres pale
O'er heaven's blue arch unfurls her milky veil;
While from the north long threads of silver light
Dart on swift shuttles o'er the tissued night!
'Breathe soft, ye Zephyrs! hear my fervent sighs,
Bear on broad wings your Votress to the skies!'-Plume over plume in long divergent lines
On whale-bone ribs the fair Mechanic joins;
Inlays with eider down the silken strings,
And weaves in wide expanse Dædalian wings;
Round her bold sons the waving pennons binds,
And walks with angel-step upon the winds.
So on the shoreless air the intrepid Gaul
Launch'd the vast concave of his buoyant ball.Journeying on high, the silken castle glides
Bright as a meteor through the azure tides;
O'er towns and towers and temples wins its way,
Or mounts sublime, and gilds the vault of day.
Silent with upturn'd eyes unbreathing crowds
Pursue the floating wonder to the clouds;
And, flush'd with transport or benumb'd with fear,
Watch, as it rises, the diminish'd sphere.
-Now less and less!-and now a speck is seen!-
41
And now the fleeting rack obtrudes between!With bended knees, raised arms, and suppliant brow
To every shrine with mingled cries they vow.'Save Him, ye Saints! who o'er the good preside;
'Bear Him, ye Winds! ye Stars benignant! guide.'
-The calm Philosopher in ether fails,
Views broader stars, and breathes in purer gales;
Sees, like a map, in many a waving line
Round Earth's blue plains her lucid waters mine;
Sees at his feet the forky lightnings glow,
And hears innocuous thunders roar below.
--Rife, great MONGOLFIER! urge thy venturous flight
High o'er the Moon's pale ice-reflected light;
High o'er the pearly Star, whose beamy horn.
Hangs in the east, gay harbinger of morn;
Leave the red eye of Mars on rapid wing;
Jove's silver guards, and Saturn's dusky ring;
Leave the fair beams, which, issuing from afar;
Play with new lustres round the Georgian star;
Shun with strong oars the Sun's attractive throne,
The sparkling zodiack, and the milky zone;
Where headlong Comets with increasing force
Through other systems bend their blazing course.For thee Cassiope her chair withdraws,
For thee the Bear retracts his shaggy paws;
High o'er the North thy golden orb shall roll,
And blaze eternal round the wondering pole.
So Argo, rising from the southern main,
Lights with new stars the blue etherial plain;
With favoring beams the mariner protects,
And the bold course, which first it steer'd, directs.
Inventress of the Woof, fair LINA flings
The flying shuttle through the dancing strings;
Inlays the broider'd weft with flowery dyes,
Quick beat the reeds, the pedals fall and rise;
Slow from the beam the lengths of warp unwind,
And dance and nod the massy weights behind.Taught by her labours, from the fertile soil
Immortal Isis clothed the banks of Nile;
And fair ARACHNE with her rival loom
Found undeserved a melancholy doom.-
42
Five
Sister-nymphs with dewy fingers twine
The beamy flax, and stretch the fibre-line;
Quick eddying threads from rapid spindles reel,
Or whirl with beaten foot the dizzy wheel.
-Charm'd round the busy Fair
five
shepherds press,
Praise the nice texture of their snowy dress,
Admire the Artists, and the art approve,
And tell with honey'd words the tale of love.
So now, where Derwent rolls his dusky floods
Through vaulted mountains, and a night of woods,
The Nymph, GOSSYPIA, treads the velvet sod,
And warms with rosy smiles the watery God;
His ponderous oars to slender spindles turns,
And pours o'er massy wheels his foamy urns;
With playful charms her hoary lover wins,
And wields his trident,-while the Monarch spins.
-First with nice eye emerging Naiads cull
From leathery pods the vegetable wool;
With wiry teeth
revolving cards
release
The tanged knots, and smooth the ravell'd fleece;
Next moves the
iron-band
with fingers fine,
Combs the wide card, and forms the eternal line;
Slow, with soft lips, the
whirling Can
acquires
The tender skeins, and wraps in rising spires;
With quicken'd pace
successive rollers
move,
And these retain, and those extend the
rove
Then fly the spoles, the rapid axles glow;And slowly circumvolves the labouring wheel below.
PAPYRA, throned upon the banks of Nile,
43
Spread her smooth leaf, and waved her silver style.
-The storied pyramid, the laurel'd bust,
The trophy'd arch had crumbled into dust;
The sacred symbol, and the epic song,
(Unknown the character, forgot the tongue,)
With each unconquer'd chief, or fainted maid,
Sunk undistinguish'd in Oblivion's shade.
Sad o'er the scatter'd ruins Genius sigh'd,
And infant Arts but learn'd to lisp and died.
Till to astonish'd realms PAPYRA taught
To paint in mystic colours Sound and Thought.
With Wisdom's voice to print the page sublime,
And mark in adamant the steps of Time.
-Three favour'd youths her soft attention share,
The fond disciples of the studious Fair,
Hear her sweet voice, the golden process prove;
Gaze, as they learn; and, as they listen, love.
The first
from Alpha to Omega joins
The letter'd tribes along the level lines;
Weighs with nice ear the vowel, liquid, surd,
And breaks in syllables the volant word.
Then forms
the next
upon the marshal'd plain
In deepening ranks his dexterous cypher-train;
And counts, as wheel the decimating bands,
The dews of Ægypt, or Arabia's sands,
And then
the third
on four concordant lines
Prints the lone crotchet, and the quaver joins;
Marks the gay trill, the solemn pause inscribes,
And parts with bars the undulating tribes.
Pleased round her cane-wove throne, the applauding crowd
Clap'd their rude hands, their swarthy foreheads bow'd;
With loud acclaim 'a present God!' they cry'd,
'A present God!' rebellowing shores reply'dThen peal'd at intervals with mingled swell
The echoing harp, shrill clarion, horn, and shell;
While Bards ecstatic, bending o'er the lyre,
44
Struck deeper chords, and wing'd the song with fire.
Then mark'd Astronomers with keener eyes
The Moon's refulgent journey through the skies;
Watch'd the swift Comets urge their blazing cars,
And weigh'd the Sun with his revolving Stars.
High raised the Chemists their Hermetic wands,
(And changing forms obey'd their waving hands,)
Her treasur'd gold from Earth's deep chambers tore,
Or fused and harden'd her chalybeate ore.
All with bent knee from fair PAPYRA claim
Wove by her hands the wreath of deathless fame.
-Exulting Genius crown'd his darling child,
The young Arts clasp'd her knees, and Virtue smiled.
So now DELANY forms her mimic bowers,
Her paper foliage, and her silken flowers;
Her virgin train the tender scissars ply,
Vein the green leaf, the purple petal dye:
Round wiry stems the flaxen tendril bends,
Moss creeps below, and waxen fruit impends.
Cold Winter views amid his realms of snow
DELANY'S vegetable statues blow;
Smooths his stern brow, delays his hoary wing,
And eyes with wonder all the blooms of spring.
The gentle LAPSANA, NYMPHÆA fair,
And bright CALENDULA with golden hair,
Watch with nice eye the Earth's diurnal way,
Marking her solar and sidereal day,
Her slow nutation, and her varying clime,
And trace with mimic art the march of Time;
Round his light foot a magic chain they fling,
And count the quick vibrations of his wing.First in its brazen cell reluctant roll'd
Bends the dark spring in many a steely fold;
On spiral brass is stretch'd the wiry thong,
Tooth urges tooth, and wheel drives wheel along;
In diamond-eyes the polish'd axles flow,
Smooth slides the hand, the ballance pants below.
Round the white circlet in relievo bold
A Serpent twines his scaly length in gold;
And brightly pencil'd on the enamel'd sphere
Live the fair trophies of the passing year.
-Here
45
Time's
huge fingers grasp his giant-mace,
And dash proud Superstition from her base,
Rend her strong towers and gorgeous fanes, and shed
The crumbling fragments round her guilty head.
There the gay
Hours
, whom wreaths of roses deck,
Lead their young trains amid the cumberous wreck;
And, slowly purpling o'er the mighty waste,
Plant the fair growths of Science and of Taste.
While each light
Moment
, as it dances by
With feathery foot and pleasure-twinkling eye,
Feeds from its baby-hand, with many a kiss,
The callow nestlings of domestic Bliss.
As yon gay clouds, which canopy the skies,
Change their thin forms, and lose their lucid dyes;
So the soft bloom of Beauty's vernal charms
Fades in our eyes, and withers in our arms.
-Bright as the silvery plume, or pearly shell,
The snow-white rose, or lily's virgin bell,
The fair HELLEBORAS attractive shone,
Warm'd every Sage, and every Shepherd won.Round the gay sisters press the
enamour'd bands
And seek with soft solicitude their hands.
-Ere while how chang'd!-in dim suffusion lies
The glance divine, that lighten'd in their eyes;
Cold are those lips, where smiles seductive hung,
And the weak accents linger on their tongue;
Each roseat feature fades to livid green,-Disgust with face averted shuts the scene.
So from his gorgeous throne, which awed the world,
The mighty Monarch of the east was hurl'd,
To dwell with brutes beneath the midnight storm,
By Heaven's just vengeance changed in mind and form.
-Prone to the earth He bends his brow superb,
Crops the young floret and the bladed herb;
Lolls his red tongue, and from the reedy side
46
Of slow Euphrates laps the muddy tide.
Long eagle-plumes his arching neck invest,
Steal round his arms, and clasp his sharpen'd breast;
Dark brinded hairs in bristling ranks, behind,
Rise o'er his back, and rustle in the wind,
Clothe his lank sides, his shrivel'd limbs surround,
And human hands with talons print the ground.
Silent in shining troops the Courtier-throng
Pursue their monarch as he crawls along;
E'en Beauty pleads in vain with smiles and tears,
Nor Flattery's self can pierce his pendant ears.
Two
Sister-Nymphs to Ganges' flowery brink
Bend their light steps, the lucid water drink,
Wind through the dewy rice, and nodding canes,
(As
eight
black Eunuchs guard the sacred plains),
With playful malice watch the scaly brood,
And shower the inebriate berries on the flood.Stay in your crystal chambers, silver tribes!
Turn your bright eyes, and shun the dangerous bribes;
The tramel'd net with less destruction sweeps
Your curling shallows, and your azure deeps;
With less deceit, the gilded fly beneath,
Lurks the fell hook unseen,-to taste is death!-Dim your slow eyes, and dull your pearly coat,
Drunk on the waves your languid forms shall float,
On useless fins in giddy circles play,
And Herons and Otters seize you for their prey.So, when the Saint from Padua's graceless land
In silent anguish sought the barren strand,
High on the shatter'd beech sublime He stood,
Still'd with his waving arm the babbling flood;
'To Man's dull ear,' He cry'd, 'I call in vain,
'Hear me, ye scaly tenants of the main!'Misshapen Seals approach in circling flocks,
In dusky mail the Tortoise climbs the rocks,
Torpedoes, Sharks, Rays, Porpus, Dolphins, pour
Their twinkling squadrons round the glittering shore;
47
With tangled fins, behind, huge Phocæ glide,
And Whales and Grampi swell the distant tide.
Then kneel'd the hoary Seer, to heaven address'd
His fiery eyes, and smote his sounding breast;
'Bless ye the Lord!' with thundering voice he cry'd,
'Bless ye the Lord!' the bending shores reply'd;
The winds and waters caught the sacred word,
And mingling echoes shouted 'Bless the Lord!'
The listening shoals the quick contagion feel,
Pant on the floods, inebriate with their zeal,
Ope their wide jaws, and bow their slimy heads,
And dash with frantic fins their foamy beds.
Sopha'd on silk, amid her charm-built towers,
Her meads of asphodel, and amaranth bowers,
Where Sleep and Silence guard the soft abodes,
In sullen apathy PAPAVER nods.
Faint o'er her couch in scintillating streams
Pass the thin forms of Fancy and of Dreams;
Froze by inchantment on the velvet ground
Fair youths and beauteous ladies glitter round;
On crystal pedestals they seem to sigh,
Bend the meek knee, and lift the imploring eye.
-And now the Sorceress bares her shrivel'd hand,
And circles thrice in air her ebon wand;
Flush'd with new life descending statues talk,
The pliant marble softening as they walk;
With deeper sobs reviving lovers breathe,
Fair bosoms rise, and soft hearts pant beneath;
With warmer lips relenting damsels speak,
And kindling blushes tinge the Parian cheek;
To viewless lutes aërial voices sing,
And hovering Loves are heard on rustling wing.
-She waves her wand again!-fresh horrors seize
Their stiffening limbs, their vital currents freeze;
By each cold nymph her marble lover lies,
And iron slumbers seal their glassy eyes.
So with his dread Caduceus HERMES led
From the dark regions of the imprison'd dead,
Or drove in silent shoals the lingering train
To Night's dull shore, and PLUTO'S dreary reign
So with her waving pencil CREWE commands
The realms of Taste, and Fancy's fairy lands;
48
Calls up with magic voice the shapes, that sleep
In earth's dark bosom, or unfathom'd deep;
That shrined in air on viewless wings aspire,
Or blazing bathe in elemental fire.
As with nice touch her plaistic hand she moves,
Rise the fine forms of Beauties, Graces, Loves;
Kneel to the fair Inchantress, smile or sigh,
And fade or flourish, as she turns her eye.
Fair CISTA, rival of the rosy dawn,
Call'd her light choir, and trod the dewy lawn;
Hail'd with rude melody the new-born May,
As cradled yet in April's lap she lay.
I.
'Born in yon blaze of orient sky,
'Sweet MAY! thy radiant form unfold;
'Unclose thy blue voluptuous eye,
'And wave thy shadowy locks of gold.
II.
'For Thee the fragrant zephyrs blow,
'For Thee descends the sunny shower;
'The rills in softer murmurs slow,
'And brighter blossoms gem the bower.
III.
'Light Graces dress'd in flowery wreaths
'And tiptoe Joys their hands combine;
'And Love his sweet contagion breathes,
'And laughing dances round thy shrine.
IV.
'Warm with new life the glittering throngs
'On quivering fin and rustling wing
'Delighted join their votive songs,
'And hail thee, GODDESS OF THE SPRING.'
O'er the green brinks of Severn's oozy bed,
49
In changeful rings, her sprightly troop She led;
PAN tripp'd before, where Eudness shades the mead,
And blew with glowing lip his sevenfold reed;
Emerging Naiads swell'd the jocund strain,
And aped with mimic step the dancing train.'I faint, I fall!'at noon
the Beauty cried,
'Weep o'er my tomb, ye Nymphs!'-and sunk and died.
-Thus, when white Winter o'er the shivering clime
Drives the still snow, or showers the silver rime;
As the lone shepherd o'er the dazzling rocks
Prints his steep step, and guides his vagrant flocks;
Views the green holly veil'd in network nice,
Her vermil clusters twinkling in the ice;
Admires the lucid vales, and slumbering floods,
Fantastic cataracts, and crystal woods,
Transparent towns, with seas of milk between,
And eyes with transport the refulgent scene:If breaks the sunshine o'er the spangled trees,
Or flits on tepid wing the western breeze,
In liquid dews descends the transient glare,
And all the glittering pageant melts in air.
Where Andes hides his cloud-wreath'd crest in snow,
And roots his base on burning sands below;
Cinchona, fairest of Peruvian maids
To Health's bright Goddess in the breezy glades
On Quito's temperate plain an altar rear'd,
Trill'd the loud hymn, the solemn prayer preferr'd:
Each balmy bud she cull'd, and honey'd flower,
And hung with fragrant wreaths the sacred bower;
Each pearly sea she search'd, and sparkling mine,
And piled their treasures on the gorgeous shrine;
Her suppliant voice for sickening Loxa raised,
Sweet breath'd the gale, and bright the censor blazed.
-'Divine HYGEIA! on thy votaries bend
Thy angel-looks, oh, hear us, and defend!
While streaming o'er the night with baleful glare
The star of Autumn rays his misty hair;
Fierce from his fens the Giant AGUE springs,
And wrapp'd in fogs descends on vampire wings;
'Before, with shuddering limbs cold Tremor reels,
50
And Fever's burning nostril dogs his heels;
Loud claps the grinning Fiend his iron hands,
Stamps with his marble feet, and shouts along the lands;
Withers the damask cheek, unnerves the strong,
And drives with scorpion-lash the shrieking throng.
Oh, Goddess! on thy kneeling votaries bend
Thy angel-looks, oh, hear us, and defend!'
-HYGEIA, leaning from the blest abodes,
The crystal mansions of the immortal gods,
Saw the sad Nymph uplift her dewy eyes,
Spread her white arms, and breathe her fervid sighs;
Call'd to her fair associates, Youth, and Joy,
And shot all-radiant through the glittering sky;
Loose waved behind her golden train of hair,
Her sapphire mantle swam diffus'd in air.O'er the grey matted moss, and pansied sod,
With step sublime the glowing Goddess trod,
Gilt with her beamy eye the conscious shade,
And with her smile celestial bless'd the maid.
'Come to my arms,' with seraph voice she cries,
'Thy vows are heard, benignant Nymph! arise;
Where yon aspiring trunks fantastic wreath
Their mingled roots, and drink the rill beneath,
Yield to the biting axe thy sacred wood,
And strew the bitter foliage on the flood.'
In silent homage bow'd the blushing maid,Five
youths athletic hasten to her aid,
O'er the scar'd hills re-echoing strokes resound,
And headlong forests thunder on the ground.
Round the dark roots, rent bark, and shatter'd boughs,
From ocherous beds the swelling fountain flows;
With streams austere its winding margin laves,
And pours from vale to vale its dusky waves.
-As the pale squadrons, bending o'er the brink,
View with a sigh their alter'd forms, and drink;
Slow-ebbing life with refluent crimson breaks
O'er their wan lips, and paints their haggard cheeks;
Through each fine nerve rekindling transports dart,
Light the quick eye, and swell the exulting heart.
-Thus ISRAEL's heaven-taught chief o'er trackless lands
51
Led to the sultry rock his murmuring bands.
Bright o'er his brows the forky radiance blazed,
And high in air the rod divine He raised.Wide yawns the cliff!-amid the thirsty throng
Rush the redundant waves, and shine along;
With gourds and shells and helmets press the bands,
Ope their parch'd lips, and spread their eager hands,
Snatch their pale infants to the exuberant shower,
Kneel on the shatter'd rock, and bless the Almighty Power.
Bolster'd with down, amid a thousand wants,
Pale Dropsy rears his bloated form, and pants;
'Quench me, ye cool pellucid rills!' he cries,
Wets his parch'd tongue, and rolls his hollow eyes.
So bends tormented TANTALUS to drink,
While from his lips the refluent waters shrink;
Again the rising stream his bosom laves,
And Thirst consumes him 'mid circumfluent waves.
-Divine HYGEIA, from the bending sky
Descending, listens to his piercing cry;
Assumes bright DIGITALIS' dress and air,
Her ruby cheek, white neck, and raven hair;
Four
youths protect her from the circling throng,
And like the Nymph the Goddess steps along.-O'er Him She waves her serpent-wreathed wand,
Cheers with her voice, and raises with her hand,
Warms with rekindling bloom his visage wan,
And charms the shapeless monster into man.
So when Contagion with mephitic breath
And withered Famine urged the work of death;
Marseilles' good Bishop, London's generous Mayor,
With food and faith, with medicine and with prayer,
Raised the weak head and stayed the parting sigh,
Or with new life relumed the swimming eye.-And now, PHILANTHROPY! thy rays divine
Dart round the globe from Zembla to the Line;
O'er each dark prison plays the cheering light,
Like northern lustres o'er the vault of night.From realm to realm, with cross or crescent crown'd,
Where'er Mankind and Misery are found,
O'er burning sands, deep waves, or wilds of snow,
52
Thy HOWARD journeying seeks the house of woe.
Down many a winding step to dungeons dank,
Where anguish wails aloud, and fetters clank;
To caves bestrew'd with many a mouldering bone,
And cells, whose echoes only learn to groan;
Where no kind bars a whispering friend disclose,
No sunbeam enters, and no zephyr blows,
HE treads, inemulous of fame or wealth,
Profuse of toil, and prodigal of health;
With soft assuasive eloquence expands
Power's rigid heart, and opes his clenching hands;
Leads stern-ey'd Justice to the dark domains,
If not to fever, to relax the chains;
Or guides awaken'd Mercy through the gloom,
And shews the prison, sister to the tomb!Gives to her babes the self-devoted wife,
To her fond husband liberty and life!-The Spirits of the Good, who bend from high
Wide o'er these earthly scenes their partial eye,
When first, array'd in VIRTUE'S purest robe,
They saw her HOWARD traversing the globe;
Saw round his brows her sun-like Glory blaze
In arrowy circles of unwearied rays;
Mistook a Mortal for an Angel-Guest,
And ask'd what Seraph-foot the earth imprest.
-Onward he moves!-Disease and Death retire,
And murmuring Demons hate him, and admire.'
Here paused the Goddess,-on HYGEIA'S shrine
Obsequious Gnomes repose the lyre divine;
Descending Sylphs relax the trembling strings,
And catch the rain-drops on their shadowy wings.
-And now her vase a modest Naiad fills
With liquid crystal from her pebbly rills;
Piles the dry cedar round her silver urn,
(Bright climbs the blaze, the crackling faggots burn),
Culls the green herb of China's envy'd bowers,
In gaudy cups the steamy treasure pours;
And, sweetly-smiling, on her bended knee
Presents the fragrant quintessence of Tea.
~ Erasmus Darwin,
1009:Scene.Up the Hill-side, inside the Shrub-house. Luca's wife, Ottima, and her paramour, the German Sebald.
Sebald
[sings]

Let the watching lids wink!
Day's a-blaze with eyes, think!
Deep into the night, drink!

Ottima
Night? Such may be your Rhine-land nights perhaps;
But this blood-red beam through the shutter's chink
We call such light, the morning: let us see!
Mind how you grope your way, though! How these tall
Naked geraniums straggle! Push the lattice
Behind that frame!Nay, do I bid you?Sebald,
It shakes the dust down on me! Why, of course
The slide-bolt catches. Well, are you content,
Or must I find you something else to spoil?
Kiss and be friends, my Sebald! Is 't full morning?
Oh, don't speak then!
Sebald.
           Ay, thus it used to be.
Ever your house was, I remember, shut
Till mid-day; I observed that, as I strolled
On mornings through the vale here; country girls
Were noisy, washing garments in the brook,
Hinds drove the slow white oxen up the hills:
But no, your house was mute, would ope no eye.
And wisely: you were plotting one thing there,
Nature, another outside. I looked up
Rough white wood shutters, rusty iron bars,
Silent as death, blind in a flood of light.
Oh, I remember!and the peasants laughed
And said, "The old man sleeps with the young wife."
This house was his, this chair, this windowhis.
Ottima
Ah, the clear morning! I can see St. Mark's;
That black streak is the belfry. Stop: Vicenza
Should lie . . . there's Padua, plain enough, that blue!
Look o'er my shoulder, follow my finger!
Sebald
                     Morning?
It seems to me a night with a sun added.
Where's dew, where's freshness? That bruised plant, I bruised
In getting through the lattice yestereve,
Droops as it did. See, here's my elbow's mark
I' the dust o' the sill.
Ottima
             Oh, shut the lattice, pray!
             Sebald
Let me lean out. I cannot scent blood here,
Foul as the morn may be.
             There, shut the world out!
How do you feel now, Ottima? There, curse
The world and all outside! Let us throw off
This mask: how do you bear yourself? Let's out
With all of it.
Ottima
        Best never speak of it.
        Sebald
Best speak again and yet again of it,
Till words cease to be more than words. "His blood,"
For instancelet those two words mean "His blood"
And nothing more. Notice, I'll say them now,
"His blood."
Ottima
      Assuredly if I repented
The deed
Sebald
     Repent? Who should repent, or why?
What puts that in your head? Did I once say
That I repented?
Ottima
         No, I said the deed . . .
         Sebald
"The deed" and "the event"just now it was
"Our passion's fruit"the devil take such cant!
Say, once and always, Luca was a wittol,
I am his cut-throat, you are . . .
Ottima
                  Here's the wine;
I brought it when we left the house above,
And glasses toowine of both sorts. Black? White then?
Sebald
But am not I his cut-throat? What are you?
Ottima
There trudges on his business from the Duomo
Benet the Capuchin, with his brown hood
And bare feet; always in one place at church,
Close under the stone wall by the south entry.
I used to take him for a brown cold piece
Of the wall's self, as out of it he rose
To let me passat first, I say, I used:
Now, so has that dumb figure fastened on me,
I rather should account the plastered wall
A piece of him, so chilly does it strike.
This, Sebald?
Sebald
       No, the white winethe white wine!
Well, Ottima, I promised no new year
Should rise on us the ancient shameful way;
Nor does it rise. Pour on! To your black eyes!
Do you remember last damned New Year's day?
Ottima
You brought those foreign prints. We looked at them
Over the wine and fruit. I had to scheme
To get him from the fire. Nothing but saying
His own set wants the proof-mark, roused him up
To hunt them out.
Sebald
         'Faith, he is not alive
To fondle you before my face.
Ottima
               Do you
Fondle me then! Who means to take your life
For that, my Sebald?
Sebald
           Hark you, Ottima!
One thing to guard against. We'll not make much
One of the otherthat is, not make more
Parade of warmth, childish officious coil,
Than yesterday: as if, sweet, I supposed
Proof upon proof were needed now, now first,
To show I love youyes, still love youlove you
In spite of Luca and what's come to him
Sure sign we had him ever in our thoughts,
White sneering old reproachful face and all!
We'll even quarrel, love, at times, as if
We still could lose each other, were not tied
By this: conceive you?
Ottima
           Love!
           Sebald
               Not tied so sure.
Because though I was wrought upon, have struck
His insolence back into himam I
So surely yours?therefore forever yours?
Ottima
Love, to be wise, (one counsel pays another)
Should we havemonths ago, when first we loved,
For instance that May morning we two stole
Under the green ascent of sycamores
If we had come upon a thing like that
Suddenly . . .
Sebald
       "A thing"there again"a thing!"
       Ottima
Then, Venus' body, had we come upon
My husband Luca Gaddi's murdered corpse
Within there, at his couch-foot, covered close
Would you have pored upon it? Why persist
In poring now upon it? For't is here
As much as there in the deserted house:
You cannot rid your eyes of it. For me,
Now he is dead I hate him worse: I hate . . .
Dare you stay here? I would go back and hold
His two dead hands, and say, "I hate you worse,
"Luca, than . . ."
Sebald
         Off, offtake your hands off mine,
'T is the hot eveningoff! oh, morning is it?
Ottima
There's one thing must be done; you know what thing.
Come in and help to carry. We may sleep
Anywhere in the whole wide house to-night.
Sebald
What would come, think you, if we let him lie
Just as he is? Let him lie there until
The angels take him! He is turned by this
Off from his face beside, as you will see.
Ottima
This dusty pane might serve for looking glass.
Three, fourfour grey hairs! Is it so you said
A plait of hair should wave across my neck?
Nothis way.
Sebald
       Ottima, I would give your neck,
Each splendid shoulder, both those breasts of yours,
That this were undone! Killing! Kill the world,
So Luca lives again!ay, lives to sputter
His fulsome dotage on youyes, and feign
Surprise that I return at eve to sup,
When all the morning I was loitering here
Bid me despatch my business and begone.
I would . . .
Ottima
       See!
       Sebald
         No, I'll finish. Do you think
I fear to speak the bare truth once for all?
All we have talked of, is, at bottom, fine
To suffer; there's a recompense in guilt;
One must be venturous and fortunate:
What is one young for, else? In age we'll sigh
O'er the wild reckless wicked days flown over;
Still, we have lived: the vice was in its place.
But to have eaten Luca's bread, have worn
His clothes, have felt his money swell my purse
Do lovers in romances sin that way?
Why, I was starving when I used to call
And teach you music, starving while you plucked me
These flowers to smell!
Ottima
            My poor lost friend!
            Sebald
                       He gave me
Life, nothing less: what if he did reproach
My perfidy, and threaten, and do more
Had he no right? What was to wonder at?
He sat by us at table quietly:
Why must you lean across till our cheeks touched?
Could he do less than make pretence to strike?
'T is not the crime's sakeI'd commit ten crimes
Greater, to have this crime wiped out, undone!
And youO how feel you? Feel you for me?
Ottima
Well then, I love you better now than ever,
And best (look at me while I speak to you)
Best for the crime; nor do I grieve, in truth,
This mask, this simulated ignorance,
This affectation of simplicity,
Falls off our crime; this naked crime of ours
May not now be looked over: look it down!
Great? let it be great; but the joys it brought,
Pay they or no its price? Come: they or it!
Speak not! The past, would you give up the past
Such as it is, pleasure and crime together?
Give up that noon I owned my love for you?
The garden's silence: even the single bee
Persisting in his toil, suddenly stopped,
And where he hid you only could surmise
By some campanula chalice set a-swing.
Who stammered"Yes, I love you?"
Sebald
                 And I drew
Back; put far back your face with both my hands
Lest you should grow too full of meyour face
So seemed athirst for my whole soul and body!
Ottima
And when I ventured to receive you here,
Made you steal hither in the mornings
Sebald
                     When
I used to look up 'neath the shrub-house here,
Till the red fire on its glazed windows spread
To a yellow haze?
Ottima
         Ahmy sign was, the sun
Inflamed the sere side of yon chestnut-tree
Nipped by the first frost.
Sebald
              You would always laugh
At my wet boots: I had to stride thro' grass
Over my ankles.
Ottima
        Then our crowning night!
        Sebald
The July night?
Ottima
        The day of it too, Sebald!
When heaven's pillars seemed o'erbowed with heat,
Its black-blue canopy suffered descend
Close on us both, to weigh down each to each,
And smother up all life except our life.
So lay we till the storm came.
Sebald
                How it came!
                Ottima
Buried in woods we lay, you recollect;
Swift ran the searching tempest overhead;
And ever and anon some bright white shaft
Burned thro' the pine-tree roof, here burned and there,
As if God's messenger thro' the close wood screen
Plunged and replunged his weapon at a venture,
Feeling for guilty thee and me: then broke
The thunder like a whole sea overhead
Sebald
Yes!
Ottima
While I stretched myself upon you, hands
To hands, my mouth to your hot mouth, and shook
All my locks loose, and covered you with them
You, Sebald, the same you!
Sebald
              Slower, Ottima!
              Ottima
And as we lay
Sebald
        Less vehemently! Love me!
Forgive me! Take not words, mere words, to heart!
Your breath is worse than wine! Breathe slow, speak slow!
Do not lean on me!
Ottima
         Sebald, as we lay,
Rising and falling only with our pants,
Who said, "Let death come now! 'T is right to die!
"Right to be punished! Nought completes such bliss
"But woe!" Who said that?
Sebald
             How did we ever rise?
Was't that we slept? Why did it end?
Ottima
                   I felt you
Taper into a point the ruffled ends
Of my loose locks 'twixt both your humid lips.
My hair is fallen now: knot it again!
Sebald
I kiss you now, dear Ottima, now and now!
This way? Will you forgive mebe once more
My great queen?
Ottima
        Bind it thrice about my brow;
Crown me your queen, your spirit's arbitress,
Magnificent in sin. Say that!
Sebald
               I crown you
My great white queen, my spirit's arbitress,
Magnificent . . .
[From without is heard the voice of Pippa, singing
The year's at the spring
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hill-side's dew-pearled;
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn:
God's in his heaven
All's right with the world!
[Pippa passes]

Sebald
God's in his heaven! Do you hear that? Who spoke?
You, you spoke!
Ottima
        Ohthat little ragged girl!
She must have rested on the step: we give them
But this one holiday the whole year round.
Did you ever see our silk-millstheir inside?
There are ten silk-mills now belong to you.
She stoops to pick my double heartsease . . . Sh!
She does not hear: call you out louder!
Sebald
                     Leave me!
Go, get your clothes ondress those shoulders!
Ottima
                         Sebald?
                         Sebald
Wipe off that paint! I hate you.
Ottima
                 Miserable!
                 Sebald
My God, and she is emptied of it now!
Outright now!how miraculously gone
All of the gracehad she not strange grace once?
Why, the blank cheek hangs listless as it likes,
No purpose holds the features up together,
Only the cloven brow and puckered chin
Stay in their places: and the very hair,
That seemed to have a sort of life in it,
Drops, a dead web!
Ottima
         Speak to menot of me!
         Sebald
That round great full-orbed face, where not an angle
Broke the delicious indolenceall broken!
Ottima
To menot of me! Ungrateful, perjured cheat!
A coward too: but ingrate's worse than all.
Beggarmy slavea fawning, cringing lie!
Leave me! Betray me! I can see your drift!
A lie that walks and eats and drinks!
Sebald
                    My God!
Those morbid olive faultless shoulder-blades
I should have known there was no blood beneath!
Ottima
You hate me then? You hate me then?
Sebald
                   To think
She would succeed in her absurd attempt,
And fascinate by sinning, show herself
Superiorguilt from its excess superior
To innocence! That little peasant's voice
Has righted all again. Though I be lost,
I know which is the better, never fear,
Of vice or virtue, purity or lust,
Nature or trick! I see what I have done,
Entirely now! Oh I am proud to feel
Such tormentslet the world take credit thence
I, having done my deed, pay too its price!
I hate, hatecurse you! God's in his heaven!
Ottima
                         Me!
Me! no, no, Sebald, not yourselfkill me
Mine is the whole crime. Do but kill methen
Yourselfthenpresentlyfirst hear me speak!
I always meant to kill myselfwait, you!
Lean on my breastnot as a breast; don't love me
The more because you lean on me, my own
Heart's Sebald! There, there, both deaths presently!
Sebald
My brain is drowned nowquite drowned: all I feel
Is . . . is, at swift-recurring intervals,
A hurry-down within me, as of waters
Loosened to smother up some ghastly pit:
There they gowhirls from a black fiery sea!
Ottima
Not meto him, O God, be merciful!
Talk by the way, while Pippa is passing from the hill-side to Orcana. Foreign Students of painting and sculpture, from Venice, assembled opposite the house of Jules, a young French statuary, at Possagno.
1st Student
Attention! My own post is beneath this window, but the pomegranate clump yonder will hide three or four of you with a little squeezing, and Schramm and his pipe must lie flat in the balcony. Four, five who's a defaulter? We want everybody, for Jules must not be suffered to hurt his bride when the jest's found out.

2nd Student
All here! Only our poet's awaynever having much meant to be present, moonstrike him! The airs of that fellow, that Giovacchino! He was in violent love with himself, and had a fair prospect of thriving in his suit, so unmolested was it,when suddenly a woman falls in love with him, too; and out of pure jealousy he takes himself off to Trieste, immortal poem and all: whereto is this prophetical epitaph appended already, as Bluphocks assures me,"Here a mammoth-poem lies, Fouled to death by butterflies." His own fault, the simpleton! Instead of cramp couplets, each like a knife in your entrails, he should write, says Bluphocks, both classically and intelligibly. sculapius, an Epic. Catalogue of the drugs: Hebe's plaisterOne strip Cools your lip. Phoebus' emulsion One bottle Clears your throttle. Mercury's bolusOne box Cures . . .

3rd Student
Subside, my fine fellow! If the marriage was over by ten o'clock, Jules will certainly be here in a minute with his bride.

2nd Student
Good!only, so should the poet's muse have been universally acceptable, says Bluphocks, et canibus nostris . . . and Delia not better known to our literary dogs than the boy Giovacchino!

1st Student
To the point, now. Where's Gottlieb, the new-comer? Oh,listen, Gottlieb, to what has called down this piece of friendly vengeance on Jules, of which we now assemble to witness the winding-up. We are all agreed, all in a tale, observe, when Jules shall burst out on us in a fury by and by: I am spokesmanthe verses that are to undeceive Jules bear my name of Lutwyche but each professes himself alike insulted by this strutting stone-squarer, who came alone from Paris to Munich, and thence with a crowd of us to Venice and Possagno here, but proceeds in a day or two alone againoh, alone indubitably!to Rome and Florence. He, forsooth, take up his portion with these dissolute, brutalized, heartless bunglers!so he was heard to call us all: now, is Schramm brutalized, I should like to know? Am I heartless?

Gottlieb
Why, somewhat heartless; for, suppose Jules a coxcomb as much as you choose, still, for this mere coxcombry, you will have brushed offwhat do folks style it?the bloom of his life. Is it too late to alter? These love-letters now, you call hisI can't laugh at them.

4th Student
Because you never read the sham letters of our inditing which drew forth these.

Gottlieb
His discovery of the truth will be frightful.

4th Student
That's the joke. But you should have joined us at the beginning: there's no doubt he loves the girlloves a model he might hire by the hour!

Gottlieb
See here! "He has been accustomed," he writes, "to have Canova's women about him, in stone, "and the world's women beside him, in flesh; these "being as much below, as those above, his soul's aspi- "ration: but now he is to have the reality." There you laugh again! I say, you wipe off the very dew of his youth.

1st Student
Schramm! (Take the pipe out of his mouth, somebody!) Will Jules lose the bloom of his youth?

Schramm
Nothing worth keeping is ever lost in this world: look at a blossomit drops presently, having done its service and lasted its time; but fruits succeed, and where would be the blossom's place could it continue? As well affirm that your eye is no longer in your body, because its earliest favourite, whatever it may have first loved to look on, is dead and done with as that any affection is lost to the soul when its first object, whatever happened first to satisfy it, is superseded in due course. Keep but ever looking, whether with the body's eye or the mind's, and you will soon find something to look on! Has a man done wondering at women?there follow men, dead and alive, to wonder at. Has he done wondering at men?there's God to wonder at: and the faculty of wonder may be, at the same time, old and tired enough with respect to its first object, and yet young and fresh sufficiently, so far as concerns its novel one. Thus . . .

1st Student
Put Schramm's pipe into his mouth again! There, you see! Well, this Jules . . . a wretched fribble oh, I watched his disportings at Possagno, the other day! Canova's galleryyou know: there he marches first resolvedly past great works by the dozen without vouchsafing an eye: all at once he stops full at thePsiche-fanciulla cannot pass that old acquaintance without a nod of encouragement"In your new place, beauty? Then behave yourself as well here as at Munich I see you!" Next he posts himself deliberately before the unfinished Piet for half an hour without moving, till up he starts of a sudden, and thrusts his very nose intoI say, intothe group; by which gesture you are informed that precisely the sole point he had not fully mastered in Canova's practice was a certain method of using the drill in the articulation of the knee-jointand that, likewise, has he mastered at length! Good-bye, therefore, to poor Canovawhose gallery no longer needs detain his successor Jules, the predestinated novel thinker in marble!

5th Student
Tell him about the women: go on to the women!

1st Student
Why, on that matter he could never be supercilious enough. How should we be other (he said) than the poor devils you see, with those debasing habits we cherish? He was not to wallow in that mire, at least: he would wait, and love only at the proper time, and meanwhile put up with the Psiche-fanciulla. Now, I happened to hear of a young Greekreal Greek girl at Malamocco; a true Islander, do you see, with Alciphron's "hair like sea-moss"Schramm knows!white and quiet as an apparition, and fourteen years old at farthest, a daughter of Natalia, so she swearsthat hag Natalia, who helps us to models at three lire an hour. We selected this girl for the heroine of our jest. So first, Jules received a scented lettersomebody had seen his Tydeus at the Academy, and my picture was nothing to it: a profound admirer bade him perseverewould make herself known to him ere long. (Paolina, my little friend of the Fenice, transcribes divinely.) And in due time, the mysterious correspondent gave certain hints of her peculiar charmsthe pale cheeks, the black hairwhatever, in short, had struck us in our Malamocco model: we retained her name, tooPhene, which is, by interpretation, sea-eagle. Now, think of Jules finding himself distinguished from the herd of us by such a creature! In his very first answer he proposed marrying his monitress: and fancy us over these letters, two, three times a day, to receive and despatch! I concocted the main of it: relations were in the waysecrecy must be observedin fine, would he wed her on trust, and only speak to her when they were indissolubly united? St stHere they come!

6th Student
Both of them! Heaven's love, speak softly, speak within yourselves!

5th Student
Look at the bridegroom! Half his hair in storm and half in calm,patted down over the left temple,like a frothy cup one blows on to cool it: and the same old blouse that he murders the marble in.

2nd Student
Not a rich vest like yours, Hannibal Scratchy!rich, that your face may the better set it off.

6th Student
And the bride! Yes, sure enough, our Phene! Should you have known her in her clothes? How magnificently pale!

Gottlieb
She does not also take it for earnest, I hope?

1st Student
Oh, Natalia's concern, that is! We settle with Natalia.

6th Student
She does not speakhas evidently let out no word. The only thing is, will she equally remember the rest of her lesson, and repeat correctly all those verses which are to break the secret to Jules?

Gottlieb
How he gazes on her! Pitypity!

1st Student
They go in: now, silence! You three, not nearer the window, mind, than that pomegranate: just where the little girl, who a few minutes ago passed us singing, is seated!



~ Robert Browning, Pippa Passes - Part I - Morning
,
1010:The Prophecy Of Famine
A SCOTS PASTORAL INSCRIBED TO JOHN WILKES, ESQ.
Nos patriam fugimus.--VIRGIL.
When Cupid first instructs his darts to fly
From the sly corner of some cook-maid's eye,
The stripling raw, just enter'd in his teens,
Receives the wound, and wonders what it means;
His heart, like dripping, melts, and new desire
Within him stirs, each time she stirs the fire;
Trembling and blushing, he the fair one views,
And fain would speak, but can't--without a Muse.
So to the sacred mount he takes his way,
Prunes his young wings, and tunes his infant lay,
His oaten reed to rural ditties frames,
To flocks and rocks, to hills and rills, proclaims,
In simplest notes, and all unpolish'd strains,
The loves of nymphs, and eke the loves of swains.
Clad, as your nymphs were always clad of yore,
In rustic weeds--a cook-maid now no more-Beneath an aged oak Lardella lies-Green moss her couch, her canopy the skies.
From aromatic shrubs the roguish gale
Steals young perfumes and wafts them through the vale.
The youth, turn'd swain, and skill'd in rustic lays,
Fast by her side his amorous descant plays.
Herds low, flocks bleat, pies chatter, ravens scream,
And the full chorus dies a-down the stream:
The streams, with music freighted, as they pass
Present the fair Lardella with a glass;
And Zephyr, to complete the love-sick plan,
Waves his light wings, and serves her for a fan.
But when maturer Judgment takes the lead,
These childish toys on Reason's altar bleed;
Form'd after some great man, whose name breeds awe,
Whose every sentence Fashion makes a law;
Who on mere credit his vain trophies rears,
And founds his merit on our servile fears;
Then we discard the workings of the heart,
244
And nature's banish'd by mechanic art;
Then, deeply read, our reading must be shown;
Vain is that knowledge which remains unknown:
Then Ostentation marches to our aid,
And letter'd Pride stalks forth in full parade;
Beneath their care behold the work refine,
Pointed each sentence, polish'd every line;
Trifles are dignified, and taught to wear
The robes of ancients with a modern air;
Nonsense with classic ornaments is graced,
And passes current with the stamp of taste.
Then the rude Theocrite is ransack'd o'er,
And courtly Maro call'd from Mincio's shore;
Sicilian Muses on our mountains roam,
Easy and free as if they were at home;
Nymphs, naiads, nereids, dryads, satyrs, fauns,
Sport in our floods, and trip it o'er our lawns;
Flowers which once flourish'd fair in Greece and Rome,
More fair revive in England's meads to bloom;
Skies without cloud, exotic suns adorn,
And roses blush, but blush without a thorn;
Landscapes, unknown to dowdy Nature, rise,
And new creations strike our wondering eyes.
For bards like these, who neither sing nor say,
Grave without thought, and without feeling gay,
Whose numbers in one even tenor flow,
Attuned to pleasure, and attuned to woe;
Who, if plain Common-Sense her visit pays,
And mars one couplet in their happy lays,
As at some ghost affrighted, start and stare,
And ask the meaning of her coming there:
For bards like these a wreath shall Mason bring,
Lined with the softest down of Folly's wing;
In Love's pagoda shall they ever doze,
And Gisbal kindly rock them to repose;
My Lord ----, to letters as to faith most true-At once their patron and example too-Shall quaintly fashion his love-labour'd dreams,
Sigh with sad winds, and weep with weeping streams;
Curious in grief (for real grief, we know,
Is curious to dress up the tale of woe),
From the green umbrage of some Druid's seat
245
Shall his own works, in his own way, repeat.
Me, whom no Muse of heavenly birth inspires,
No judgment tempers when rash genius fires;
Who boast no merit but mere knack of rhyme,
Short gleams of sense, and satire out of time;
Who cannot follow where trim fancy leads,
By prattling streams, o'er flower-empurpled meads;
Who often, but without success, have pray'd
For apt Alliteration's artful aid;
Who would, but cannot, with a master's skill,
Coin fine new epithets, which mean no ill:
Me, thus uncouth, thus every way unfit
For pacing poesy, and ambling wit,
Taste with contempt beholds, nor deigns to place
Amongst the lowest of her favour'd race.
Thou, Nature, art my goddess--to thy law
Myself I dedicate! Hence, slavish awe!
Which bends to fashion, and obeys the rules
Imposed at first, and since observed by fools;
Hence those vile tricks which mar fair Nature's hue,
And bring the sober matron forth to view,
With all that artificial tawdry glare
Which virtue scorns, and none but strumpets wear!
Sick of those pomps, those vanities, that waste
Of toil, which critics now mistake for taste;
Of false refinements sick, and labour'd ease,
Which art, too thinly veil'd, forbids to please;
By Nature's charms (inglorious truth!) subdued,
However plain her dress, and 'haviour rude,
To northern climes my happier course I steer,
Climes where the goddess reigns throughout the year;
Where, undisturb'd by Art's rebellious plan,
She rules the loyal laird, and faithful clan.
To that rare soil, where virtues clustering grow,
What mighty blessings doth not England owe!
What waggon-loads of courage, wealth, and sense,
Doth each revolving day import from thence?
To us she gives, disinterested friend!
Faith without fraud, and Stuarts without end.
When we prosperity's rich trappings wear,
Come not her generous sons and take a share?
And if, by some disastrous turn of fate,
246
Change should ensue, and ruin seize the state,
Shall we not find, safe in that hallow'd ground,
Such refuge as the holy martyr found?
Nor less our debt in science, though denied
By the weak slaves of prejudice and pride.
Thence came the Ramsays, names of worthy note,
Of whom one paints, as well as t'other wrote;
Thence, Home, disbanded from the sons of prayer
For loving plays, though no dull Dean was there;
Thence issued forth, at great Macpherson's call,
That old, new, epic pastoral, Fingal;
Thence Malloch, friend alike to Church and State,
Of Christ and Liberty, by grateful Fate
Raised to rewards, which, in a pious reign,
All daring infidels should seek in vain;
Thence simple bards, by simple prudence taught,
To this wise town by simple patrons brought,
In simple manner utter simple lays,
And take, with simple pensions, simple praise.
Waft me, some Muse, to Tweed's inspiring stream,
Where all the little Loves and Graces dream;
Where, slowly winding, the dull waters creep,
And seem themselves to own the power of sleep;
Where on the surface lead, like feathers, swims;
There let me bathe my yet unhallow'd limbs,
As once a Syrian bathed in Jordan's flood-Wash off my native stains, correct that blood
Which mutinies at call of English pride,
And, deaf to prudence, rolls a patriot tide.
From solemn thought which overhangs the brow
Of patriot care, when things are--God knows how;
From nice trim points, where Honour, slave to Rule,
In compliment to Folly, plays the fool;
From those gay scenes, where Mirth exalts his power,
And easy Humour wings the laughing hour;
From those soft better moments, when desire
Beats high, and all the world of man's on fire;
When mutual ardours of the melting fair
More than repay us for whole years of care,
At Friendship's summons will my Wilkes retreat,
And see, once seen before, that ancient seat,
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That ancient seat, where majesty display'd
Her ensigns, long before the world was made!
Mean narrow maxims, which enslave mankind,
Ne'er from its bias warp thy settled mind:
Not duped by party, nor opinion's slave,
Those faculties which bounteous nature gave,
Thy honest spirit into practice brings,
Nor courts the smile, nor dreads the frown of kings.
Let rude licentious Englishmen comply
With tumult's voice, and curse--they know not why;
Unwilling to condemn, thy soul disdains
To wear vile faction's arbitrary chains,
And strictly weighs, in apprehension clear,
Things as they are, and not as they appear.
With thee good humour tempers lively wit;
Enthroned with Judgment, Candour loves to sit;
And nature gave thee, open to distress,
A heart to pity, and a hand to bless.
Oft have I heard thee mourn the wretched lot
Of the poor, mean, despised, insulted Scot,
Who, might calm reason credit idle tales,
By rancour forged where prejudice prevails,
Or starves at home, or practises, through fear
Of starving, arts which damn all conscience here.
When scribblers, to the charge by interest led,
The fierce North Briton foaming at their head,
Pour forth invectives, deaf to Candour's call,
And, injured by one alien, rail at all;
On northern Pisgah when they take their stand,
To mark the weakness of that Holy Land,
With needless truths their libels to adorn,
And hang a nation up to public scorn,
Thy generous soul condemns the frantic rage,
And hates the faithful, but ill-natured page.
The Scots are poor, cries surly English pride;
True is the charge, nor by themselves denied.
Are they not, then, in strictest reason clear,
Who wisely come to mend their fortunes here?
If, by low supple arts successful grown,
They sapp'd our vigour to increase their own;
If, mean in want, and insolent in power,
They only fawn'd more surely to devour,
248
Roused by such wrongs, should Reason take alarm,
And e'en the Muse for public safety arm?
But if they own ingenuous virtue's sway,
And follow where true honour points the way,
If they revere the hand by which they're fed,
And bless the donors for their daily bread,
Or, by vast debts of higher import bound,
Are always humble, always grateful found:
If they, directed by Paul's holy pen,
Become discreetly all things to all men,
That all men may become all things to them,
Envy may hate, but Justice can't condemn.
Into our places, states, and beds they creep;
They've sense to get, what we want sense to keep.
Once--be the hour accursed, accursed the place!-I ventured to blaspheme the chosen race.
Into those traps, which men call'd patriots laid,
By specious arts unwarily betray'd,
Madly I leagued against that sacred earth,
Vile parricide! which gave a parent birth:
But shall I meanly error's path pursue,
When heavenly truth presents her friendly clue?
Once plunged in ill, shall I go farther in?
To make the oath, was rash: to keep it, sin.
Backward I tread the paths I trod before,
And calm reflection hates what passion swore.
Converted, (blessed are the souls which know
Those pleasures which from true conversion flow,
Whether to reason, who now rules my breast,
Or to pure faith, like Lyttelton and West),
Past crimes to expiate, be my present aim
To raise new trophies to the Scottish name;
To make (what can the proudest Muse do more?)
E'en faction's sons her brighter worth adore;
To make her glories, stamp'd with honest rhymes,
In fullest tide roll down to latest times.
Presumptuous wretch! and shall a Muse like thine,
An English Muse, the meanest of the Nine,
Attempt a theme like this? Can her weak strain
Expect indulgence from the mighty Thane?
Should he from toils of government retire,
And for a moment fan the poet's fire;
249
Should he, of sciences the moral friend,
Each curious, each important search suspend,
Leave unassisted Hill of herbs to tell,
And all the wonders of a cockleshell;
Having the Lord's good grace before his eyes,
Would not the Home step forth and gain the prize?
Or if this wreath of honour might adorn
The humble brows of one in England born,
Presumptuous still thy daring must appear;
Vain all thy towering hopes whilst I am here.
Thus spake a form, by silken smile and tone,
Dull and unvaried, for the Laureate known,
Folly's chief friend, Decorum's eldest son,
In every party found, and yet of none.
This airy substance, this substantial shade,
Abash'd I heard, and with respect obey'd.
From themes too lofty for a bard so mean,
Discretion beckons to an humbler scene;
The restless fever of ambition laid,
Calm I retire, and seek the sylvan shade.
Now be the Muse disrobed of all her pride,
Be all the glare of verse by truth supplied.
And if plain nature pours a simple strain,
Which Bute may praise, and Ossian not disdain,-Ossian, sublimest, simplest bard of all,
Whom English infidels Macpherson call,-Then round my head shall Honour's ensigns wave,
And pensions mark me for a willing slave.
Two boys, whose birth, beyond all question, springs
From great and glorious, though forgotten, kings-Shepherds, of Scottish lineage, born and bred
On the same bleak and barren mountain's head;
By niggard nature doom'd on the same rocks
To spin out life, and starve themselves and flocks;
Fresh as the morning, which, enrobed in mist,
The mountain's top with usual dulness kiss'd,
Jockey and Sawney to their labours rose;
Soon clad, I ween, where nature needs no clothes;
Where, from their youth inured to winter-skies,
Dress and her vain refinements they despise.
Jockey, whose manly high-boned cheeks to crown,
With freckles spotted, flamed the golden down,
250
With meikle art could on the bagpipes play,
E'en from the rising to the setting day;
Sawney as long without remorse could bawl
Home's madrigals, and ditties from Fingal:
Oft at his strains, all natural though rude,
The Highland lass forgot her want of food;
And, whilst she scratch'd her lover into rest,
Sunk pleased, though hungry, on her Sawney's breast.
Far as the eye could reach, no tree was seen;
Earth, clad in russet, scorn'd the lively green:
The plague of locusts they secure defy,
For in three hours a grasshopper must die:
No living thing, whate'er its food, feasts there,
But the cameleon, who can feast on air.
No birds, except as birds of passage, flew;
No bee was known to hum, no dove to coo:
No streams, as amber smooth, as amber clear,
Were seen to glide, or heard to warble here:
Rebellion's spring, which through the country ran,
Furnish'd, with bitter draughts, the steady clan:
No flowers embalm'd the air, but one white rose,
Which on the tenth of June by instinct blows;
By instinct blows at morn, and when the shades
Of drizzly eve prevail, by instinct fades.
One, and but one poor solitary cave,
Too sparing of her favours, nature gave;
That one alone (hard tax on Scottish pride!)
Shelter at once for man and beast supplied.
There snares without, entangling briars spread,
And thistles, arm'd against the invader's head,
Stood in close ranks, all entrance to oppose;
Thistles now held more precious than the rose.
All creatures which, on nature's earliest plan,
Were formed to loathe and to be loathed by man,
Which owed their birth to nastiness and spite,
Deadly to touch, and hateful to the sight;
Creatures which, when admitted in the ark,
Their saviour shunn'd, and rankled in the dark,
Found place within: marking her noisome road
With poison's trail, here crawl'd the bloated toad;
There webs were spread of more than common size,
And half-starved spiders prey'd on half-starved flies;
251
In quest of food, efts strove in vain to crawl;
Slugs, pinch'd with hunger, smear'd the slimy wall:
The cave around with hissing serpents rung;
On the damp roof unhealthy vapour hung;
And Famine, by her children always known,
As proud as poor, here fix'd her native throne.
Here, for the sullen sky was overcast,
And summer shrunk beneath a wintry blast-A native blast, which, arm'd with hail and rain,
Beat unrelenting on the naked swain,
The boys for shelter made; behind, the sheep,
Of which those shepherds every day _take keep_,
Sickly crept on, and, with complainings rude,
On nature seem'd to call, and bleat for food.
JOCKEY.
_Sith_ to this cave by tempest we're confined,
And within _ken_ our flocks, under the wind,
Safe from the pelting of this perilous storm,
Are laid _emong_ yon thistles, dry and warm,
What, Sawney, if by shepherds' art we try
To mock the rigour of this cruel sky?
What if we tune some merry roundelay?
Well dost thou sing, nor ill doth Jockey play.
SAWNEY.
Ah! Jockey, ill advisest thou, _I wis_,
To think of songs at such a time as this:
Sooner shall herbage crown these barren rocks,
Sooner shall fleeces clothe these ragged flocks,
Sooner shall want seize shepherds of the south,
And we forget to live from hand to mouth,
Than Sawney, out of season, shall impart
The songs of gladness with an aching heart.
JOCKEY.
Still have I known thee for a silly swain;
Of things past help, what boots it to complain?
Nothing but mirth can conquer fortune's spite;
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No sky is heavy, if the heart be light:
Patience is sorrow's salve: what can't be cured,
So Donald right areads, must be endured.
SAWNEY.
Full silly swain, _I wot_, is Jockey now.
How didst thou bear thy Maggy's falsehood? How,
When with a foreign loon she stole away,
Didst thou forswear thy pipe and shepherd's lay?
Where was thy boasted wisdom then, when I
Applied those proverbs which you now apply?
JOCKEY.
Oh, she was _bonny_! All the Highlands round
Was there a rival to my Maggy found?
More precious (though that precious is to all)
Than the rare medicine which we Brimstone call,
Or that choice plant, so grateful to the nose,
Which, in I know not what far country, grows,
Was Maggy unto me: dear do I rue
A lass so fair should ever prove untrue.
SAWNEY.
Whether with pipe or song to charm the ear,
Through all the land did Jamie find a peer?
Cursed be that year by every honest Scot,
And in the shepherd's calendar forgot,
That fatal year when Jamie, hapless swain!
In evil hour forsook the peaceful plain:
Jamie, when our young laird discreetly fled,
Was seized, and hang'd till he was dead, dead, dead.
JOCKEY.
Full sorely may we all lament that day,
For all were losers in the deadly fray.
Five brothers had I on the Scottish plains,
Well dost thou know were none more hopeful swains;
Five brothers there I lost, in manhood's pride;
253
Two in the field, and three on gibbets died.
Ah, silly swains! to follow war's alarms;
Ah! what hath shepherds' life to do with arms?
SAWNEY.
Mention it not--there saw I strangers clad
In all the honours of our ravish'd plaid;
Saw the Ferrara, too, our nation's pride,
Unwilling grace the awkward victor's side.
There fell our choicest youth, and from that day
_Mote_ never Sawney tune the merry lay;
Bless'd those which fell! cursed those which still survive,
To mourn Fifteen renew'd in Forty-five!
Thus plain'd the boys, when, from her throne of turf,
With boils emboss'd, and overgrown with scurf,
Vile humours which, in life's corrupted well
Mix'd at the birth, not abstinence could quell,
Pale Famine rear'd the head; her eager eyes,
Where hunger e'en to madness seem'd to rise,
Speaking aloud her throes and pangs of heart,
Strain'd to get loose, and from their orbs to start:
Her hollow cheeks were each a deep-sunk cell,
Where wretchedness and horror loved to dwell;
With double rows of useless teeth supplied,
Her mouth, from ear to ear, extended wide,
Which, when for want of food her entrails pined,
She oped, and, cursing, swallow'd nought but wind:
All shrivell'd was her skin; and here and there,
Making their way by force, her bones lay bare:
Such filthy sight to hide from human view,
O'er her foul limbs a tatter'd plaid she threw.
Cease, cried the goddess, cease, despairing swains!
And from a parent hear what Jove ordains.
Pent in this barren corner of the isle,
Where partial fortune never deign'd to smile;
Like nature's bastards, reaping for our share
What was rejected by the lawful heir;
Unknown amongst the nations of the earth,
Or only known to raise contempt and mirth;
Long free, because the race of Roman braves
254
Thought it not worth their while to make us slaves;
Then into bondage by that nation brought,
Whose ruin we for ages vainly sought;
Whom still with unslaked hate we view, and still,
The power of mischief lost, retain the will;
Consider'd as the refuse of mankind,
A mass till the last moment left behind,
Which frugal nature doubted, as it lay,
Whether to stamp with life or throw away;
Which, form'd in haste, was planted in this nook,
But never enter'd in Creation's book;
Branded as traitors who, for love of gold,
Would sell their God, as once their king they sold,-Long have we borne this mighty weight of ill,
These vile injurious taunts, and bear them still.
But times of happier note are now at hand,
And the full promise of a better land:
There, like the sons of Israel, having trod,
For the fix'd term of years ordain'd by God,
A barren desert, we shall seize rich plains,
Where milk with honey flows, and plenty reigns:
With some few natives join'd, some pliant few,
Who worship Interest and our track pursue;
There shall we, though the wretched people grieve,
Ravage at large, nor ask the owners' leave.
For us, the earth shall bring forth her increase;
For us, the flocks shall wear a golden fleece;
Fat beeves shall yield us dainties not our own,
And the grape bleed a nectar yet unknown:
For our advantage shall their harvests grow,
And Scotsmen reap what they disdain'd to sow:
For us, the sun shall climb the eastern hill;
For us, the rain shall fall, the dew distil.
When to our wishes Nature cannot rise,
Art shall be task'd to grant us fresh supplies;
His brawny arm shall drudging Labour strain,
And for our pleasure suffer daily pain:
Trade shall for us exert her utmost powers,
Hers all the toil, and all the profit ours:
For us, the oak shall from his native steep
Descend, and fearless travel through the deep:
The sail of commerce, for our use unfurl'd,
255
Shall waft the treasures of each distant world:
For us, sublimer heights shall science reach;
For us, their statesman plot, their churchmen preach:
Their noblest limbs of council we'll disjoint,
And, mocking, new ones of our own appoint.
Devouring War, imprison'd in the North,
Shall, at our call, in horrid pomp break forth,
And when, his chariot-wheels with thunder hung,
Fell Discord braying with her brazen tongue,
Death in the van, with Anger, Hate, and Fear,
And Desolation stalking in the rear,
Revenge, by Justice guided, in his train,
He drives impetuous o'er the trembling plain,
Shall, at our bidding, quit his lawful prey,
And to meek, gentle, generous Peace give way.
Think not, my sons, that this so bless'd estate
Stands at a distance on the roll of fate;
Already big with hopes of future sway,
E'en from this cave I scent my destined prey.
Think not that this dominion o'er a race,
Whose former deeds shall time's last annals grace,
In the rough face of peril must be sought,
And with the lives of thousands dearly bought:
No--fool'd by cunning, by that happy art
Which laughs to scorn the blundering hero's heart,
Into the snare shall our kind neighbours fall
With open eyes, and fondly give us all.
When Rome, to prop her sinking empire, bore
Their choicest levies to a foreign shore,
What if we seized, like a destroying flood,
Their widow'd plains, and fill'd the realm with blood;
Gave an unbounded loose to manly rage,
And, scorning mercy, spared nor sex, nor age?
When, for our interest too mighty grown,
Monarchs of warlike bent possessed the throne,
What if we strove divisions to foment,
And spread the flames of civil discontent,
Assisted those who 'gainst their king made head,
And gave the traitors refuge when they fled?
When restless Glory bade her sons advance,
And pitch'd her standard in the fields of France,
What if, disdaining oaths,--an empty sound,
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By which our nation never shall be bound,-Bravely we taught unmuzzled War to roam,
Through the weak land, and brought cheap laurels home?
When the bold traitors, leagued for the defence
Of law, religion, liberty, and sense,
When they against their lawful monarch rose,
And dared the Lord's anointed to oppose,
What if we still revered the banish'd race,
And strove the royal vagrants to replace;
With fierce rebellions shook the unsettled state,
And greatly dared, though cross'd by partial fate?
These facts, which might, where wisdom held the sway,
Awake the very stones to bar our way,
There shall be nothing, nor one trace remain
In the dull region of an English brain;
Bless'd with that faith which mountains can remove,
First they shall dupes, next saints, last martyrs, prove.
Already is this game of Fate begun
Under the sanction of my darling son;
That son, of nature royal as his name,
Is destined to redeem our race from shame:
His boundless power, beyond example great,
Shall make the rough way smooth, the crooked straight;
Shall for our ease the raging floods restrain,
And sink the mountain level to the plain.
Discord, whom in a cavern under ground
With massy fetters their late patriot bound;
Where her own flesh the furious hag might tear,
And vent her curses to the vacant air;
Where, that she never might be heard of more,
He planted Loyalty to guard the door,
For better purpose shall our chief release,
Disguise her for a time, and call her Peace.
Lured by that name--fine engine of deceit!-Shall the weak English help themselves to cheat;
To gain our love, with honours shall they grace
The old adherents of the Stuart race,
Who, pointed out no matter by what name,
Tories or Jacobites, are still the same;
To soothe our rage the temporising brood
Shall break the ties of truth and gratitude,
Against their saviour venom'd falsehoods frame,
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And brand with calumny their William's name:
To win our grace, (rare argument of wit!)
To our untainted faith shall they commit
(Our faith, which, in extremest perils tried,
Disdain'd, and still disdains, to change her side)
That sacred Majesty they all approve,
Who most enjoys, and best deserves their love.
~ Charles Churchill,
1011:BY MICHING MALLECHO, Esq.

Is it a party in a parlour,
Crammed just as they on earth were crammed,
Some sipping punchsome sipping tea;
But, as you by their faces see,
All silent, and alldamned!
Peter Bell, by W. Wordsworth.

Ophelia.What means this, my lord?
Hamlet.Marry, this is Miching Mallecho; it means mischief. ~Shakespeare.

PROLOGUE
Peter Bells, one, two and three,
O'er the wide world wandering be.
First, the antenatal Peter,
Wrapped in weeds of the same metre,
The so-long-predestined raiment
Clothed in which to walk his way meant
The second Peter; whose ambition
Is to link the proposition,
As the mean of two extremes
(This was learned from Aldric's themes)
Shielding from the guilt of schism
The orthodoxal syllogism;
The First Peterhe who was
Like the shadow in the glass
Of the second, yet unripe,
His substantial antitype.
Then came Peter Bell the Second,
Who henceforward must be reckoned
The body of a double soul,
And that portion of the whole
Without which the rest would seem
Ends of a disjointed dream.
And the Third is he who has
O'er the grave been forced to pass
To the other side, which is,
Go and try else,just like this.
Peter Bell the First was Peter
Smugger, milder, softer, neater,
Like the soul before it is
Born from that world into this.
The next Peter Bell was he,
Predevote, like you and me,
To good or evil as may come;
His was the severer doom,
For he was an evil Cotter,
And a polygamic Potter.
And the last is Peter Bell,
Damned since our first parents fell,
Damned eternally to Hell
Surely he deserves it well!
PART THE FIRST
DEATH
And Peter Bell, when he had been
With fresh-imported Hell-fire warmed,
Grew seriousfrom his dress and mien
'Twas very plainly to be seen
Peter was quite reformed.
His eyes turned up, his mouth turned down;
His accent caught a nasal twang;
He oiled his hair; there might be heard
The grace of God in every word
Which Peter said or sang.
But Peter now grew old, and had
An ill no doctor could unravel;
His torments almost drove him mad;
Some said it was a fever bad
Some swore it was the gravel.
His holy friends then came about,
And with long preaching and persuasion
Convinced the patient that, without
The smallest shadow of a doubt,
He was predestined to damnation.
They said'Thy name is Peter Bell;
Thy skin is of a brimstone hue;
Alive or deaday, sick or well
The one God made to rhyme with hell;
The other, I think, rhymes with you.'
Then Peter set up such a yell!
The nurse, who with some water gruel
Was climbing up the stairs, as well
As her old legs could climb themfell,
And broke them boththe fall was cruel.
The Parson from the casement lept
Into the lake of Windermere
And many an eelthough no adept
In God's right reason for itkept
Gnawing his kidneys half a year.
And all the rest rushed through the door,
And tumbled over one another,
And broke their skulls.Upon the floor
Meanwhile sat Peter Bell, and swore,
And cursed his father and his mother;
And raved of God, and sin, and death,
Blaspheming like an infidel;
And said, that with his clenchd teeth
He'd seize the earth from underneath,
And drag it with him down to hell.
As he was speaking came a spasm,
And wrenched his gnashing teeth asunder;
Like one who sees a strange phantasm
He lay,there was a silent chasm
Between his upper jaw and under.
And yellow death lay on his face;
And a fixed smile that was not human
Told, as I understand the case,
That he was gone to the wrong place:
I heard all this from the old woman.
Then there came down from Langdale Pike
A cloud, with lightning, wind and hail;
It swept over the mountains like
An ocean,and I heard it strike
The woods and crags of Grasmere vale.
And I saw the black storm come
Nearer, minute after minute;
Its thunder made the cataracts dumb;
With hiss, and clash, and hollow hum,
It neared as if the Devil was in it.
The Devil was in it:he had bought
Peter for half-a-crown; and when
The storm which bore him vanished, nought
That in the house that storm had caught
Was ever seen again.
The gaping neighbours came next day
They found all vanished from the shore:
The Bible, whence he used to pray,
Half scorched under a hen-coop lay;
Smashed glassand nothing more!
PART THE SECOND
THE DEVIL
The Devil, I safely can aver,
Has neither hoof, nor tail, nor sting;
Nor is he, as some sages swear,
A spirit, neither here nor there,
In nothingyet in everything.
He iswhat we are; for sometimes
The Devil is a gentleman;
At others a bard bartering rhymes
For sack; a statesman spinning crimes;
A swindler, living as he can;
A thief, who cometh in the night,
With whole boots and net pantaloons,
Like some one whom it were not right
To mention;or the luckless wight
From whom he steals nine silver spoons.
But in this case he did appear
Like a slop-merchant from Wapping,
And with smug face, and eye severe,
On every side did perk and peer
Till he saw Peter dead or napping.
He had on an upper Benjamin
(For he was of the driving schism)
In the which he wrapped his skin
From the storm he travelled in,
For fear of rheumatism.
He called the ghost out of the corse;
It was exceedingly like Peter,
Only its voice was hollow and hoarse
It had a queerish look of course
Its dress too was a little neater.
The Devil knew not his name and lot;
Peter knew not that he was Bell:
Each had an upper stream of thought,
Which made all seem as it was not;
Fitting itself to all things well.
Peter thought he had parents dear,
Brothers, sisters, cousins, cronies,
In the fens of Lincolnshire;
He perhaps had found them there
Had he gone and boldly shown his
Solemn phiz in his own village;
Where he thought oft when a boy
He'd clomb the orchard walls to pillage
The produce of his neighbour's tillage,
With marvellous pride and joy.
And the Devil thought he had,
'Mid the misery and confusion
Of an unjust war, just made
A fortune by the gainful trade
Of giving soldiers rations bad
The world is full of strange delusion
That he had a mansion planned
In a square like Grosvenor Square,
That he was aping fashion, and
That he now came to Westmoreland
To see what was romantic there.
And all this, though quite ideal,
Ready at a breath to vanish,
Was a state not more unreal
Than the peace he could not feel,
Or the care he could not banish.
After a little conversation,
The Devil told Peter, if he chose,
He'd bring him to the world of fashion
By giving him a situation
In his own serviceand new clothes.
And Peter bowed, quite pleased and proud,
And after waiting some few days
For a new liverydirty yellow
Turned up with blackthe wretched fellow
Was bowled to Hell in the Devil's chaise.
PART THE THIRD
HELL
Hell is a city much like London
A populous and a smoky city;
There are all sorts of people undone,
And there is little or no fun done;
Small justice shown, and still less pity.
There is a Castles, and a Canning,
A Cobbett, and a Castlereagh;
All sorts of caitiff corpses planning
All sorts of cozening for trepanning
Corpses less corrupt than they.
There is a -, who has lost
His wits, or sold them, none knows which;
He walks about a double ghost,
And though as thin as Fraud almost
Ever grows more grim and rich.
There is a Chancery Court; a King;
A manufacturing mob; a set
Of thieves who by themselves are sent
Similar thieves to represent;
An army; and a public debt.
Which last is a scheme of paper money,
And meansbeing interpreted
'Bees, keep your waxgive us the honey,
And we will plant, while skies are sunny,
Flowers, which in winter serve instead.'
There is a great talk of revolution
And a great chance of despotism
German soldierscampsconfusion
Tumultslotteriesragedelusion
Ginsuicideand methodism;
Taxes too, on wine and bread,
And meat, and beer, and tea, and cheese,
From which those patriots pure are fed,
Who gorge before they reel to bed
The tenfold essence of all these.
There are mincing women, mewing,
(Like cats, who amant miser,)
Of their own virtue, and pursuing
Their gentler sisters to that ruin,
Without whichwhat were chastity?
Lawyersjudgesold hobnobbers
Are therebailiffschancellors
Bishopsgreat and little robbers
Rhymesterspamphleteersstock-jobbers
Men of glory in the wars,
Things whose trade is, over ladies
To lean, and flirt, and stare, and simper,
Till all that is divine in woman
Grows cruel, courteous, smooth, inhuman,
Crucified 'twixt a smile and whimper.
Thrusting, toiling, wailing, moiling,
Frowning, preachingsuch a riot!
Each with never-ceasing labour,
Whilst he thinks he cheats his neighbour,
Cheating his own heart of quiet.
And all these meet at levees;
Dinners convivial and political;
Suppers of epic poets;teas,
Where small talk dies in agonies;
Breakfasts professional and critical;
Lunches and snacks so aldermanic
That one would furnish forth ten dinners,
Where reigns a Cretan-tongud panic,
Lest news Russ, Dutch, or Alemannic
Should make some losers, and some winners;
At conversazioniballs
Conventiclesand drawing-rooms
Courts of lawcommitteescalls
Of a morningclubsbook-stalls
Churchesmasqueradesand tombs.
And this is Helland in this smother
All are damnable and damned;
Each one damning, damns the other
They are damned by one another,
By none other are they damned.
'Tis a lie to say, 'God damns!'
Where was Heaven's Attorney General
When they first gave out such flams?
Let there be an end of shams,
They are mines of poisonous mineral.
Statesmen damn themselves to be
Cursed; and lawyers damn their souls
To the auction of a fee;
Churchmen damn themselves to see
God's sweet love in burning coals.
The rich are damned, beyond all cure,
To taunt, and starve, and trample on
The weak and wretched; and the poor
Damn their broken hearts to endure
Stripe on stripe, with groan on groan.
Sometimes the poor are damned indeed
To take,not means for being blessed,
But Cobbett's snuff, revenge; that weed
From which the worms that it doth feed
Squeeze less than they before possessed.
And some few, like we know who,
Damnedbut God alone knows why
To believe their minds are given
To make this ugly Hell a Heaven;
In which faith they live and die.
Thus, as in a town, plague-stricken,
Each man be he sound or no
Must indifferently sicken;
As when day begins to thicken,
None knows a pigeon from a crow,
So good and bad, sane and mad,
The oppressor and the oppressed;
Those who weep to see what others
Smile to inflict upon their brothers;
Lovers, haters, worst and best;
All are damnedthey breathe an air,
Thick, infected, joy-dispelling:
Each pursues what seems most fair,
Mining like moles, through mind, and there
Scoop palace-caverns vast, where Care
In thrond state is ever dwelling.
PART THE FOURTH
SIN
Lo, Peter in Hell's Grosvenor Square,
A footman in the Devil's service!
And the misjudging world would swear
That every man in service there
To virtue would prefer vice.
But Peter, though now damned, was not
What Peter was before damnation.
Men oftentimes prepare a lot
Which ere it finds them, is not what
Suits with their genuine station.
All things that Peter saw and felt
Had a peculiar aspect to him;
And when they came within the belt
Of his own nature, seemed to melt,
Like cloud to cloud, into him.
And so the outward world uniting
To that within him, he became
Considerably uninviting
To those who, meditation slighting,
Were moulded in a different frame.
And he scorned them, and they scorned him;
And he scorned all they did; and they
Did all that men of their own trim
Are wont to do to please their whim,
Drinking, lying, swearing, play.
Such were his fellow-servants; thus
His virtue, like our own, was built
Too much on that indignant fuss
Hypocrite Pride stirs up in us
To bully one another's guilt.
He had a mind which was somehow
At once circumference and centre
Of all he might or feel or know;
Nothing went ever out, although
Something did ever enter.
He had as much imagination
As a pint-pot;he never could
Fancy another situation,
From which to dart his contemplation,
Than that wherein he stood.
Yet his was individual mind,
And new created all he saw
In a new manner, and refined
Those new creations, and combined
Them, by a master-spirit's law.
Thusthough unimaginative
An apprehension clear, intense,
Of his mind's work, had made alive
The things it wrought on; I believe
Wakening a sort of thought in sense.
But from the first 'twas Peter's drift
To be a kind of moral eunuch,
He touched the hem of Nature's shift,
Felt faintand never dared uplift
The closest, all-concealing tunic.
She laughed the while, with an arch smile,
And kissed him with a sister's kiss,
And said'My best Diogenes,
I love you wellbut, if you please,
Tempt not again my deepest bliss.
''Tis you are coldfor I, not coy,
Yield love for love, frank, warm, and true;
And Burns, a Scottish peasant boy
His errors prove itknew my joy
More, learnd friend, than you.
'Bocca bacciata non perde ventura,
Anzi rinnuova come fa la luna:
So thought Boccaccio, whose sweet words might cure a
Male prude, like you, from what you now endure, a
Low-tide in soul, like a stagnant laguna.'
Then Peter rubbed his eyes severe,
And smoothed his spacious forehead down
With his broad palm;'twixt love and fear,
He looked, as he no doubt felt, queer,
And in his dream sate down.
The Devil was no uncommon creature;
A leaden-witted thiefjust huddled
Out of the dross and scum of nature;
A toad-like lump of limb and feature,
With mind, and heart, and fancy muddled.
He was that heavy, dull, cold thing,
The spirit of evil well may be:
A drone too base to have a sting;
Who gluts, and grimes his lazy wing,
And calls lust, luxury.
Now he was quite the kind of wight
Round whom collect, at a fixed aera,
Venison, turtle, hock, and claret,
Good cheerand those who come to share it
And best East Indian madeira!
It was his fancy to invite
Men of science, wit, and learning,
Who came to lend each other light;
He proudly thought that his gold's might
Had set those spirits burning.
And men of learning, science, wit,
Considered him as you and I
Think of some rotten tree, and sit
Lounging and dining under it,
Exposed to the wide sky.
And all the while, with loose fat smile,
The willing wretch sat winking there,
Believing 'twas his power that made
That jovial sceneand that all paid
Homage to his unnoticed chair.
Though to be sure this place was Hell;
He was the Deviland all they
What though the claret circled well,
And wit, like ocean, rose and fell?
Were damned eternally.
PART THE FIFTH
GRACE
Among the guests who often stayed
Till the Devil's petits-soupers,
A man there came, fair as a maid,
And Peter noted what he said,
Standing behind his master's chair.
He was a mighty poetand
A subtle-souled psychologist;
All things he seemed to understand,
Of old or newof sea or land
But his own mindwhich was a mist.
This was a man who might have turned
Hell into Heavenand so in gladness
A Heaven unto himself have earned;
But he in shadows undiscerned
Trusted,and damned himself to madness.
He spoke of poetry, and how
'Divine it wasa lighta love
A spirit which like wind doth blow
As it listeth, to and fro;
A dew rained down from God above;
'A power which comes and goes like dream,
And which none can ever trace
Heaven's light on earthTruth's brightest beam.'
And when he ceased there lay the gleam
Of those words upon his face.
Now Peter, when he heard such talk,
Would, heedless of a broken pate,
Stand like a man asleep, or balk
Some wishing guest of knife or fork,
Or drop and break his master's plate.
At night he oft would start and wake
Like a lover, and began
In a wild measure songs to make
On moor, and glen, and rocky lake,
And on the heart of man
And on the universal sky
And the wide earth's bosom green,
And the sweet, strange mystery
Of what beyond these things may lie,
And yet remain unseen.
For in his thought he visited
The spots in which, ere dead and damned,
He his wayward life had led;
Yet knew not whence the thoughts were fed
Which thus his fancy crammed.
And these obscure remembrances
Stirred such harmony in Peter,
That, whensoever he should please,
He could speak of rocks and trees
In poetic metre.
For though it was without a sense
Of memory, yet he remembered well
Many a ditch and quick-set fence;
Of lakes he had intelligence,
He knew something of heath and fell.
He had also dim recollections
Of pedlars tramping on their rounds;
Milk-pans and pails; and odd collections
Of saws, and proverbs; and reflections
Old parsons make in burying-grounds.
But Peter's verse was clear, and came
Announcing from the frozen hearth
Of a cold age, that none might tame
The soul of that diviner flame
It augured to the Earth:
Like gentle rains, on the dry plains,
Making that green which late was gray,
Or like the sudden moon, that stains
Some gloomy chamber's window-panes
With a broad light like day.
For language was in Peter's hand
Like clay while he was yet a potter;
And he made songs for all the land,
Sweet both to feel and understand,
As pipkins late to mountain Cotter.
And Mr. -, the bookseller,
Gave twenty pounds for some;then scorning
A footman's yellow coat to wear,
Peter, too proud of heart, I fear,
Instantly gave the Devil warning.
Whereat the Devil took offence,
And swore in his soul a great oath then,
'That for his damned impertinence
He'd bring him to a proper sense
Of what was due to gentlemen!'
PART THE SIXTH
DAMNATION
'O that mine enemy had written
A book!'cried Job:a fearful curse,
If to the Arab, as the Briton,
'Twas galling to be critic-bitten:
The Devil to Peter wished no worse.
When Peter's next new book found vent,
The Devil to all the first Reviews
A copy of it slyly sent,
With five-pound note as compliment,
And this short notice'Pray abuse.'
Then seriatim, month and quarter,
Appeared such mad tirades.One said
'Peter seduced Mrs. Foy's daughter,
Then drowned the mother in Ullswater,
The last thing as he went to bed.'
Another'Let him shave his head!
Where's Dr. Willis?Or is he joking?
What does the rascal mean or hope,
No longer imitating Pope,
In that barbarian Shakespeare poking?'
One more, 'Is incest not enough?
And must there be adultery too?
Grace after meat? Miscreant and Liar!
Thief! Blackguard! Scoundrel! Fool! Hell-fire
Is twenty times too good for you.
'By that last book of yours we think
You've double damned yourself to scorn;
We warned you whilst yet on the brink
You stood. From your black name will shrink
The babe that is unborn.'
All these Reviews the Devil made
Up in a parcel, which he had
Safely to Peter's house conveyed.
For carriage, tenpence Peter paid
Untied themread themwent half mad.
'What!' cried he, 'this is my reward
For nights of thought, and days of toil?
Do poets, but to be abhorred
By men of whom they never heard,
Consume their spirits' oil?
'What have I done to them?and who
Is Mrs. Foy? 'Tis very cruel
To speak of me and Betty so!
Adultery! God defend me! Oh!
I've half a mind to fight a duel.
'Or,' cried he, a grave look collecting,
'Is it my genius, like the moon,
Sets those who stand her face inspecting,
That face within their brain reflecting,
Like a crazed bell-chime, out of tune?'
For Peter did not know the town,
But thought, as country readers do,
For half a guinea or a crown,
He bought oblivion or renown
From God's own voice in a review.
All Peter did on this occasion
Was, writing some sad stuff in prose.
It is a dangerous invasion
When poets criticize; their station
Is to delight, not pose.
The Devil then sent to Leipsic fair
For Born's translation of Kant's book;
A world of words, tail foremost, where
Rightwrongfalsetrueand fouland fair
As in a lottery-wheel are shook.
Five thousand crammed octavo pages
Of German psychologics,he
Who his furor verborum assuages
Thereon, deserves just seven months' wages
More than will e'er be due to me.
I looked on them nine several days,
And then I saw that they were bad;
A friend, too, spoke in their dispraise,
He never read them;with amaze
I found Sir William Drummond had.
When the book came, the Devil sent
It to P. Verbovale, Esquire,
With a brief note of compliment,
By that night's Carlisle mail. It went,
And set his soul on fire.
Fire, which ex luce praebens fumum,
Made him beyond the bottom see
Of truth's clear wellwhen I and you, Ma'am,
Go, as we shall do, subter humum,
We may know more than he.
Now Peter ran to seed in soul
Into a walking paradox;
For he was neither part nor whole,
Nor good, nor badnor knave nor fool;
Among the woods and rocks
Furious he rode, where late he ran,
Lashing and spurring his tame hobby;
Turned to a formal puritan,
A solemn and unsexual man,
He half believed White Obi.
This steed in vision he would ride,
High trotting over nine-inch bridges,
With Flibbertigibbet, imp of pride,
Mocking and mowing by his side
A mad-brained goblin for a guide
Over corn-fields, gates, and hedges.
After these ghastly rides, he came
Home to his heart, and found from thence
Much stolen of its accustomed flame;
His thoughts grew weak, drowsy, and lame
Of their intelligence.
To Peter's view, all seemed one hue;
He was no Whig, he was no Tory;
No Deist and no Christian he;
He got so subtle, that to be
Nothing, was all his glory.
One single point in his belief
From his organization sprung,
The heart-enrooted faith, the chief
Ear in his doctrines' blighted sheaf,
That 'Happiness is wrong';
So thought Calvin and Dominic;
So think their fierce successors, who
Even now would neither stint nor stick
Our flesh from off our bones to pick,
If they might 'do their do.'
His morals thus were undermined:
The old Peterthe hard, old Potter
Was born anew within his mind;
He grew dull, harsh, sly, unrefined,
As when he tramped beside the Otter.
In the death hues of agony
Lambently flashing from a fish,
Now Peter felt amused to see
Shades like a rainbow's rise and flee,
Mixed with a certain hungry wish.
So in his Country's dying face
He lookedand, lovely as she lay,
Seeking in vain his last embrace,
Wailing her own abandoned case,
With hardened sneer he turned away:
And coolly to his own soul said;
'Do you not think that we might make
A poem on her when she's dead:
Or, noa thought is in my head
Her shroud for a new sheet I'll take:
'My wife wants one.Let who will bury
This mangled corpse! And I and you,
My dearest Soul, will then make merry,
As the Prince Regent did with Sherry,'
'Ayand at last desert me too.'
And so his Soul would not be gay,
But moaned within him; like a fawn
Moaning within a cave, it lay
Wounded and wasting, day by day,
Till all its life of life was gone.
As troubled skies stain waters clear,
The storm in Peter's heart and mind
Now made his verses dark and queer:
They were the ghosts of what they were,
Shaking dim grave-clothes in the wind.
For he now raved enormous folly,
Of Baptisms, Sunday-schools, and Graves,
'Twould make George Colman melancholy
To have heard him, like a male Molly,
Chanting those stupid staves.
Yet the Reviews, who heaped abuse
On Peter while he wrote for freedom,
So soon as in his song they spy
The folly which soothes tyranny,
Praise him, for those who feed 'em.
'He was a man, too great to scan;
A planet lost in truth's keen rays:
His virtue, awful and prodigious;
He was the most sublime, religious,
Pure-minded Poet of these days.'
As soon as he read that, cried Peter,
'Eureka! I have found the way
To make a better thing of metre
Than e'er was made by living creature
Up to this blessd day.'
Then Peter wrote odes to the Devil;
In one of which he meekly said:
'May Carnage and Slaughter,
Thy niece and thy daughter,
May Rapine and Famine,
Thy gorge ever cramming,
Glut thee with living and dead!
  'May Death and Damnation,
And Consternation,
Flit up from Hell with pure intent!
Slash them at Manchester,
Glasgow, Leeds, and Chester;
Drench all with blood from Avon to Trent.
'Let thy body-guard yeomen
Hew down babes and women,
And laugh with bold triumph till Heaven be rent!
When Moloch in Jewry
Munched children with fury,
It was thou, Devil, dining with pure intent.'
PART THE SEVENTH
DOUBLE DAMNATION
The Devil now knew his proper cue.
Soon as he read the ode, he drove
To his friend Lord MacMurderchouse's,
A man of interest in both houses,
And said:'For money or for love,
'Pray find some cure or sinecure;
To feed from the superfluous taxes
A friend of oursa poetfewer
Have fluttered tamer to the lure
Than he.' His lordship stands and racks his
Stupid brains, while one might count
As many beads as he had boroughs,
At length replies; from his mean front,
Like one who rubs out an account,
Smoothing away the unmeaning furrows:
'It happens fortunately, dear Sir,
I can. I hope I need require
No pledge from you, that he will stir
In our affairs;like Oliver,
That he'll be worthy of his hire.'
These words exchanged, the news sent off
To Peter, home the Devil hied,
Took to his bed; he had no cough,
No doctor,meat and drink enough,
Yet that same night he died.
The Devil's corpse was leaded down;
His decent heirs enjoyed his pelf,
Mourning-coaches, many a one,
Followed his hearse along the town:
Where was the Devil himself?
When Peter heard of his promotion,
His eyes grew like two stars for bliss:
There was a bow of sleek devotion
Engendering in his back; each motion
Seemed a Lord's shoe to kiss.
He hired a house, bought plate, and made
A genteel drive up to his door,
With sifted gravel neatly laid,
As if defying all who said,
Peter was ever poor.
But a disease soon struck into
The very life and soul of Peter
He walked aboutslepthad the hue
Of health upon his cheeksand few
Dug betternone a heartier eater.
And yet a strange and horrid curse
Clung upon Peter, night and day;
Month after month the thing grew worse,
And deadlier than in this my verse
I can find strength to say.
Peter was dullhe was at first
Dulloh, so dullso very dull!
Whether he talked, wrote, or rehearsed
Still with this dulness was he cursed
Dullbeyond all conceptiondull.
No one could read his booksno mortal,
But a few natural friends, would hear him;
The parson came not near his portal;
His state was like that of the immortal
Described by Swiftno man could bear him.
His sister, wife, and children yawned,
With a long, slow, and drear ennui,
All human patience far beyond;
Their hopes of Heaven each would have pawned,
Anywhere else to be.
But in his verse, and in his prose,
The essence of his dulness was
Concentred and compressed so close,
'Twould have made Guatimozin doze
On his red gridiron of brass.
A printer's boy, folding those pages,
Fell slumbrously upon one side;
Like those famed Seven who slept three ages.
To wakeful frenzy's vigil-rages,
As opiates, were the same applied.
Even the Reviewers who were hired
To do the work of his reviewing,
With adamantine nerves, grew tired;
Gaping and torpid they retired,
To dream of what they should be doing.
And worse and worse, the drowsy curse
Yawned in him, till it grew a pest
A wide contagious atmosphere,
Creeping like cold through all things near;
A power to infect and to infest.
His servant-maids and dogs grew dull;
His kitten, late a sportive elf;
The woods and lakes, so beautiful,
Of dim stupidity were full,
All grew dull as Peter's self.
The earth under his feetthe springs,
Which lived within it a quick life,
The air, the winds of many wings,
That fan it with new murmurings,
Were dead to their harmonious strife.
The birds and beasts within the wood,
The insects, and each creeping thing,
Were now a silent multitude;
Love's work was left unwroughtno brood
Near Peter's house took wing.
And every neighbouring cottager
Stupidly yawned upon the other:
No jackass brayed; no little cur
Cocked up his ears;no man would stir
To save a dying mother.
Yet all from that charmed district went
But some half-idiot and half-knave,
Who rather than pay any rent,
Would live with marvellous content,
Over his father's grave.
No bailiff dared within that space,
For fear of the dull charm, to enter;
A man would bear upon his face,
For fifteen months in any case,
The yawn of such a venture.
Seven miles abovebelowaround
This pest of dulness holds its sway;
A ghastly life without a sound;
To Peter's soul the spell is bound
How should it ever pass away?
'Composed at Florence, October 1819, and forwarded to Hunt (Nov. 2) to be published by C. & J. Ollier without the author's name; ultimately printed by Mrs. Shelley in the second edition of the Poetical Works, 1839. A skit by John Hamilton Reynolds, Peter Bell, A Lyrical Ballad, had already appeared (April, 1819), a few days before the publication of Wordsworth's Peter Bell, A Tale. These productions were reviewed in Leigh Hunt's Examiner (April 26, May 3, 1819); and to the entertainment derived from his perusal of Hunt's criticisms the composition of Shelley's Peter Bell the Third is chiefly owing.' ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, Peter Bell The Third
,
1012: Ahana

Ahana
(Ahana, the Dawn of God, descends on the world where amid the strife and trouble of mortality the Hunters of Joy, the
Seekers after Knowledge, the Climbers in the quest of Power are toiling up the slopes or waiting in the valleys. As she stands on the mountains of the East, voices of the Hunters of Joy are the first to greet her.)
Vision delightful alone on the hills whom the silences cover,
Closer yet lean to mortality; human, stoop to thy lover.

Wonderful, gold like a moon in the square of the sun where thou strayest
Glimmers thy face amid crystal purities; mighty thou playest
Sole on the peaks of the world, unafraid of thy loneliness. Glances
Leap from thee down to us, dream-seas and light-falls and magical trances;
Sun-drops flake from thy eyes and the heart's caverns packed are with pleasure
Strange like a song without words or the dance of a measureless measure.

Tread through the edges of dawn, over twilight's grey-lidded margin;
Heal earth's unease with thy feet, O heaven-born delicate virgin.

Children of Time whose spirits came down from eternity, seizing
Joys that escape us, yoked by our hearts to a labour unceasing,
Earth-bound, torn with our longings, our life is a brief incompleteness.

Thou hast the stars to sport with, the winds run like bees to thy sweetness.

Art thou not heaven-bound even as I with the earth? Hast thou ended
All desirable things in a stillness lone and unfriended?
Only is calm so sweet? is our close tranquillity only?
Cold are the rivers of peace and their banks are leafless and lonely.

Heavy is godhead to bear with its mighty sun-burden of lustre.

Art thou not weary of only the stars in their solemn muster,
Sky-hung the chill bare plateaus and peaks where the eagle rejoices
In the inhuman height of his nesting, solitude's voices
Making the heart of the silence lonelier? strong and untiring,
Deaf with the cry of the waterfall, lonely the pine lives aspiring.

Two are the ends of existence, two are the dreams of the Mother:

478

Pondicherry, c. 1910 - 1920

Heaven unchanging, earth with her time-beats yearn to each other, -
Earth-souls needing the touch of the heavens peace to recapture,
Heaven needing earth's passion to quiver its peace into rapture.

Marry, O lightning eternal, the passion of a moment-born fire!
Out of thy greatness draw close to the breast of our mortal desire!
Is he thy master, Rudra the mighty, Shiva ascetic?
Has he denied thee his world? In his dance that they tell of, ecstatic,
Slaying, creating, calm in the midst of the movement and madness,
Stole there no rhythm of an earthly joy and a mortal sadness?
Wast thou not made in the shape of a woman? Sweetness and beauty
Move like a song of the gods in thy limbs and to love is thy duty
Graved in thy heart as on tablets of fate; joy's delicate blossom
Sleeps in thy lids of delight; all Nature hides in thy bosom
Claiming her children unborn and the food of her love and her laughter.

Is he the first? was there none then before him? shall none come after?
He who denies and his blows beat down on our hearts like a hammer's,
He whose calm is the silent reply to our passion and clamours!
Is not there deity greater here new-born in a noble
Labour and sorrow and struggle than stilled into rapture immobile?
Earth has beatitudes warmer than heaven's that are bare and undying,
Marvels of Time on the crest of the moments to Infinity flying.

Earth has her godheads; the Tritons sway on the toss of the billows,
Emerald locks of the Nereids stream on their foam-crested pillows,
Dryads peer out from the branches, Naiads glance up from the waters;
High are her flame-points of joy and the gods are ensnared by her daughters.

Artemis calls as she flees through the glades and the breezes pursue her;
Cypris laughs in her isles where the ocean-winds linger to woo her.

Here thou shalt meet amid beauty forgotten the dance of the Graces;
Night shall be haunted for ever with strange and delicate faces.

Music is here of the fife and the flute and the lyre and the timbal,
Wind in the forests, bees in the grove, - spring's ardent cymbal
Thrilling, the cry of the cuckoo; the nightingale sings in the branches,
Human laughter is heard and the cattle low in the ranches.

Frankly and sweetly she gives to her children the bliss of her body,
Breath of her lips and the green of her garments, rain-pourings heady
Tossed from her cloud-carried beaker of tempest, oceans and streamlets,
Dawn and the mountain-air, corn-fields and vineyards, pastures and hamlets,

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Tangles of sunbeams asleep, mooned dream-depths, twilight's shadows,
Taste and scent and the fruits of her trees and the flowers of her meadows,
Life with her wine-cup of longing under the purple of her tenture,
Death as her gate of escape and rebirth and renewal of venture.

Still must they mutter that all here is vision and passing appearance,
Magic of Maya with falsehood and pain for its only inherence.

One is there only, apart in his greatness, the End and Beginning, -
He who has sent through his soul's wide spaces the universe spinning.

One eternal, Time an illusion, life a brief error!
One eternal, Master of heaven - and of hell and its terror!
Spirit of silence and purity rapt and aloof from creation, -
Dreaming through aeons unreal his splendid and empty formation!
Spirit all-wise in omnipotence shaping a world but to break it, -
Pushed by what mood of a moment, the breath of what fancy to make it?
None is there great but the eternal and lonely, the unique and unmated,
Bliss lives alone with the self-pure, the single, the forever-uncreated.

Truths? or thought's structures bridging the vacancy mute and unsounded
Facing the soul when it turns from the stress of the figures around it?
Solely we see here a world self-made by some indwelling Glory
Building with forms and events its strange and magnificent story.

Yet at the last has not all been solved and unwisdom demolished,
Myth cast out and all dreams of the soul, and all worship abolished?
All now is changed, the reverse of the coin has been shown to us; Reason
Waking, detecting the hoax of the spirit, at last has arisen,
Captured the Truth and built round her its bars that she may not skedaddle,
Gallop again with the bit in her teeth and with Fancy in the saddle.

Now have the wise men discovered that all is the craft of a superMagic of Chance and a movement of Void and inconscient Stupor.

Chance by a wonderful accident ever her ripples expanding
Out of a gaseous circle of Nothingness, implacably extending
Freak upon freak, repeating rigidly marvels on marvels,
Making a world out of Nothing, started on the arc of her travels.

Nothingness born into feeling and action dies back to Nothing.

Sea of a vague electricity, romping through space-curves and clothing
Strangely the Void with a semblance of Matter, painfully flowered
Into this giant phenomenon universe. Man who has towered
Out of the plasm and struggled by thought to Divinity's level,

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Man, this miniature second creator of good and of evil,
He too was only a compost of Matter made living, organic,
Forged as her thinking tool by an Energy blind and mechanic.

Once by an accident queer but quite natural, provable, simple,
Out of blind Space-Nought lashed into life, wearing Mind as its wimple,
Dupe of a figment of consciousness, doped with behaviour and feature,
Matter deluded claimed to be spirit and sentient creature.

All the high dreams man has dreamed and his hopes and his deeds, his soul's greatness
Are but a food-seeking animal's acts with the mind for their witness, -
Mind a machine for the flickers of thought, Matter's logic unpremissed, -
Are but a singular fireworks, chemistry lacking the chemist,
Matter's nervous display; the heart's passion, the sorrow and burning
Fire of delight and sweet ecstasy, love and its fathomless yearning,
Boundless spiritual impulses making us one with world-being,
Outbursts of vision opening doors to a limitless seeing,
Gases and glands and the genes and the nerves and the brain-cells have done it,
Brooded out drama and epic, structured the climb of the sonnet,
Studied the stars and discovered the brain and the laws of its thinking,
Sculptured the cave-temple, reared the cathedral, infinity drinking
Wrought manufacturing God and the soul for the uplift of Nature, -
Science, philosophy, head of his mystical chemical stature,
Music and painting revealing the godhead in sound and in colour,
Acts of the hero, thoughts of the thinker, search of the scholar,
All the magnificent planning, all the inquiry and wonder
Only a trick of the atom, its marvellous magical blunder.

Who can believe it? Something or someone, a Force or a Spirit
Conscious, creative, wonderful shaped out a world to inherit
Here for the beings born from its vast universal existence, -
Fields of surprise and adventure, vistas of light-haunted distance,
Play-routes of wisdom and vision and struggle and rapture and sorrow,
Sailing in Time through the straits of today to the sea of tomorrow.

Worlds and their wonders, suns and their flamings, earth and her nations,
Voyages endless of Mind through the surge of its fate-tossed creations,
Star upon star throbbing out in the silence of infinite spaces,
Species on species, bodies on bodies, faces on faces,

Ahana

481

Souls without number crossing through Time towards eternity, aeons
Crowding on aeons, loving and battle, dirges and paeans,
Thoughts ever leaping, hopes ever yearning, lives ever streaming,
Millions and millions on trek through the days with their doings and dreaming,
Herds of the Sun who move on at the cry of the radiant drover, -
Countless, surviving the death of the centuries, lost to recover,
Finished, but only to begin again, who is its tireless creator,
Cause or the force of its driving, its thinker or formless dictator?
Surely no senseless Vacancy made it, surely 'twas fashioned
By an almighty One million-ecstasied, thousand-passioned.

Self-made? then by what self from which thought could arise and emotion,
Waves that well up to the surface, born from what mysteried ocean?
Nature alone is the fountain. But what is she? Is she not only
Figure and name for what none understands, though all feel, or a lonely
Word in which all finds expression, spirit-heights, dumb work of Matter, -
Vague designation filling the gaps of our thought with its clatter?
Power without vision that blunders in man into thinking and sinning?
Rigid, too vast inexhaustible mystery void of a meaning?
Energy blindly devising, unconsciously ranging in order?
Chance in the march of a cosmic Insanity crossing the border
Out of the eternal silence to thought and its strangeness and splendour?
Consciousness born by an accident until an accident end her?
Nought else is she but the power of the Spirit who dwells in her ever,
Witness and cause of her workings, lord of her pauseless endeavour.

All things she knows, though she seems here unseeing; even in her slumber
Wondrous her works are, design and its magic and magic of number,
Plan of her mighty cosmic geometry, balance of forces,
Universe flung beyond universe, law of the stars and their courses,
Cosmos atomic stretched to the scale of the Infinite's measure.

Mute in the trance of the Eternal she sleeps with the stone and the azure.

Now she awakes; for life has just stirred in her, stretching first blindly
Outward for sense and its pleasure and pain and the gifts of the kindly
Mother of all, for her light and her air and the sap from her flowing,
Pleasure of bloom and inconscient beauty, pleasure of growing.

Then into mind she arises; heart's yearning awakes and reflection
Looks out on struggle and harmony, - conscious, her will of selection

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Studies her works and illumines the choice of her way; last, slowly
Inward she turns and stares at the Spirit within her. Holy
Silences brood in her heart and she feels in her ardent recesses
Passions too great for her frame, on her body immortal caresses.

Into the calm of the Greatness beyond her she enters, burning
Now with a light beyond thought's, towards Self and Infinity turning,
Turned to beatitude, turned to eternity, spiritual grandeur,
Power without limit, ecstasy imperishable, shadowless splendour.

Then to her mortals come, flashing, thoughts that are wisdom's fire-kernel;
Leaping her flame-sweeps of might and delight and of vision supernal
Kindle the word and the act, the Divine and humanity fusing,
Illuminations, trance-seeds of silence, flowers of musing, -
Light of our being that yet has to be, its glory and glimmer
Smiting with sunrise the soul of the sage and the heart of the dreamer.

Or is it all but a vain expectation and effort ungrounded,
Wings without body, sight without object, waters unsounded,
Hue of a shimmer that steals through some secret celestial portal,
Glory of a gleam or a dream in an animal brief-lived and mortal?
Are they not radiances native to heaven's more fortunate ether,
Won when we part from this body, this temporal house of a nether
Mystery of life lived in vain? Upon earth is the glory forbidden,
Nature for ever accursed, frustrated, grief-vexed, fate-ridden?
Half of the glory she dreamed of forgotten or lost in earth's darkness,
Half of it mangled and missed as the death-wheels whirl in their starkness,
Cast out from heaven a goddess rebellious with mind for her mirror,
Cursed with desire and self-will and doomed to self-torture and error,
Came she to birth then with God for her enemy? Were we created
He unwilling or sleeping? did someone transgress the fated
Limits he set, outwitting God? In the too hasty vision
Marred of some demiurge filmed there the blur of a fatal misprision,
Making a world that revolves on itself in a circuit of failure,
Aeons of striving, death for a recompense, Time for our tenure?
Out of him rather she came and for him are her cry and her labour;
Deep are her roots in him; topless she climbs, to his greatness a neighbour.

All is himself in her, brooding in darkness, mounting the sun-ways;
Air-flight to him is man's journey with heaven and earth for the runways.

He is the witness and doer, he is the loved and the lover,

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He the eternal Truth that we look in ourselves to discover.

All is his travel in Time; it is he who turns history's pages,
Act and event and result are the trail that he leaves through the ages;
Form and idea are his signs and number and sound are his symbols,
Music and singing, the word and its rhythm are Divinity's cymbals,
Thunder and surge are the drums of his marching. Through us, with urges
Self-ward, form-bound, mute, motionless, slowly inevitably emerges
Vast as the cosmos, minute as the atom, the Spirit eternal.

Often the gusts of his force illumining moments diurnal
Flame into speech and idea; transcendences splendid and subtle
Suddenly shoot through the weft of our lives from a magical shuttle;
Hid in our hearts is his glory; the Spirit works in our members.

Silence is he, with our voices he speaks, in our thoughts he remembers.

Deep in our being inhabits the voiceless invisible Teacher;
Powers of his godhead we live; the Creator dwells in the creature.

Out of his Void we arise to a mighty and shining existence,
Out of Inconscience, tearing the black Mask's giant resistance;
Waves of his consciousness well from him into these bodies in Nature,
Forms are put round him; his oneness, divided by mind's nomenclature,
High on the summits of being ponders immobile and single,
Penetrates atom and cell as the tide drenches sand-grain and shingle.

Oneness unknown to us dwells in these millions of figures and faces,
Wars with itself in our battles, loves in our clinging embraces,
Inly the self and the substance of things and their cause and their mover
Veiled in the depths which the foam of our thoughts and our life's billows cover,
Heaves like the sea in its waves; like heaven with its star-fires it gazes
Watching the world and its works. Interned in the finite's mazes,
Still shall he rise to his vast superconscience, we with him climbing;
Truth of man's thought with the truth of God's spirit faultlessly timing,
That which was mortal shall enter immortality's golden precincts,
Hushed breath of ecstasy, honey of lotus depths where the bee sinks,
Timeless expanses too still for the voice of the hours to inveigle,
Spaces of spirit too vast for the flight of the God-bearing eagle, -
Enter the Splendour that broods now unseen on us, deity invading,
Sight without error, light without shadow, beauty unfading,
Infinite largeness, rapture eternal, love none can sever,

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Life, not this death-play, but a power God-driven and blissful for ever.

"No," cry the wise, "for a circle was traced, there was pyloned a limit
Only we escape through dream's thin passages. None can disclaim it;
All things created are made by their borders, sketched out and coded;
Vain is the passion to divinise manhood, humanise godhead.

None can exceed himself; even to find oneself hard for our search is:
Only we see as in night by a lustre of flickering torches.

To be content with our measure, our space is the law of our living.

All of thyself to thy manhood and Nature and Circumstance giving,
Be what thou must be or be what thou canst be, one hour in an era.

Knowing the truth of thy days, shun the light of ideal and chimera:
Curb heart's impatience, bind thy desires down, pause from self-vexing."
Who is the nomad then? who is the seeker, the gambler risking
All for a dream in a dream, the old and the sure and the stable
Flung as a stake for a prize that was never yet laid on the table?
Always the world is expanding and growing from minute to minute;
Playing the march of the adventure of Time with our lives for her spinet
Maya or Nature, the wonderful Mother, strikes out surprising
Strains of the spirit disprisoned; creation heavenward rising
Wrestles with Time and Space and the Unknown to give form to the Formless.

Bliss is her goal, but her road is through whirlwind and death-blast and storm-race.

All is a wager and danger, all is a chase and a battle.

Vainly man, crouched in his corner of safety, shrinks from the fatal
Lure of the Infinite. Guided by Powers that surround and precede us
Fearful and faltering steps are our perishing efforts that lead us
On through the rooms of the finite till open the limitless spaces
And we can look into all-seeing eyes and imperishable faces.

But we must pass through the aeons; Space is a bar twixt our ankles,
Time is a weight that we drag and the scar of the centuries rankles:
Caught by the moments, held back from the spirit's timelessness, slowly
Wading in shallows we take not the sea-plunge vastly and wholly.

Hard is the way to the Eternal for the mind-born will of the mortal
Bound by the body and life to the gait of the house-burdened turtle.

Here in this world that knows not its morrow, this reason that stumbles
Onward from error to truth and from truth back to error while crumbles
All that it fashioned, after the passion and travail are ended,

Ahana

485

After the sacrifice offered when the will and the strength are expended,
Nothing is done but to have laid down one stone of a road without issue,
Added our quota of evil and good to an ambiguous tissue.

Destiny's lasso, its slip-knot tied by delight and repining,
Draws us through tangles of failure and victory's inextricable twining.

In the hard reckoning made by the grey-robed accountant at even
Pain is the ransom we pay for the smallest foretaste of heaven.

Ignorance darkens, death and inconscience gape to absorb us;
Thick and persistent the Night confronts us, its hunger enormous
Swallowing our work and our lives. Our love and our knowledge squandered
Lie like a treasure refused and trod down on the ways where we wandered;
All we have done is effaced by the thousands behind us arriving.

Trapped in a round fixed for ever circles our thought and our living.

Fiercely the gods in their jealousy strike down the heads that have neighboured
Even for a moment their skies; in the sands our achievements are gravured.

Yet survives bliss in the rhythm of our heart-beats, yet is there wonder,
Beauty's immortal delight, and the seals of the mystery sunder.

Honied a thousand whispers come, in the birds, in the breezes,
Moonlight, the voices of streams; with a hundred marvellous faces
Always he lures us to love him, always he draws us to pleasure
Leaving remembrance and anguish behind for our only treasure.

Passionate we seek for him everywhere, yearn for some sign of him, calling,
Scanning the dust for his footprints, praying and stumbling and falling;
Nothing is found and no answer comes from the masks that are passing.

Memories linger, lines from the past like a half-faded tracing.

He has passed on into silence wearing his luminous mantle.

Out of the melodied distance a laugh rings pure-toned, infantile,
Sole reminder that he is, last signal recalling his presence.

There is a joy behind suffering; pain digs our road to his pleasance.

All things have bliss for their secret; only our consciousness falters
Fearing to offer itself as a victim on ecstasy's altars.

Is not the world his disguise? when that cloak is tossed back from his shoulders,
Beauty looks out like a sun on the hearts of the ravished beholders.

Mortals, your end is beatitude, rapture eternal his meaning:
Joy, which he most now denies, is his purpose: the hedges, the screening

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Were but the rules of his play; his denials came to lure farther.

These too were magic of Maya, smiles of the marvellous Mother.

Oh, but the cruelty! oh, but the empty pain we go rueing!
Edges of opposite sweetness, calls to a closer pursuing.

All that we meet is a symbol and gateway; cryptic intention
Lurks in a common appearance, smiles from a casual mention:
Opposites hide in each other; in the laughter of Nature is danger,
Glory and greatness their embryos form in the womb of her anger.

Why are we terrified? wherefore cry out and draw back from the smiting -
Blows from the hands of a lover to direr exactions exciting,
Fiery points of his play! Was he Rudra only the mighty?
Whose were the whispers of sweetness, whose were the murmurs of pity?
Something opposes our grasp on the light and the sweetness and power,
Something within us, something without us, trap-door or tower,
Nature's gap in our being - or hinge! That device could we vanquish,
Once could we clasp him and hold, his joy we could never relinquish.

Then we could not be denied, for our might would be single and flawless.

Sons of the Eternal, sovereigns of Nature absolute and lawless,
Termlessly our souls would possess as he now enjoys and possesses,
Termlessly probe the delight of his laughter's lurking recesses,
Chasing its trail to the apex of sweetness and secrecy. Treasured
Close to the beats of Eternity's heart in a greatness unmeasured,
Locked into a miracle and mystery of Light we would live in him, - seated
Deep in his core of beatitude ceaselessly by Nature repeated,
Careless of Time, with no fear of an end, with no need for endeavour
Caught by his ecstasy dwell in a rapture enduring for ever.

What was the garden he built when the stars were first set in their places,
Soul and Nature together mid streams and in cloudless spaces
Naked and innocent? Someone offered a fruit of derision,
Knowledge of good and of evil, cleaving in God a division.

Though He who made all said, "It is good; I have fashioned perfection,"
"No, there is evil," someone whispered, "'tis screened from detection."
Wisest he of the beasts of the field, one cunning and creeping;
"See it," he said, "be wise; you shall be as the gods are, unsleeping,
They who know all." And they ate. The roots of our being were shaken;
Hatred and weeping and wrath at once trampled a world overtaken,
Terror and fleeing and anguish and shame and desires unsated;

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Cruelty stalked like a lion; Revenge and her brood were created.

Out to the desert he drove the rebellious. Flaming behind them
Streamed out the sword of his wrath and it followed leaping to find them,
Stabbing at random. The pure and the evil, the strong and the tempted,
All are confounded in punishment; justly is no one exempted.

Virtuous? yes, there are many, but who is there innocent? Toiling
Therefore we seek, but find not that Eden. Planting and spoiling,
"This is the garden," we say, "lo, the trees and this is the river."
Vainly redeemers came, not one has availed to deliver.

Never can Nature go back to her careless and childlike beginning,
Laugh of the babe and the song of the wheel in its delicate spinning,
Smile of the sun upon flowers and earth's beauty, life without labour
Plucking the fruits of the soil and rejoicing in cottage and arbour.

Once we have chosen to be as the gods, we must follow that motion.

Knowledge must grow in us, might like a Titan's, bliss like an ocean,
Calmness and purity born of the spirit's gaze on the Real,
Rapture of his oneness embracing the soul in a clasp hymeneal.

Was it not he once in Brindavan? Woods divine to our yearning,
Memorable always! O flowers, O delight on the tree-tops burning,
Grasses his herds have grazed and crushed by his feet in the dancing,
Yamuna flowing with song, through the greenness always advancing,
You unforgotten remind; for his flute with its sweetness ensnaring
Sounds in our ears in the night and our souls of their teguments baring
Hales us out naked and absolute, out to his woodlands eternal,
Out to his moonlit dances, his dalliance sweet and supernal,
And we go stumbling, maddened and thrilled to his dreadful embraces,
Slaves of his rapture to Brindavan crowded with amorous faces,
Luminous kine in the green glades seated, soft-eyed gazing,
Flowers on the branches distressing us, moonbeams unearthly amazing,
Yamuna flowing before us, laughing low with her voices,
Brindavan arching o'er us where Shyama sports and rejoices.

Inly the miracle trembles repeated; mist-walls are broken
Hiding that country of God and we look on the wonderful token,
Clasp the beautiful body of the Eternal; his flute-call of yearning
Cries in our breast with its blissful anguish for ever returning;
Life flows past us with passionate voices, a heavenly river,
All our being goes back as a bride of his bliss to the Giver.
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Even an hour of the soul can unveil the Unborn, the Everlasting,
Gaze on its mighty Companion; the load of mortality casting,
Mind hushes stilled in eternity; waves of the Infinite wander
Thrilling body and soul and its endless felicity squander;
All world-sorrow is finished, the cry of the parting is over;
Ecstasy laughs in our veins, in our heart is the heart of the Lover.

As when a stream from a highl and plateau green mid the mountains
Draws through broad lakes of delight the gracious sweep of its fountains,
Life from its heaven of desire comes down to the toil of the earth-ways;
Streaming through mire it pours still the mystical joy of its birthplace,
Green of its banks and the green of its trees and the hues of the flower.

Something of child-heart beauty, something of greatness and power,
Dwell with it still in its early torrent laughter and brightness,
Call in the youth of its floods and the voice of the wideness and whiteness.

But in its course are set darkness and fall and the spirit's ordeal.

Hating its narrowness, forced by an ardour to see all and be all,
Dashed on the inconscient rocks and straining through mud, over gravel,
Flows, like an ardent prisoner bound to the scenes of his travail,
Life, the river of the Spirit, consenting to anguish and sorrow
If by her heart's toil a loan-light of joy from the heavens she can borrow.

Out of the sun-rays and moon-rays, the winds' wing-glimmer and revel,
Out of the star-fields of wonder, down to earth's danger and evil
Headlong cast with a stridulant thunder, the doom-ways descending,
Shuddering below into sunless depths, across chasms unending,
Baulked of the might of its waters, a thread in a mountainous vastness,
Parcelled and scanted it hurries as if storming a Titan fastness,
Carving the hills with a sullen and lonely gigantic labour.

Hurled into strangling ravines it escapes with a leap and a quaver,
Breaks from the channels of hiding it grooves out and chisels and twistens,
Angry, afraid, white, foaming. A stony and monstrous resistance
Meets it piling up stubborn limits. Afflicted the river
Treasures a scattered sunbeam, moans for a god to deliver,
Longing to lapse through the plain's green felicity, yearning to widen
Joined to the ocean's shoreless eternity far-off and hidden.

High on the cliffs the Great Ones are watching, the Mighty and Deathless,
Soaring and plunging the roadway of the Gods climbs uplifted and breathless;

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Ever we hear in the heart of the peril a flute go before us,
Luminous beckoning hands in the distance invite and implore us.

Ignorant, circled with death and the abyss, we have dreamed of a human
Paradise made from the mind of a man, from the heart of a woman,
Dreamed of the Isles of the Blest in a light of perpetual summer,
Dreamed of the joy of an earthly life with no pain for incomer.

Never, we said, can these waters from heaven be lost in the marshes,
Cease in the sands of the desert, die where the simoom parches;
Plains are beyond, there are hamlets and fields where the river rejoices
Pacing once more with a quiet step and with amical voices:
Bright amid woodlands red with the berries and cool with the breezes
Glimmer the leaves; all night long the heart of the nightingale eases
Sweetly its burden of pity and sorrow. There amid flowers
We shall take pleasure in arbours delightful, leng thening the hours,
Time for our servitor waiting our fancy through moments unhasting,
Under the cloudless blue of those skies of tranquillity resting,
Lying on beds of lilies, hearing the bells of the cattle
Tinkle, and drink red wine of life and go forth to the battle,
Fight and unwounded return to our beautiful home by the waters,
Fruit of our joy rear tall strong sons and radiant daughters.

Then shall the Virgins of Light come down to us clad in clear raiment
Woven from sunbeam and moonbeam and lightnings, limitless payment
Bring of our toil and our sorrow, carrying life-giving garlands
Plucked by the fountains of Paradise, bring from imperishable star-lands
Hymn-words of wisdom, visions of beauty, heaven-fruit ruddy,
Wine-cups of ecstasy sending the soul like a stream through the body.

Fate shall not know; if her spies come down to our beautiful valley,
They shall grow drunk with its grapes and wander in woodl and and alley.

There leaps the anger of Rudra? there will his lightnings immortal
Circle around with their red eye of cruelty stabbing the portal?
Fearless is there life's play; I shall sport with my dove from his highlands,
Drinking her laughter of bliss like a god in my Grecian islands.

Life in my limbs shall grow deathless, flesh with the God-glory tingle,
Lustre of Paradise, light of the earth-ways marry and mingle.

These are but dreams and the truth shall be greater. Heaven made woman!
Flower of beatitude! living shape of the bliss of the Brahman!
Art thou not she who shall bring into life and time the Eternal?

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Body of the summer of the Gods, a sweetness virginal, vernal,
Breathes from thy soul into Nature; Love sits dreaming in thy bosom,
Wisdom gazes from thy eyes, thy breasts of God-rapture are the blossom.

If but the joy of thy feet once could touch our spaces smiting
Earth with a ray from the Unknown, on the world's heart heaven's script writing,
All then would change into harmony and beauty, Time's doors shudder
Swinging wide on their hinges into Eternity, other
Voices than earth's would be fire in our speech and make deathless our thinking.

One who is hidden in Light would grow visible, multitudes linking,
Lyres of a single ecstasy, throbs of the one heart beating,
Wonderful bodies and souls in the spirit's identity meeting
Even as stars in sky-vastness know their kindred in grandeur.

Yet may it be that although in the hands of our destiny stands sure
Fixed to its hour the Decree of the Advent, still it is fated
Only when kindling earth's bodies a mightier Soul is created.

Far-off the gold and the greatness, the rapture too splendid and dire.

Are not the ages too young? too low in our hearts burns the fire.

Bringest thou only a gleam on the summits, a cry in the distance,
Seen by the eyes that are wakened, heard by a spirit that listens?
Form of the formless All-Beautiful, lodestar of Nature's aspirance,
Music of prelude giving a voice to the ineffable Silence,
First white dawn of the God-Light cast on these creatures that perish,
Word-key of a divine and eternal truth for mortals to cherish,
Come! let thy sweetness and force be a breath in the breast of the future
Making the god-ways alive, immortality's golden-red suture:
Deep in our lives there shall work out a honeyed celestial leaven,
Bliss shall grow native to being and earth be a kin-soil to heaven.

Open the barriers of Time, the world with thy beauty enamour.

Trailing behind thee the purple of thy soul and the dawn-moment's glamour,
Forcing the heart of the Midnight where slumber and secrecy linger,
Guardians of Mystery, touching her bosom with thy luminous finger,
Daughter of Heaven, break through to me moonlike, mystic and gleaming;
Tread through the margins of twilight, cross over borders of dreaming.

Vision delightful alone on the peaks whom the silences cover,
Vision of bliss, stoop down to mortality, lean to thy lover.
Ahana

491

AHANA
Voice of the sensuous mortal, heart of eternal longing,
Thou who hast lived as in walls, thy soul with thy senses wronging!
But I descend at last. Fickle and terrible, sweet and deceiving,
Poison and nectar one has dispensed to thee, luring thee, leaving.

We two together shall capture the flute and the player relentless.

Son of man, thou hast crowned thy life with the flowers that are scentless,
Chased the delights that wound. But I come and midnight shall sunder.

Lo, I come, and behind me Knowledge descends and with thunder
Filling the spaces Strength, the Angel, bears on his bosom
Joy to thy arms. Thou shalt look on her face like a child's or a blossom,
Innocent, free as in Eden of old, not afraid of her playing,
When thy desires I have seized and devoured like a lioness preying.

Thou shalt not suffer always nor cry to me lured and forsaken:
I have a snare for his footsteps, I have a chain for him taken.

Come then to Brindavan, soul of the joyous; faster and faster
Follow the dance I shall teach thee with Shyama for slave and for master.

Follow the notes of the flute with a soul aware and exulting;
Trample Delight that submits and crouch to a sweetness insulting.

Then shalt thou know what the dance meant, fathom the song and the singer,
Hear behind thunder its rhymes, touched by lightning thrill to his finger,
Brindavan's rustle shalt understand and Yamuna's laughter,
Take thy place in the Ras1 and thy share of the ecstasy after.
1 The dance-round of Krishna with the cowherdesses in the moonlit groves of Brindavan, type of the dance of Divine Delight with the souls of men liberated in the world of
Bliss secret within us.
Poems from Manuscripts
Circa 1912 - 1913
~ Sri Aurobindo, - Ahana
,
1013: Ilion

Book I: The Book of the Herald



Dawn in her journey eternal compelling the labour of mortals,
Dawn the beginner of things with the night for their rest or their ending,
Pallid and bright-lipped arrived from the mists and the chill of the Euxine.
Earth in the dawn-fire delivered from starry and shadowy vastness
Woke to the wonder of life and its passion and sorrow and beauty,
All on her bosom sustaining, the patient compassionate Mother.
Out of the formless vision of Night with its look on things hidden
Given to the gaze of the azure she lay in her garment of greenness,
Wearing light on her brow. In the dawn-ray lofty and voiceless
Ida climbed with her god-haunted peaks into diamond lustres,
Ida first of the hills with the ranges silent beyond her
Watching the dawn in their giant companies, as since the ages
First began they had watched her, upbearing Time on their summits.
Troas cold on her plain awaited the boon of the sunshine.
There, like a hope through an emerald dream sole-pacing for ever,
Stealing to wideness beyond, crept Simois lame in his currents,
Guiding his argent thread mid the green of the reeds and the grasses.
Headlong, impatient of Space and its boundaries, Time and its slowness,
Xanthus clamoured aloud as he ran to the far-surging waters,
Joining his call to the many-voiced roar of the mighty Aegean,
Answering Oceans limitless cry like a whelp to its parent.
Forests looked up through their rifts, the ravines grew aware of their shadows.
Closer now gliding glimmered the golden feet of the goddess.
Over the hills and the headlands spreading her garment of splendour,
Fateful she came with her eyes impartial looking on all things,
Bringer to man of the day of his fortune and day of his downfall.
Full of her luminous errand, careless of eve and its weeping,
Fateful she paused unconcerned above Ilions mysteried greatness,
Domes like shimmering tongues of the crystal flames of the morning,
Opalesque rhythm-line of tower-tops, notes of the lyre of the sungod.
High over all that a nation had built and its love and its laughter,
Lighting the last time highway and homestead, market and temple,
Looking on men who must die and women destined to sorrow,
Looking on beauty fire must lay low and the sickle of slaughter,
Fateful she lifted the doom-scroll red with the script of the Immortals,
Deep in the invisible air that folds in the race and its morrows
Fixed it, and passed on smiling the smile of the griefless and deathless,
Dealers of death though death they know not, who in the morning
Scatter the seed of the event for the reaping ready at nightfall.
Over the brooding of plains and the agelong trance of the summits
Out of the sun and its spaces she came, pausing tranquil and fatal,
And, at a distance followed by the golden herds of the sungod,
Carried the burden of Light and its riddle and danger to Hellas.
Even as fleets on a chariot divine through the gold streets of ether,
Swiftly when Life fleets, invisibly changing the arc of the soul-drift,
And, with the choice that has chanced or the fate man has called and now suffers
Weighted, the moment travels driving the past towards the future,
Only its face and its feet are seen, not the burden it carries.
Weight of the event and its surface we bear, but the meaning is hidden.
Earth sees not; lifes clamour deafens the ear of the spirit:
Man knows not; least knows the messenger chosen for the summons.
Only he listens to the voice of his thoughts, his hearts ignorant whisper,
Whistle of winds in the tree-tops of Time and the rustle of Nature.
Now too the messenger hastened driving the car of the errand:
Even while dawn was a gleam in the east, he had cried to his coursers.
Half yet awake in lights turrets started the scouts of the morning
Hearing the jar of the wheels and the throb of the hooves exultation,
Hooves of the horses of Greece as they galloped to Phrygian Troya.
Proudly they trampled through Xanthus thwarting the foam of his anger,
Whinnying high as in scorn crossed Simois tangled currents,
Xanthus reed-girdled twin, the gentle and sluggard river.
One and unarmed in the car was the driver; grey was he, shrunken,
Worn with his decades. To Pergama cinctured with strength Cyclopean
Old and alone he arrived, insignificant, feeblest of mortals,
Carrying Fate in his helpless hands and the doom of an empire.
Ilion, couchant, saw him arrive from the sea and the darkness.
Heard mid the faint slow stirrings of life in the sleep of the city,
Rapid there neared a running of feet, and the cry of the summons
Beat round the doors that guarded the domes of the splendour of Priam.
Wardens charged with the night, ye who stand in Laomedons gateway,
Waken the Ilian kings. Talthybius, herald of Argos,
Parleying stands at the portals of Troy in the grey of the dawning.
High and insistent the call. In the dimness and hush of his chamber
Charioted far in his dreams amid visions of glory and terror,
Scenes of a vivider world,though blurred and deformed in the brain-cells,
Vague and inconsequent, there full of colour and beauty and greatness,
Suddenly drawn by the pull of the conscious thread of the earth-bond
And of the needs of Time and the travail assigned in the transience
Warned by his body, Deiphobus, reached in that splendid remoteness,
Touched through the nerve-ways of life that branch to the brain of the dreamer,
Heard the terrestrial call and slumber startled receded
Sliding like dew from the mane of a lion. Reluctant he travelled
Back from the light of the fields beyond death, from the wonderful kingdoms
Where he had wandered a soul among souls in the countries beyond us,
Free from the toil and incertitude, free from the struggle and danger:
Now, compelled, he returned from the respite given to the time-born,
Called to the strife and the wounds of the earth and the burden of daylight.
He from the carven couch upreared his giant stature.
Haste-spurred he laved his eyes and regained earths memories, haste-spurred
Donning apparel and armour strode through the town of his fathers,
Watched by her gods on his way to his fate, towards Pergamas portals.
Nine long years had passed and the tenth now was wearily ending,
Years of the wrath of the gods, and the leaguer still threatened the ramparts
Since through a tranquil morn the ships came past Tenedos sailing
And the first Argive fell slain as he leaped on the Phrygian beaches;
Still the assailants attacked, still fought back the stubborn defenders.
When the reward is withheld and endlessly leng thens the labour,
Weary of fruitless toil grows the transient heart of the mortal.
Weary of battle the invaders warring hearthless and homeless
Prayed to the gods for release and return to the land of their fathers:
Weary of battle the Phrygians beset in their beautiful city
Prayed to the gods for an end of the danger and mortal encounter.
Long had the high-beached ships forgotten their measureless ocean.
Greece seemed old and strange to her children camped on the beaches,
Old like a life long past one remembers hardly believing
But as a dream that has happened, but as the tale of another.
Time with his tardy touch and Nature changing our substance
Slowly had dimmed the faces loved and the scenes once cherished:
Yet was the dream still dear to them longing for wife and for children,
Longing for hearth and glebe in the far-off valleys of Hellas.
Always like waves that swallow the shingles, lapsing, returning,
Tide of the battle, race of the onset relentlessly thundered
Over the Phrygian corn-fields. Trojan wrestled with Argive,
Caria, Lycia, Thrace and the war-lord mighty Achaia
Joined in the clasp of the fight. Death, panic and wounds and disaster,
Glory of conquest and glory of fall, and the empty hearth-side,
Weeping and fortitude, terror and hope and the pang of remembrance,
Anguish of hearts, the lives of the warriors, the strength of the nations
Thrown were like weights into Destinys scales, but the balance wavered
Pressed by invisible hands. For not only the mortal fighters,
Heroes half divine whose names are like stars in remoteness,
Triumphed and failed and were winds or were weeds on the dance of the surges,
But from the peaks of Olympus and shimmering summits of Ida
Gleaming and clanging the gods of the antique ages descended.
Hidden from human knowledge the brilliant shapes of Immortals
Mingled unseen in the mellay, or sometimes, marvellous, maskless,
Forms of undying beauty and power that made tremble the heart-strings
Parting their deathless secrecy crossed through the borders of vision,
Plain as of old to the demigods out of their glory emerging,
Heard by mortal ears and seen by the eyeballs that perish.
Mighty they came from their spaces of freedom and sorrowless splendour.
Sea-vast, trailing the azure hem of his clamorous waters,
Blue-lidded, maned with the Night, Poseidon smote for the future,
Earth-shaker who with his trident releases the coils of the Dragon,
Freeing the forces unborn that are locked in the caverns of Nature.
Calm and unmoved, upholding the Word that is Fate and the order
Fixed in the sight of a Will foreknowing and silent and changeless,
Hera sent by Zeus and Athene lifting his aegis
Guarded the hidden decree. But for Ilion, loud as the surges,
Ares impetuous called to the fire in mens hearts, and his passion
Woke in the shadowy depths the forms of the Titan and demon;
Dumb and coerced by the grip of the gods in the abyss of the being,
Formidable, veiled they sit in the grey subconscient darkness
Watching the sleep of the snake-haired Erinnys. Miracled, haloed,
Seer and magician and prophet who beholds what the thought cannot witness,
Lifting the godhead within us to more than a human endeavour,
Slayer and saviour, thinker and mystic, leaped from his sun-peaks
Guarding in Ilion the wall of his mysteries Delphic Apollo.
Heavens strengths divided swayed in the whirl of the Earth-force.
All that is born and destroyed is reborn in the sweep of the ages;
Life like a decimal ever recurring repeats the old figure;
Goal seems there none for the ball that is chased throughout Time by the Fate-teams;
Evil once ended renews and no issue comes out of living:
Only an Eye unseen can distinguish the thread of its workings.
Such seemed the rule of the pastime of Fate on the plains of the Troad;
All went backwards and forwards tossed in the swing of the death-game.
Vain was the toil of the heroes, the blood of the mighty was squandered,
Spray as of surf on the cliffs when it moans unappeased, unrequited
Age after fruitless age. Day hunted the steps of the nightfall;
Joy succeeded to grief; defeat only greatened the vanquished,
Victory offered an empty delight without guerdon or profit.
End there was none of the effort and end there was none of the failure.
Triumph and agony changing hands in a desperate measure
Faced and turned as a man and a maiden trampling the grasses
Face and turn and they laugh in their joy of the dance and each other.
These were gods and they trampled lives. But though Time is immortal,
Mortal his works are and ways and the anguish ends like the rapture.
Artists of Nature content with their work in the plan of the transience,
Beautiful, deathless, august, the Olympians turned from the carnage,
Leaving the battle already decided, leaving the heroes
Slain in their minds, Troy burned, Greece left to her glory and downfall.
Into their heavens they rose up mighty like eagles ascending
Fanning the world with their wings. As the great to their luminous mansions
Turn from the cry and the strife, forgetting the wounded and fallen,
Calm they repose from their toil and incline to the joy of the banquet,
Watching the feet of the wine-bearers rosily placed on the marble,
Filling their hearts with ease, so they to their sorrowless ether
Passed from the wounded earth and its air that is ploughed with mens anguish;
Calm they reposed and their hearts inclined to the joy and the silence.
Lifted was the burden laid on our wills by their starry presence:
Man was restored to his smallness, the world to its inconscient labour.
Life felt a respite from height, the winds breathed freer delivered;
Light was released from their blaze and the earth was released from their greatness.
But their immortal content from the struggle titanic departed.
Vacant the noise of the battle roared like the sea on the shingles;
Wearily hunted the spears their quarry; strength was disheartened;
Silence increased with the march of the months on the tents of the leaguer.
But not alone on the Achaians the steps of the moments fell heavy;
Slowly the shadow deepened on Ilion mighty and scornful:
Dragging her days went by; in the rear of the hearts of her people
Something that knew what they dared not know and the mind would not utter,
Something that smote at her soul of defiance and beauty and laughter,
Darkened the hours. For Doom in her sombre and giant uprising
Neared, assailing the skies: the sense of her lived in all pastimes;
Time was pursued by unease and a terror woke in the midnight:
Even the ramparts felt her, stones that the gods had erected.
Now no longer she dallied and played, but bounded and hastened,
Seeing before her the end and, imagining massacre calmly,
Laughed and admired the flames and rejoiced in the cry of the captives.
Under her, dead to the watching immortals, Deiphobus hastened
Clanging in arms through the streets of the beautiful insolent city,
Brilliant, a gleaming husk but empty and left by the daemon.
Even as a star long extinguished whose light still travels the spaces,
Seen in its form by men, but itself goes phantom-like fleeting
Void and null and dark through the uncaring infinite vastness,
So now he seemed to the sight that sees all things from the Real.
Timeless its vision of Time creates the hour by things coming.
Borne on a force from the past and no more by a power for the future
Mighty and bright was his body, but shadowy the shape of his spirit
Only an eidolon seemed of the being that had lived in him, fleeting
Vague like a phantom seen by the dim Acherontian waters.
But to the guardian towers that watched over Pergamas gateway
Out of the waking city Deiphobus swiftly arriving
Called, and swinging back the huge gates slowly, reluctant,
Flung Troy wide to the entering Argive. Ilions portals
Parted admitting her destiny, then with a sullen and iron
Cry they closed. Mute, staring, grey like a wolf descended
Old Talthybius, propping his steps on the staff of his errand;
Feeble his body, but fierce still his glance with the fire within him;
Speechless and brooding he gazed on the hated and coveted city.
Suddenly, seeking heaven with her buildings hewn as for Titans,
Marvellous, rhythmic, a child of the gods with marble for raiment,
Smiting the vision with harmony, splendid and mighty and golden,
Ilion stood up around him entrenched in her giant defences.
Strength was uplifted on strength and grandeur supported by grandeur;
Beauty lay in her lap. Remote, hieratic and changeless,
Filled with her deeds and her dreams her gods looked out on the Argive,
Helpless and dumb with his hate as he gazed on her, they too like mortals
Knowing their centuries past, not knowing the morrow before them.
Dire were his eyes upon Troya the beautiful, his face like a doom-mask:
All Greece gazed in them, hated, admired, grew afraid, grew relentless.
But to the Greek Deiphobus cried and he turned from his passion
Fixing his ominous eyes with the god in them straight on the Trojan:
Messenger, voice of Achaia, wherefore confronting the daybreak
Comest thou driving thy car from the sleep of the tents that besiege us?
Fateful, I deem, was the thought that, conceived in the silence of midnight,
Raised up thy aged limbs from the couch of their rest in the stillness,
Thoughts of a mortal but forged by the Will that uses our members
And of its promptings our speech and our acts are the tools and the image.
Oft from the veil and the shadow they leap out like stars in their brightness,
Lights that we think our own, yet they are but tokens and counters,
Signs of the Forces that flow through us serving a Power that is secret.
What in the dawning bringst thou to Troya the mighty and dateless
Now in the ending of Time when the gods are weary of struggle?
Sends Agamemnon challenge or courtesy, Greek, to the Trojans?
High like the northwind answered the voice of the doom from Achaia:
Trojan Deiphobus, daybreak, silence of night and the evening
Sink and arise and even the strong sun rests from his splendour.
Not for the servant is rest nor Time is his, only his death-pyre.
I have not come from the monarch of men or the armoured assembly
Held on the wind-swept marge of the thunder and laughter of ocean.
One in his singleness greater than kings and multitudes sends me.
I am a voice out of Phthia, I am the will of the Hellene.
Peace in my right I bring to you, death in my left hand. Trojan,
Proudly receive them, honour the gifts of the mighty Achilles.
Death accept, if Ate deceives you and Doom is your lover,
Peace if your fate can turn and the god in you chooses to hearken.
Full is my heart and my lips are impatient of speech undelivered.
It was not made for the streets or the market, nor to be uttered
Meanly to common ears, but where counsel and majesty harbour
Far from the crowd in the halls of the great and to wisdom and foresight
Secrecy whispers, there I will speak among Ilions princes.
Envoy, answered the Laomedontian, voice of Achilles,
Vain is the offer of peace that sets out with a threat for its prelude.
Yet will we hear thee. Arise who are fleetest of foot in the gateway,
Thou, Thrasymachus, haste. Let the domes of the mansion of Ilus
Wake to the bruit of the Hellene challenge. Summon Aeneas.
Even as the word sank back into stillness, doffing his mantle
Started to run at the bidding a swift-footed youth of the Trojans
First in the race and the battle, Thrasymachus son of Aretes.
He in the dawn disappeared into swiftness. Deiphobus slowly,
Measuring Fate with his thoughts in the troubled vasts of his spirit,
Back through the stir of the city returned to the house of his fathers,
Taming his mighty stride to the pace infirm of the Argive.
But with the god in his feet Thrasymachus rapidly running
Came to the halls in the youth of the wonderful city by Ilus
Built for the joy of the eye; for he rested from war and, triumphant,
Reigned adored by the prostrate nations. Now when all ended,
Last of its mortal possessors to walk in its flowering gardens,
Great Anchises lay in that luminous house of the ancients
Soothing his restful age, the far-warring victor Anchises,
High Bucoleons son and the father of Rome by a goddess;
Lonely and vagrant once in his boyhood divine upon Ida
White Aphrodite ensnared him and she loosed her ambrosial girdle
Seeking a mortals love. On the threshold Thrasymachus halted
Looking for servant or guard, but felt only a loneness of slumber
Drawing the souls sight within away from its life and things human;
Soundless, unheeding, the vacant corridors fled into darkness.
He to the shades of the house and the dreams of the echoing rafters
Trusted his high-voiced call, and from chambers still dim in their twilight
Strong Aeneas armoured and mantled, leonine striding,
Came, Anchises son; for the dawn had not found him reposing,
But in the night he had left his couch and the clasp of Cresa,
Rising from sleep at the call of his spirit that turned to the waters
Prompted by Fate and his mother who guided him, white Aphrodite.
Still with the impulse of speed Thrasymachus greeted Aeneas:
Hero Aeneas, swift be thy stride to the Ilian hill-top.
Dardanid, haste! for the gods are at work; they have risen with the morning,
Each from his starry couch, and they labour. Doom, we can see it,
Glows on their anvils of destiny, clang we can hear of their hammers.
Something they forge there sitting unknown in the silence eternal,
Whether of evil or good it is they who shall choose who are masters
Calm, unopposed; they are gods and they work out their iron caprices.
Troy is their stage and Argos their background; we are their puppets.
Always our voices are prompted to speech for an end that we know not,
Always we think that we drive, but are driven. Action and impulse,
Yearning and thought are their engines, our will is their shadow and helper.
Now too, deeming he comes with a purpose framed by a mortal,
Shaft of their will they have shot from the bow of the Grecian leaguer,
Lashing themselves at his steeds, Talthybius sent by Achilles.
Busy the gods are always, Thrasymachus son of Aretes,
Weaving Fate on their looms, and yesterday, now and tomorrow
Are but the stands they have made with Space and Time for their timber,
Frame but the dance of their shuttle. What eye unamazed by their workings
Ever can pierce where they dwell and uncover their far-stretching purpose?
Silent they toil, they are hid in the clouds, they are wrapped with the midnight.
Yet to Apollo I pray, the Archer friendly to mortals,
Yet to the rider on Fate I abase myself, wielder of thunder,
Evil and doom to avert from my fatherland. All night Morpheus,
He who with shadowy hands heaps error and truth upon mortals,
Stood at my pillow with images. Dreaming I erred like a phantom
Helpless in Ilions streets with the fire and the foeman around me.
Red was the smoke as it mounted triumphant the house-top of Priam,
Clang of the arms of the Greeks was in Troya, and thwarting the clangour
Voices were crying and calling me over the violent Ocean
Borne by the winds of the West from a land where Hesperus harbours.
Brooding they ceased, for their thoughts grew heavy upon them and voiceless.
Then, in a farewell brief and unthought and unconscious of meaning,
Parting they turned to their tasks and their lives now close but soon severed:
Destined to perish even before his perishing nation,
Back to his watch at the gate sped Thrasymachus rapidly running;
Large of pace and swift, but with eyes absorbed and unseeing,
Driven like a car of the gods by the whip of his thoughts through the highways,
Turned to his mighty future the hero born of a goddess.
One was he chosen to ascend into greatness through fall and disaster,
Loser of his world by the will of a heaven that seemed ruthless and adverse,
Founder of a newer and greater world by daring adventure.
Now, from the citadels rise with the townships crowding below it
High towards a pondering of domes and the mystic Palladium climbing,
Fronted with the morning ray and joined by the winds of the ocean,
Fate-weighed up Troys slope strode musing strong Aeneas.
Under him silent the slumbering roofs of the city of Ilus
Dreamed in the light of the dawn; above watched the citadel, sleepless
Lonely and strong like a goddess white-limbed and bright on a hill-top,
Looking far out at the sea and the foe and the prowling of danger.
Over the brow he mounted and saw the palace of Priam,
Home of the gods of the earth, Laomedons marvellous vision
Held in the thought that accustomed his will to unearthly achievement
And in the blaze of his spirit compelling heaven with its greatness,
Dreamed by the harp of Apollo, a melody caught into marble.
Out of his mind it arose like an epic canto by canto;
Each of its halls was a strophe, its chambers lines of an epode,
Victor chant of Ilions destiny. Absent he entered,
Voiceless with thought, the brilliant megaron crowded with paintings,
Paved with a splendour of marble, and saw Deiphobus seated,
Son of the ancient house by the opulent hearth of his fathers,
And at his side like a shadow the grey and ominous Argive.
Happy of light like a lustrous star when it welcomes the morning,
Brilliant, beautiful, glamoured with gold and a fillet of gem-fire,
Paris, plucked from the song and the lyre by the Grecian challenge,
Came with the joy in his face and his eyes that Fate could not alter.
Ever a child of the dawn at play near a turn of the sun-roads,
Facing destinys look with the careless laugh of a comrade,
He with his vision of delight and beauty brightening the earth-field
Passed through its peril and grief on his way to the ambiguous Shadow.
Last from her chamber of sleep where she lay in the Ilian mansion
Far in the heart of the house with the deep-bosomed daughters of Priam,
Noble and tall and erect in a nimbus of youth and of glory,
Claiming the world and life as a fief of her strength and her courage,
Dawned through a doorway that opened to distant murmurs and laughter,
Capturing the eye like a smile or a sunbeam, Penthesilea.
She from the threshold cried to the herald, crossing the marble,
Regal and fleet, with her voice that was mighty and dire in its sweetness.
What with such speed has impelled from the wind-haunted beaches of Troas,
Herald, thy car though the sun yet hesitates under the mountains?
Comest thou humbler to Troy, Talthybius, now than thou camest
Once when the streams of my East sang low to my ear, not this Ocean
Loud, and I roamed in my mountains uncalled by the voice of Apollo?
Bringest thou dulcet-eyed peace or, sweeter to Penthesilea,
Challenge of war when the spears fall thick on the shields of the fighters,
Lightly the wheels leap onward chanting the anthem of Ares,
Death is at work in his fields and the heart is enamoured of danger?
What says Odysseus, the baffled Ithacan? what Agamemnon?
Are they then weary of war who were rapid and bold and triumphant,
Now that their gods are reluctant, now victory darts not from heaven
Down from the clouds above Ida directing the luminous legions
Armed by Fate, now Pallas forgets, now Poseidon slumbers?
Bronze were their throats to the battle like bugles blaring in chorus;
Mercy they knew not, but shouted and ravened and ran to the slaughter
Eager as hounds when they chase, till a woman met them and stayed them,
Loud my war-shout rang by Scamander. Herald of Argos,
What say the vaunters of Greece to the virgin Penthesilea?
High was the Argives answer confronting the mighty in Troya.
Princes of Pergama, whelps of the lion who roar for the mellay,
Suffer my speech! It shall ring like a spear on the hearts of the mighty.
Blame not the herald; his voice is an impulse, an echo, a channel
Now for the timbrels of peace and now for the drums of the battle.
And I have come from no cautious strength, from no half-hearted speaker,
But from the Phthian. All know him! Proud is his soul as his fortunes,
Swift as his sword and his spear are the speech and the wrath from his bosom.
I am his envoy, herald am I of the conquering Argives.
Has not one heard in the night when the breezes whisper and shudder,
Dire, the voice of a lion unsatisfied, gnawed by his hunger,
Seeking his prey from the gods? For he prowls through the glens of the mountains,
Errs a dangerous gleam in the woodlands, fatal and silent.
So for a while he endures, for a while he seeks and he suffers
Patient yet in his terrible grace as assured of his banquet;
But he has lacked too long and he lifts his head and to heaven
Roars in his wonder, incensed, impatiently. Startled the valleys
Shrink from the dreadful alarum, the cattle gallop to shelter.
Arming the herdsmen cry to each other for comfort and courage.
So Talthybius spoke, as a harper voicing his prelude
Touches his strings to a varied music, seeks for a concord;
Long his strain he prepares. But one broke in on the speaker,
Sweet was his voice like a harps though heard in the front of the onset,
One of the sons of Fate by the people loved whom he ruined,
Leader in counsel and battle, the Priamid, he in his beauty
Carelessly walking who scattered the seeds of Titanic disaster.
Surely thou dreamedst at night and awaking thy dreams have not left thee!
Hast thou not woven thy words to intimidate children in Argos
Sitting alarmed in the shadows who listen pale to their nurses?
Greek, thou art standing in Ilion now and thou facest her princes.
Use not thy words but thy kings. If friendship their honey-breathed burden,
Friendship we clasp from Achilles, but challenge outpace with our challenge
Meeting the foe ere he moves in his will to the clash of encounter.
Such is the way of the Trojans since Phryx by the Hellespont halting
Seated Troy on her hill with the Ocean for comrade and sister.
Shaking in wrath his filleted head Talthybius answered:
Princes, ye speak their words who drive you! Thus said Achilles:
Rise, Talthybius, meet in her spaces the car of the morning;
Challenge her coursers divine as they bound through the plains of the Troad.
Hasten, let not the day wear gold ere thou stand in her ramparts.
Herald charged with my will to a haughty and obstinate nation,
Speak in the palace of Priam the word of the Phthian Achilles.
Freely and not as his vassal who leads, Agamemnon, the Argive,
But as a ruler in Hellas I send thee, king of my nations.
Long I have walked apart from the mellay of gods in the Troad,
Long has my listless spear leaned back on the peace of my tent-side,
Deaf to the talk of the trumpets, the whine of the chariots speeding;
Sole with my heart I have lived, unheeding the Hellene murmur,
Chid when it roared for the hunt the lion pack of the war-god,
Day after day I walked at dawn and in blush of the sunset,
Far by the call of the seas and alone with the gods and my dreaming,
Leaned to the unsatisfied chant of my heart and the rhythms of ocean,
Sung to by hopes that were sweet-lipped and vain. For Polyxenas brothers
Still are the brood of the Titan Laomedon slain in his greatness,
Engines of God unable to bear all the might that they harbour.
Awe they have chid from their hearts, nor our common humanity binds them,
Stay have they none in the gods who approve, giving calmness to mortals:
But like the Titans of old they have hugged to them grandeur and ruin.
Seek then the race self-doomed, the leaders blinded by heaven
Not in the agora swept by the winds of debate and the shoutings
Lion-voiced, huge of the people! In Troyas high-crested mansion
Speak out my word to the hero Deiphobus, head of the mellay,
Paris the racer of doom and the stubborn strength of Aeneas.
Herald of Greece, when thy feet shall be pressed on the gold and the marble,
Rise in the Ilian megaron, curb not the cry of the challenge.
Thus shalt thou say to them striking the ground with the staff of defiance,
Fronting the tempests of war, the insensate, the gamblers with downfall.
Princes of Troy, I have sat in your halls, I have slept in your chambers;
Not in the battle alone as a warrior glad of his foemen,
Glad of the strength that mates with his own, in peace we encountered.
Marvelling I sat in the halls of my enemies, close to the bosoms
Scarred by the dints of my sword and the eyes I had seen through the battle,
Ate rejoicing the food of the East at the tables of Priam
Served by the delicatest hands in the world, by Hecubas daughter,
Or with our souls reconciled in some careless and rapturous midnight
Drank of the sweetness of Phrygian wine, admiring your bodies
Shaped by the gods indeed, and my spirit revolted from hatred,
Softening it yearned in its strings to the beauty and joy of its foemen,
Yearned from the death that oertakes and the flame that cries and desires
Even at the end to save and even on the verge to deliver
Troy and her wonderful works and her sons and her deep-bosomed daughters.
Warned by the gods who reveal to the heart what the mind cannot hearken
Deaf with its thoughts, I offered you friendship, I offered you bridal,
Hellas for comrade, Achilles for brother, the world for enjoyment
Won by my spear. And one heard my call and one turned to my seeking.
Why is it then that the war-cry sinks not to rest by the Xanthus?
We are not voices from Argolis, Lacedaemonian tricksters,
Splendid and subtle and false; we are speakers of truth, we are Hellenes,
Men of the northl and faithful in friendship and noble in anger,
Strong like our fathers of old. But you answered my truth with evasion
Hoping to seize what I will not yield and you flattered your people.
Long have I waited for wisdom to dawn on your violent natures.
Lonely I paced oer the sands by the thousand-throated waters
Praying to Pallas the wise that the doom might turn from your mansions,
Buildings delightful, gracious as rhythms, lyrics in marble,
Works of the transient gods, and I yearned for the end of the war-din
Hoping that Death might relent to the beautiful sons of the Trojans.
Far from the cry of the spears, from the speed and the laughter of axles,
Heavy upon me like iron the intolerable yoke of inaction
Weighed like a load on a runner. The war-cry rose by Scamander;
Xanthus was crossed on a bridge of the fallen, not by Achilles.
Often I stretched out my hand to the spear, for the Trojan beaches
Rang with the voice of Deiphobus shouting and slaying the Argives;
Often my heart like an anxious mother for Greece and her children
Leaped, for the air was full of the leonine roar of Aeneas.
Always the evening fell or the gods protected the Argives.
Then by the moat of the ships, on the hither plain of the Xanthus
New was the voice that climbed through the din and sailed on the breezes,
High, insistent, clear, and it shouted an unknown war-cry
Threatening doom to the peoples. A woman had come in to aid you,
Regal and insolent, fair as the morning and fell as the northwind,
Freed from the distaff who grasps at the sword and she spurns at subjection
Breaking the rule of the gods. She is turbulent, swift in the battle.
Clanging her voice of the swan as a summons to death and disaster,
Fleet-footed, happy and pitiless, laughing she runs to the slaughter;
Strong with the gait that allures she leaps from her car to the slaying,
Dabbles in blood smooth hands like lilies. Europe astonished
Reels from her shock to the Ocean. She is the panic and mellay,
War is her paean, the chariots thunder of Penthesilea.
Doom was her coming, it seems, to the men of the West and their legions;
Ajax sleeps for ever, Meriones lies on the beaches.
One by one they are falling before you, the great in Achaia.
Ever the wounded are borne like the stream of the ants when they forage
Past my ships, and they hush their moans as they near and in silence
Gaze at the legions inactive accusing the fame of Achilles.
Still have I borne with you, waited a little, looked for a summons,
Longing for bridal torches, not flame on the Ilian housetops,
Blood in the chambers of sweetness, the golden amorous city
Swallowed by doom. Not broken I turned from the wrestle Titanic,
Hopeless, weary of toil in the ebb of my glorious spirit,
But from my stress of compassion for doom of the kindred nations,
But for her sake whom my soul desires, for the daughter of Priam.
And for Polyxenas sake I will speak to you yet as your lover
Once ere the Fury, abrupt from Erebus, deaf to your crying,
Mad with the joy of the massacre, seizes on wealth and on women
Calling to Fire as it strides and Ilion sinks into ashes.
Yield; for your doom is impatient. No longer your helpers hasten,
Legions swift to your call; the yoke of your pride and your splendour
Lies not now on the nations of earth as when Fortune desired you,
Strength was your slave and Troya the lioness hungrily roaring
Threatened the western world from her ramparts built by Apollo.
Gladly released from the thraldom they hated, the insolent shackles
Curbing their manhood the peoples arise and they pray for your ruin;
Piled are their altars with gifts; their blessings help the Achaians.
Memnon came, but he sleeps, and the faces swart of his nation
Darken no more like a cloud over thunder and surge of the onset.
Wearily Lycia fights; far fled are the Carian levies.
Thrace retreats to her plains preferring the whistle of stormwinds
Or on the banks of the Strymon to wheel in her Orphean measure,
Not in the revel of swords and fronting the spears of the Hellenes.
Princes of Pergama, open your gates to our Peace who would enter,
Life in her gracious clasp and forgetfulness, grave of earths passions,
Healer of wounds and the past. In a comity equal, Hellenic,
Asia join with Greece, one world from the frozen rivers
Trod by the hooves of the Scythian to farthest undulant Ganges.
Tyndarid Helen resign, the desirable cause of your danger,
Back to Greece that is empty long of her smile and her movements.
Broider with riches her coming, pomp of her slaves and the waggons
Endlessly groaning with gold that arrive with the ransom of nations.
So shall the Fury be pacified, she who exultant from Sparta
Breathed in the sails of the Trojan ravisher helping his oarsmen.
So shall the gods be appeased and the thoughts of their wrath shall be cancelled,
Justice contented trace back her steps and for brands of the burning
Torches delightful shall break into Troy with the swords of the bridal.
I like a bridegroom will seize on your city and clasp and defend her
Safe from the envy of Argos, from Lacedaemonian hatred,
Safe from the hunger of Crete and the Locrians violent rapine.
But if you turn from my voice and you hearken only to Ares
Crying for battle within you deluded by Hera and Pallas,
Swiftly the fierce deaths surges shall close over Troy and her ramparts
Built by the gods shall be stubble and earth to the tread of the Hellene.
For to my tents I return not, I swear it by Zeus and Apollo,
Master of Truth who sits within Delphi fathomless brooding
Sole in the caverns of Nature and hearkens her underground murmur,
Giving my oath to his keeping mute and stern who forgets not,
Not from the panting of Ares toil to repose, from the wrestle
Locked of hope and death in the ruthless clasp of the mellay
Leaving again the Trojan ramparts unmounted, leaving
Greece unavenged, the Aegean a lake and Europe a province.
Choosing from Hellas exile, from Peleus and Deidamia,
Choosing the field for my chamber of sleep and the battle for hearthside
I shall go warring on till Asia enslaved to my footsteps
Feels the tread of the God in my sandal pressed on her bosom.
Rest shall I then when the borders of Greece are fringed with the Ganges;
Thus shall the past pay its Titan ransom and, Fate her balance
Changing, a continent ravished suffer the fortune of Helen.
This I have sworn allying my will to Zeus and Ananke.
So was it spoken, the Phthian challenge. Silent the heroes
Looked back amazed on their past and into the night of their future.
Silent their hearts felt a grasp from gods and had hints of the heavens.
Hush was awhile in the room, as if Fate were trying her balance
Poised on the thoughts of her mortals. At length with a musical laughter
Sweet as the jangling of bells upon anklets leaping in measure
Answered aloud to the gods the virgin Penthesilea.
Long I had heard in my distant realms of the fame of Achilles,
Ignorant still while I played with the ball and ran in the dances
Thinking not ever to war; but I dreamed of the shock of the hero.
So might a poet inland who imagines the rumour of Ocean,
Yearn with his lust for the giant upheaval, the dance as of hill-tops,
Toss of the yellow mane and the tawny march and the voices
Lionlike claiming earth as a prey for the clamorous waters.
So have I longed as I came for the cry and the speed of Achilles.
But he has lurked in his ships, he has sulked like a boy that is angry.
Glad am I now of his soul that arises hungry for battle,
Glad, whether victor I live or defeated travel the shadows.
Once shall my spear have rung on the shield of the Phthian Achilles.
Peace I desire not. I came to a haughty and resolute nation,
Honour and fame they cherish, not life by the gift of a foeman.
Sons of the ancient house on whom Ilion looks as on Titans,
Chiefs whom the world admires, do you fear then the shock of the Phthian?
Gods, it is said, have decided your doom. Are you less in your greatness?
Are you not gods to reverse their decrees or unshaken to suffer?
Memnon is dead and the Carians leave you? Lycia lingers?
But from the streams of my East I have come to you, Penthesilea.
Virgin of Asia, answered Talthybius, doom of a nation
Brought thee to Troy and her haters Olympian shielded thy coming,
Vainly who feedest mens hearts with a hope that the gods have rejected.
Doom in thy sweet voice utters her counsels robed like a woman.
Answered the virgin disdainfully, wroth at the words of the Argive:
Hast thou not ended the errand they gave thee, envoy of Hellas?
Not, do I think, as our counsellor camst thou elected from Argos,
Nor as a lover to Troy hast thou hastened with amorous footing
Hurting thy heart with her frowardness. Hatred and rapine sent thee,
Greed of the Ilian gold and lust of the Phrygian women,
Voice of Achaian aggression! Doom am I truly; let Gnossus
Witness it, Salamis speak of my fatal arrival and Argos
Silent remember her wounds. But the Argive answered the virgin:
Hearken then to the words of the Hellene, Penthesilea.
Virgin to whom earths strongest are corn in the sweep of thy sickle,
Lioness vain of thy bruit who besiegest the paths of the battle!
Art thou not satiate yet? hast thou drunk then so little of slaughter?
Death has ascended thy car; he has chosen thy hand for his harvest.
But I have heard of thy pride and disdain, how thou scornest the Argives
And of thy fate thou complainest that ever averse to thy wishes
Cloisters the Phthian and matches with weaklings Penthesilea.
Not of the Ithacan boar nor the wild-cat littered in Locris
Nor of the sleek-coat Argive wild-bulls sates me the hunting;
So hast thou said, I would bury my spear in the lion of Hellas.
Blind and infatuate, art thou not beautiful, bright as the lightning?
Were not thy limbs made cunningly linking sweetness to sweetness?
Is not thy laughter an arrow surprising hearts imprudent?
Charm is the seal of the gods upon woman. Distaff and girdle,
Work of the jar at the well and the hush of our innermost chambers,
These were appointed thee, but thou hast scorned them, O Titaness, grasping
Rather the shield and the spear. Thou, obeying thy turbulent nature,
Tramplest oer laws that are old to the pleasure thy heart has demanded.
Rather bow to the ancient Gods who are seated and constant.
But for thyself thou passest and what hast thou gained for the aeons
Mingled with men in their works and depriving the age of thy beauty?
Fair art thou, woman, but fair with a bitter and opposite sweetness
Clanging in war when thou matchest thy voice with the shout of assemblies.
Not to this end was thy sweetness made and the joy of thy members,
Not to this rhythm Heaven tuned its pipe in thy throat of enchantment,
Armoured like men to go warring forth and with hardness and fierceness
Mix in the strife and the hate while the varied meaning of Nature
Perishes hurt in its heart and life is emptied of music.
Long have I marked in your world a madness. Monarchs descending
Court the imperious mob of their slaves and their suppliant gesture
Shameless and venal offends the majestic tradition of ages:
Princes plead in the agora; spurred by the tongue of a coward,
Heroes march to an impious war at a priestly bidding.
Gold is sought by the great with the chaffering heart of the trader.
Asia fails and the Gods are abandoning Ida for Hellas.
Why must thou come here to perish, O noble and exquisite virgin,
Here in a cause not thine, in a quarrel remote from thy beauty,
Leaving a land that is lovely and far to be slain among strangers?
Girl, to thy rivers go back and thy hills where the grapes are aspirant.
Trust not a fate that indulges; for all things, Penthesilea,
Break with excess and he is the wisest who walks by a measure.
Yet, if thou wilt, thou shalt meet me today in the shock of the battle:
There will I give thee the fame thou desirest; captive in Hellas,
Men shall point to thee always, smiling and whispering, saying,
This is the woman who fought with the Greeks, overthrowing their heroes;
This is the slayer of Ajax, this is the slave of Achilles.
Then with her musical laughter the fearless Penthesilea:
Well do I hope that Achilles enslaved shall taste of that glory
Or on the Phrygian fields lie slain by the spear of a woman.
But to the herald Achaian the Priamid, leader of Troya:
Rest in the halls of thy foes and ease thy fatigue and thy winters.
Herald, abide till the people have heard and reply to Achilles.
Not as the kings of the West are Ilions princes and archons,
Monarchs of men who drive their nations dumb to the battle.
Not in the palace of Priam and not in the halls of the mighty
Whispered councils prevail and the few dispose of the millions;
But with their nation consulting, feeling the hearts of the commons
Ilions princes march to the war or give peace to their foemen.
Lightning departs from her kings and the thunder returns from her people
Met in the ancient assembly where Ilus founded his columns
And since her famous centuries, names that the ages remember
Leading her, Troya proclaims her decrees to obedient nations.
Ceasing he cried to the thralls of his house and they tended the Argive.
Brought to a chamber of rest in the luminous peace of the mansion,
Grey he sat and endured the food and the wine of his foemen,
Chiding his spirit that murmured within him and gazed undelighted,
Vexed with the endless pomps of Laomedon. Far from those glories
Memory winged it back to a sward half-forgotten, a village
Nestling in leaves and low hills watching it crowned with the sunset.
So for his hour he abode in earths palace of lordliest beauty,
But in its caverns his heart was weary and, hurt by the splendours,
Longed for Greece and the smoke-darkened roof of a cottage in Argos,
Eyes of a woman faded and children crowding the hearthside.
Joyless he rose and eastward expected the sunrise on Ida.
***
~ Sri Aurobindo, 1 - The Book of the Herald
,

IN CHAPTERS [194/194]



   52 Integral Yoga
   35 Philosophy
   33 Poetry
   22 Christianity
   8 Yoga
   6 Fiction
   5 Occultism
   3 Psychology
   3 Mysticism
   2 Integral Theory
   1 Philsophy
   1 Mythology
   1 Cybernetics
   1 Alchemy


   49 Sri Aurobindo
   15 Nolini Kanta Gupta
   13 Anonymous
   10 Saint Augustine of Hippo
   9 Plotinus
   9 Aristotle
   7 The Mother
   6 H P Lovecraft
   5 Swami Krishnananda
   5 Satprem
   5 Plato
   5 Aldous Huxley
   4 Nirodbaran
   4 George Van Vrekhem
   3 Walt Whitman
   3 Sri Ramakrishna
   3 Rabindranath Tagore
   3 Jorge Luis Borges
   3 Friedrich Nietzsche
   3 Carl Jung
   3 Aleister Crowley
   2 Robert Browning
   2 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
   2 Mahendranath Gupta
   2 Jorge Luis Borges
   2 A B Purani


   13 Anonymous - Poems
   9 Poetics
   9 City of God
   8 Savitri
   8 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
   6 Lovecraft - Poems
   5 The Study and Practice of Yoga
   5 The Perennial Philosophy
   5 Letters On Poetry And Art
   4 Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo
   4 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
   4 Record of Yoga
   4 Preparing for the Miraculous
   4 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
   4 Collected Poems
   3 Whitman - Poems
   3 Twilight of the Idols
   3 The Secret Doctrine
   3 Tagore - Poems
   3 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04
   3 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 01
   3 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
   3 Labyrinths
   3 Essays On The Gita
   2 Vedic and Philological Studies
   2 The Synthesis Of Yoga
   2 The Phenomenon of Man
   2 The Life Divine
   2 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
   2 Selected Fictions
   2 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 02
   2 Magick Without Tears
   2 Liber ABA
   2 Isha Upanishad
   2 Hymns to the Mystic Fire
   2 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
   2 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
   2 Essays Divine And Human
   2 Browning - Poems
   2 Aion


0 0.01 - Introduction, #Agenda Vol 1, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  A little white silhouette, twelve thousand miles away, solitary and frail amidst a spiritual horde which had once and for all decided that the meditating and miraculous yogi was the apogee of the species, was searching for the means, for the reality of this man who for a moment believes himself sovereign of the heavens or sovereign of a machine, but who is quite probably something completely different than his spiritual or material glories. Another, a lighter air was throbbing in that breast, unburdened of its heavens and of its prehistoric machines. Another Epic was beginning.
  Would Matter and Spirit meet, then, in a third PHYSIOLOGICAL position that would perhaps be at last the position of Man rediscovered, the something that had for so long fought and suffered in quest of becoming its own species? She was the great Possible at the beginning of man. Mother is our fable come true. 'All is possible' was her first open sesame.

00.01 - The Mother on Savitri, #Sweet Mother - Harmonies of Light, #unset, #Zen
   On the 18th January 1960; when a young sadhak met the Mother for a personal interview, She said to him: "I shall give you something special; be prepared." The next day, when he again met Her, She spoke in French first about how to kindle the psychic Flame and then in this connection started speaking about Sri Aurobindo`s great Epic Savitri and continued to speak at length.
  The sadhak, after returning from the Mother, wanted to note down immediately what She had said, but he could not do so because he felt a great hesitation due to his sense of incapacity to transcribe exactly the Mother`s own words.
  --
  In truth, the entire form of Savitri has descended "en masse" from the highest region and Sri Aurobindo with His genius only arranged the lines - in a superb and magnificent style. Sometimes entire lines were revealed and He has left them intact; He worked hard, untiringly, so that the inspiration could come from the highest possible summit. And what a work He has created! Yes, it is a true creation in itself. It is an unequalled work. Everything is there, and it is put in such a simple, such a clear form; verses perfectly harmonious, limpid and eternally true. My child, I have read so many things, but I have never come across anything which could be compared with Savitri. I have studied the best works in Greek, Latin, English and of course French literature, also in German and all the great creations of the West and the East, including the great Epics; but I repeat it, I have not found anywhere anything comparable with Savitri. All these literary works seems to me empty, flat, hollow, without any deep reality - apart from a few rare exceptions, and these too represent only a small fraction of what Savitri is. What grandeur, what amplitude, what reality: it is something immortal and eternal He has created. I tell you once again there is nothing like in it the whole world. Even if one puts aside the vision of the reality, that is, the essential substance which is the heart of the inspiration, and considers only the lines in themselves, one will find them unique, of the highest classical kind. What He has created is something man cannot imagine. For, everything is there, everything.
  It may then be said that Savitri is a revelation, it is a meditation, it is a quest of the Infinite, the Eternal. If it is read with this aspiration for Immortality, the reading itself will serve as a guide to Immortality. To read Savitri is indeed to practice Yoga, spiritual concentration; one can find there all that is needed to realise the Divine. Each step of Yoga is noted here, including the secret of all other Yogas. Surely, if one sincerely follows what is revealed here in each line one will reach finally the transformation of the Supramental Yoga. It is truly the infallible guide who never abandons you; its support is always there for him who wants to follow the path. Each verse of Savitri is like a revealed Mantra which surpasses all that man possessed by way of knowledge, and I repeat this, the words are expressed and arranged in such a way that the sonority of the rhythm leads you to the origin of sound, which is OM.

0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
   Gadadhar grew up into a healthy and restless boy, full of fun and sweet mischief. He was intelligent and precocious and endowed with a prodigious memory. On his father's lap he learnt by heart the names of his ancestors and the hymns to the gods and goddesses, and at the village school he was taught to read and write. But his greatest delight was to listen to recitations of stories from Hindu mythology and the Epics. These he would afterwards recount from memory, to the great joy of the villagers. Painting he enjoyed; the art of moulding images of the gods and goddesses he learnt from the potters. But arithmetic was his great aversion.
   At the age of six or seven Gadadhar had his first experience of spiritual ecstasy. One day in June or July, when he was walking along a narrow path between paddy-fields, eating the puffed rice that he carried in a basket, he looked up at the sky and saw a beautiful, dark thunder-cloud. As it spread, rapidly enveloping the whole sky, a flight of snow-white cranes passed in front of it. The beauty of the contrast overwhelmed the boy. He fell to the ground, unconscious, and the puffed rice went in all directions. Some villagers found him and carried him home in their arms. Gadadhar said later that in that state he had experienced an indescribable joy.
   Gadadhar was seven years old when his father died. This incident profoundly affected him. For the first time the boy realized that life on earth was impermanent. Unobserved by others, he began to slip into the mango orchard or into one of the cremation grounds, and he spent hours absorbed in his own thoughts. He also became more helpful to his mother in the discharge of her household duties. He gave more attention to reading and hearing the religious stories recorded in the Puranas. And he became interested in the wandering monks and pious pilgrims who would stop at Kamarpukur on their way to Puri. These holy men, the custodians of India's spiritual heritage and the living witnesses of the ideal of renunciation of the world and all-absorbing love of God, entertained the little boy with stories from the Hindu Epics, stories of saints and prophets, and also stories of their own adventures. He, on his part, fetched their water and fuel and
   served them in various ways. Meanwhile, he was observing their meditation and worship.
  --
   Narendra was born in Calcutta on January 12, 1863, of an aristocratic kayastha family. His mother was steeped in the great Hindu Epics, and his father, a distinguished attorney of the Calcutta High Court, was an agnostic about religion, a friend of the poor, and a mocker at social conventions. Even in his boyhood and youth Narendra possessed great physical courage and presence of mind, a vivid imagination, deep power of thought, keen intelligence, an extraordinary memory, a love of truth, a passion for purity, a spirit of independence, and a tender heart. An expert musician, he also acquired proficiency in physics, astronomy, mathematics, philosophy, history, and literature. He grew up into an extremely handsome young man. Even as a child he practised meditation and showed great power of concentration. Though free and passionate in word and action, he took the vow of austere religious chastity and never allowed the fire of purity to be extinguished by the slightest defilement of body or soul.
   As he read in college the rationalistic Western philosophers of the nineteenth century, his boyhood faith in God and religion was unsettled. He would not accept religion on mere faith; he wanted demonstration of God. But very soon his passionate nature discovered that mere Universal Reason was cold and bloodless. His emotional nature, dissatisfied with a mere abstraction, required a concrete support to help him in the hours of temptation. He wanted an external power, a guru, who by embodying perfection in the flesh would still the commotion of his soul. Attracted by the magnetic personality of Keshab, he joined the Brahmo Samaj and became a singer in its choir. But in the Samaj he did not find the guru who could say that he had seen God.

0.03 - The Threefold Life, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  This mixing with life may, however, be pursued for the sake of the individual mind and with an entire indifference to the forms of the material existence or the uplifting of the race. This indifference is seen at its highest in the Epicurean discipline and is not entirely absent from the Stoic; and even altruism does the works of compassion more often for its own sake than for the sake of the world it helps. But this too is a limited fulfilment. The progressive mind is seen at its noblest when it strives to elevate the whole race to its own level whether by sowing broadcast the image of its own thought and fulfilment or by changing the material life of the race into fresh forms, religious, intellectual, social or political, intended to represent more nearly that ideal of truth, beauty, justice, righteousness with which the man's own soul is illumined. Failure in such a field matters little; for the mere attempt is dynamic and creative. The struggle of Mind to elevate life is the promise and condition of the conquest of life by that which is higher even than Mind.
  That highest thing, the spiritual existence, is concerned with what is eternal but not therefore entirely aloof from the transient. For the spiritual man the mind's dream of perfect beauty is realised in an eternal love, beauty and delight that has no dependence and is equal behind all objective appearances; its dream of perfect Truth in the supreme, self-existent, self-apparent and eternal Verity which never varies, but explains and is the secret of all variations and the goal of all progress; its dream of perfect action in the omnipotent and self-guiding Law that is inherent for ever in all things and translates itself here in the rhythm of the worlds. What is fugitive vision or constant effort of creation in the brilliant Self is an eternally existing Reality in the Self that knows2 and is the Lord.

01.02 - Sri Aurobindo - Ahana and Other Poems, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   And because our Vedic poets always looked beyond humanity, beyond earth, therefore could they make divine poetry of humanity and what is of earth. Therefore it was that they were pervadingly so grandiose and sublime and puissant. The heroic, the Epic was their natural element and they could not but express themselves in the grand manner Sri Aurobindo has the same outlook and it is why we find in him the ring of the old-world manner.
   Mark the stately march, the fullness of voice, the wealth of imagery, the vigour of movement of these lines:

01.03 - Mystic Poetry, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Something of the fullness of spiritual matter and manner overflows in these Epic lines:
   His spirit mingles with eternity's heart

01.03 - The Yoga of the King - The Yoga of the Souls Release, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  There were high encounters, Epic colloquies,
  And counsels came couched in celestial speech,

01.04 - The Secret Knowledge, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Is a preface only of the Epic climb
  Of human soul from its flat earthly state

01.07 - Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   "They can no longer tell us that it is only small minds that have piety. They are shown how it has grown best in one of the the greatest geometricians, one of the subtlest metaphysicians, one of the most penetrating minds that ever existed on earth. The piety of such a philosopher should make the unbeliever and the libertine declare what a certain Diocles said one day on seeing Epicurus in a temple: 'What a feast, what a spectacle for me to see Epicurus in a temple! All my doubts vainsh, piety takes its place again. I never saw Jupiter's greatness so well as now when I behold Epicurus kneeling down!"1
   What characterises Pascal is the way in which he has bent his brainnot rejected it but truly bent and forced even the dry "geometrical brain" to the service of Faith.
  --
   "Ils ne peuvent plus nous dire qu'il n'y a que de petits esprits qui aient de la pit: car on leur en fait voir de la mieux pouss dans run des plus grands go-mtres, l'un des plus subtils mtaphysiciens, et des plus pntrants esprits que aient jamais t au monde. La pit d'un tel philosophe devrait faire dire aux indvots et awe libertins ce que dit un jour un certain Diocls, en voyant Epicure dans un temple: 'Quelle fte,' s'criait-il, 'quelle spectacle pour moi, de voir Epicure dans un temple! Tous mes soupons s'vanouissent: la pit reprend sa place; et je ne vis jamais mieux la grandeur de Jupiter que depuis que je vois Epicure genoux!' " aBayle: Nouvelle de la Rpublique des Lettres.
   "La dernire dmarche de la raison, c'est de connatre qu'il y a une infinit de chases qui la surpassent. Elle est bien faible si elle ne va jusque-l

0 1966-08-19, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Thats basically the point. We say Savitri is an Epic; so Savitri is the Epic of the victory over death.
   (silence)

02.02 - Rishi Dirghatama, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Indeed the darkness and the blindness seem to have been the Divine's grace upon him, for his eyes turned inward to other domains and saw strange truths and stranger facts. We remember in this connection another blind old poet who even though fallen on such evil days composed the world famous Epic poem (I am referring obviously to Milton and his Paradise Lost). We remember also here the deaf incomparable master of music Beethoven. Many of the sayings of Dirghatama have become so current that they are now familiar even to the common man. They are mottoes and proverbs we all quote at all times. "Truth is one, the wise call it in different ways"the mantra is from Dirghatama. "Heaven is my father, Earth my mother"this is also from Dirghatama. The famous figure of two birds with beautiful wing dwelling on the same tree comes also from Dirghatama. There are a good many sayings of this kind that have become intimate companions to our lips of which the source we do not know. When we read the mantras of Dirghatama we are likely to exclaim even as the villager did when he first saw Hamlet played in London, "It is full of quotations."
   You must have already noticed that the utterance of Dirghatama carries a peculiar turn, even perhaps a twist. In fact his mantras are an enigma, a riddle to which it is sometimes difficult to find the fitting key. For example when he says, "What is above is moving downward and what is down is moving upward; yes, they who are below are indeed up above, and they who are up are here below," or again, "He who knows the father below by what is above, and he who knows the father who is above by what is below is called the poet (the seer creator)", we are, to say the least, not a little puzzled.

02.07 - The Descent into Night, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
     Epics of horror and grim majesty,
    Wry statues spat and stiffened in life's mud,

02.08 - The World of Falsehood, the Mother of Evil and the Sons of Darkness, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  In ruin ends the Epic of a soul.
  This is the tragedy of the inner death

03.09 - Art and Katharsis, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   There is a didactic Art that looks openly and crudely to moral hygiene. And because of this, there arose, as a protest and in opposition, a free-lance art that sought to pursue art for art's sake and truth for truth's sakeeven if that truth and that art were unpleasant and repellent to the morality-ridden sophisticated consciousness. Or perhaps it may have been the other way round: because of the degeneracy of Art from its high and serious and Epic nobility and sublimity to lesser levels of sthetic hedonism and dilettantism that the didactic took its rise and sought to yoke art to duty, to moral welfare and social service. Not that there is an inherent impossibility of moralising art becoming good art in its own way; but great art is essentially a-moralnot in the sense of being infra-moral, but in the sense of being supra-moral.
   Art does not tend towards the Good in the manner of the moralist. It does not teach or preach that virtue is to be pursued and vice to be shunned, that a good deed is rewarded and a wrong one punished. Poetic justice, of the direct and crude style, is a moral code or dogma, and, if imposed upon the sthetic movement, serves only to fetter and curb and twist it. Art opens the vision to a higher good than what the conventions of moral idealism can frame. Great art does not follow the lines laid down by the ethical mentality, not only because this mentality cannot embody the true truth, but also because it does not give us the Good which art should aim at, that is to say, the purest and the highest good.

04.02 - The Growth of the Flame, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Struck from the Epic lyre of rumour's winds
  Or sung like a chanted thought by the poet Fame.

04.03 - The Call to the Quest, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  An Epic of hope and failure breaks earth's heart;
  Her force and will exceed her form and fate.

06.02 - The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  His grandeur he turns to an Epic of doom and fall;
  His littleness crawls content through squalor and mud,

07.02 - The Parable of the Search for the Soul, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  An Epicure of the spirit's unseen joys,
  He lives on the sweet honey of solitude:

10.04 - Lord of Time, #Writings In Bengali and Sanskrit, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The traditional poet rejoiced in the Epic
  The creation of full rhythm is his With deep satisfaction

1.01 - Foreward, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  of which there is no record in their Epic or classical literature.
  The Vedic religion was in this account only a worship of NatureGods full of solar myths and consecrated by sacrifices and a sacrificial liturgy primitive enough in its ideas and contents, and it is these barbaric prayers that are the much vaunted, haloed and apotheosized Veda.

1.01 - 'Imitation' the common principle of the Arts of Poetry., #Poetics, #Aristotle, #Philosophy
  There is another art which imitates by means of language alone, and that either in prose or verse--which, verse, again, may either combine different metres or consist of but one kind--but this has hitherto been without a name. For there is no common term we could apply to the mimes of Sophron and Xenarchus and the Socratic dialogues on the one hand; and, on the other, to poetic imitations in iambic, elegiac, or any similar metre. People do, indeed, add the word 'maker' or 'poet' to the name of the metre, and speak of elegiac poets, or Epic (that is, hexameter) poets, as if it were not the imitation that makes the poet, but the verse that entitles them all indiscriminately to the name. Even when a treatise on medicine or natural science is brought out in verse, the name of poet is by custom given to the author; and yet Homer and Empedocles have nothing in common but the metre, so that it would be right to call the one poet, the other physicist rather than poet. On the same principle, even if a writer in his poetic imitation were to combine all metres, as Chaeremon did in his Centaur, which is a medley composed of metres of all kinds, we should bring him too under the general term poet. So much then for these distinctions.
  There are, again, some arts which employ all the means above mentioned, namely, rhythm, tune, and metre. Such are Dithyrambic and Nomic poetry, and also Tragedy and Comedy; but between them the difference is, that in the first two cases these means are all employed in combination, in the latter, now one means is employed, now another.

1.01 - Newtonian and Bergsonian Time, #Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, #Norbert Wiener, #Cybernetics
  theory of Epicycles or the Copernican theory of orbits, and in
  any such theory the future after a fashion repeats the past. The

1.01 - THE STUFF OF THE UNIVERSE, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  modern science was necessary. The atoms of Epicurus were mert
  and indivisible. And the infinitesimal worlds of Pascal could still

1.020 - The World and Our World, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
  These assumptions have led to the conclusion that the object exists independently of its being perceived, and the universe was created much earlier than the creation of the human individual. This theory gets confirmation from the expositions in the Puranas, the Epics, etc., wherein we are told that God created the world. He did not create man first; man is perhaps the last of creation. Even in the Aittareya Upanishad, on which perhaps the Panchadasi, etc., take their stand, we are given to understand that man was not the first creation, and that perhaps nothing perceiving was ever existent. Nothing perceiving, nothing thinking, nothing willing, conscious, ever existed except that One which willed Itself to be many, and the world was so created, etc., is the doctrine.
  Basing themselves on this scriptural proclamation, exponents tell us that there is a distinction between what they call Ishvara srishti and jiva srishti the creation of God and the creation of the individual. There are two kinds of creation. Ikshanadi-praveshanta srishtir ishana kalpita; jagradadi-vimokshantah samsaro jiva-kalpitah - says the Panchadasi, in a famous passage. The meaning of passage has reference to the Aittareya Upanishad and such other relevant passages in other Upanishads, and makes out that God willed to be many, and manifested Himself as this vast creation, projected individualities, and entered the individual by an immanence of His own nature. This is another way of describing the traditional process of creation through divine manifestations usually known as Ishvara, Hiranyagarbha and Virat all of which are precedent to individual manifestations, and prior to the existence of human beings. But there is also what is known as 'individual's creation'. A lot of detail about it is given in the Panchadasi, especially in its fourth chapter called Dvaita Vivek how duality-consciousness arose at all, and how perceptions can bind us, though they need not necessarily bind us.

1.02 - The Divine Teacher, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  HE PECULIARITY of the Gita among the great religious books of the world is that it does not stand apart as a work by itself, the fruit of the spiritual life of a creative personality like Christ, Mahomed or Buddha or of an epoch of pure spiritual searching like the Veda and Upanishads, but is given as an episode in an Epic history of nations and their wars and men and their deeds and arises out of a critical moment in the soul of one of its leading personages face to face with the crowning action of his life, a work terrible, violent and sanguinary, at the point when he must either recoil from it altogether or carry it through to its inexorable completion. It matters little whether or no, as modern criticism supposes, the Gita is a later composition inserted into the mass of the Mahabharata by its author in order to invest its teaching with the authority and popularity of the great national Epic. There seem to me to be strong grounds against this supposition for which, besides, the evidence, extrinsic or internal, is in the last degree scanty and insufficient. But even if it be sound, there remains the fact that the author has not only taken pains to interweave his work inextricably into the vast web of the larger poem, but is careful again and again to remind us of the situation from which the teaching has arisen; he returns to it prominently, not only at the end, but in the middle of his profoundest philosophical disquisitions. We must accept the insistence of the author and give its full importance to this recurrent preoccupation of the Teacher and the disciple.
  The teaching of the Gita must therefore be regarded not merely in the light of a general spiritual philosophy or ethical doctrine, but as bearing upon a practical crisis in the application of ethics and spirituality to human life. For what that crisis stands, what is the significance of the battle of Kurukshetra and its effect on
  --
  Mahabharata, we may fairly conclude that they were actually contemporaries and that the Epic is to a great extent dealing with historical characters and in the war of Kurukshetra with a historical occurrence imprinted firmly on the memory of the race. We know too that Krishna and Arjuna were the object of religious worship in the pre-Christian centuries; and there is some reason to suppose that they were so in connection with a religious and philosophical tradition from which the Gita may have gathered many of its elements and even the foundation of its synthesis of knowledge, devotion and works, and perhaps also that the human Krishna was the founder, restorer or at the least one of the early teachers of this school. The Gita may well in spite of its later form represent the outcome in Indian thought of the teaching of Krishna and the connection of that teaching with the historical Krishna, with Arjuna and with the war of
  Kurukshetra may be something more than a dramatic fiction. In the Mahabharata Krishna is represented both as the historical character and the Avatar; his worship and Avatarhood must therefore have been well established by the time - apparently from the fifth to the first centuries B.C. - when the old story and poem or Epic tradition of the Bharatas took its present form. There is a hint also in the poem of the story or legend of the Avatar's early life in Vrindavan which, as developed by the Puranas into an intense and powerful spiritual symbol, has exercised so profound an influence on the religious mind of
  India. We have also in the Harivansha an account of the life of

1.02 - The Doctrine of the Mystics, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Such are some of the principal images of the Veda and a very brief and insufficient outline of the teaching of the Forefa thers. So understood the Rig Veda ceases to be an obscure, confused and barbarous hymnal; it becomes the high-aspiring Song of Humanity; its chants are episodes of the lyrical Epic of the soul in its immortal ascension.
  This at least; what more there may be in the Veda of ancient science, lost knowledge, old psycho-physical tradition remains yet to be discovered.

1.037 - Preventing the Fall in Yoga, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
  The reason is simple. In the practice of yoga the whole being is active and, therefore, it starts waking up every blessed thing in this world whatever may be sleeping anywhere. Even invisible forces, even distant elements may feel that some strange activity is going on in some part of the universe. We must have heard in the Epics and Puranas that even the gods are distressed by the tapas of yogis. It means that the meditative activity of a sincere seeker can tell upon even very far and distant regions like the heavens, and not merely the corners of the earth. But our ordinary little work that is going on in a shop, a factory or an office may not be felt at all in such regions. The reason is that these ordinary activities are shallow; they are not deep enough. They do not touch the bottom of things, and therefore the reactions set up are also mild.
  But in yoga, what actually moves is the very root of our being. Our soul itself is yearning in the aspiration for the Ultimate Reality. It is not a function of a part of the psychological organs like mentation, intellection, egoism, etc. It is every blessed thing that is in us that becomes active, and we may say there is a sort of conscription of every part of our personality in this warfare called the practice of yoga. Every individual is harnessed into the army. Everyone is a soldier when this war takes place. There is no civilian at all in the practice of yoga; everyone is active like an army man everyone, and no one is excluded. Every part of the personality becomes roused, and we can imagine what reactions this can set up. You may ask me why they should set up reactions. Can this noble activity called yoga not be carried on without any adverse reactions.
  --
  Avirati is a sudden flare-up of buried desires in a very vehement manner, pouncing on anything and everything that is in front. It may be even an inanimate object it may be a fountain pen, a wristwatch, a transistor, or it may be a donkey. It does not matter what it is, because the desire that has been kept suppressed for years together wants only an immediate satisfaction, even through the silliest object possible. This condition of avirati (avirati means the absence of virati, which is the same as rati) attachment, affection, craving, and longing for the smallest satisfaction available will completely divert the attention of the mind from the original ideal. Even a little stream can draw the entire mass of water of a large river with a force that can burst all boundaries and devastate everything that is around. This is what we call 'the fall' in yoga. When a person reaches this state, he has fallen. We talk of a fall and hear of these things happening in the Epics and Puranas, where the mind has come back to the original condition from where it wanted to rise; only it is in a worse state.
  All of these virulent flare-ups are to be guarded against before they actually happen. It is better to prevent the rise of a disease by prophylactics, etc., rather than to try to treat the disease when it has already come up in a violent form. This is only to present before the mind of the seeker the possibilities of impediments and the nature of the difficulties that may arise. The teacher also prescribes methods of remedying them in a proper manner.

1.03 - PERSONALITY, SANCTITY, DIVINE INCARNATION, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  Among the cultivated and mentally active, hagiography is now a very unpopular form of literature. The fact is not at all surprising. The cultivated and the mentally active have an insatiable appetite for novelty, diversity and distraction. But the saints, however commanding their talents and whatever the nature of their professional activities, are all incessantly preoccupied with only one subjectspiritual Reality and the means by which they and their fellows can come to the unitive knowledge of that Reality. And as for their actions these are as monotonously uniform as their thoughts; for in all circumstances they behave selflessly, patiently and with indefatigable charity. No wonder, then, if the biographies of such men and women remain unread. For one well educated person who knows anything about William Law there are two or three hundred who have read Boswells life of his younger contemporary. Why? Because, until he actually lay dying, Johnson indulged himself in the most fascinating of multiple personalities; whereas Law, for all the superiority of his talents was almost absurdly simple and single-minded. Legion prefers to read about Legion. It is for this reason that, in the whole repertory of Epic, drama and the novel there are hardly any representations of true theocentric saints.
  O Friend, hope for Him whilst you live, know whilst you live, understand whilst you live? for in life deliverance abides.

1.03 - The House Of The Lord, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
  At the beginning all of us would make it a point to be present during his meal and watch the function as well as the Mother's part in it. When the time was announced, water was brought for Sri Aurobindo to wash his hands, then he started eating with a spoon and rarely with knife and fork. He would take off his ring, place it in Champaklal's hand and wash. Champakal would put it back on his finger afterwards. Sometimes when he forgot to take off the ring, Champaklal caught hold of the hand before it was dipped in the water. Then the Mother would come, prepare and lay the table, push it herself up to Sri Aurobindo and arrange the various foods in bowls or glass tumblers, in the order of savouries, sweets and fruit juices everything having an atmosphere of cleanliness, purity and beauty. Then she would offer, one by one, the dishes to the silent Deity who would take them slowly and silently as if the eating was not for the satisfaction of the palate but an act of self-offering. Steadiness and silence were the characteristic stamps of Sri Aurobindo. Dhra, according to him, was the ideal of Aryan culture. Hurry and hustle were words not found in his dictionary. Be it eating, drinking, walking or talking he did it always in a slow and measured rhythm, giving the impression that every movement was conscious and consecrated. The Mother would punctuate the silence with queries like, "How do you like that dish?" or such remarks as, "This mushroom is grown here, this is special brinjal sent from Benares, this is butterfruit." To all, Sri Aurobindo's reply would be, "Oh, I see! Quite good!" Typically English in manner and tone! His silence or laconic praise made us wonder if he had not lost all distinction in taste! Did rasagolla, bread and brinjal have the same taste in the Divine sense-experience? Making this vital point clear, he wrote in a letter: "Distinction is never lost, bread cannot be as tasty as a luchi, but a yogi can enjoy bread with as much rasa as a luchi which is quite a different thing." He had a liking for sweets, particularly for rasagolla, sandesh and pantua. We could see that clearly: after the Mother had banned all sweets from his menu for medical reasons, one day some pantuas found their way in by chance. The Mother could not send them back from the table. She asked him if he would take some. He replied, "If it is pantua, I can try." Since then this became a spicy joke with all of us. He enjoyed, as a matter of fact, all kinds of good dishes, European or Indian. But whatever was not to his taste, he would just touch and put away. The pungent preparations of the South could not, however, receive his blessings, except the rasam[1]. When on his arrival in Pondicherry he was given rasam, he enjoyed it very much and said in our talks, "It has a celestial taste!" He was neither a puritan god nor an Epicure; only, he had no hankering or attachment for anything. His meal ended with a big tumbler of orange juice which he sipped slowly, looking after each sip to see how much was left, and keeping a small quantity as prasd. Once the entire juice had slightly fermented and after one or two sips he left it at the Mother's prompting. We conspired to make good use of it as prasd, but Sri Aurobindo got the scent of our secret design and forewarned us! We had to check our temptation.
  One thing that we noticed was that unless the Mother served him in this way, he would lose all distinction between different preparations and would not know which to take first and in which order. Very probably he would have gone half-fed. On one occasion we saw him eating a whole cooked green chilly before we could cry halt! Of course, what was one chilly for him who is said in the old days to have taken a lump of opium with impunity! We have also seen him finishing his meal somehow, if for some reason the Mother could not be present and Champaklal had to serve instead. The story goes that once Mridu's dish went back without being touched by Sri Aurobindo, and she raised a storm. Sri Aurobindo had to quiet her with the plea that the Mother being absent he did not know what he had taken or what he had not. On another occasion Sri Aurobindo's meal being over earlier than usual, Mridu's dish arrived late and was left untouched. As soon as she heard about it she began to wail "like a new-born babe" as if she would bring down the whole Ashram by her lamentations. Dr. Manilal reported the fact to Sri Aurobindo and he asked, "How did she know about it?" I replied apologetically, "I told her." He said softly, "These things should not be said;" then he added with a smile, "but it is I who ought to lament for having missed her fine dish." We all had a good laugh.
  --
  Sometime in 1945 his eyesight got affected; and the Mother suggested that I should now take up all the reading and writing work and this continued till the end. In the evening we revised the old versions of Savitri, read letters, poems, literary articles by disciples or devotees outside, and other miscellaneous matters. In course of time these incidental readings increased to such an extent that he remarked that all his time was being spent on these, while his own work was left undone. He only made the remark and continued with them, until in 1949, practically all the correspondence came to an abrupt halt, and only the work on Savitri proceeded steadily. I wonder if he had taken the decision to leave the body and was therefore in a hurry to finish his Epic in time. Correspondence with Dilip and Amal Kiran was the only exception.
  Now, the part of the time that remains unaccounted for was the night. For a number of years, especially during the last ones, it was the most interesting period. For gradually, attending to Sri Aurobindo's meal, his walking and his sleep became very complicated since these activities had to depend on the Mother's round of work. I have said before that, like life, our daily routine was continually changing. The midday meal shifted from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. We had to be guided by her clock. She had thousands of things to attend to in addition to the organisational work of the Ashram. Now she had also to bear additional responsibility for Sri Aurobindo. No wonder her time had to be very flexible. And too subtle, elusive and quick are her movements for our human calculation! Can we imagine her holding collective meditation at 11 p.m., sometimes even at 1 a.m.? Consequently Sri Aurobindo's supper began to shift from normal hours to as late as 11 p.m. after which she would go down for meditation. But if she was late, then the meal had to be served after the meditation. Later on the meditation was followed by a regular Pranam attended by more than three hundred individuals. Then the Mother would come to Sri Aurobindo's room to attend to his walking, normally at 11 p.m., but there were occasions when she came even at 1 a.m.! Then she would come half an hour or one hour later to give him an eye-wash with a blue liquid called "blue water", and to rub lightly his upper body with a perfumed white cream. That was her last service of the day. We naturally had to keep awake till then, awaiting the soft tread of her feet in the corridor, for there was no knowing when she would turn up. Of course whenever possible, we did snatch a cat-nap in between, but it had to be "conscious sleep"! Purani, whose duty began at 2.30 a.m., sometimes found us awake! I am sure that it was Sri Aurobindo's radiant Presence which was the source of all our energy and kept us fit as a fiddle, in spite of many days of scanty sleep. I have read in Kalidasa that during Shiva's deep meditation, a constant stream of energy Tapas went out to fill his two attendants to enable them to keep vigil over the world of Nature. Even after the Mother's departure, Sri Aurobindo kept awake and only when he had learnt that she had retired, did our lights go out; that was at about 2 a.m. It was my duty to switch off the last light. The switch was above the foot, of his bed. Putting my hand on it I would look at him: he gave his impersonal sweet smile in return and the light went off. A night lamp was kept burning. Then we too would retire, sleeping in the same room. Once I had a frightful nightmare and screamed. Sri Aurobindo called me, "Nirod! Nirod!" and I woke up. Very often, Purani said, when he came he found me snoring. Champaklal amended, saying, "No, he snores even long before!" "That is perhaps in anticipation of Purani's arrival!" added Sri Aurobindo.

1.03 - The Human Disciple, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   actual language of the Epic does not justify and, if pressed, would turn the straightforward philosophical language of the Gita into a constant, laborious and somewhat puerile mystification. The language of the Veda and part at least of the Puranas is plainly symbolic, full of figures and concrete representations of things that lie behind the veil, but the Gita is written in plain terms and professes to solve the great ethical and spiritual difficulties which the life of man raises, and it will not do to go behind this plain language and thought and wrest them to the service of our fancy. But there is this much of truth in the view, that the setting of the doctrine though not symbolical, is certainly typical, as indeed the setting of such a discourse as the Gita must necessarily be if it is to have any relation at all with that which it frames. Arjuna, as we have seen, is the representative man of a great world-struggle and divinely-guided movement of men and nations; in the Gita he typifies the human soul of action brought face to face through that action in its highest and most violent crisis with the problem of human life and its apparent incompatibility with the spiritual state or even with a purely ethical ideal of perfection.
  Arjuna is the fighter in the chariot with the divine Krishna as his charioteer. In the Veda also we have this image of the human soul and the divine riding in one chariot through a great battle to the goal of a high-aspiring effort. But there it is a pure figure and symbol. The Divine is there Indra, the Master of the

1.03 - The Manner of Imitation., #Poetics, #Aristotle, #Philosophy
  These, then, as we said at the beginning, are the three differences which distinguish artistic imitation,--the medium, the objects, and the manner. So that from one point of view, Sophocles is an imitator of the same kind as Homer--for both imitate higher types of character; from another point of view, of the same kind as Aristophanes--for both imitate persons acting and doing. Hence, some say, the name of 'drama' is given to such poems, as representing action. For the same reason the Dorians claim the invention both of Tragedy and Comedy. The claim to Comedy is put forward by the Megarians,--not only by those of Greece proper, who allege that it originated under their democracy, but also by the Megarians of Sicily, for the poet Epicharmus, who is much earlier than Chionides and Magnes, belonged to that country. Tragedy too is claimed by certain Dorians of the Peloponnese. In each case they appeal to the evidence of language. The outlying villages, they say, are by them called {kappa omega mu alpha iota}, by the Athenians {delta eta mu iota}: and they assume that Comedians were so named not from {kappa omega mu 'alpha zeta epsilon iota nu}, 'to revel,' but because they wandered from village to village (kappa alpha tau alpha / kappa omega mu alpha sigma), being excluded contemptuously from the city. They add also that the Dorian word for 'doing' is {delta rho alpha nu}, and the Athenian, {pi rho alpha tau tau epsilon iota nu}.
  This may suffice as to the number and nature of the various modes of imitation.

1.045 - Piercing the Structure of the Object, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
  This condition of prakriti or pradhana the mulaprakriti, as it is called becomes the cause of the first manifestation in the process of evolution. This first form of manifestation, cosmologically, is called mahat in the terminology of the Samkhya. This is a Sanskrit word which practically means what is known as cosmic intellect or universal intelligence. This is, in the language of the Puranas and the Epics, the condition of the Creator or Brahma wherein all individualities are brought together into a single universal point of view. There are no various points of view there; there is only one point of view, and that is the cosmic point of view. Here, everything is directly experienced without the instrumentality of the senses. There is not even this mind as we see it in our own personal individuality. It is pure intelligence, subtly manifest in cosmic sattva, which is the first manifestation of prakriti.  .
  Then the Samkhya tells us that there is a gradual solidification or concretisation of this state, and there is manifest a tendency to self-affirmation of a cosmic nature which is called ahamkara. This ahamkara is not the egoism of the human being, but it is a logical presupposition of the manifestation of variety. It is purely a logical 'x' without which we cannot explain anything that is manifest subsequently, but it has no connection whatsoever with the pride or the individual egoism of the human beings that we see usually. Sometimes these states of prakriti, mahat and ahamkara, mentioned in the Samkhya, are identified with the principles of Ishvara, Hiranyagarbha and Virat which are mentioned in the Vedanta doctrine.

1.04 - The Origin and Development of Poetry., #Poetics, #Aristotle, #Philosophy
  As, in the serious style, Homer is pre-eminent among poets, for he alone combined dramatic form with excellence of imitation, so he too first laid down the main lines of Comedy, by dramatising the ludicrous instead of writing personal satire. His Margites bears the same relation to Comedy that the Iliad and Odyssey do to Tragedy. But when Tragedy and Comedy came to light, the two classes of poets still followed their natural bent: the lampooners became writers of Comedy, and the Epic poets were succeeded by Tragedians, since the drama was a larger and higher form of art.
  Whether Tragedy has as yet perfected its proper types or not; and whether it is to be judged in itself, or in relation also to the audience,--this raises another question. Be that as it may, Tragedy--as also Comedy--was at first mere improvisation. The one originated with the authors of the Dithyramb, the other with those of the phallic songs, which are still in use in many of our cities. Tragedy advanced by slow degrees; each new element that showed itself was in turn developed.

1.04 - What Arjuna Saw - the Dark Side of the Force, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
  brilliant passages of the Gilgamesh Epic, Homers Iliad and
  Odyssey, the works of the Greek tragedians, Dantes Divina

1.053 - A Very Important Sadhana, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
  The mind needs variety, no doubt, and it cannot exist without variety. It always wants change. Monotonous food will not be appreciated by the mind, and so the scriptures, especially the larger ones like the Epics, the Puranas, the Agamas, the Tantras, etc., provide a large area of movement for the mind wherein it leisurely roams about to its deep satisfaction, finds variety in plenty, reads stories of great saints and sages, and feels very much thrilled by the anecdotes of Incarnations, etc. But at the same time, with all its variety, we will find that it is a variety with a unity behind it. There is a unity of pattern, structure and aim in the presentation of variety in such scriptures as the Srimad Bhagavata, for instance. There are 18,000 verses giving all kinds of detail everything about the cosmic creation and the processes of the manifestation of different things in their gross form, subtle form, causal form, etc. Every type of story is found there. It is very interesting to read it. The mind rejoices with delight when going through such a large variety of detail with beautiful comparisons, etc. But all this variety is like a medical treatment by which we may give varieties of medicine with a single aim. We may give one tablet, one capsule, one injection, and all sorts of things at different times in a day to treat a single disease. The purpose is the continued assertion that God is All, and the whole of creation is a play of the glory of God.
  The goal of life in every stage of its manifestation is the vision of God, the experience of God, the realisation of God that God is the Supreme Doer and the Supreme Existence. This is the principle that is driven into the mind again and again by the Srimad Bhagavata Mahapurana or such similar texts. If a continued or sustained study of such scriptures is practised, it is purifying. It is a tapas by itself, and it is a study of the nature of ones own Self, ultimately. The word sva is used here to designate this process of study svadhyaya. Also, we are told in one sutra of Patanjali, tad drau svarpe avasthnam (I.3), that the seer finds himself in his own nature when the vrittis or the various psychoses of the mind are inhibited. The purpose of every sadhana is only this much: to bring the mind back to its original source.

1.05 - Definition of the Ludicrous, and a brief sketch of the rise of Comedy., #Poetics, #Aristotle, #Philosophy
   Epic poetry agrees with Tragedy in so far as it is an imitation in verse of characters of a higher type. They differ, in that Epic poetry admits but one kind of metre, and is narrative in form. They differ, again, in their length: for Tragedy endeavours, as far as possible, to confine itself to a single revolution of the sun, or but slightly to exceed this limit; whereas the Epic action has no limits of time. This, then, is a second point of difference; though at first the same freedom was admitted in Tragedy as in Epic poetry.
  Of their constituent parts some are common to both, some peculiar to Tragedy, whoever, therefore, knows what is good or bad Tragedy, knows also about Epic poetry. All the elements of an Epic poem are found in Tragedy, but the elements of a Tragedy are not all found in the Epic poem.
  author class:Aristotle

1.05 - THE HOSTILE BROTHERS - ARCHETYPES OF RESPONSE TO THE UNKNOWN, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
  The second escape is that of Epicureanism. Fully aware of the hopelessness of life, it consists of
  enjoying for the present the blessings that we do have without looking at the dragon or the mice; it lies

1.05 - War And Politics, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
  We may remind ourselves of Talthybius's mission to Troy in Sri Aurobindo's Epic poem Ilion: Achilles made an offer by which Troy would be saved and the honour of the Greeks would be preserved, a harmonising offer, but it was rejected. Similarly, Duraiswamy went with India's soul in his "frail" hands and brought it back, downhearted, rewarded with ungracious remarks for the gratuitous advice. Sri Aurobindo even sent a telegram to Rajagopalachari and Dr. Munje urging them to accept the Proposals. Dr. Indra Sen writes, "We met the members individually and the sense of the reactions were more or less to this effect: Sri Aurobindo has created difficulties for us by his message to Cripps. He doesn't know the actual situation, we are in it, we know' better... and so on." Cripps flew back a disappointed man but with the consolation and gratified recognition that at least one great man had welcomed the idea. When the rejection was announced, Sri Aurobindo said in a quiet tone, "I knew it would fail." We at once pounced on it and asked him, "Why did you then send Duraiswamy at all?" "For a bit of niskama karma,"[3]was his calm reply, without any bitterness or resentment. The full spirit of the kind of "disinterested work" he meant comes out in an early letter of his (December 1933), which refers to his spiritual work: "I am sure of the results of my work. But even if I still saw the chance that it might come to nothing (which is impossible), I would go on unperturbed, because I would still have done to the best of my power the work that I had to do, and what is so done always counts in the economy of the universe."
  After the War, the Labour Government of U.K. sent a Cabinet Mission to India in 1946 for fresh talks. Asked to give his views on the mission by Amrita Bazar Patrika, a leading daily in the country, Sri Aurobindo said:

1.06 - On remembrance of death., #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
  Insensibility of heart dulls the mind, and abundance of food dries the fountains of tears. Thirst and vigil afflict the heart, and when the heart is afflicted the waters flow. The things we have said will seem cruel to Epicures and incredible to the indolent; but a man of action will readily test them, and he who has found them out by experience will smile at them. But he who is still seeking will become more gloomy.
  Just as the Fathers lay down that perfect love knows no sin, so I for my part declare that a perfect sense of death is free from fear.

1.06 - The Three Schools of Magick 1, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  It remains, therefore, in a contemplative attitude. To use the terms of Western philosophy, there is in its attitude something of the stoicism of Zeno; or of the Pickwickianism, if I may use the term, of Epicurus. The ideal reaction to phenomena is that of perfect elasticity. It possesses something of the cold-bloodedness of mathematics; and for this reason it seems fair to say, for the purposes of elementary study, that Pythagoras is its most adequate exponent in European philosophy.
  Since the discovery of Asiatic thought, however, we have no need to take our ideas at second-hand. The Yellow School of Magick possesses one perfect classic. The Tao Teh King.[AC16]

1.07 - Savitri, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
  It is my task in this chapter to give a factual account of the long process that led to Savitri in its final form. As the grand Epic has captured many hearts all over the world by its supernal beauty I thought that they would be much interested in the history of its growth, development and final emergence the birth of the Golden Child. But I own that it is a formidable task. Though I had the unique good fortune to see Sri Aurobindo working on the Epic in its entire revised version, and had some small share in being its scribe, to try in retrospect to reconstruct the imposing edifice from such a distance in memory is indeed difficult, for there are many versions, plenty of revisions, additions, subtractions, emendations from which the final version was made. To give an accurate report of all this process is beyond my capacity. For I am not a scholar, and have no aptitude for research into old (or new) archives, neither did I ever dream that I should one day be called upon to render an account of what the Master had done, or left undone, through this poor mortal as his instrument. Had I not been helped by my esteemed and multi-capable friend Amal Kiran indefatigable researcher no less than a poet and by a young friend as assistant, my readers would have had to remain content with just a bare outline.
  The apology submitted, let the rash venture begin. Savitri, according to Dinen Roy,[1] was started by Sri Aurobindo in Baroda. From all the extant versions, for there are quite a number, it appears that originally the scheme of the poem consisted of two parts: I Earth, II Beyond. The first part had four Books and the second had three Books and an epilogue.
  --
  So far the account of the procedure which was followed for working on the three Books seems approximately correct. We have been considerably helped by some dates mentioned before in the account. But in what follows about the rest of the Epic, I am afraid that the report cannot claim as much exactness owing to my lapse of memory. I can sum up the position obtained at this stage by quoting Sri Aurobindo's letter to Amal in 1946. After investigating all the documents available, we have come to the following conclusions about the rest of the Books. Book IV, The Book of Birth and Quest, is fairly revised by Sri Aurobindo. Several versions before the end of 1938 have been worked upon these versions are expansions of much older drafts, one of them possibly dating back to Baroda. The revised version was later corrected and amplified with my help as scribe and has been divided into four Cantos. In re-doing Book V, The Book of Love, Sri Aurobindo took up, at a certain point, an earlier version than that of 1936. There are quite a number of versions with various titles before 1936. Here too, originally there were no different Cantos. There are three old versions of The Book of Fate of equal length. They were called Canto II, and fairly short. One of these versions was expanded into enormous length and developed into two Cantos, the very last touches given almost during the final month of Sri Aurobindo's life. An instance of the expansion is the passage "O singer of the ultimate ecstasy... will is Fate." There was no Book of Yoga in the original scheme of the poem. One old version called Book III, Death, has been changed into The Book of Yoga. It was enormously expanded and named Canto I. All the rest of the six Cantos were totally new and dictated. They were all at first divided into Cantos with different titles. Apparently all these Cantos except the first one are entirely new. I could get no trace of any old versions from which they could have been developed. I am now amazed to see that so many lines could have been dictated day after day, like The Book of Everlasting Day. The Book of Death contains three old versions all called Canto III; the final version is constructed from one of these and from another version some lines are taken to be inserted into The Book of Eternal Night, Canto IV, Night, of the early version served as the basis of The Book of Eternal Night. It was revised, lines were added and split into two Cantos. Then in the typescript further revisions took place. Canto I, first called The Passage into the Void of Night, was changed into Towards the Black Void. Book X, The Book of the Double Twilight, called only Twilight, Canto V in the earlier versions of which there are four or five, had no division into Cantos. From these early versions a fair number of lines have been taken and woven into a larger version. The old lines are now not always in their original form. Book XI had three old drafts. One which was larger than the other two has been used for the final version and was enormously expanded; even whole passages running into hundreds of lines have been added, as I have mentioned before. About The Epilogue, except for a few additions, it almost reproduces the single old version.
  Now we can go into the detailed working procedure of all these later Books. I had to take now a more and more prominent part as scribe, for after the completion of the fourth Book, The Book of Birth and Quest, from 1944 or so, Sri Aurobindo's eyesight began to grow dim and he didn't want to strain his eyes by going through all the old manuscripts with their faint, small handwriting. So I was asked to bring out these old versions from the drawer; I now had access to all the manuscripts. Most of them were in loose sheets of notebook size written on one side. Unfortunately no dates were given to suggest when they were written. I was asked to read aloud Book by Book before him, but I don't remember by what method we proceeded. Did we give a general reading to all the Books before we started with the actual working on them individually? Or did we go about systematically finishing one Book after another? Perhaps the latter. Taking this procedure to be probable, I was asked when there were more than one version of a Book, to read them, sometimes all, sometimes one or two and selecting out of them the best one, he indicated the lines to be marked in the margin for inclusion; sometimes lines or passages were taken from other versions too. As I have shown, and as Sri Aurobindo's dictated letter has already hinted, all these Books were either thoroughly revised or almost entirely rewritten.
  --
  This is roughly the story of the grand Epic Savitri traced from the earliest conception to its final consummation. Undoubtedly the first three Books were of a much higher level of inspiration and nearer perfection than the rest, for with ample leisure, and working by himself he could devote more time and care to that end, which unfortunately could not be said about the rest of the Books. Apart from the different versions I have mentioned, there is a huge mass of manuscripts which we have left unclassified since they are in fragments[4] all of which testifies to the immense labour of a god that has gone into the building of the magnificent Epic. For a future research scholar, when Savitri earns as wide a recognition as, for instance, Dante's or Homer's Epic, if not more, a very interesting work remains to be done; going into the minutest detail, he would show where new lines or passages have been added, or where one line slightly changed becomes an overhead line, or how another line after various changes comes back to its original version, etc., etc. I was chosen as a scribe probably because I didn't have all these gifts, so that I could, like a passive instrument, jot down faithfully whatever was dictated while Amal would have raised doubts, argued with him or been lost in sheer admiration of the beauty and the grandeur! Dilip would have started quoting line after line in rapturous ecstasy before the poem had come out! I submit no apology, nor am I conscience-stricken for my failures, for he knew what was the worth of his instrument. I am only grateful to him for being able to serve him with the very faculty which he had evolved and developed in me.
  We can at last see how from among scattered seeds a single huge banyan tree has grown and spread itself to the transcendent and the cosmic infinite and excites our perpetual wonder. I wish I could provide a more faithful and vivid picture of its daily growth, a branch here, an offshoot there, trimming the old twigs, reviving the dying ones, discarding the outworn crowding branches till there soared up into the sky a majestic vision under whose perennial shade the world can repose awhile, in its long journey to the Eternal. To show how he expanded the poem I may quote one long new passage which he appended to the end of Book II, Canto VI, The Kingdoms and the Godheads of the Greater Life:
  --
  I desist from giving my own impression of the incomparable Epic. I have no such competence and though I have been made a poet by the Master I leave it to more efficient authorities. One fact alone makes me dumb with a reverent awe and exalted admiration: the colossal labour Sri Aurobindo put forth to build this unique structure. It reminds me of one of those majestic ancient temples like Konarak or of a Gothic cathedral like Notre Dame before which you stand and stare in speechless ecstasy, your soul takes a flight beyond time and space. Before I knew much about Sri Aurobindo, I asked him in my foolish way, why, himself being the master of inspiration and having all higher planes at his command, sending inspiration to others, should he still have to work so hard? With his consciousness entirely silent, he had only to hitch to the right source and words, images, ideas would tumble down in a Brahmaputra of inspiration! To which he answered in his habitual indulgent tone, perhaps a bit piqued by my facile observation: "The highest planes are not so accommodating as all that. If they were so, why should it be so difficult to bring down and organise the supermind in the physical consciousness? What happy-go-lucky fancy-web-spinning ignoramuses you all are. You speak of silence, consciousness, overmental, supramental, etc. as if they were so many electric buttons you have only to press and there you are. It may be one day, but meanwhile I have to discover everything about the working of all possible modes of electricity, all the laws, possibilities, perils, etc., construct roads of connection and communication, make the whole far-wiring system, try to find out how it can be made foolproof and all that in the course of a single lifetime. And I have to do it while my blessed disciples are firing off their gay or gloomy a priori reasonings at me from a position of entire irresponsibility and expecting me to divulge everything to them not in hints but at length. Lord God in omnibus!"
  Then, with regard to hard labour on Savitri, he wrote: "That is very simple. I used Savitri as a means of ascension. I began with it on a certain mental level, each time I could reach a higher level I rewrote from that level. Moreover I was particular if part seemed to me to come from any lower levels I was not satisfied to leave it because it was good poetry. All had to be as far as possible of the same mint. In fact, Savitri has not been regarded by me as a poem to be written and finished; but as a field of experimentation to see how far poetry could be written from one's own Yogic consciousness and how that could be made creative. I did not rewrite Rose of God or the sonnets except for two or three verbal alterations made at the moment."
  All this was written to me in 1936. Since then the work proceeded slowly and gradually until between 1939 and 1950 he succeeded to a great extent in achieving what he aimed at, as stated in the letter above. I am sure if he had more time at his disposal and could work by himself, he would have raised it to his ideal of perfect perfection. As it is, Savitri is, I suppose, the example par excellence of the Future Poetry he speaks of in his book The Future Poetry. Founder of the New Age, pioneer in the field of poetry, as in many others, he has left us an inexhaustible heritage of words, images, ideas, suggestions and hints about which we can only say here is God's plenty. Rameshwar Gupta very aptly calls it Eternity in Words.[5] Generation after generation will drink in its soul's nectar from this perennial source. The life span of the English language itself has increased a thousandfold. Shakespeare, it is said, increased the life span of the English language by centuries. Sri Aurobindo said about Shakespeare, "That kind of spear does not shake everywhere." Now we find another far greater that will shake the world to its very roots. If for no other reason, the English speaking races ought to be eternally grateful to the supreme poet of the grand Epic for this miracle.
  Sri Aurobindo quoting in The Future Poetry these lines of an Elizabethan poet,
  --
  Dr. Piper of Syracuse University says about Savitri that it already has inaugurated the New Age of Illumination and is probably the greatest Epic in the English language... the most comprehensive, integrated, beautiful and perfect cosmic poem ever composed.... It ranges symbolically from primordial cosmic void, through earth's darkness and struggles, to the highest realms of supramental spiritual existence and illumines every important concern of man, through verse of unparalleled massiveness, magnificence and metaphorical brilliance. Savitri is perhaps the most powerful artistic work in the world for expanding man's mind towards the Absolute.
  The Mother has pronounced the last word on Savitri. I quote some extracts from a long talk on it to a young aspirant:

1.08 - Attendants, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
  Purani was already known to Sri Aurobindo from the twenties and had enjoyed his closeness during those years. It was thus with him a resumption or the old relation after a lapse of many years. Compared with him, we were youngsters and had the passport of entry by virtue of our medical profession, but some individual contact was established with the Master through correspondence so that he knew each one of us by name at least. In my own case, perhaps, I can go a little further. Had our written contact not been so intimate and various, I do not know if I could have been so free with him and of use to him in diverse ways. I have always wondered at and failed to probe the mystery of that intimacy. I have even imagined that Sri Aurobindo must have seen in his timeless vision that one day this humble self might be physically of some service to him. He prepared me for that eventual day, initiated me into love for poetry that I might at least transcribe his Epic Savitri from his dictation, gave some intellectual training that I might be useful to him in his literary work. He even made me familiar with his often baffling handwriting so that I could read his manuscripts and decipher them. These may be all weavings of fancy, but if I have been of any help in his intellectual pursuits, most of it was undoubtedly due to his previous coaching through voluminous letters, literary training and above all, his patient and persuasive manner. This long preparation had put out all fear of his awe-inspiring personality and made my approach to him free and almost unconventional, sometimes leading to an unpardonable abuse of that unstinted freedom. Things went on like a song and life would have made itself a transformed vision of the Supreme, but alas, after the novelty of the soul-contact had worn off, the other face of our nature, the subconscient, came to light and the pressure of the physical nearness began to tell. Work was no longer a joyous offering, but a duty; service alone was not a sufficient reward, it needed more concrete spiritual touches, failing which other lesser joys and satisfactions were regarded as legitimate recompense. My old maladies doubt and depression renewed their hold and transfused into the act of service their bitter stuff. The Master could at once feel the vibration, even though no word was uttered by the lips. Quite often by a look, by a quiet pressure of hands, he would communicate his understanding sympathy and the affliction would withdraw for a time. Never have I seen any displeasure or loss of temper at my delinquency, no harsh word of disapproval though he was quite aware of all inner and outer movements. A largeness, compassionate forgiveness and divine consideration have made life's stream flow through an apparently trackless solitary journey towards the ultimate vastness.
  I do not know if I have the right to speak of my other colleagues, but of Champaklal particularly I must write a few heart-felt words, for his spirit of service has left an indelible impression on my soul and taught me what true service is. Let me prelude it with the Mother's opinion about him when she introduced him to Andre, her son, in 1949. She said with great warmth: "He came here when he was very young. I taught him many kinds of work. He has himself taken up Sri Aurobindo's personal service. He looks into practically everything with regard to Sri Aurobindo. He is extremely careful, meticulous and very particular about details. He has no regular time for food; he takes it when he can. So it is with his sleep. That is why he cannot join the sports activities. He works with joy and devotion. He collects all our little things and keeps them with great care our clothes, nails, hair, etc."

1.08 - RELIGION AND TEMPERAMENT, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  So far as the achievement of mans final end is concerned, it is as much of a handicap to be an extreme cerebrotonic or an extreme viscerotonic as it is to be an extreme somatotonic. But whereas the cerebrotonic and the viscerotonic cannot do much harm except to themselves and those in immediate contact with them, the extreme somatotonic, with his native aggressiveness, plays havoc with whole societies. From one point of view civilization may be defined as a complex of religious, legal and educational devices for preventing extreme somatotonics from doing too much mischief, and for directing their irrepressible energies into socially desirable channels. Confucianism and Chinese culture have sought to achieve this end by inculcating filial piety, good manners and an amiably viscerotonic Epicureanism the whole reinforced somewhat incongruously by the cerebrotonic spirituality and restraints of Buddhism and classical Taoism. In India the caste system represents an attempt to subordinate military, political and financial power to spiritual authority; and the education given to all classes still insists so strongly upon the fact that mans final end is unitive knowledge of God that even at the present time, even after nearly two hundred years of gradually accelerating Europeanization, successful somatotonics will, in middle life, give up wealth, position and power to end their days as humble seekers after enlightenment. In Catholic Europe, as in India, there was an effort to subordinate temporal power to spiritual authority; but since the Church itself exercised temporal power through the agency of political prelates and mitred business men, the effort was never more than partially successful. After the Reformation even the pious wish to limit temporal power by means of spiritual authority was completely abandoned. Henry VIII made himself, in Stubbss words, the Pope, the whole Pope, and something more than the Pope, and his example has been followed by most heads of states ever since. Power has been limited only by other powers, not by an appeal to first principles as interpreted by those who are morally and spiritually qualified to know what they are talking about. Meanwhile, the interest in religion has everywhere declined and even among believing Christians the Perennial Philosophy has been to a great extent replaced by a metaphysic of inevitable progress and an evolving God, by a passionate concern, not with eternity, but with future time. And almost suddenly, within the last quarter of a century, there has been consummated what Sheldon calls a somatotonic revolution, directed against all that is characteristically cerebrotonic in the theory and practice of traditional Christian culture. Here are a few symptoms of this somatotonic revolution.
  In traditional Christianity, as in all the great religious formulations of the Perennial Philosophy, it was axiomatic that contemplation is the end and purpose of action. Today the great majority even of professed Christians regard action (directed towards material and social progress) as the end, and analytic thought (there is no question any longer of integral thought, or contemplation) as the means to that end.

1.08 - The Gods of the Veda - The Secret of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Saraswati, a name familiar to the religious conceptions of the race from our earliest eras, & of incessant occurrence in poetic phraseology and image, is worshipped yearly even at the present day in all provinces of the peninsula no less than those many millenniums ago in the prehistoric dawn of our religion and literature. Consistently, subsequent to the Vedic times, she has been worshipped everywhere & is named in all passages as a goddess of speech, poetry, learning and eloquence. Epic, Purana and the popular imagination know her solely as this deity of speech & knowledge. She ranks therefore in the order of religious ideas with the old Hellenic conceptions of Pallas, Aphrodite or the Muses; nor does any least shadow of the material Nature-power linger to lower the clear intellectuality of her powers and functions. But there is also a river Saraswati or several rivers of that name. Therefore, the doubt suggests itself: In any given passage may it not be the Aryan river, Saraswati, which the bards are chanting? even if they sing of her or cry to her as a goddess, may it not still be the River, so dear, sacred & beneficent to them, that they worship? Or even where she is clearly a goddess of speech and thought, may it not be that the Aryans, having had originally no intellectual or moral conceptions and therefore no gods of the mind and heart, converted, when they did feel the need, this sacred flowing River into a goddess of sacred flowing song? In that case we are likely to find in her epithets & activities the traces of this double capacity.
  For the rest, Sayana in this particular passage lends some support [to] this suggestion of Saraswatis etymological good luck; for he tells us that Saraswati has two aspects, the embodied goddess of Speech and the figure of a river. He distributes, indeed, these two capacities with a strange inconsistency and in his interpretation, as in so many of these harsh & twisted scholastic renderings, European & Indian, of the old melodious subtleties of thought & language, the sages of the Veda come before us only to be convicted of a baffling incoherence of sense and a pointless inaptness of language. But possibly, after all, it is the knowledge of the scholar that is at fault, not the intellect of the Vedic singers that was confused, stupid and clumsy! Nevertheless we must consider the possibility that Sayanas distribution of the sense may be ill-guided, & yet his suggestion about the double role of the goddess may in itself be well-founded. There are few passages of the ancient Sanhita, into which these ingenuities of the ritualistic & naturalistic interpretations do not pursue us. Our inquiry would protract itself into an intolerable length, if we had at every step to clear away from the path either the heavy ancient lumber or the brilliant modern rubbish. It is necessary to determine, once for all, whether the Vedic scholars, prve ntan uta, are guides worthy of trustwhe ther they are as sure in taste & insight as they are painstaking and diligent in their labour,whether, in a word, these ingenuities are the outcome of an imaginative licence of speculation or a sound & keen intuition of the true substance of Veda. Here is a crucial passage. Let us settle at least one side of the account the ledger of the great Indian scholiast.
  --
  In Saraswati we have a deity with subjective functions the first desideratum in our enquiry. Still, there is a doubt, a difficulty. Saraswati of the Epics & Puranas, Saraswati, as she is worshipped today throughout India is, no doubt, a purely subjective goddess and presides only over intellectual and immaterial functions. She is our Lady of Speech, the Muse, the goddess of Poetry, Art and Learning. Saraswati, the flowing, is also the name of more than one river in modern India, but especially of the sacred stream in upper India supposed to join secretly in their confluence the waters of theGanges and Yamuna and form with them the holy Triveni or triple braid of waters in which the ceremonial ablution of the devotee is more potent than at almost any other Indian place of pilgrimage and gives the richest spiritual fruit to the believing pilgrim. But in our modern religious ideas there is no real connexion, except of name, between the goddess and the river. In the Veda also there is a Saraswati who is the goddess of speech; in the Veda also there seems to be an ancient river Saraswati, although this stream is placed by Vedic scholars in the Panjab and not in the vicinity of Prayaga and Ayodhya. Were these two deities,for every river and indeed every natural object was to the Vedic Rishis a divine being,the same goddess Saraswati? Sayana accepts, even in this passage, their identity; she is, he tells us, [].1 If this identity were accepted, we would have to ask ourselves by what process of subjective metamorphosis a material Panjab river came to be the deity of Speech, the female power of Brahma, the Muse and tutelar goddess of scholar and poet. Or was not rather the goddess of speech eponymous of the river and subsequently imaged in it by the Vedic symbolists? But before we descend to these ulterior questions, we must first know for certain whether Sayana is right in his identification of the river and the Muse. First of all, are they the same in this passage? secondly, are they the same in any passage of the Veda? It is to the first question alone that we need address ourselves for the present; for on its solution depends the whole purport, value and helpfulness of these three Riks for the purposes of our enquiry into the sense and secret of the Vedas.
    Blank in MS; in his commentary on the passage under discussion, Sayana describes Saraswati as: dvividh . . . vigrahavaddevat nadrp ca.Ed.

1.09 - SKIRMISHES IN A WAY WITH THE AGE, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
  of vision. The painter, the sculptor, the Epic poet are essentially
  visionaries. In the Dionysian state, on the other hand, the whole

1.09 - Sri Aurobindo and the Big Bang, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
  bindo meant Savitri, the Epic which he had been rewriting
  and expanding for decades. If anything, Sri Aurobindos
  --
  ed being. We find in the Epic a description of the universe
  and its origin, the gradations or worlds of involution and

1.107 - The Bestowal of a Divine Gift, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
  At that time it is that we have to keep up the strength of our will, which is impossible on the face of the earth. Nobody has kept up that strength of will because nobody imagines that such a thing will happen. This is the whole difficulty. Everybody thinks, I have passed through it; it is over. Now I am face to face with God. This is not true. We have got many things to pass through before we have even an inkling of the presence of that Almighty. The seven gates, and many other gates of the fortress of mystical experience which great masters have spoken of, are nothing but these hurdles we have to pass through in the practice of yoga. They are all Epic descriptions of these obstacles we have to face and the difficulties we have to overcome.
  When everything is done, and we are in the hall of the divine Absolute, then the glory dawns, which is the experience designated in the sutra of Patanjali as dharma-megha samadhi. This is a grand experience, very majestic. Once we reach that state, there is no fear. We are real masters. Prasakhyne api akusdasya sarvath vivekakhyte dharmamegha samdhi (IV.29). We do not know why he has given this name to it. It is a peculiar novelty of Patanjali. Many people interpret it in many ways. What is dharma, and what is megha? If we look at the dictionary, we will see that a very simple meaning is given. Dharma is virtue, righteousness; megha is cloud. So what does dharma-megha the cloud of righteousness, the cloud of virtue mean?

1.10 - Farinata and Cavalcante de' Cavalcanti. Discourse on the Knowledge of the Damned., #The Divine Comedy, #Dante Alighieri, #Christianity
  With Epicurus all his followers,
  Who with the body mortal make the soul;

1.10 - Theodicy - Nature Makes No Mistakes, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
  it would be equal to the Epic repetition of suffering, death
  and rebirth, many times and in many ways. This quest for

1.1.1.06 - Inspiration and Effort, #Letters On Poetry And Art, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Inspiration is always a very uncertain thing; it comes when it chooses, stops suddenly before it has finished its work, refuses to descend when it is called. This is a well-known affliction, perhaps of all artists, but certainly of poets. There are some who can comm and it at will; those who, I think, are more full of an abundant poetic energy than careful for perfection; others who oblige it to come whenever they put pen to paper but with these the inspiration is either not of a high order or quite unequal in its level. Again there are some who try to give it a habit of coming by always writing at the same time; Virgil with his nine lines first written, then perfected every morning, Milton with his fifty Epic lines a day, are said to have succeeded in regularising their inspiration. It is, I suppose, the same principle which makes gurus in India prescribe for their disciples a meditation at the same fixed hour every day. It succeeds partially of course, for some entirely, but not for everybody. For myself, when the inspiration did not come with a rush or in a stream,for then there is no difficulty,I had only one way, to allow a certain kind of incubation in which a large form of the thing to be done threw itself on the mind and then wait for the white heat in which the entire transcription could rapidly take place. But I think each poet has his own way of working and finds his own issue out of inspirations incertitudes.
  26 January 1932

1.11 - GOOD AND EVIL, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  Philosophers and theologians have sought to establish a theoretical basis for the existing moral codes, by whose aid individual men and women pass judgment on their spontaneous evaluations. From Moses to Bentham, from Epicurus to Calvin, from the Christian and Buddhist philosophies of universal love to the lunatic doctrines of nationalism and racial superiority the list is long and the span of thought enormously wide. But fortunately there is no need for us to consider these various theories. Our concern is only with the Perennial Philosophy and with the system of ethical principles which those who believe in that philosophy have used, when passing judgment on their own and other peoples evaluations. The questions that we have to ask in this section are simple enough, and simple too are the answers. As always, the difficulties begin only when we pass from theory to practice, from ethical principle to particular application.
  Granted that the ground of the individual soul is akin to, or identical with, the divine Ground of all existence, and granted that this divine Ground is an ineffable Godhead that manifests itself as personal God or even as the incarnate Logos, what is the ultimate nature of good and evil, and what the true purpose and last end of human life?

1.11 - The Kalki Avatar, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
  Traveller of the Worlds, in his Epic Savitri. As this endless
  scale of worlds is, each of them, the expression of Existence
  --
  In Savitri, the Avatars Epic, there are many lines evok-
  ing the burden he has to bear. For instance:

1.12 - The Superconscient, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  We will not attempt here to describe what these higher planes of consciousness are in themselves, independent of man. Each of them is a whole world of existence, vaster and more active than the earth, and our mental language is inadequate to describe them; we would need a language of the visionary or the poet "another language," as Rimbaud said. This is what Sri Aurobindo has created in Savitri, his poetic Epic, to which we refer the reader.
  A million lotuses swaying on one stem.

1.12 - TIME AND ETERNITY, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  This Marxian account of the matter is somewhat oversimplified. It is not quite true to say that all theologies and philosophies whose primary concern is with time, rather than eternity, are necessarily revolutionary. The aim of all revolutions is to make the future radically different from and better than the past. But some time-obsessed philosophies are primarily concerned with the past, not the future, and their politics are entirely a matter of preserving or restoring the status quo and getting back to the good old days. But the retrospective time-worshippers have one thing in common with the revolutionary devotees of the bigger and better future; they are prepared to use unlimited violence to achieve their ends. It is here that we discover the essential difference between the politics of eternity-philosophers and the politics of time-philosophers. For the latter, the ultimate good is to be found in the temporal worldin a future, where everyone will be happy because all are doing and thinking something either entirely new and unprecedented or, alternatively, something old, traditional and hallowed. And because the ultimate good lies in time, they feel justified in making use of any temporal means for achieving it. The Inquisition burns and tortures in order to perpetuate a creed, a ritual and an ecclesiastico-politico-financial organization regarded as necessary to mens eternal salvation. Bible-worshipping Protestants fight long and savage wars, in order to make the world safe for what they fondly imagine to be the genuinely antique Christianity of apostolic times. Jacobins and Bolsheviks are ready to sacrifice millions of human lives for the sake of a political and economic future gorgeously unlike the present. And now all Europe and most of Asia has had to be sacrificed to a crystal-gazers vision of perpetual Co-Prosperity and the Thousand-Year Reich. From the records of history it seems to be abundantly clear that most of the religions and philosophies which take time too seriously are correlated with political theories that inculcate and justify the use of large-scale violence. The only exceptions are those simple Epicurean faiths, in which the reaction to an all too real time is Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die. This is not a very noble, nor even a very realistic kind of morality. But it seems to make a good deal more sense than the revolutionary ethic: Die (and kill), for tomorrow someone else will eat, drink and be merry. In practice, of course, the prospect even of somebody elses future merriment is extremely precarious. For the process of wholesale dying and killing creates material, social and psychological conditions that practically guarantee the revolution against the achievement of its beneficent ends.
  For those whose philosophy does not compel them to take time with an excessive seriousness the ultimate good is to be sought neither in the revolutionarys progressive social apocalypse, nor in the reactionarys revived and perpetuated past, but in an eternal divine now which those who sufficiently desire this good can realize as a fact of immediate experience. The mere act of dying is not in itself a passport to eternity; nor can wholesale killing do anything to bring deliverance either to the slayers or the slain or their posterity. The peace that passes all understanding is the fruit of liberation into eternity; but in its ordinary everyday form peace is also the root of liberation. For where there are violent passions and compelling distractions, this ultimate good can never be realized. That is one of the reasons why the policy correlated with eternity-philosophies is tolerant and non-violent. The other reason is that the eternity, whose realization is the ultimate good, is a kingdom of heaven within. Thou art That; and though That is immortal and impassible, the killing and torturing of individual thous is a matter of cosmic significance, inasmuch as it interferes with the normal and natural relationship between individual souls and the divine eternal Ground of all being. Every violence is, over and above everything else, a sacrilegious rebellion against the divine order.

1.13 - Gnostic Symbols of the Self, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  this on Epictetus (Enchiridion, 51, if.), where it says that he who has resolved
  to progress (TrpoKoirTeiv) is, by anticipation, already "perfect."

1.13 - Under the Auspices of the Gods, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  individualism; nonviolence, warmongering; Epicureanism, asceticism,
  etc. Each is one part of the divine Truth, each a single ray of God.

1.14 - Bibliography, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
   Epictetus. Enchiridion. See: Epictetus; The Discourses, etc. Edited
  and translated by W. A. Oldfather. (Loeb Classical Library.) Lon-

1.16 - Man, A Transitional Being, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  At the end of six years, in 1920, Sri Aurobindo felt he had said enough, for the time being, and the Arya drew to a close. The rest of his written work would be comprised almost entirely of letters to his disciples thousands upon thousands of them, containing all kinds of practical indications about yogic experiences, difficulties, and progress. But most importantly, over a period of thirty years, he would write and rewrite his extraordinary 28,813-line Epic poem, Savitri, like a fifth Veda his message, in which he describes the experiences of the higher and lower worlds, his own battles in the Subconscient and Inconscient, the whole occult history of evolution on the earth and in the universe, and his vision of the future:
  Interpreting the universe by soul signs He read from within the text of the without.310

1.16 - The Suprarational Ultimate of Life, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The first mark of the suprarational, when it intervenes to take up any portion of our being, is the growth of absolute ideals; and since life is Being and Force and the divine state of being is unity and the Divine in force is God as Power taking possession, the absolute vital ideals must be of that nature. Nowhere are they wanting. If we take the domestic and social life of man, we find hints of them there in several forms; but we need only note, however imperfect and dim the present shapes, the strivings of love at its own self-finding, its reachings towards its absolute the absolute love of man and woman, the absolute maternal or paternal, filial or fraternal love, the love of friends, the love of comrades, love of country, love of humanity. These ideals of which the poets have sung so persistently, are not a mere glamour and illusion, however the egoisms and discords of our instinctive, infrarational way of living may seem to contradict them. Always crossed by imperfection or opposite vital movements, they are still divine possibilities and can be made a first means of our growth into a spiritual unity of being with being. Certain religious disciplines have understood this truth, have taken up these relations boldly and applied them to our souls communion with God; and by a converse process they can, lifted out of their present social and physical formulas, become for us, not the poor earthly things they are now, but deep and beautiful and wonderful movements of God in man fulfilling himself in life. All the economic development of life itself takes on at its end the appearance of an attempt to get rid of the animal squalor and bareness which is what obligatory poverty really means, and to give to man the divine ease and leisure of the gods. It is pursued in a wrong way, no doubt, and with many ugly circumstances, but still the ideal is darkly there. Politics itself, that apparent game of strife and deceit and charlatanism, can be a large field of absolute idealisms. What of patriotism,never mind the often ugly instincts from which it starts and which it still obstinately preserves,but in its aspects of worship, self-giving, discipline, self-sacrifice? The great political ideals of man, monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, apart from the selfishnesses they serve and the rational and practical justifications with which they arm themselves, have had for their soul an ideal, some half-seen truth of the absolute and have carried with them a worship, a loyalty, a loss of self in the idea which have made men ready to suffer and die for them. War and strife themselves have been schools of heroism; they have preserved the heroic in man, they have created the katriys tyaktajvit of the Sanskrit Epic phrase, the men of power and courage who have abandoned their bodily life for a cause; for without heroism man cannot grow into the Godhead; courage, energy and strength are among the very first principles of the divine nature in action. All this great vital, political, economic life of man with its two powers of competition and cooperation is stumbling blindly forward towards some realisation of power and unity,in two divine directions, therefore. For the Divine in life is Power possessed of self-mastery, but also of mastery of His world, and man and mankind too move towards conquest of their world, their environment. And again the Divine in fulfilment here is and must be oneness, and the ideal of human unity however dim and far off is coming slowly into sight. The competitive nation-units are feeling, at times, however feebly as yet, the call to cast themselves into a greater unified cooperative life of the human race.
  No doubt all is still moving, however touched by dim lights from above, on a lower half rational half infrarational level, clumsily, coarsely, in ignorance of itself and as yet with little nobility of motive. All is being worked out very crudely by the confused clash of life-forces and the guidance of ideas that are half-lights of the intellect, and the means proposed are too mechanical and the aims too material; they miss the truth that the outer life-result can only endure if it is founded on inner realities. But so life in the past has moved always and must at first move. For life organises itself at first round the ego-motive and the instinct of ego-expansion is the earliest means by which men have come into contact with each other; the struggle for possession has been the first crude means towards union, the aggressive assertion of the smaller self the first step towards a growth into the larger self. All has been therefore a half-ordered confusion of the struggle for life corrected by the need and instinct of association, a struggle of individuals, clans, tribes, parties, nations, ideas, civilisations, cultures, ideals, religions, each affirming itself, each compelled into contact, association, strife with the others. For while Nature imposes the ego as a veil behind which she labours out the individual manifestation of the spirit, she also puts a compulsion on it to grow in being until it can at last expand or merge into a larger self in which it meets, harmonises with itself, comprehends in its own consciousness, becomes one with the rest of existence. To assist in this growth Life-Nature throws up in itself ego-enlarging, ego-exceeding, even ego-destroying instincts and movements which combat and correct the smaller self-affirming instincts and movements,she enforces on her human instrument impulses of love, sympathy, self-denial, self-effacement, self-sacrifice, altruism, the drive towards universality in mind and heart and life, glimmerings of an obscure unanimism that has not yet found thoroughly its own true light and motive-power. Because of this obscurity these powers, unable to affirm their own absolute, to take the lead or dominate, obliged to compromise with the demands of the ego, even to become themselves a form of egoism, are impotent also to bring harmony and transformation to life. Instead of peace they seem to bring rather a sword; for they increase the number and tension of conflict of the unreconciled forces, ideas, impulses of which the individual human consciousness and the life of the collectivity are the arena. The ideal and practical reason of man labours to find amidst all this the right law of life and action; it strives by a rule of moderation and accommodation, by selection and rejection or by the dominance of some chosen ideas or powers to reduce things to harmony, to do consciously what Nature through natural selection and instinct has achieved in her animal kinds, an automatically ordered and settled form and norm of their existence. But the order, the structure arrived at by the reason is always partial, precarious and temporary. It is disturbed by a pull from below and a pull from above. For these powers that life throws up to help towards the growth into a larger self, a wider being, are already reflections of something that is beyond reason, seeds of the spiritual, the absolute. There is the pressure on human life of an Infinite which will not allow it to rest too long in any formulation,not at least until it has delivered out of itself that which shall be its own self-exceeding and self-fulfilment.

1.17 - Practical rules for the Tragic Poet., #Poetics, #Aristotle, #Philosophy
  After this, the names being once given, it remains to fill in the episodes. We must see that they are relevant to the action. In the case of Orestes, for example, there is the madness which led to his capture, and his deliverance by means of the purificatory rite. In the drama, the episodes are short, but it is these that give extension to Epic poetry.
  Thus the story of the Odyssey can be stated briefly. A certain man is absent from home for many years; he is jealously watched by Poseidon, and left desolate. Meanwhile his home is in a wretched plight--suitors are wasting his substance and plotting against his son. At length, tempest-tost, he himself arrives; he makes certain persons acquainted with him; he attacks the suitors with his own hand, and is himself preserved while he destroys them. This is the essence of the plot; the rest is episode.

1.17 - The Transformation, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  supple, mobile and light at will, in contrast to the present fixity of the gross material form. Thus Matter will become a divine expression; the supramental Will will be able to translate the whole gamut of its inner life into corresponding changes in its own substance, much as our faces now change (although so little and so imperfectly) according to our emotions: the body will be made of concentrated energy obeying the will. Instead of being, in the powerful words of Epictetus, "a little soul carrying a corpse,"347 we will become a living soul in a living body.
  It is not just the body and the mind that will have to change with the supramental consciousness, but also life's very substance. If there is one sign that characterizes our mental civilization, it is the use of artifices. Nothing happens naturally; we are the prisoners of a thick web of substitutes: airplanes, telephones, televisions, and the plethora of instruments and devices that mask our impotence. We forget that our marvelous inventions are only the material extensions of powers that exist within us; if they were not already there, we would never have been able to invent them. We are that thaumaturge sceptic of miracles,348 Sri Aurobindo spoke of. Having delegated to machines the task of seeing for us, hearing for us, and traveling for us, we have now become helpless without them. Our human civilization, created for the joy of life, has become the slave of the means required for enjoying 346

1.18 - Further rules for the Tragic Poet., #Poetics, #Aristotle, #Philosophy
  Again, the poet should remember what has been often said, and not make an Epic structure into a Tragedy--by an Epic structure I mean one with a multiplicity of plots--as if, for instance, you were to make a tragedy out of the entire story of the Iliad. In the Epic poem, owing to its length, each part assumes its proper magnitude. In the drama the result is far from answering to the poet's expectation. The proof is that the poets who have dramatised the whole story of the Fall of Troy, instead of selecting portions, like Euripides; or who have taken the whole tale of Niobe, and not a part of her story, like Aeschylus, either fail utterly or meet with poor success on the stage. Even Agathon has been known to fail from this one defect. In his Reversals of the Situation, however, he shows a marvellous skill in the effort to hit the popular taste,--to produce a tragic effect that satisfies the moral sense. This effect is produced when the clever rogue, like Sisyphus, is outwitted, or the brave villain defeated. Such an event is probable in Agathon's sense of the word: 'it is probable,' he says, 'that many things should happen contrary to probability.'
  The Chorus too should be regarded as one of the actors; it should be an integral part of the whole, and share in the action, in the manner not of Euripides but of Sophocles. As for the later poets, their choral songs pertain as little to the subject of the piece as to that of any other tragedy. They are, therefore, sung as mere interludes, a practice first begun by Agathon. Yet what difference is there between introducing such choral interludes, and transferring a speech, or even a whole act, from one play to another?

1.19 - Equality, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   accept equally all the touches of the world pleasurable or painful without attachment or disturbance which is a necessary element in the discipline of the Gita. Therefore, even if we begin with the tamasic recoil, - which is not at all necessary, - it can only be as a first incitement to a greater endeavour, not as a permanent pessimism. The real discipline begins with the movement to mastery over these things from which we were first inclined merely to flee. It is here that the possibility of a kind of rajasic equality comes in, which is at its lowest the strong nature's pride in selfmastery, self-control, superiority to passion and weakness; but the Stoic ideal seizes upon this point of departure and makes it the key to an entire liberation of the soul from subjection to all weakness of its lower nature. As the tamasic inward recoil is a generalisation of Nature's principle of jugupsa or self-protection from suffering, so the rajasic upward movement is a generalisation of Nature's other principle of the acceptance of struggle and effort and the innate impulse of life towards mastery and victory; but it transfers the battle to the field where alone complete victory is possible. Instead of a struggle for scattered outward aims and transient successes, it proposes nothing less than the conquest of Nature and the world itself by a spiritual struggle and an inner victory. The tamasic recoil turns from both the pains and pleasures of the world to flee from them; the rajasic movement turns upon them to bear, master and rise superior to them. The Stoic self-discipline calls desire and passion into its embrace of the wrestler and crushes them between its arms, as did old Dhritarashtra in the Epic the iron image of Bhima. It endures the shock of things painful and pleasurable, the causes of the physical and mental affections of the nature, and breaks their effects to pieces; it is complete when the soul can bear all touches without being pained or attracted, excited or troubled.
  It seeks to make man the conqueror and king of his nature.

12.01 - This Great Earth Our Mother, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Progress takes place through a process of dialectics, that is to say, by way of choice between two opposites. The established harmony and uniformity becomes rigid and unalterable, has to be broken in order to start a move towards another harmony richer and higher, and this is done in the human consciousness by the growth of a free will in the individual that disobeys the established law. That is the great Disobedience of which Milton speaks so thunderingly in his famous Epic poem and which is at the very centre of the Christian religion. It means a Fall: the sense of separation itself is a falla separate egoism standing out against all and everyone, including God Himself. But this has been necessary to replace the blind obedience of an automaton by the willing and happy collaboration of a free being. That is the psychic with its free choice. The choice lies, as the Upanishad says, between 'reyas' and 'preyas'; the deliberate choice of the 'reyas' by the psychic being at every step is the great dialectic movement of evolution through which the consciousness moves forward and upward towards the supreme reality. The initial separation, disobedience or sin is the price that the individual human being has to pay in order to move towards its final destiny, the freedom and the integrality of its supreme divine fulfilment. Egoism, the fount and origin of sin, is the mask, the camouflage over the visage of God, the Individual.
   IV

1.22 - (Poetic Diction continued.) How Poetry combines elevation of language with perspicuity., #Poetics, #Aristotle, #Philosophy
  Eucleides, the elder, declared that it would be an easy matter to be a poet if you might leng then syllables at will. He caricatured the practice in the very form of his diction, as in the verse: '{Epsilon pi iota chi alpha rho eta nu / epsilon iota delta omicron nu / Mu alpha rho alpha theta omega nu alpha delta epsilon / Beta alpha delta iota zeta omicron nu tau alpha}, or, {omicron upsilon kappa / alpha nu / gamma / epsilon rho alpha mu epsilon nu omicron sigma / tau omicron nu / epsilon kappa epsilon iota nu omicron upsilon /epsilon lambda lambda epsilon beta omicron rho omicron nu}. To employ such license at all obtrusively is, no doubt, grotesque; but in any mode of poetic diction there must be moderation. Even metaphors, strange (or rare) words, or any similar forms of speech, would produce the like effect if used without propriety and with the express purpose of being ludicrous. How great a difference is made by the appropriate use of leng thening, may be seen in Epic poetry by the insertion of ordinary forms in the verse. So, again, if we take a strange (or rare) word, a metaphor, or any similar mode of expression, and replace it by the current or proper term, the truth of our observation will be manifest. For example Aeschylus and Euripides each composed the same iambic line. But the alteration of a single word by Euripides, who employed the rarer term instead of the ordinary one, makes one verse appear beautiful and the other trivial. Aeschylus in his
  Philoctetes says: {Phi alpha gamma epsilon delta alpha iota nu alpha / delta / eta / mu omicron upsilon / sigma alpha rho kappa alpha sigma / epsilon rho theta iota epsilon iota / pi omicron delta omicron sigma}.

1.23 - Epic Poetry., #Poetics, #Aristotle, #Philosophy
  object:1.23 - Epic Poetry.
  As to that poetic imitation which is narrative in form and employs a single metre, the plot manifestly ought, as in a tragedy, to be constructed on dramatic principles. It should have for its subject a single action, whole and complete, with a beginning, a middle, and an end. It will thus resemble a living organism in all its unity, and produce the pleasure proper to it. It will differ in structure from historical compositions, which of necessity present not a single action, but a single period, and all that happened within that period to one person or to many, little connected together as the events may be. For as the sea-fight at Salamis and the battle with the Carthaginians in

1.24 - (Epic Poetry continued.) Further points of agreement with Tragedy., #Poetics, #Aristotle, #Philosophy
  Again, Epic poetry must have as many kinds as Tragedy: it must be simple, or complex, or 'ethical,' or 'pathetic.' The parts also, with the exception of song and spectacle, are the same; for it requires Reversals of the Situation, Recognitions, and Scenes of Suffering.
  Moreover, the thoughts and the diction must be artistic. In all these respects Homer is our earliest and sufficient model. Indeed each of his poems has a twofold character. The Iliad is at once simple and 'pathetic,' and the Odyssey complex (for Recognition scenes run through it), and at the same time 'ethical.' Moreover, in diction and thought they are supreme.
   Epic poetry differs from Tragedy in the scale on which it is constructed, and in its metre. As regards scale or length, we have already laid down an adequate limit:--the beginning and the end must be capable of being brought within a single view. This condition will be satisfied by poems on a smaller scale than the old Epics, and answering in length to the group of tragedies presented at a single sitting.
   Epic poetry has, however, a great--a special--capacity for enlarging its dimensions, and we can see the reason. In Tragedy we cannot imitate several lines of actions carried on at one and the same time; we must confine ourselves to the action on the stage and the part taken by the players. But in Epic poetry, owing to the narrative form, many events simultaneously transacted can be presented; and these, if relevant to the subject, add mass and dignity to the poem. The Epic has here an advantage, and one that conduces to grandeur of effect, to diverting the mind of the hearer, and relieving the story with varying episodes. For sameness of incident soon produces satiety, and makes tragedies fail on the stage.
  As for the metre, the heroic measure has proved its fitness by the test of experience. If a narrative poem in any other metre or in many metres were now composed, it would be found incongruous. For of all measures the heroic is the stateliest and the most massive; and hence it most readily admits rare words and metaphors, which is another point in which the narrative form of imitation stands alone. On the other hand, the iambic and the trochaic tetrameter are stirring measures, the latter being akin to dancing, the former expressive of action. Still more absurd would it be to mix together different metres, as was done by Chaeremon. Hence no one has ever composed a poem on a great scale in any other than heroic verse. Nature herself, as we have said, teaches the choice of the proper measure.
  --
  The element of the wonderful is required in Tragedy. The irrational, on which the wonderful depends for its chief effects, has wider scope in Epic poetry, because there the person acting is not seen. Thus, the pursuit of Hector would be ludicrous if placed upon the stage--the Greeks standing still and not joining in the pursuit, and Achilles waving them back. But in the Epic poem the absurdity passes unnoticed.
  Now the wonderful is pleasing: as may be inferred from the fact that every one tells a story with some addition of his own, knowing that his hearers like it. It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of telling lies skilfully. The secret of it lies in a fallacy, For, assuming that if one thing is or becomes, a second is or becomes, men imagine that, if the second is, the first likewise is or becomes. But this is a false inference. Hence, where the first thing is untrue, it is quite unnecessary, provided the second be true, to add that the first is or has become. For the mind, knowing the second to be true, falsely infers the truth of the first. There is an example of this in the Bath Scene of the Odyssey.

1.24 - RITUAL, SYMBOL, SACRAMENT, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  It is hardly necessary to add that this process of conscious sacramentalization can be applied only to such actions as are not intrinsically evil. Somewhat unfortunately, the Gita was not originally published as an independent work, but as a theological digression within an Epic poem; and since, like most Epics, the Mahabharata is largely concerned with the exploits of warriors, it is primarily in relation to warfare that the Gitas advice to act with non-attachment and for Gods sake only is given. Now, war is accompanied and followed, among other things, by a widespread dissemination of anger and hatred, pride, cruelty and fear. But, it may be asked, is it possible (the Nature of Things being what it is) to sacramentalize actions, whose psychological by-products are so completely God-eclipsing as are these passions? The Buddha of the Pali scriptures would certainly have answered this question in the negative. So would the Lao Tzu of the Tao Teh King. So would the Christ of the Synoptic Gospels. The Krishna of the Gita (who is also, by a kind of literary accident, the Krishna of the Mahabharata) gives an affirmative answer. But this affirmative answer, it should be remembered, is hedged around with limiting conditions. Non-attached slaughter is recommended only to those, who are warriors by caste, and to whom warfare is a duty and vocation. But what is duty or dharma for the Kshatriya is adharma and forbidden to the Brahman; nor is it any part of the normal vocation or caste duty of the mercantile and labouring classes. Any confusion of castes, any assumption by one man of another mans vocation and duties of state, is always, say the Hindus, a moral evil and a menace to social stability. Thus, it is the business of the Brahmans to fit themselves to be seers, so that they may be able to explain to their fellow men the nature of the universe, of mans last end and of the way to liberation. When solthers or administrators, or usurers, or manufacturers or workers usurp the functions of the Brahmans and formulate a philosophy of life in accordance with their variously distorted notions of the universe, then society is thrown into confusion. Similarly, confusion reigns when the Brahman, the man of non-coercive spiritual authority, assumes the coercive power of the Kshatriya, or when the Kshatriyas job of ruling is usurped by bankers and stock jobbers, or finally when the warrior castes dharma of fighting is imposed, by conscription, on Brahman, Vaisya and Sudra alike. The history of Europe during the later Middle Ages and Renaissance is largely a history of the social confusions that arises when large numbers of those who should be seers abandon spiritual authority in favour of money and political power. And contemporary history is the hideous record of what happens when political bosses, businessmen or class-conscious proletarians assume the Brahmans function of formulating a philosophy of life; when usurers dictate policy and debate the issues of war and peace; and when the warriors caste duty is imposed on all and sundry, regardless of psycho-physical make-up and vocation.
  next chapter: 1.25 - SPIRITUAL EXERCISES

1.72 - Education, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  P.S. Better mention, perhaps, that literacy is no test of education. For ignorance of life, the don class leaves all others at the post; and it is these monkish and monkeyish recluses, with their hideous clatter and cackle, "The tittering, thin-bearded, Epicene," "Dwarf, fringed with fear," the obscene vole, dweller by and in backwaters that has foisted upon us the grotesque and poisonous superstition that wisdom abides only in dogs-eared, worm-eaten, mule-inspired long-forgotten as misbegotten folios.
  I like the story it is a true tale of the old Jew millionaire who bought up the annual waste of the Pennsylvania Railroad a matter of Three Million Dollars. He called with his cheque very neatly made out and signed it by making his mark! The Railroad Man was naturally flabbergasted, and could not help exclaiming, "Yet you made all those millions of yours what would you have been if only you had been able to read and write?" "Doorkeeper at the Synagogue" was the prompt reply. His illiteracy had disqualified him when he applied for the job after landing.

1958-09-24 - Living the truth - Words and experience, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
    The means by which this need [of intellectual understanding] can be satisfied and with which our nature of mind has provided us is philosophy, and in this field it must be a spiritual philosophy. Such systems have arisen in numbers in the East; for almost always, wherever there has been a considerable spiritual development, there has arisen from it a philosophy justifying it to the intellect. The method was at first an intuitive seeing and an intuitive expression, as in the fathomless thought and profound language of the Upanishads, but afterwards there was developed a critical method, a firm system of dialectics, a logical organisation. The later philosophies were an intellectual account1 or a logical justification of what had been found by inner realisation; or they provided themselves with a mental ground or a systematised method for realisation and experience.2 In the West where the syncretic tendency of the consciousness was replaced by the analytic and separative, the spiritual urge and the intellectual reason parted company almost at the outset; philosophy took from the first a turn towards a purely intellectual and ratiocinative explanation of things. Nevertheless, there were systems like the Pythagorean, Stoic, and Epicurean, which were dynamic not only for thought but for conduct of life and developed a discipline, an effort at inner perfection of the being; this reached a higher spiritual plane of knowledge in later Christian or Neo-pagan thought-structures where East and West met together. But later on the intellectualisation became complete and the connection of philosophy with life and its energies or spirit and its dynamism was either cut or confined to the little that the metaphysical idea can impress on life and action by an abstract and secondary influence. Religion has supported itself in the West not by philosophy but by a credal theology; sometimes a spiritual philosophy emerges by sheer force of individual genius, but it has not been as in the East a necessary adjunct to every considerable line of spiritual experience and endeavour. It is true that a philosophic development of spiritual thought is not entirely indispensable; for the truths of spirit can be reached more directly and completely by intuition and by a concrete inner contact. It must also be said that the critical control of the intellect over spiritual experience can be hampering and unreliable, for it is an inferior light turned upon a field of higher illumination; the true controlling power is an inner discrimination, a psychic sense and tact, a superior intervention of guidance from above or an innate and luminous inner guidance. But still this line of development too is necessary, because there must be a bridge between the spirit and the intellectual reason: the light of a spiritual or at least a spiritualised intelligence is necessary for the fullness of our total inner evolution, and without it, if another deeper guidance is lacking, the inner movement may be erratic and undisciplined, turbid and mixed with unspiritual elements or one-sided or incomplete in its catholicity. For the transformation of the Ignorance into the integral Knowledge the growth in us of a spiritual intelligence ready to receive a higher light and canalise it for all the parts of our nature is an intermediate necessity of great importance.
    The Life Divine, SABCL, Vol. 19, pp. 878-80

1969 11 08?, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   194Valmikie, our ancient Epic poet, includes among the signs of a just and enlightened state of society not only universal education, morality and spirituality but this also that there shall be none who is compelled to eat coarse food, none uncrowned and unanointed, or who lives a mean and petty slave of luxuries.
   195The acceptance of poverty is noble and beneficial in a class or an individual, but it becomes fatal and pauperises life of its richness and expansion if it is perversely organised into a general or national ideal.

1969 12 01, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   210In my ignorance I thought anger could be noble and vengeance grandiose; but now when I watch Achilles in his Epic fury, I see a very fine baby in a very fine rage and I am pleased and amused.
   211Power is noble, when it overtops anger; destruction is grandiose, but it loses caste when it proceeds from vengeance. Leave these things, for they belong to a lower humanity.

1969 12 03, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   212Poets make much of death and external afflictions; but the only tragedies are the souls failures and the only Epic mans triumphant ascent towards godhead.
   Usually man is not afflicted with the only thing truly tragic, the failure to find ones soul and to live according to its law.1
  --
   And the true Epic, the true glory is to find the Divine in oneself and to live according to His law.
   3 December 1969

1.A - ANTHROPOLOGY, THE SOUL, #Philosophy of Mind, #unset, #Zen
  A cognate question is that of the community of soul and body. This community (interdependence) was assumed as a fact, and the only problem was how to comprehend it. The usual answer, perhaps, was to call it an incomprehensible mystery; and, indeed, if we take them to be absolutely antithetical and absolutely independent, they are as impenetrable to each other as one piece of matter to another, each being supposed to be found only in the pores of the other, i.e. where the other is not - whence Epicurus, when attri buting to the gods a residence in the pores, was consistent in not imposing on them any connection with the world. A somewhat different answer has been given by all philosophers since this relation came to be expressly discussed. Descartes, Malebranche, Spinoza, and Leibniz have all indicated God as this nexus. They meant that the finitude of soul and matter were only ideal and unreal distinctions; and, so holding, there philosophers took God, not, as so often is done, merely as another word for the incomprehensible, but rather as the sole true identity of finite mind and matter. But either this identity, as in the case of Spinoza, is too abstract, or, as in the case of Leibniz, though his Monad of monads brings things into being, it does so only by an act of judgement or choice. Hence, with Leibniz, the result is a distinction between soul and the corporeal (or material), and the identity is only like the copula of a judgement, and does not rise or develop into system, into the absolute syllogism.
   390 The Soul is at first (a) In its immediate natural mode - the natural soul, which only is.

1.anon - Enuma Elish (When on high), #Anonymous - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  The origin of this The Babylonian Epic of Creation and its translator are both unknown. The original story is from the time of the Sumerians. This was written about the time of Nebuchadrezzar in the 12th century B.C.

1.anon - If this were a world, #Anonymous - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  The Epic of Gilgamesh Tablet V
   They stood at the forest's edge,

1.anon - Less profitable, #Anonymous - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  The Epic of Gilgamesh Tablet VI
  He washed out his marred hair and cleaned up his equipment(?),

1.anon - Others have told me, #Anonymous - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  The Epic of Gilgamesh Tablet I
  He who has seen everything, I will make known (?) to the lands.

1.anon - The Epic of Gilgamesh Tablet II, #Anonymous - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  object:1.anon - The Epic of Gilgamesh Tablet II
  author class:Anonymous

1.anon - The Epic of Gilgamesh Tablet III, #Anonymous - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  object:1.anon - The Epic of Gilgamesh Tablet III
  author class:Anonymous

1.anon - The Epic of Gilgamesh Tablet IV, #Anonymous - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  object:1.anon - The Epic of Gilgamesh Tablet IV
  author class:Anonymous

1.anon - The Epic of Gilgamesh TabletIX, #Anonymous - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  object:1.anon - The Epic of Gilgamesh TabletIX
  author class:Anonymous

1.anon - The Epic of Gilgamesh Tablet VII, #Anonymous - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  object:1.anon - The Epic of Gilgamesh Tablet VII
  author class:Anonymous

1.anon - The Epic of Gilgamesh Tablet VIII, #Anonymous - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  object:1.anon - The Epic of Gilgamesh Tablet VIII
  author class:Anonymous

1.anon - The Epic of Gilgamesh Tablet X, #Anonymous - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  object:1.anon - The Epic of Gilgamesh Tablet X
  author class:Anonymous

1.anon - The Epic of Gilgamesh Tablet XI The Story of the Flood, #Anonymous - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  object:1.anon - The Epic of Gilgamesh Tablet XI The Story of the Flood
  author class:Anonymous

1.anon - The Seven Evil Spirits, #Anonymous - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  [2] The Imkhullu appears also in the Creation Epic.
  [3] Adad is god of storm, Anu of heaven, Enlil of storm, Sin of the Moon, Shamash of the Sun, and Ishtar of love and fruitfulness. The meaning of Massu is unknown; but Ea was long the chief ruler.

1f.lovecraft - At the Mountains of Madness, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   a truly Epic quality where they told of the building of the new city in
   the cavern sea. The Old Ones had gone about it scientifically;

1f.lovecraft - The Nameless City, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   Holding this view, I thought I could trace roughly a wonderful Epic of
   the nameless city; the tale of a mighty sea-coast metropolis that ruled
  --
   stages of the painted Epicthe leave-taking of the race that had dwelt
   in the nameless city and the valley around for ten million years; the

1f.lovecraft - The Picture in the House, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   uninhabited islands. But the true Epicure in the terrible, to whom a
   new thrill of unutterable ghastliness is the chief end and

1f.lovecraft - The Rats in the Walls, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   Epic of the ratsthe scampering army of obscene vermin which had burst
   forth from the castle three months after the tragedy that doomed it to
  --
   the lethal army which closed the ancient Epic.
   I wonder that any man among us lived and kept his sanity through that

1f.lovecraft - Till A the Seas, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   belt was spared; no people left unrouted. It was an Epic, a titan
   tragedy whose plot was unrevealed to the actorsthis wholesale

1.jk - To Charles Cowden Clarke, #Keats - Poems, #John Keats, #Poetry
  Shew'd me that Epic was of all the king,
  Round, vast, and spanning all like Saturn's ring?

1.lovecraft - The Poe-ets Nightmare, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  Cycles and Epicycles of such girth
  That each a cosmos seem'd, dazzled my gaze

1.pbs - Peter Bell The Third, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
  Suppers of Epic poets;teas,
  Where small talk dies in agonies;

1.poe - Eureka - A Prose Poem, #Poe - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  His original idea seems to have been a compound of the true Epicurean atoms with the false nebulae of his contemporaries; and thus his theory presents us with the singular anomaly of absolute truth deduced, as a mathematical result, from a hybrid datum of ancient imagination intertangled with modern inacumen. Laplace's real strength lay, in fact, in an almost miraculous mathematical instinct: -on this he relied; and in no instance did it fail or deceive him: -in the case of the Nebular Cosmogony, it led him, blindfolded, through a labyrinth of Error, into one of the most luminous and stupendous temples of Truth.
  Let us now fancy, for the moment, that the ring first thrown off by the Sun -that is to say, the ring whose breaking-up constituted Neptune -did not, in fact, break up until the throwing-off of the ring out of which Uranus arose; that this latter ring, again, remained perfect until the discharge of that out of which sprang Saturn; that this latter, again, remained entire until the discharge of that from which originated Jupiter -and so on. Let us imagine, in a word, that no dissolution occurred among the rings until the final rejection of that which gave birth to Mercury. We thus paint to the eye of the mind a series of coexistent concentric circles; and looking as well at them as at the processes by which, according to Laplace's hypothesis, they were constructed, we perceive at once a very singular analogy with the atomic strata and the process of the original irradiation as I have described it. Is it impossible that, on measuring the forces, respectively, by which each successive planetary circle was thrown off -that is to say, on measuring the successive excesses of rotation over gravitation which occasioned the successive discharges -we should find the analogy in question more decidedly confirmed? Is it improbable that we should discover these forces to have varied -as in the original radiation -proportional to the squares of the distances?

1.rb - Caliban upon Setebos or, Natural Theology in the Island, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
  is of the Quiet--an indifferent, absentee, Epicurean God. His
  Setebos is merely a God of arbitrary and jealous power. It is

1.rb - Pippa Passes - Part I - Morning, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
  All here! Only our poet's awaynever having much meant to be present, moonstrike him! The airs of that fellow, that Giovacchino! He was in violent love with himself, and had a fair prospect of thriving in his suit, so unmolested was it,when suddenly a woman falls in love with him, too; and out of pure jealousy he takes himself off to Trieste, immortal poem and all: whereto is this prophetical epitaph appended already, as Bluphocks assures me,"Here a mammoth-poem lies, Fouled to death by butterflies." His own fault, the simpleton! Instead of cramp couplets, each like a knife in your entrails, he should write, says Bluphocks, both classically and intelligibly. sculapius, an Epic. Catalogue of the drugs: Hebe's plaisterOne strip Cools your lip. Phoebus' emulsion One bottle Clears your throttle. Mercury's bolusOne box Cures . . .
  3rd Student

1.rt - Brahm, Viu, iva, #Tagore - Poems, #Rabindranath Tagore, #Poetry
     Its Epic is formed.
     Stars in their orbits,

1.rt - Compensation, #Tagore - Poems, #Rabindranath Tagore, #Poetry
  Once I had a fancy to compose an Epic
  But by a sudden touch of your bangles
  --
  That Epic is lying at my feet in smithereens.
  Alas, those stories of wars and heroes

1.rt - The Gardener XXXVIII - My Love, Once Upon A Time, #Tagore - Poems, #Rabindranath Tagore, #Poetry
  launched a great Epic in his mind.
    Alas, I was not careful, and it struck

1.rwe - Beauty, #Emerson - Poems, #Ralph Waldo Emerson, #Philosophy
  Seas ebbed and flowed in Epic chime.
  In dens of passion, and pits of woe,

1.whitman - As A Strong Bird On Pinious Free, #Whitman - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   With all their ancient struggles, martyrs, heroes, Epics, wars, thou
      bear'st the other continents;

1.whitman - Passage To India, #Whitman - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   The flowing literatures, tremendous Epics, religions, castes,
   Old occult Brahma, interminably far backthe tender and junior

1.whitman - Song Of The Exposition, #Whitman - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   Closed for aye the Epics of Asia's, Europe's helmeted warriors;
   Calliope's call for ever closedClio, Melpomene, Thalia closed and

1.ww - The Excursion- IV- Book Third- Despondency, #Wordsworth - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  Of soft Epicureans, taught--if they
  The ends of being would secure, and win

2.02 - Meeting With the Goddess, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology
  logical and Epic works par excellence; these treat of cosmogonie, theological,
  astronomical, and physical knowledge; and (4) Tantra, texts describing tech

2.02 - The Ishavasyopanishad with a commentary in English, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
  grow them in the garden of Epicurus. So is it with the lover of
  humanity, who loses or seeks to lose his lower self in mankind;

2.02 - THE SCINTILLA, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  [47] The eye, like the sun, is a symbol as well as an allegory of consciousness.99 In alchemy the scintillulae are put together to form the gold (Sol), in the Gnostic systems the atoms of light are reintegrated. Psychologically, this doctrine testifies to the personality- or ego-character of psychic complexes: just as the distinguishing mark of the ego-complex is consciousness, so it is possible that other, unconscious complexes may possess, as splinter psyches, a certain luminosity of their own.100 From these atoms is produced the Monad (and the lapis in its various significations), in agreement with the teachings of Epicurus, who held that the concourse of atoms even produced God.101
  [48] In his chapter on knowledge,102 Dorn uses the concept of the scintillae in moral form: Let every man consider diligently in his heart what has been said above, and thus little by little he will come to see with his mental eyes a number of sparks shining day by day and more and more and growing into such a great light that thereafter all things needful to him will be made known. This light is the light of nature. As Dorn says in his Philosophia meditativa:

2.03 - Karmayogin A Commentary on the Isha Upanishad, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
  the stars; it has written the dramas of Shakespeare, the Epics of
  Valmekie and Homer and Vyasa, the philosophies of Kant and

2.04 - The Divine and the Undivine, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  It is possible to erect a faineant Deity, like the gods of Epicurus, blissful in himself, observing but indifferent to a world conducted or misconducted by a mechanical law of Nature. It is open to us to posit a Witness Self, a silent Soul in things, a
  Purusha who allows Nature to do what she will and is content to reflect all her order and all her disorders in his passive and stainless consciousness, - or a supreme Self absolute, inactive, free from all relations, unconcerned with the works of the cosmic

2.05 - On Poetry, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Sri Aurobindo: Plenty of people have written it. But this is dactylic hexameter, the metre in which the Epics of Homer and Virgil are written. It has a very fine movement and is very suitable for the Epic. I have tried it and X and Y have seen and considered it a success. I remember just a few lines:
   Old and alone he arrived, insignificant, feeblest of mortals,
  --
   Disciple: Is it true that the Epic now, after Milton, will tend to be more subjective?
   Sri Aurobindo: Yes, it is so. The idea that an Epic requires a story has been there for long, but the story as a subject for an Epic seems to be exhausted. It will have to be more subjective and the element of interpretation will have to be admitted.
   Disciple: There is an idea that the form of the Epic may be a combination of Epic and drama, or may be a series of odes in combination like the one written by Meredith.
   Sri Aurobindo: There has been an effort by Victor Hugo. His La Lgende des sicles is Epic in tone, in thought and movement. And yet it is not given its right place by the critics. It does not deal with a story but with episodes. That is the only Epic in the French language.
   Disciple: Some maintain that as there is no story in Dante's Divine Comedy it is not an Epic.
   Sri Aurobindo: It is an Epic. Paradise Lost has very little story and very few incidents, yet it is an Epic. At present men demand something more than a great story from an Epic.
   Disciple: Hyperion of Keats, is it an Epic?
   Sri Aurobindo: The first draft of it would have been an Epic if he could have kept to the height and finished the poem. But in the second draft there is already a drop a decline from the Epic height.
   Disciple: There have been Indian writers of English poetry. What do you think of them?
  --
   Sri Aurobindo: It is a very good poem; it is an exercise in Epic. I remember his Earthly Paradise which is exceedingly fine. There is a tendency to run down Morris, because he derived his inspiration from the Middle Ages as the Victorian age did not give him any subject. Shelley and Keats both tried to bring in the Epic with the subjective element, but they failed because they tried to put it in the old forms.
   Disciple: Toru Dutt has written poetry in English and was well-spoken of for some time.
  --
   Sri Aurobindo: Yes, in Epics, dramas, series of sonnets, as Isaid. But modern poets say that long poems are not poetry! Only in short poems you get the essence of pure poetry!
   Disciple: Some of the moderns have themselves written long poems. Among Indian poets Tagore would score high as he has great creative force.
  --
   Disciple: Some people have demanded of Y to attempt something big, like an Epic.
   Sri Aurobindo: For the Epic you require the power of architectural construction. With most of these poets it is yet the promise and not the fulfilment of their poetic personality.
   19 JANUARY 1940 (Evening)

2.08 - The Sword, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  Who has any idea which joint of the ordinary missionary is preferred by Epicures? It is only a matter of conjecture that Catholics are better eating than Presbyterians.
  Yet these points and their kind are the only one which have any importance at the time when the events occur.

2.0 - THE ANTICHRIST, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
  development of hedonism, upon a thoroughly morbid soil. Epicureanism,
  the pagan theory of salvation, even though it possessed a large
  --
  closely related to the above. Epicurus was a _typical_ decadent: and I
  was the first to recognise him as such.--The terror of pain, even of
  --
  on the pre-existent form of which Epicurus had waged war. One has
  only to read Lucretius in order to understand what Epicurus combated,
  _not_ Paganism, but "Christianity," that is to say the corruption of
  --
  _deliverance._--And Epicurus had triumphed, every respectable thinker
  in the Roman Empire was an Epicurean: _then St Paul appeared_ ... St
  Paul, the Chandala hatred against Rome, against "the world," the Jew,

2.1.1.04 - Reading, Yogic Force and the Development of Style, #Letters On Poetry And Art, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  You have nowhere said anything about Firdausi, the Epic poet of Persia, author of Shahnameh? How is it that you who have made your own culture so wide by means of learning so many languages have allowed a serious gap in it by not knowing Persian?
  have read Firdausi in a translation long ago, but it gave no idea at all of the poetic qualities of the original. As for gaps in the culturewell, I dont know Russian or Finnish (missing the Kalevala) and have not read the Nibelungenlied in the original, nor for that matter Pentaurs poem on the conquests of Rameses in ancient Egyptian or at least the fragment of it that survives. I dont know Arabic either but I dont mind that having read Burtons translation of the Arabian Nights which is as much a classic as the original. Anyhow the gaps are vast and many.

2.1.7.07 - On the Verse and Structure of the Poem, #Letters On Poetry And Art, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Savitri was originally written many years ago before the Mother came as a narrative poem in two parts, Part I Earth and Part II Beyond (these two parts are still extant in the scheme) each of four books or rather Part II consisted of 3 books and an epilogue. Twelve books to an Epic is a classical superstition, but this new Savitri may extend to ten books if much is added in the final revision it may be even twelve. The first book has been leng thening and leng thening out till it must be over 2000 lines, but I shall break up the original first four into five, I think in fact I have already started doing so. These first five will be, as I conceive them now, the Book of Birth, the Book of Quest, the Book of Love, the Book of Fate, the Book of Death. As for the second Part, I have not touched it yet. There was no climbing of planes there in the first version rather Savitri moves through the worlds of Night, of Twilight, of Day all of course in a spiritual sense and ended by calling down the power of the Highest Worlds of Sachchidananda. I had no idea of what the supramental World could be like at that time, so it could not enter into the scheme. As for expressing the supramental inspiration, that is a matter of the future.
  31 October 1936

2.24 - The Evolution of the Spiritual Man, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Stoic and Epicurean, which were dynamic not only for thought but for conduct of life and developed a discipline, an effort at inner perfection of the being; this reached a higher spiritual plane of knowledge in later Christian or Neo-pagan thought-structures where East and West met together. But later on the intellectualisation became complete and the connection of philosophy with life and its energies or spirit and its dynamism was either cut or confined to the little that the metaphysical idea can impress on life and action by an abstract and secondary influence. Religion has supported itself in the West not by philosophy but by a credal theology; sometimes a spiritual philosophy emerges by sheer force of individual genius, but it has not been as in the East a necessary adjunct to every considerable line of spiritual experience and endeavour. It is true that a philosophic development of spiritual thought is not entirely indispensable; for the truths of spirit can be reached more directly and completely by intuition and by a concrete inner contact. It must also be said that the critical control of the intellect over spiritual experience can be hampering and unreliable, for it is an inferior light turned upon a field of higher illumination; the true controlling power is an inner discrimination, a psychic sense and tact, a superior intervention of guidance from above or an innate and luminous inner guidance. But still this line of development too is necessary, because there must be a bridge between the spirit and the intellectual reason: the light of a spiritual or at least a spiritualised intelligence is necessary for the fullness of our total inner evolution, and without it, if another deeper guidance is lacking, the inner movement may be erratic and undisciplined, turbid and mixed with unspiritual elements or one-sided or incomplete in its catholicity. For the transformation of the Ignorance into the integral Knowledge the growth in us of a spiritual intelligence ready to receive a higher light and canalise it for all the parts of our nature is an intermediate necessity of great importance.
  But none of these three lines of approach can by themselves entirely fulfil the greater and ulterior intention of Nature; they cannot create in mental man the spiritual being, unless and until they open the door to spiritual experience. It is only by an inner realisation of what these approaches are seeking after, by an overwhelming experience or by many experiences building up an inner change, by a transmutation of the consciousness, by a liberation of the spirit from its present veil of mind, life and body that there can emerge the spiritual being. That is the final line of the soul's progress towards which the others are pointing and, when it is ready to disengage itself from the preliminary approaches, then the real work has begun and the turning-point of the change is no longer distant. Till then all that the human mental being has reached is a familiarity with the idea of things beyond him, with the possibility of an other-worldly movement, with the ideal of some ethical perfection; he may have made too some contact with greater Powers or Realities which help his mind or heart or life. A change there may be, but not the transmutation of the mental into the spiritual being. Religion and its thought and ethics and occult mysticism in ancient times produced the priest and the mage, the man of piety, the just man, the man of wisdom, many high points of mental manhood; but it is only after spiritual experience through the heart and mind began that we see arise the saint, the prophet, the Rishi, the Yogi, the seer, the spiritual sage and the mystic, and it is the religions in which these types of spiritual manhood came into being that have endured, covered the globe and given mankind all its spiritual aspiration and culture.

2.25 - List of Topics in Each Talk, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   | 09-01-39 | Epic form: Meredith, Hugo, Dante, Keats, Naidu, Harin, Masefield, Morris, Dutt |
   | 06-01-40 | Tagore on poetry, Kalelkar on art and form |

2.3.1.54 - An Epic Line, #Letters On Poetry And Art, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  object:2.3.1.54 - An Epic Line
  author class:Sri Aurobindo
  --
  Do you think the blank verse here [in the poem Agni Jatavedas] has any Epical ring?
  Nothere are sometimes Epic or almost Epic lines, but the whole or most of it has not the Epic ring. There is one Epic line
  An infinite rapture veiled by infinite pain.
  Perhaps the first three lines are near the Epicthere may be one or two others.
  19 May 1937

30.01 - World-Literature, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   In a parallel manner, the Epics of Dante and Milton have specifically dealt with the Christian ideas. To us, modern intellectuals and adorers of materia1 science most of the ideas of these two poets may seem not only grotesque but also superstitious - at least they will appear unfamiliar and strange. But once we cross the barrier of words and enter the realm of the spirit, leaving behind the outward theme, we are in contact with the inner soul and we come across something altogether different which is vast and intensely near and intimate to our own heart. Thus,
   Jehovah thundering out of Sion, throned

30.04 - Intuition and Inspiration in Art, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Intuition is inner seeing, inspiration inner hearing. Poetry breaks out of the former, music of the later. We find a considerable influence of inspiration in poetry where music looms large; e.g. in lyrics. Likewise a poetic form can often be found to a large extent in music - Wagner is an immortal instance. Inspiration is the fount of the lyric, intuition of the Epic.
   Forms of beauty and truth come into existence through the creator's intuition, and the rhythm, the gesture of truth and beauty through his inspiration. "The thing in itself," the substance, shines clear and lucid in intuition, while its character or "nature" reveals itself poignant and intimate through inspiration. One is the formative force, the other the kinetic or executive.

30.05 - Rhythm in Poetry, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   It is in this hexameter that Homer has composed his wonderful Epics with their sublime poetry. I do not wish to plague you with too many quotations from the original Greek, but let me recite the opening line of Homer's Iliad:
   Mnin a/iede, the/a, P/l/iado Achi/los
  --
   The whole of his Epic, Ilion,again is in this metre. It is in Ilion that the hexameter form has been closely followed; for in Ahana,as in our payaror the heroic couplet, in English, there is throughout rhyming at the end. This is how Ilionbegins:
   Dawn in her/journey e/ternal com/pelling the/labour

30.07 - The Poet and the Yogi, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Even at the very commencement of his immortal Epic, Meghnadbadh he invokes Saraswati the white-armed Mother of knowledge. The feeling or firm conviction is that the Mother of Knowledge is also the giver of liberation. That is why the poetry that is a help and a means to attain liberation has a special appeal to our heart.
   Of course, there are poets whose creations totally lack spirituality or even something akin to it. For example, Catullus, of whom Sri Aurobindo says: "He has as much philosophy in him as a red ant."

30.17 - Rabindranath, Traveller of the Infinite, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Rabindranath's pain did never become extreme or tragic, the note of union is there hidden in his pang of separation: "O Death, thou art an equivalent to my Lord Krishna." Death is not death pure and simple; immortality lies hidden therein. The poet had always a glimpse of the One whom he pursued in a ceaseless quest. In his 'Urvasi' this urge has reached its acme. It is there that his insight has fully opened up. The poet has attuned all the strings of his life-energy to the highest note of his inner consciousness. The realisation is as profound as the language is gathered and condensed, the metre and rhythm too are of the finest and richest quality. Here at least once the glory of a real Epic has shown itself in his poetry. The full-throated Epic tune is sounded in the voice of the poet:
   O Urvasi swaying soft and sweet,
  --
   Tagore, as it appears to me, never again reached such heights of bold imageries and in such an amplitude of melody. Enchanting moods and manners, figures and symbols, diverse and varied, were there, every one of them with its own speciality, beauty and gracefulness but it is doubtful whether they possess the sense of vastness and loftiness and Epic sweep and grandeur to that extent as here. The urge, the movement that finds expression here is not concerned merely with the aspiration of human beings or individuals; here is expressed in a profound, grandiose voice the aspiration of the inert soil and the mute earth; not merely in conscious beings but also in the subconscient world there vibrates an intense, passionate, vast, upward longing. A sleepless march proceeds towards the light from the bottom of the entire creation - not only it is finely and adequately expressed but that reality has assumed its own form as it were in word and rhythm, as a living embodiment. In 'The Awakening of the Fountain' we notice the lisping of this grand message, although the .fountain there is a mere symbol or an image, and the significance too is to a considerable extent of the nature of an oration or discourse, nevertheless fundamentally the poet's dream remains the same. So, we can say, what commenced with the 'Fountain', with the cry of a chord and the invocation of a single limb, has become a full-fledged orchestral symphony in 'Balaka': the wheel has come full circle.
   ***

3.02 - The Great Secret, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
    In my lyrics I sought to uncover the yearnings of the heart, in man or in nature, what things cry for, what their tears are for. On a larger canvas, through legends and parables, I portrayed the various facets of life's moods and urges, its rare wisdoms and common foolishnesses, gave a pulsating accent and a meaningful concreteness to episodes that constitute history, the history of man's and nature's consciousness. The tragedies and comedies of life I cast in the dramatic form too, and it is not for me to say how pleased you were to see the ancient form serving magnificently the needs and demands of the modern temperament. I moulded in unforgettable individualities figures and characters of living forces. A wider and still more explicit instrument is the novel which is perhaps more agreeable to the scientific and enquiring spirit of the age. For it is both illustrative and explanatory. I have given you the life history of individuals and social aggregates and I have attempted to give you too something of the life history of humanity taken as a whole, the massive aggregate in its circling, coiling, mounting movements. But I knew and I felt that it is not mere extension, largeness - the wide commonalty - that is enough for the human spirit. It needs uplift. It needs the grand style. So I gave you my Epic. It was indeed a whole life's labour. Well, many of you do not and did not understand, more were overawed, but all felt its magic vibration. Yes, it was my desperate attempt to tear open the veil.
    I have varied the theme and I have varied the manner. Like a consummate scientist I juggled with my words, I knew how to change their constitution and transmute them as it were, make them carry a new sense, a new tone, a new value. I could comm and something of the Ciceronian swell, something of the Miltonic amplitude, something of the Racinian suavity; I was not incapable of the simplicity of Wordsworth at his best, nor was even the Shakespearean magic quite unknown to me. The sublimity of Valmiki and the nobility of Vyasa were not peaks too high for me to compass.

3.05 - Cerberus And Furies, And That Lack Of Light, #Of The Nature Of Things, #Lucretius, #Poetry
  Even Epicurus went, his light of life
  Run out, the man in genius who o'er-topped

3.05 - The Formula of I.A.O., #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  contains in herself the Principle of Growth the Epicene Hermetic
  seed. It becomes the Babe in the Egg (AHarpocrates) by virtue of
  --
  finding the Secret Root of oneself, the Epicene Virgin who is 10
  (Malkuth) but spelt in full 20 (Jupiter).2

31.10 - East and West, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   THE East is spiritual by nature, while the West is inclined towards materialism. The East seeks for the world beyond. The West wants to possess this mundane world. Every rule, however, admits of exception, but that does not make it a sham. The same principle holds good here. The East is not wanting in Epicures like Charvaka, nor is the West wanting in personages like Saint Francis. Nevertheless, on the whole it can be said that the life-current of the East tends towards the domain beyond the senses, while that of the West is turned to the seekings of the senses. The East is firmly rooted in the eternal Truth. The West is familiar with the transient truths of the outer world. As a result of this difference the West has become skilful in action, lively and dynamic, and the East has become meditative, peace-loving and indifferent to life-activities. The present urge of mankind is to synthesise these different traits and to impart to the world at large a common, nobler and wider ideal. To-day we are convinced that these two different types of virtue are complementary to each other. The body without the soul is blind; the soul without the body is lame. The body must be infused with the spirit of the soul, and the dynamis of the soul must manifest itself through the body. This is indeed the ideal of the new synthesis.
   Let us try to throw more light on this difference so that we may comprehend the synthetic ideal more clearly. We wilt now compare and contrast, for example, the genius of Valmiki and that of Shakespeare in the field of literature. On reading Shakespeare a stamp of characters that are human is left on our mind, and Valmiki impresses us with characters that are superhuman. Shakespeare has d Epicted men solely as human beings, while Valmiki read into men the symbol of some larger and higher truth. In the works of Shakespeare we feel the touch of material life and enjoy the savour of earthly pleasure, the embrace of physical bodies with each other, as it were. But Valmiki deals with experiences and realities that exceed the bounds of ordinary earthly life. Hamlet, Macbeth and King Lear are the highlights of Shakespearae's creation. Valmiki's heroes and heroine are Rama, Ravana and Sita. The characters d Epicted by Shakespeare are men as men are or would be. But even the human characters of Valmiki contain something of the super-human, they overflow the bounds of humanity. It is not so difficult for us to grasp the clashes of sentiments that go to make up the character of Hamlet, for we are already quite familiar with them in our life; whereas the character of Rama which is not at all complex can yet hardly be adequately measured. There is a mystic vastness behind the character which can never be classed with human traits. Indeed, Rama and Ravana both are two aspects of the same Infinite. Even the drama of their earthly life is not merely founded on human qualities. The East wants to explore the Infinite, while the West wants to delve into the finite. Homer, the father of Western literature, is an illustrative example. The men of Homer's world, however mighty and powerful they may be, are after all human beings. Achilles and Hector are but the royal editions or dignified versions of our frail human nature. Never do they reflect the Infinite. The gift of the West is to bring to the fore the speciality of the finite through the senses. Plato himself did not like very much the Homerian god who to him was only "human - all too human." The gift of the East on the other hand is to manifest the Infinite and the Truth beyond the grasp of the senses with the aid of the finite, with the senses as a means.

3.1.24 - In the Moonlight, #Collected Poems, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Should we not herd in Epicurus' sty
  Whom Nature made not of a Stoic stuff?

3.2.4 - Sex, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The hldik akti is the Shakti of the Divine Ananda and Love taking possession of the whole being down to the vital and physical. But it is the Ananda and love of the Divine the spiritual, it cannot be turned to a human love and vital pleasure. It can have nothing to do with marriage. In your dream it was neither the divine nor the human that came, but a supernormal and supraphysical vital kma and joya being from that world intervening in the sleep and trying to take possession of what should be given only to the Divine. That is a particularly dangerous kind of intervention, so I had immediately to put you on your guard against it. It was of the nature of a supraphysical temptation such as the appearance of the Apsaras to the Tapaswis in the stories of the Epics and Puranas. The other dreams were dreams of success and fame and were also of the vital plane. You need not be depressed by these ordeals in the subtle worlds; they come to all in one form or another; only you have to learn vigilance and find your way through these lesser planes to the highest, so that it may be the highest that will come down into you. When these trials come, it is a sign that you are advancing, for otherwise the Powers of these worlds, whether lesser gods or Daityas, would not take the trouble to test you.
  ***

33.01 - The Initiation of Swadeshi, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Earlier preparations and abortive attempts there had been galore, with results that counted for little. This huge mammoth mass of humanity lay inert, like Kumbhakarna of the Epic story, for hundreds of years. Here and there once in a while an attempt had been made to pour into its ears fiery words of awakening, like:
   Who would live a life bereft of all freedom,

33.06 - Alipore Court, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   How simple the words, almost all monosyllabic (except five) - how easy in manner! Absolutely unadorned and still most effective! The movement is that of an arrow, strong and firm and straight. There is an Epic quality about it, what Matthew Arnold calls the "grand style simple." This piece fortunately has not been lost; it has found a place in one of Sri Aurobindo's works, in his The Doctrine of Passive Resistance,under the heading, "The Morality of Boycott." You might read it for yourselves. You will be delighted, I can assure you.
   Now I am going to divulge to you yet another secret, perhaps the most important of all, concerning our life in jail. I have said that I had Sri Aurobindo's essays on the bomb slipped out of jail by handing them over to a friend. But how was this done? By what means did we carry on this kind of secret interchange with the outside world? How we could manage to import pistols into jail remained a major headache for the police. The police invented so many theories and there was no end to the conjectures indulged in by the public.

3.4.1.05 - Fiction-Writing and Sadhana, #Letters On Poetry And Art, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  There is obviously nothing on their surface connecting the two. It may have been that the literary quality of the Essays and its depth of thought satisfied some ideal in your temperament and therefore put you into touch with the creative force behind you. A poet for instance can feel himself stimulated enough to creation after reading Homer, yet his own work may be quite different, not Epic at all and dealing with quite another order of ideas and things. It is only that the reading stimulates his inner being to create, but according to its own quite different way and purpose.
  26 October 1935

3.6.01 - Heraclitus, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The ideas of Heraclitus on which I have so far laid stress, are general, philosophical, metaphysical; they glance at those first truths of existence, devānāṁ prathamā vratāni,1 for which philosophy first seeks because they are the key to all other truths. But what is their practical effect on human life and aspiration? For that is in the end the real value of philosophy for man, to give him light on the nature of his being, the principles of his psychology, his relations with the world and with God, the fixed lines or the great possibilities of his destiny. It is the weakness of most European philosophy-not the ancient-that it lives too much in the clouds and seeks after pure metaphysical truth too exclusively for its own sake; therefore it has been a little barren because much too indirect in its bearing on life. It is the great distinction of Nietzsche among later European thinkers to have brought back something of the old dynamism and practical force into philosophy, although in the stress of this tendency he may have neglected unduly the dialectical and metaphysical side of philosophical thinking. No doubt, in seeking Truth we must seek it for its own sake first and not start with any preconceived practical aim and prepossession which would distort our disinterested view of things; but when Truth has been found, its bearing on life becomes of capital importance and is the solid justification of the labour spent in our research. Indian philosophy has always understood its double function; it has sought the Truth not only as an intellectual pleasure or the natural dharma of the reason, but in order to know how man may live by the Truth or strive after it; hence its intimate influence on the religion, the social ideas, the daily life of the people, its immense dynamic power on the mind and actions of Indian humanity. The Greek thinkers, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, the Stoics and Epicureans, had also this practical aim and dynamic force, but it acted only on the cultured few. That was because Greek philosophy, losing its ancient affiliation to the Mystics, separated itself from the popular religion; but as ordinarily Philosophy alone can give light to Religion and save it from crudeness, ignorance and superstition, so Religion alone can give, except for a few, spiritual passion and effective power to Philosophy and save it from becoming unsubstantial, abstract and sterile. It is a misfortune for both when the divine sisters part company.
  But when we seek among Heraclitus' sayings for the human application of his great fundamental thoughts, we are disappointed. He gives us little direct guidance and on the whole leaves us to draw our own profit from the packed opulence of his first ideas. What may be called his aristocratic view of life, we might regard possibly as a moral result of his philosophical conception of Power as the nature of the original principle. He tells us that the many are bad, the few good and that one is to him equal to thousands, if he be the best. Power of knowledge, power of character,-character, he says, is man's divine force,-power and excellence generally are the things that prevail in human life and are supremely valuable, and these things in their high and pure degree are rare among men, they are the difficult attainment of the few. From that, true enough so far as it goes, we might deduce a social and political philosophy. But the democrat might well answer that if there is an eminent and concentrated virtue, knowledge and force in the one or the few, so too there is a diffused virtue, knowledge and force in the many which acting collectively may outweigh and exceed isolated or rare excellences. If the king, the sage, the best are Vishnu himself, as old Indian thought also affirmed, to a degree to which the ordinary man, prākṛto janaḥ, cannot pretend, so also are "the five", the group, the people. The Divine is samaṣṭi as well as vyaṣṭi, manifested in the collectivity as well as in the individual, and the justice on which Heraclitus insists demands that both should have their effect and their value; they depend indeed and draw on each other for the effectuation of their excellences.

3.7.2.04 - The Higher Lines of Karma, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  This higher mind holds its pure and complete sway only on a few high souls, in others it acts upon the lower and outer mind but amidst much misprision, confusion and distortion of thought and will and perverting or abating mixture; on the mass of men governed by the lower egoistic, vital and conventional standards of conduct its influence is indirect and little. None the less it gives the clue we have to follow in order to pursue the spiral ascent of the lines of Karma. And first we observe that the just man follows the ethical law for its own sake and not for any other purpose whatsoever, is just for the sake of justice, righteous for the sake of righteousness, compassionate for the sake of compassion, true for the sake of truth alone. Harishchandra sacrificing self and wife and child and kingdom and subjects in an unswerving fidelity to the truth of the spoken word, Shivi giving his flesh to the hawk rather than fall from his kingly duty of protection to the fugitive, the Bodhisattwa laying his body before the famished tiger, images in which sacred or Epic legend has consecrated this greater kind of virtue, illuminate an elevation of the ethical will and a law of moral energy that asks for no return from man or living thing or from the gods of Karma, lays down no conditions, makes no calculation of consequence, of less or more or of the greatest good of the greatest number, admits neither the hedonistic nor the utilitarian measure, but does simply the act as the thing to be done because it is right and virtue and therefore the very law of being of the ethical man, the categorical imperative of his nature.
  This kind of high absoluteness in the ethical demand is appalling to the flesh and the ego, for it admits of no comfortable indulgence and compromise, no abating reserves or conditions, no profitable compact between the egoistic life and virtue. It is offensive too to the practical reason, for it ignores the complexity of the world and of human nature and seems to savour of an extremism and exclusive exaggeration as dangerous to life as it is exalted in ideal purpose. Fiat justitia ruat coelum, let justice and right be done though the heavens fall, is a rule of conduct that only the ideal mind can accept with equanimity or the ideal life tolerate in practice. And even to the larger ideal mind this absoluteness becomes untrustworthy if it is an obedience not to the higher law of the soul, but to an outward moral law, a code of conduct. For then in place of a lifting enthusiasm we have the rigidity of the Pharisee, a puritan fierceness or narrowness or the life-killing tyranny of a single insufficient side of the nature. This is not yet that higher mental movement, but a straining towards it, an attempt to rise above the transitional law and the vitalistic compromise. And it brings with it an artificiality, a tension, a coercion, often a repellent austerity which, disregarding as it does sanity and large wisdom and the simple naturalness of the true ethical mind and the flexibilities of life, tyrannising over but not transforming it, is not the higher perfection of our nature. But still even here there is the feeling out after a great return to the output of moral energy, an attempt well worth making, if the aim can indeed so be accomplished, to build up by the insistence on a rigid obedience to a law of moral action that which is yet non-existent or imperfectly existent in us but which alone can make the law of our conduct a thing true and living,an ethical being with an inalienably ethical nature. No rule imposed on him from outside, whether in the name of a supposed mechanical or impersonal law or of God or prophet, can be, as such, true or right or binding on man: it becomes that only when it answers to some demand or aids some evolution of his inner being. And when that inner being is revealed, evolved, at each moment naturally active, simply and spontaneously imperative, then we get the true, the inner and intuitive Law in its light of self-knowledge, its beauty of self-fulfilment, its intimate life significance. An act of justice, truth, love, compassion, purity, sacrifice becomes then the faultless expression, the natural outflowering of our soul of justice, our soul of truth, our soul of love and compassion, our soul of purity or sacrifice. And before the greatness of its imperative mandate to the outer nature the vital being and the practical reason and surface seeking intelligence must and do bow down as before something greater than themselves, something that belongs directly to the divine and the infinite.

38.04 - Great Time, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08, #unset, #Zen
   The Eternal Poet is pleased with his Epic
   The global rhythm of creation, Filled with felicity

4.0 - NOTES TO ZARATHUSTRA, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
  as far asunder as possible; the one, like the Epicurean gods, not
  concerning themselves in the least with the others.
  --
  martially. Otherwise the spirit becomes tame. No Epicurean "gardens"
  and mere "retirement from the masses." War (but without powder) between
  --
  The manner in which Superman must live: like an Epicurean God.
  Divine suffering is the substance of the third part of Zarathustra. The
  --
  from them a perfectly Epicurean God, a Superman, a transfigurer of
  existence.

4.1 - Jnana, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  194. Valmekie, our ancient Epic poet, includes among the signs
  448

4.2 - Karma, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  209. In my ignorance I thought anger could be noble and vengeance grandiose; but now when I watch Achilles in his Epic fury, I see a very fine baby in a very fine rage and I am pleased and amused.
  210. Power is noble, when it overtops anger; destruction is grandiose, but it loses caste when it proceeds from vengeance.
  --
  211. Poets make much of death and external afflictions; but the only tragedies are the soul's failures and the only Epic man's triumphant ascent towards godhead.
  212. The tragedies of the heart & the body are the weeping of children over their little griefs & their broken toys. Smile within

5.01 - EPILOGUE, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  in the view of the mere biologist, the human Epic resembles
  nothing so much as a way of the Cross.

5.1.01.1 - The Book of the Herald, #5.1.01 - Ilion, #unset, #Zen
  Out of his mind it arose like an Epic canto by canto;
  Each of its halls was a strophe, its chambers lines of an epode,

5.1.02 - Ahana, #Collected Poems, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Brooded out drama and Epic, structured the climb of the sonnet,
  Studied the stars and discovered the brain and the laws of its thinking,

5.3.04 - Roots in M, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  I take first the guttural roots of the M class, , , , , pure or nasalised ( etc), , , , , , , , & , , , and the nasal forms of those three groups. We must not expect to find all these roots still extant or recoverable by their traces in the comparatively modern language of the Epic & later writers, but we may fairly assume that they all at one time existed. Here the first significance which strikes us by its frequency is the sense of motion and the kindred idea of swiftness.We find & , to go, move, creep, to go, move, & in the same sense, go, move, speed, start or set out. We find signifying immediately, quickly, a boat, a fly or bee, a goat, from the sense of leaping in , in the same sense, a way, path, from an original to move, go, to go after an end, go to a goal, walk, travel, seek, leading to the modern sense of to hunt, pursue etc; , an animal, from to move, especially the swiftest of all animals or perhaps the most hunted, the deer; and all the numerous derivatives of this root; , the vital breath or an ape, from to move, flow or to leap, be active; a spider, ape or crane; in the same sense, but also applied to some kind of fish, possibly from its darting or leaping motion. Finally we have to wish or long for, which, from the analogy of & other verbs of wishing must have started from the sense of motion towards, going after, pursuing which we find in .
  ***

7.05 - Patience and Perseverance, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  Parvas of the splendid Epic poem. And reading it, they would
  201

7.5.28 - The Greater Plan, #Collected Poems, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  A preface to the Epic of the Supreme.
  Sonnets

9.99 - Glossary, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
    Mahabharata: A famous Hindu Epic.
    mahabhava: The most intense ecstatic love of God.
  --
    Ramayana: A famous Hindu Epic.
    Rambha: The name of a celestial maiden.

Aeneid, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  apparently, that the Epic was still unfinished, he directed in his will
  that the manuscript be destroyed. To the great fortune of succeeding
  --
  Calli'ope muse of Epic poetry, ix, 696.
  Ca'lybe aged priestess of Juno at Juno's Rutulian temple; her
  --
  "Lu'percal" is so established in English that the translation allows the latter accenting if an Epic caesura is read in the line): a
  cavern at the foot of the Palatine Hill, originally sacred to an
  --
  Virgil (Oxford 1931); W. F. Jackson Knight, Vergil: Epic and
  Anthropology, ed. John Christie (London 1967) reprints, with corrections, his Vergil's Troy: Essays on the Second Book of the
  --
  and especially Chapter 4 on "The Tempo of Virgilian Epic," and his
  * Virgil's "Aeneid": A Critical Description (Ann Arbor 1968);

Blazing P1 - Preconventional consciousness, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  Where seen: The terrible twos; rebellious youth; frontier mentalities; feudal kingdoms; Epic
  heroes; wild rock stars; gang leaders; soldiers of fortune66

BOOK II. -- PART II. THE ARCHAIC SYMBOLISM OF THE WORLD-RELIGIONS, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
  The whole History of that period is allegorized in the Ramayana, which is the mystic narrative in Epic
  form of the struggle between Rama -- the first king of the divine dynasty of the early Aryans -- and

BOOK I. -- PART I. COSMIC EVOLUTION, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
  and Epic poem. Read esoterically -- they will all yield the same meaning. Thus one account enumerates
  Seven worlds, exclusive of the nether worlds, also seven in number; these fourteen upper and nether

BOOK I. -- PART III. SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE CONTRASTED, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
  tation, in the sense of Epicurus, be essential and inherent in it. . . . That gravity should be innate,
  inherent and essential to matter, so that one body may act upon another at a distance, through a
  --
  the fact, that Kanada in India, and Leucippus, Democritus, and after them Epicurus -- the earliest
  atomists in Europe -- while propagating their doctrine of definite proportions, believed in Gods or
  --
  from Anaxagoras down to Epicurus, the Roman Lucretius, and finally even to Galileo, all those
  Philosophers believed more or less in ANIMATED atoms, not in invisible specks of so-called "brute"
  --
  I., p. 297.) Even Epicurus, the model Atheist and materialist, knew and believed so much in the ancient
  Wisdom, that he taught that the
  --
  perfect repose, the Epicurean Indolentia, which looks flippant enough in its expression, though not
  quite untrue.
  --
  Thomson. The Hindu and Greek Atomists -- Kanada, Leucippus, Democritus, Epicurus, Lucretius,
  etc., etc., are now reflected as in a clear mirror, in the supporters of the atomic theory of our modern
  --
  testimony of History, which shows even the Atheists of old -- such as Epicurus and Democritus -believing in gods, was false; and that philosophers like Socrates and Plato, asserting their existence,
  were mistaken enthusiasts and fools. If we hold our opinions merely on historical grounds, on the
  --
  less extended, as those of Epicurus and Gassendi, but, as Mertz shows, immaterial and metaphysical
  atoms, 'mathematical points'; or real souls, -- as explained by Henri Lachelier (Professeur agrege de
  --
  Cycle and Epicycle, orb in orb . . ."
  But with the pagans, with whom, as Coleridge has it -- ". . . . . Time, cyclical time, was their

BOOK IX. - Of those who allege a distinction among demons, some being good and others evil, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
  Among the philosophers there are two opinions about these mental emotions, which the Greeks call , while some of our own writers, as Cicero, call them perturbations,[331] some[Pg 356] affections, and some, to render the Greek word more accurately, passions. Some say that even the wise man is subject to these perturbations, though moderated and controlled by reason, which imposes laws upon them, and so restrains them within necessary bounds. This is the opinion of the Platonists and Aristotelians; for Aristotle was Plato's disciple, and the founder of the Peripatetic school. But others, as the Stoics, are of opinion that the wise man is not subject to these perturbations. But Cicero, in his book De Finibus, shows that the Stoics are here at variance with the Platonists and Peripatetics rather in words than in reality; for the Stoics decline to apply the term "goods" to external and bodily advantages,[332] because they reckon that the only good is virtue, the art of living well, and this exists only in the mind. The other philosophers, again, use the simple and customary phraseology, and do not scruple to call these things goods, though in comparison of virtue, which guides our life, they are little and of small esteem. And thus it is obvious that, whether these outward things are called goods or advantages, they are held in the same estimation by both parties, and that in this matter the Stoics are pleasing themselves merely with a novel phraseology. It seems, then, to me that in this question, whether the wise man is subject to mental passions, or wholly free from them, the controversy is one of words rather than of things; for I think that, if the reality and not the mere sound of the words is considered, the Stoics hold precisely the same opinion as the Platonists and Peripatetics. For, omitting for brevity's sake other proofs which I might adduce in support of this opinion, I will state but one which I consider conclusive. Aulus Gellius, a man of extensive erudition, and gifted with an eloquent and graceful style, relates, in his work entitled Noctes Attic,[333] that he once made a voyage with an eminent Stoic philosopher; and he goes on to relate fully and with gusto what I shall barely state, that when the ship was tossed and in danger from a violent storm, the philosopher[Pg 357] grew pale with terror. This was noticed by those on board, who, though themselves threatened with death, were curious to see whether a philosopher would be agitated like other men. When the tempest had passed over, and as soon as their security gave them freedom to resume their talk, one of the passengers, a rich and luxurious Asiatic, begins to banter the philosopher, and rally him because he had even become pale with fear, while he himself had been unmoved by the impending destruction. But the philosopher availed himself of the reply of Aristippus the Socratic, who, on finding himself similarly bantered by a man of the same character, answered, "You had no cause for anxiety for the soul of a profligate debauchee, but I had reason to be alarmed for the soul of Aristippus." The rich man being thus disposed of, Aulus Gellius asked the philosopher, in the interests of science and not to annoy him, what was the reason of his fear? And he, willing to instruct a man so zealous in the pursuit of knowledge, at once took from his wallet a book of Epictetus the Stoic,[334] in which doctrines were advanced which precisely harmonized with those of Zeno and Chrysippus, the founders of the Stoical school. Aulus Gellius says that he read in this book that the Stoics maintain that there are certain impressions made on the soul by external objects which they call phantasi, and that it is not in the power of the soul to determine whether or when it shall be invaded by these. When these impressions are made by alarming and formidable objects, it must needs be that they move the soul even of the wise man, so that for a little he trembles with fear, or is depressed by sadness, these impressions anticipating the work of reason and self-control; but this does not imply that the mind accepts these evil impressions, or approves or consents to them. For this consent is, they think, in a man's power; there being this difference between the mind of the wise man and that of the fool, that the fool's mind yields to these passions and consents to them, while that of the wise man, though it cannot help being invaded by them, yet retains with unshaken firmness a true and steady persuasion of those things which it ought rationally to desire or avoid. This account of what[Pg 358] Aulus Gellius relates that he read in the book of Epictetus about the sentiments and doctrines of the Stoics I have given as well as I could, not, perhaps, with his choice language, but with greater brevity, and, I think, with greater clearness. And if this be true, then there is no difference, or next to none, between the opinion of the Stoics and that of the other philosophers regarding mental passions and perturbations, for both parties agree in maintaining that the mind and reason of the wise man are not subject to these. And perhaps what the Stoics mean by asserting this, is that the wisdom which characterizes the wise man is clouded by no error and sullied by no taint, but, with this reservation that his wisdom remains undisturbed, he is exposed to the impressions which the goods and ills of this life (or, as they prefer to call them, the advantages or disadvantages) make upon them. For we need not say that if that philosopher had thought nothing of those things which he thought he was forthwith to lose, life and bodily safety, he would not have been so terrified by his danger as to betray his fear by the pallor of his cheek. Nevertheless, he might suffer this mental disturbance, and yet maintain the fixed persuasion that life and bodily safety, which the violence of the tempest threatened to destroy, are not those good things which make their possessors good, as the possession of righteousness does. But in so far as they persist that we must call them not goods but advantages, they quarrel about words and neglect things. For what difference does it make whether goods or advantages be the better name, while the Stoic no less than the Peripatetic is alarmed at the prospect of losing them, and while, though they name them differently, they hold them in like esteem? Both parties assure us that, if urged to the commission of some immorality or crime by the threatened loss of these goods or advantages, they would prefer to lose such things as preserve bodily comfort and security rather than commit such things as violate righteousness. And thus the mind in which this resolution is well grounded suffers no perturbations to prevail with it in opposition to reason, even though they assail the weaker parts of the soul; and not only so, but it rules over them, and, while it refuses its consent and resists them, administers[Pg 359] a reign of virtue. Such a character is ascribed to neas by Virgil when he says,
  "He stands immovable by tears, Nor tenderest words with pity hears."[335]
  --
  We need not at present give a careful and copious exposition of the doctrine of Scripture, the sum of Christian knowledge, regarding these passions. It subjects the mind itself to God, that He may rule and aid it, and the passions, again, to the mind, to moderate and bridle them, and turn them to righteous uses. In our ethics, we do not so much inquire whether a pious soul is angry, as why he is angry; not whether he is sad, but what is the cause of his sadness; not whether he fears, but what he fears. For I am not aware that any right thinking person would find fault with anger at a wrongdoer which seeks his amendment, or with sadness which intends relief to the suffering, or with fear lest one in danger be destroyed. The Stoics, indeed, are accustomed to condemn compassion.[336] But how much more honourable had it been in that Stoic we have been telling of, had he been disturbed by compassion prompting him to relieve a fellow-creature, than to be disturbed by the fear of shipwreck! Far better, and more humane, and more consonant with pious sentiments, are the words of Cicero in praise of Csar, when he says, "Among your virtues none is more admirable and agreeable than your compassion."[337] And what is compassion but a fellow-feeling for another's misery, which prompts us to help him if we can? And this emotion is obedient to reason, when compassion is shown without violating right, as when the poor are relieved, or the penitent forgiven. Cicero, who knew how to use language, did not hesitate to call this a virtue, which the Stoics are not ashamed to reckon among the vices, although, as the book of that eminent Stoic, Epictetus, quoting the opinions of Zeno and Chrysippus, the founders of the school, has taught us, they admit that passions of this kind invade the soul of the wise man, whom they would have to be free from all vice.[Pg 360] Whence it follows that these very passions are not judged by them to be vices, since they assail the wise man without forcing him to act against reason and virtue; and that, therefore, the opinion of the Peripatetics or Platonists and of the Stoics is one and the same. But, as Cicero says,[338] mere logomachy is the bane of these pitiful Greeks, who thirst for contention rather than for truth. However, it may justly be asked, whether our subjection to these affections, even while we follow virtue, is a part of the infirmity of this life? For the holy angels feel no anger while they punish those whom the eternal law of God consigns to punishment, no fellow-feeling with misery while they relieve the miserable, no fear while they aid those who are in danger; and yet ordinary language ascribes to them also these mental emotions, because, though they have none of our weakness, their acts resemble the actions to which these emotions move us; and thus even God Himself is said in Scripture to be angry, and yet without any perturbation. For this word is used of the effect of His vengeance, not of the disturbing mental affection.
  6. Of the passions which, according to Apuleius, agitate the demons who are supposed by him to mediate between gods and men.

Book of Genesis, #The Bible, #Anonymous, #Various
  The primeval story of creation in Genesis has been compared to other ancient literatures, such as the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, the Atrahasis Epic, and the Babylonian Enuma Elish, as well as ancient writings of Egypt and Greece. These diverse writings indicate the universal concept of God and the creation of the world. What is unique is that the Book of Genesis records only one God, the Lord God of Israel.
  Seven key themes of Hebrew Scripture are initiated in the Book of Genesis and are developed throughout the Torah: God is one; the goodness of creation and the world; God's undying love for his creation mankind in spite of man's sin and disobedience; God presides with justice and mercy; God is active in history by making covenants with Israel, his chosen people; the proper response of obedience to God's Word through observance of traditions and institutions will bring blessings; the gift of Hope through prophecy of the coming Messiah.
  --
  Genesis 3:15 has been given a messianic interpretation, and has become known as the "First Gospel," or the Protoevangelium - the first announcement of the Messiah and Redeemer, of a battle between the serpent and the Woman, and of the final victory of a descendant of hers. The presence of the ancient Hebrew Epicene personal pronoun that begins the second sentence of Genesis 3:15 explains the Latin Vulgate and Douay-Rheims female interpretation of the word ("she" - referring to the Woman), and the Revised Standard Version and NIV male interpretation of the word ("he" - referring to the seed or offspring of the Woman).
  The fall of Adam and Eve led to a geometric progression of sin. Noah is introduced (Chapters 6-9) as the one righteous man. The history of Noah is marked by the Hebrew lunar calendar, for the word for new moon, month - - odesh - is recorded in Genesis 7:11. God finally brought judgement through the Flood, but saved Noah and made a Covenant (9:8) with Noah, his family, and all living creatures. Eber - - (an eponym for Hebrew) was a descendant of Shem (10:21, 11:16). In spite of man's disobedience, God remains faithful to his creation, the human race. The consistent pattern of covenant, fall, judgement, and redemption that is evident in Genesis persists throughout Hebrew Scripture.

Book of Imaginary Beings (text), #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  What was the giant Humbaba like, who guards the mountain cedars in that pieced-together Assyrian Epic Gilgamesh,
  which may be the worlds oldest poem? Georg Burckhardt
  --
  and brought them to Odins Epic paradise. There, in the Hall
  of the Slain, Valhalla, whose ceiling was of gold and was

BOOK VIII. - Some account of the Socratic and Platonic philosophy, and a refutation of the doctrine of Apuleius that the demons should be worshipped as mediators between gods and men, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
  If, then, Plato defined the wise man as one who imitates, knows, loves this God, and who is rendered blessed through fellowship with Him in His own blessedness, why discuss with the other philosophers? It is evident that none come nearer to us than the Platonists. To them, therefore, let that fabulous theology give place which delights the minds of men with the crimes of the gods; and that civil theology also, in which impure demons, under the name of gods, have seduced the peoples of the earth given up to earthly pleasures, desiring to be honoured by the errors of men, and, by filling the minds of their worshippers with impure desires, exciting them to make the representation of their crimes one of the rites of their worship, whilst they themselves found in the spectators of these exhibitions a most pleasing spectacle,a theology in which, whatever was honourable in the temple, was defiled by its mixture with the obscenity of the theatre, and whatever was base in the theatre was vindicated by the abominations of the temples. To these philosophers also the interpretations of Varro must give place, in which he explains the sacred rites as having reference to heaven and earth, and to the seeds and operations of perishable things; for, in the first place, those rites have not the signification which he would have men believe is attached to them, and therefore truth does not follow him in his attempt so to interpret them; and even if they had this signification, still those things ought not to be worshipped by the rational soul as its god which are placed below it in the scale of nature, nor ought the soul to prefer to itself as gods things to which the true God has given it the preference. The same must be said of those writings pertaining to the sacred rites, which Numa Pompilius took care to conceal by causing them to be buried along with himself, and which,[Pg 313] when they were afterwards turned up by the plough, were burned by order of the senate. And, to treat Numa with all honour, let us mention as belonging to the same rank as these writings that which Alexander of Macedon wrote to his mother as communicated to him by Leo, an Egyptian high priest. In this letter not only Picus and Faunus, and neas and Romulus, or even Hercules and sculapius and Liber, born of Semele, and the twin sons of Tyndareus, or any other mortals who have been deified, but even the principal gods themselves,[294] to whom Cicero, in his Tusculan questions,[295] alludes without mentioning their names, Jupiter, Juno, Saturn, Vulcan, Vesta, and many others whom Varro attempts to identify with the parts or the elements of the world, are shown to have been men. There is, as we have said, a similarity between this case and that of Numa; for, the priest being afraid because he had revealed a mystery, earnestly begged of Alexander to comm and his mother to burn the letter which conveyed these communications to her. Let these two theologies, then, the fabulous and the civil, give place to the Platonic philosophers, who have recognised the true God as the author of all things, the source of the light of truth, and the bountiful bestower of all blessedness. And not these only, but to these great acknowledgers of so great a God, those philosophers must yield who, having their mind enslaved to their body, supposed the principles of all things to be material; as Thales, who held that the first principle of all things was water; Anaximenes, that it was air; the Stoics, that it was fire; Epicurus, who affirmed that it consisted of atoms, that is to say, of minute corpuscules; and many others whom it is needless to enumerate, but who believed that bodies, simple or compound, animate or inanimate, but nevertheless bodies, were the cause and principle of all things. For some of themas, for instance, the Epicureansbelieved that living things could originate from things without life; others held that all things living or without life spring from a living principle, but that, nevertheless, all things, being material, spring from a material principle. For the Stoics thought that fire, that is, one of the four material elements of which this visible[Pg 314] world is composed, was both living and intelligent, the maker of the world and of all things contained in it,that it was in fact God. These and others like them have only been able to suppose that which their hearts enslaved to sense have vainly suggested to them. And yet they have within themselves something which they could not see: they represented to themselves inwardly things which they had seen without, even when they were not seeing them, but only thinking of them. But this representation in thought is no longer a body, but only the similitude of a body; and that faculty of the mind by which this similitude of a body is seen is neither a body nor the similitude of a body; and the faculty which judges whether the representation is beautiful or ugly is without doubt superior to the object judged of. This principle is the understanding of man, the rational soul; and it is certainly not a body, since that similitude of a body which it beholds and judges of is itself not a body. The soul is neither earth, nor water, nor air, nor fire, of which four bodies, called the four elements, we see that this world is composed. And if the soul is not a body, how should God, its Creator, be a body? Let all those philosophers, then, give place, as we have said, to the Platonists, and those also who have been ashamed to say that God is a body, but yet have thought that our souls are of the same nature as God. They have not been staggered by the great changeableness of the soul,an attri bute which it would be impious to ascribe to the divine nature,but they say it is the body which changes the soul, for in itself it is unchangeable. As well might they say, "Flesh is wounded by some body, for in itself it is invulnerable." In a word, that which is unchangeable can be changed by nothing, so that that which can be changed by the body cannot properly be said to be immutable.
  6. Concerning the meaning of the Platonists in that part of philosophy called physical.
  --
  Then, again, as far as regards the doctrine which treats of that which they call logic, that is, rational philosophy, far be it from us to compare them with those who attri buted to the bodily senses the faculty of discriminating truth, and thought that all we learn is to be measured by their untrustworthy and fallacious rules. Such were the Epicureans, and all of the same school. Such also were the Stoics, who ascribed to the bodily senses that expertness in disputation which they so ardently love, called by them dialectic, asserting that from the senses the mind conceives the notions () of those things which they explicate by definition. And hence is developed the whole plan and connection of their learning and teaching. I often wonder, with respect to this, how they can say that none are beautiful but the wise; for by what bodily sense have they perceived that beauty, by what eyes of the flesh have they seen wisdom's comeliness[Pg 317] of form? Those, however, whom we justly rank before all others, have distinguished those things which are conceived by the mind from those which are perceived by the senses, neither taking away from the senses anything to which they are competent, nor attri buting to them anything beyond their competency. And the light of our understandings, by which all things are learned by us, they have affirmed to be that selfsame God by whom all things were made.
  8. That the Platonists hold the first rank in moral philosophy also.

BOOK VI. - Of Varros threefold division of theology, and of the inability of the gods to contri bute anything to the happiness of the future life, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
  Let us see, now, what he says concerning the second kind. "The second kind which I have explained," he says, "is that concerning which philosophers have left many books, in which they treat such questions as these: what gods there are, where they are, of what kind and character they are, since what time they have existed, or if they have existed from eternity; whether they are of fire, as Heraclitus believes; or of number, as Pythagoras; or of atoms, as Epicurus says; and other such things, which men's ears can more easily hear inside the walls of a school than outside in the Forum." He finds fault with nothing in this kind of theology which they call physical, and which belongs to philosophers, except that he has related their controversies among themselves, through which there has arisen a multitude of dissentient sects. Nevertheless he has removed this kind from the Forum, that is, from the populace, but he has shut it up in schools. But that first kind, most false and most base, he has not removed from the citizens. Oh, the religious ears of the people, and among them even those of the Romans, that are not able to bear what the philosophers dispute concerning the gods! But when the poets sing and stage-players act such things as are derogatory to the dignity and the nature of the immortals, such as may befall not a man merely, but the most contemptible man, they not only bear, but willingly listen to. Nor is this all, but they even consider that these things please the gods, and that they are propitiated by them.
  But some one may say, Let us distinguish these two kinds of theology, the mythical and the physical,that is, the fabulous and the natural,from this civil kind about which we are now speaking. Anticipating this, he himself has distinguished them. Let us see now how he explains the civil theology itself. I see, indeed, why it should be distinguished as fabulous, even because it is false, because it is base, because it is unworthy. But to wish to distinguish the natural from the civil, what else is that but to confess that the civil itself is false? For if that be natural, what fault has it that it should be excluded? And if this which is called civil be not[Pg 240] natural, what merit has it that it should be admitted? This, in truth, is the cause why he wrote first concerning human things, and afterwards concerning divine things; since in divine things he did not follow nature, but the institution of men. Let us look at this civil theology of his. "The third kind," says he, "is that which citizens in cities, and especially the priests, ought to know and to administer. From it is to be known what god each one may suitably worship, what sacred rites and sacrifices each one may suitably perform." Let us still attend to what follows. "The first theology," he says, "is especially adapted to the theatre, the second to the world, the third to the city." Who does not see to which he gives the palm? Certainly to the second, which he said above is that of the philosophers. For he testifies that this pertains to the world, than which they think there is nothing better. But those two theologies, the first and the third,to wit, those of the theatre and of the city,has he distinguished them or united them? For although we see that the city is in the world, we do not see that it follows that any things belonging to the city pertain to the world. For it is possible that such things may be worshipped and believed in the city, according to false opinions, as have no existence either in the world or out of it. But where is the theatre but in the city? Who instituted the theatre but the state? For what purpose did it constitute it but for scenic plays? And to what class of things do scenic plays belong but to those divine things concerning which these books of Varro's are written with so much ability?

BOOK V. - Of fate, freewill, and God's prescience, and of the source of the virtues of the ancient Romans, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
  Philosophers,who place the end of human good in virtue itself, in order to put to shame certain other philosophers, who indeed approve of the virtues, but measure them all with reference to the end of bodily pleasure, and think that this pleasure is to be sought for its own sake, but the virtues on account of pleasure,are wont to paint a kind of word-picture, in which Pleasure sits like a luxurious queen on a royal seat, and all the virtues are subjected to her as slaves, watching her nod, that they may do whatever she shall command. She commands Prudence to be ever on the watch to discover how Pleasure may rule, and be safe. Justice she orders to grant what benefits she can, in order to secure those friendships which are necessary for bodily pleasure; to do wrong to no one, lest, on account of the breaking of the laws, Pleasure be not able to live in security. Fortitude she orders to keep her mistress, that is, Pleasure, bravely in her mind, if any affliction befall her body which does not occasion death, in order that by remembrance of former delights she may mitigate the poignancy of present pain. Temperance she commands to take only a certain quantity even of the most favourite food, lest, through immoderate use, anything prove hurtful by disturbing the health of the body, and thus Pleasure, which the Epicureans make to consist chiefly in the health of the body, be grievously offended. Thus the virtues, with the whole dignity of their glory, will be the slaves of Pleasure, as of some imperious and disreputable woman.
  There is nothing, say our philosophers, more disgraceful[Pg 218] and monstrous than this picture, and which the eyes of good men can less endure. And they say the truth. But I do not think that the picture would be sufficiently becoming, even if it were made so that the virtues should be represented as the slaves of human glory; for, though that glory be not a luxurious woman, it is nevertheless puffed up, and has much vanity in it. Wherefore it is unworthy of the solidity and firmness of the virtues to represent them as serving this glory, so that Prudence shall provide nothing, Justice distribute nothing, Temperance moderate nothing, except to the end that men may be pleased and vainglory served. Nor will they be able to defend themselves from the charge of such baseness, whilst they, by way of being despisers of glory, disregard the judgment of other men, seem to themselves wise, and please themselves. For their virtue,if, indeed, it is virtue at all,is only in another way subjected to human praise; for he who seeks to please himself seeks still to please man. But he who, with true piety towards God, whom he loves, believes, and hopes in, fixes his attention more on those things in which he displeases himself, than on those things, if there are any such, which please himself, or rather, not himself, but the truth, does not attri bute that by which he can now please the truth to anything but to the mercy of Him whom he has feared to displease, giving thanks for what in him is healed, and pouring out prayers for the healing of that which is yet unhealed.

BOOK XI. - Augustine passes to the second part of the work, in which the origin, progress, and destinies of the earthly and heavenly cities are discussed.Speculations regarding the creation of the world, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
  Next, we must see what reply can be made to those who agree that God is the Creator of the world, but have difficulties about the time of its creation, and what reply, also, they can make to difficulties we might raise about the place of its creation. For, as they demand why the world was created then and no sooner, we may ask why it was created just here where it is, and not elsewhere. For if they imagine infinite spaces of time before the world, during which God could not have been idle, in like manner they may conceive outside the world infinite realms of space, in which, if any one says that the Omnipotent cannot hold His hand from working, will it not follow that they must adopt Epicurus' dream of innumerable worlds? with this difference only, that he asserts that they are formed and destroyed by the fortuitous movements of atoms, while they will hold that they are made by God's hand, if they maintain that, throughout the boundless immensity of space, stretching interminably in every direction round the world, God cannot rest, and that the worlds which they suppose Him to make cannot be destroyed. For here the question is with those who, with ourselves, believe that God is spiritual, and the Creator of all existences but Himself. As for others, it is a condescension to dispute with them on a religious question, for they have acquired a reputation only among men[Pg 442] who pay divine honours to a number of gods, and have become conspicuous among the other philosophers for no other reason than that, though they are still far from the truth, they are near it in comparison with the rest. While these, then, neither confine in any place, nor limit, nor distribute the divine substance, but, as is worthy of God, own it to be wholly though spiritually present everywhere, will they perchance say that this substance is absent from such immense spaces outside the world, and is occupied in one only, (and that a very little one compared with the infinity beyond,) the one, namely, in which is the world? I think they will not proceed to this absurdity. Since they maintain that there is but one world, of vast material bulk, indeed, yet finite, and in its own determinate position, and that this was made by the working of God, let them give the same account of God's resting in the infinite times before the world as they give of His resting in the infinite spaces outside of it. And as it does not follow that God set the world in the very spot it occupies and no other by accident rather than by divine reason, although no human reason can comprehend why it was so set, and though there was no merit in the spot chosen to give it the precedence of infinite others, so neither does it follow that we should suppose that God was guided by chance when He created the world in that and no earlier time, although previous times had been running by during an infinite past, and though there was no difference by which one time could be chosen in preference to another. But if they say that the thoughts of men are idle when they conceive infinite places, since there is no place beside the world, we reply that, by the same showing, it is vain to conceive of the past times of God's rest, since there is no time before the world.
  6. That the world and time had both one beginning, and the one did not anticipate the other.

BOOK XIII. - That death is penal, and had its origin in Adam's sin, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
  [451] A common question among the Epicureans; urged by Velleius in Cic. De Nat. Deor. i. 9; adopted by the Manichans and spoken to by Augustine in the Conf. xi. 10, 12, also in De Gen. contra Man. i. 3.
  [452] The Neo-Platonists.
  --
  [536] The former opinion was held by Democritus and his disciple Epicurus; the latter by Heraclitus, who supposed that "God amused Himself" by thus renewing worlds.
  [537] The Alexandrian Neo-Platonists endeavoured in this way to escape from the obvious meaning of the Timus.

BOOK XIV. - Of the punishment and results of mans first sin, and of the propagation of man without lust, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
  First, we must see what it is to live after the flesh, and what to live after the spirit. For any one who either does not recollect, or does not sufficiently weigh, the language of sacred Scripture, may, on first hearing what we have said, suppose that the Epicurean philosophers live after the flesh, because they place man's highest good in bodily pleasure; and that those others do so who have been of opinion that in some form or other bodily good is man's supreme good; and that the mass of men do so who, without dogmatizing or philosophizing on the subject, are so prone to lust that they cannot delight in any pleasure save such as they receive from bodily sensations: and he may suppose that the Stoics, who place the supreme good of men in the soul, live after the spirit; for what is man's soul, if not spirit? But in the sense of the divine Scripture both are proved to live after the flesh. For by flesh it means not only the body of a terrestrial and mortal animal, as when it says, "All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, another of birds,"[2] but it uses this word in many other significations; and among these various usages, a frequent one is to use flesh for man himself, the nature of man taking the part for the whole, as in the words, "By the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified;"[3] for what does he mean here by "no flesh" but "no man?" And this, indeed, he shortly after says more plainly: "No man shall be justified by the law;"[4] and in the Epistle to the Galatians, "Knowing that a man is not justified by the[Pg 3] works of the law." And so we understand the words, "And the Word was made flesh,"[5]that is, man, which some not accepting in its right sense, have supposed that Christ had not a human soul.[6] For as the whole is used for the part in the words of Mary Magdalene in the Gospel, "They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him,"[7] by which she meant only the flesh of Christ, which she supposed had been taken from the tomb where it had been buried, so the part is used for the whole, flesh being named, while man is referred to, as in the quotations above cited.
  Since, then, Scripture uses the word flesh in many ways, which there is not time to collect and investigate, if we are to ascertain what it is to live after the flesh (which is certainly evil, though the nature of flesh is not itself evil), we must carefully examine that passage of the epistle which the Apostle Paul wrote to the Galatians, in which he says, "Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God."[8] This whole passage of the apostolic epistle being considered, so far as it bears on the matter in hand, will be sufficient to answer the question, what it is to live after the flesh. For among the works of the flesh which he said were manifest, and which he cited for condemnation, we find not only those which concern the pleasure of the flesh, as fornications, uncleanness, lasciviousness, drunkenness, revellings, but also those which, though they be remote from fleshly pleasure, reveal the vices of the soul. For who does not see that idolatries, witchcrafts, hatreds, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, heresies, envyings, are vices rather of the soul than of the flesh? For it is quite possible for a man to abstain from fleshly pleasures for the sake of idolatry or some heretical error; and yet, even when he does so, he is proved by this apostolic authority to be living after the flesh; and in[Pg 4] abstaining from fleshly pleasure, he is proved to be practising damnable works of the flesh. Who that has enmity has it not in his soul? or who would say to his enemy, or to the man he thinks his enemy, You have a bad flesh towards me, and not rather, You have a bad spirit towards me? In fine, if any one heard of what I may call "carnalities," he would not fail to attribute them to the carnal part of man; so no one doubts that "animosities" belong to the soul of man. Why then does the doctor of the Gentiles in faith and verity call all these and similar things works of the flesh, unless because, by that mode of speech whereby the part is used for the whole, he means us to understand by the word flesh the man himself?

BOOK XIX. - A review of the philosophical opinions regarding the Supreme Good, and a comparison of these opinions with the Christian belief regarding happiness, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
  To illustrate briefly what he means, I must begin with his own introductory statement in the above-mentioned book, that there are four things which men desire, as it were by nature without a master, without the help of any instruction, without industry or the art of living which is called virtue, and which is certainly learned:[620] either pleasure, which is an agreeable stirring of the bodily sense; or repose, which excludes every bodily inconvenience; or both these, which Epicurus calls by the one name, pleasure; or the primary objects of nature,[621] which comprehend the things already named and other things, either bodily, such as health, and safety, and integrity of the members, or spiritual, such as the greater and less mental gifts that are found in men. Now these four thingspleasure, repose, the two combined, and the primary objects of natureexist in us in such sort that we must either desire virtue on their account, or them for the sake of virtue, or both for their own sake; and consequently there arise from this distinction twelve sects, for each is by this consideration tripled. I will illustrate this in one instance, and, having done so, it will not be difficult to understand the others. According, then, as bodily pleasure is subjected, preferred, or united to virtue, there are three sects. It is subjected to virtue when it is chosen as subservient to virtue. Thus it is[Pg 295] a duty of virtue to live for one's country, and for its sake to beget children, neither of which can be done without bodily pleasure. For there is pleasure in eating and drinking, pleasure also in sexual intercourse. But when it is preferred to virtue, it is desired for its own sake, and virtue is chosen only for its sake, and to effect nothing else than the attainment or preservation of bodily pleasure. And this, indeed, is to make life hideous; for where virtue is the slave of pleasure it no longer deserves the name of virtue. Yet even this disgraceful distortion has found some philosophers to patronize and defend it. Then virtue is united to pleasure when neither is desired for the other's sake, but both for their own. And therefore, as pleasure, according as it is subjected, preferred, or united to virtue, makes three sects, so also do repose, pleasure and repose combined, and the prime natural blessings, make their three sects each. For as men's opinions vary, and these four things are sometimes subjected, sometimes preferred, and sometimes united to virtue, there are produced twelve sects. But this number again is doubled by the addition of one difference, viz. the social life; for whoever attaches himself to any of these sects does so either for his own sake alone, or for the sake of a companion, for whom he ought to wish what he desires for himself. And thus there will be twelve of those who think some one of these opinions should be held for their own sakes, and other twelve who decide that they ought to follow this or that philosophy not for their own sakes only, but also for the sake of others whose good they desire as their own. These twenty-four sects again are doubled, and become forty-eight by adding a difference taken from the New Academy. For each of these four and twenty sects can hold and defend their opinion as certain, as the Stoics defended the position that the supreme good of man consisted solely in virtue; or they can be held as probable, but not certain, as the New Academics did. There are, therefore, twenty-four who hold their philosophy as certainly true, other twenty-four who hold their opinions as probable, but not certain. Again, as each person who attaches himself to any of these sects may adopt the mode of life either of the Cynics or of the other philosophers, this distinction will double the number,[Pg 296] and so make ninety-six sects. Then, lastly, as each of these sects may be adhered to either by men who love a life of ease, as those who have through choice or necessity addicted themselves to study, or by men who love a busy life, as those who, while philosophizing, have been much occupied with state affairs and public business, or by men who choose a mixed life, in imitation of those who have apportioned their time partly to erudite leisure, partly to necessary business: by these differences the number of the sects is tripled, and becomes 288.
  I have thus, as briefly and lucidly as I could, given in my own words the opinions which Varro expresses in his book. But how he refutes all the rest of these sects, and chooses one, the Old Academy, instituted by Plato, and continuing to Polemo, the fourth teacher of that school of philosophy which held that their system was certain; and how on this ground he distinguishes it from the New Academy,[622] which began with Polemo's successor Arcesilaus, and held that all things are uncertain; and how he seeks to establish that the Old Academy was as free from error as from doubt,all this, I say, were too long to enter upon in detail, and yet I must not altogether pass it by in silence. Varro then rejects, as a first step, all those differences which have multiplied the number of sects; and the ground on which he does so is that they are not differences about the supreme good. He maintains that in philosophy a sect is created only by its having an opinion of its own different from other schools on the point of the ends-in-chief. For man has no other reason for philosophizing than that he may be happy; but that which makes him happy is itself the supreme good. In other words, the supreme good is the reason of philosophizing; and therefore that cannot be called a sect of philosophy which pursues no way of its own towards the supreme good. Thus, when it is asked whether a wise man will adopt the social life, and desire and be interested in the supreme good of his friend as in his own, or will, on the contrary, do all that he does merely for his own sake, there is no question here about the supreme good, but only about the propriety of associating or not associating a friend in its participation: whether the wise man will do this[Pg 297] not for his own sake, but for the sake of his friend in whose good he delights as in his own. So, too, when it is asked whether all things about which philosophy is concerned are to be considered uncertain, as by the New Academy, or certain, as the other philosophers maintain, the question here is not what end should be pursued, but whether or not we are to believe in the substantial existence of that end; or, to put it more plainly, whether he who pursues the supreme good must maintain that it is a true good, or only that it appears to him to be true, though possibly it may be delusive,both pursuing one and the same good. The distinction, too, which is founded on the dress and manners of the Cynics, does not touch the question of the chief good, but only the question whether he who pursues that good which seems to himself true should live as do the Cynics. There were, in fact, men who, though they pursued different things as the supreme good, some choosing pleasure, others virtue, yet adopted that mode of life which gave the Cynics their name. Thus, whatever it is which distinguishes the Cynics from other philosophers, this has no bearing on the choice and pursuit of that good which constitutes happiness. For if it had any such bearing, then the same habits of life would necessitate the pursuit of the same chief good, and diverse habits would necessitate the pursuit of different ends.

BOOK XVIII. - A parallel history of the earthly and heavenly cities from the time of Abraham to the end of the world, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
  But what author of any sect is so approved in this demon-worshipping city, that the rest who have differed from or opposed him in opinion have been disapproved? The Epicureans asserted that human affairs were not under the providence of the gods; and the Stoics, holding the opposite opinion, agreed that they were ruled and defended by favourable and tutelary gods. Yet were not both sects famous among the Athenians? I wonder, then, why Anaxagoras was accused of a crime for saying that the sun was a burning stone, and denying that it was a god at all; while in the same city Epicurus flourished gloriously and lived securely, although he not only did not believe that the sun or any star was a god, but contended that neither Jupiter nor any of the gods dwelt in the world at all, so that the prayers and supplications of men might reach them! Were not both Aristippus and Antis thenes there, two noble philosophers and both Socratic? yet they placed the chief end of life within bounds so diverse and contradictory, that the first made the delight of the body the chief good, while the other asserted that man was made happy mainly by the virtue of the mind. The one also said that the wise man should flee from the republic; the other, that he should administer its affairs. Yet did not each gather disciples to follow his own sect? Indeed, in the conspicuous and well-known porch, in gymnasia, in gardens, in places public and private, they openly strove in bands each for his own opinion, some asserting there was one world, others innumerable worlds;[Pg 269] some that this world had a beginning, others that it had not; some that it would perish, others that it would exist always; some that it was governed by the divine mind, others by chance and accident; some that souls are immortal, others that they are mortal, and of those who asserted their immortality, some said they transmigrated through beasts, others that it was by no means so, while of those who asserted their mortality, some said they perished immediately after the body, others that they survived either a little while or a longer time, but not always; some fixing supreme good in the body, some in the mind, some in both; others adding to the mind and body external good things; some thinking that the bodily senses ought to be trusted always, some not always, others never. Now what people, senate, power, or public dignity of the impious city has ever taken care to judge between all these and other well-nigh innumerable dissensions of the philosophers, approving and accepting some, and disapproving and rejecting others? Has it not held in its bosom at random, without any judgment, and confusedly, so many controversies of men at variance, not about fields, houses, or anything of a pecuniary nature, but about those things which make life either miserable or happy? Even if some true things were said in it, yet falsehoods were uttered with the same licence; so that such a city has not amiss received the title of the mystic Babylon. For Babylon means confusion, as we remember we have already explained. Nor does it matter to the devil, its king, how they wrangle among themselves in contradictory errors, since all alike deservedly belong to him on account of their great and varied impiety.
  But that nation, that people, that city, that republic, these Israelites, to whom the oracles of God were entrusted, by no means confounded with similar licence false prophets with the true prophets; but, agreeing together, and differing in nothing, acknowledged and upheld the au thentic authors of their sacred books. These were their philosophers, these were their sages, divines, prophets, and teachers of probity and piety. Whoever was wise and lived according to them was wise and lived not according to men, but according to God who hath spoken by them. If sacrilege is forbidden there, God hath forbidden[Pg 270] it. If it is said, "Honour thy father and thy mother,"[576] God hath commanded it. If it is said, "Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal,"[577] and other similar commandments, not human lips but the divine oracles have enounced them. Whatever truth certain philosophers, amid their false opinions, were able to see, and strove by laborious discussions to persuade men of,such as that God has made this world, and Himself most providently governs it, or of the nobility of the virtues, of the love of country, of fidelity in friendship, of good works and everything pertaining to virtuous manners, although they knew not to what end and what rule all these things were to be referred,all these, by words prophetic, that is, divine, although spoken by men, were commended to the people in that city, and not inculcated by contention in arguments, so that he who should know them might be afraid of contemning, not the wit of men, but the oracle of God.

COSA - BOOK VI, #The Confessions of Saint Augustine, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
  held that Epicurus had in my mind won the palm, had I not believed that
  after death there remained a life for the soul, and places of requital
  according to men's deserts, which Epicurus would not believe. And I
  asked, "were we immortal, and to live in perpetual bodily pleasure,

ENNEAD 01.03 - Of Dialectic, or the Means of Raising the Soul to the Intelligible World., #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 01, #Plotinus, #Christianity
  5. Whence does this science derive its proper principles? Intelligence furnishes the soul with the clear principles she is capable of receiving. Having discovered and achieved these principles, dialectics puts their consequences in order. Dialectics composes, and divides, till it has arrived at a perfect intelligence of things; for according to (Plato),350 dialectics is the purest application of intelligence and wisdom. In this case, if dialectics be the noblest exercise of our faculties, it must exercise itself with essence and the highest objects. Wisdom studies existence, as intelligence studies that which is still beyond existence (the One, or the Good). But is not philosophy also that which is most eminent? Surely. But there is no confusion between philosophy and dialectics, because dialectics is the highest part of philosophy. It is not (as Aristotle thought) merely an instrument for philosophy, nor (as Epicurus thought) made up of pure speculations and abstract rules. It studies things themselves, and its matter is the (real) beings. It reaches them by following a method which yields reality as well as the idea. Only accidentally does dialectics busy itself with error and sophisms. Dialectics considers them alien to its mission, and as produced by a foreign principle. Whenever anything contrary to the rule of truth is advanced, dialectics recognizes the error by the light of the truths it contains. Dialectics, however, does not care for274 propositions, which, to it, seem only mere groupings of letters. Nevertheless, because it knows the truth, dialectics also understands propositions, and, in general, the operations of the soul. Dialectics knows what it is to affirm, to deny, and how to make contrary or contradictory assertions. Further, dialectics distinguishes differences from identities, grasping the truth by an intuition that is as instantaneous as is that of the senses; but dialectics leaves to another science, that enjoys those details, the care of treating them with exactness.
  THE VARIOUS BRANCHES OF PHILOSOPHY CROWNED BY DIALECTICS.

ENNEAD 01.04 - Whether Animals May Be Termed Happy., #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04, #Plotinus, #Christianity
  1. The (Aristotelian) ideal of living well and happiness are (practically) identical. Should we, on that account, grant even to animals the privilege of achieving happiness? Why might we not say that they live well, if it be granted them, in their lives, to follow the course of nature, without obstacles? For if to live well consist either in pleasure (pleasant passions, as the Epicureans taught), or in realizing one's own individual aim (the Stoic ideal), then this living well is, in either case, possible for animals, who can both enjoy pleasure, and accomplish their peculiar aim. Thus singing birds live a life desirable for them, if they enjoy pleasure, and sing conformably to their nature. If further we should define happiness as achieving the supreme purpose towards which nature aspires (the Stoic ideal), we should, even in this case, admit that animals share in happiness when they accomplish this supreme purpose. Then nature arouses in them no further desires, because their whole career is completed, and their life is filled from beginning to end.
  WHETHER PLANTS MAY BE TERMED HAPPY.
  There are no doubt some who may object to our admitting to happiness living beings other than man. They might even point out that on this basis happiness could not be refused to even the lowest beings, such as1020 plants: for they also live, their life also has a purpose, by which they seek to fulfil their development. However, it would seem rather unreasonable to say, that living beings other than humans cannot possess happiness by this mere reason that to us they seem pitiable. Besides, it would be quite possible to deny to plants what may be predicated of other living beings, on the grounds that plants lack emotion. Some might hold they are capable of happiness, on the strength of their possessing life, for a being that lives can live well or badly; and in this way we could say that they possess or lack well-being, and bear, or do not bear fruits. If (as Aristippus thought), pleasure is the goal of man, and if to live well is constituted by enjoying it, it would be absurd to claim that no living beings other than man could live well. The same argument applies if we define happiness as (a state of imperturbable tranquility, by Epicurus called) ataraxy;2 or as (the Stoic ideal,3 of) living conformably to nature.
  LIVING WELL NEED NOT BE EXTENDED EVEN TO ALL ANIMALS.

ENNEAD 02.09 - Against the Gnostics; or, That the Creator and the World are Not Evil., #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 02, #Plotinus, #Christianity
  15. We should however observe the moral effect produced in the soul of those who listen to the speeches of these men who teach scorn of the world and its contents. About the destiny of man there are two principal doctrines. The one assigns as our end the pleasures of the body, the other suggests honesty and virtue, the love of which comes from the divinity, and leads back to the Divinity, as we have shown elsewhere.375 Epicurus, who denies divine Providence, advises us to seek the only thing that remains, the enjoyments of pleasure. Well, the (Gnostics) hold a still more pernicious doctrine; they blame the manner in which divine Providence operates, and they accuse Providence itself; they refuse respect to laws established here below, and the virtue which has been honored by all centuries. To destroy the last vestiges of honor, they destroy temperance by joking at it; they attack justice, whether natural, or acquired by reason or exercise; in one word, they annihilate everything that could lead to virtue. Nothing remains but to seek out pleasure, to profess selfishness, to renounce all social relations with men, to think only of one's personal interest, unless indeed one's own innate disposition be good enough to resist their pernicious doctrines. Nothing that we regard as good is by them esteemed, for they seek entirely different objects.
  THE GNOSTICS IGNORE VIRTUE WITHOUT WHICH GOD IS A MERE WORD.

ENNEAD 03.01 - Concerning Fate., #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 01, #Plotinus, #Christianity
  STOIC AND EpicUREAN CAUSELESS ORIGIN REALLY THE UTMOST DETERMINISM.
  Now among the things that become, or among those that although perpetually existent do not always result in the same actions, it may be boldly asserted that87 everything has a cause. We should not admit (the Stoic contention99) that something happens without a cause, nor accept the ( Epicurean100) arbitrary convergence of the atoms, nor believe that any body initiates a movement suddenly and without determining reason, nor suppose (with Epicurus again101) that the soul undertakes some action by a blind impulse, without any motive. Thus to suppose that a thing does not belong to itself, that it could be carried away by involuntary movements, and act without motive, would be to subject it to the most crushing determinism. The will must be excited, or the desire awakened by some interior or exterior stimulus. No determination (is possible) without motive.
  EVERY GOOD THING HAS SOME CAUSE; NATURE BEING THE ULTIMATE CAUSE.
  --
  Those sages who (like Leucippus, Democritus and Epicurus) assumed material principles such as the atoms, and who explain everything by their motion, their shock and combinations, pretend that everything existent and occurring is caused by the agency of these atoms, their "actions and reactions." This includes, according to them, our appetites and dispositions. The necessity residing in the nature of these principles, and in their effects, is therefore, by these sages, extended to everything that exists. As to the (Ionic Hylicists), who assume other physical (ultimate) principles, referring everything to them, they thus also subject all beings to necessity.
  HERACLITUS, THOUGH MORE SPIRITUAL, IS ALSO DETERMINIST.
  --
  THE STOIC POLEMIC AGAINST THE EpicUREANS.
  To begin with, even if we do admit such atomic principles, their existence does not in any way inevitably lead to either the necessity of all things, or fatality. Let us, indeed, grant the existence of atoms; now some will move downwards that is, if there is an up and down in the universeo thers obliquely, by chance, in various directions. As there will be no order, there will be nothing determinate. Only what will be born of the atoms will be determinate. It will therefore be impossible to guess or predict events, whether by artand indeed, how could there be any art in the midst of orderless things?or by enthusiasm, or divine inspiration; for prediction implies that the future is determined. True, bodies will obey the impulses necessarily communicated to them by the atoms; but how could you explain the operations and affections of the soul by movements of atoms? How could atomic shock, whether vertical or oblique, produce in the soul these our reasonings, or appetites, whether necessarily, or in any other way? What explanation could they give of the soul's resistance to the impulsions of the body? By what concourse of atoms will one man become a geometrician, another become a mathematician and astronomer, and the other a philosopher? For, according to that doctrine we no longer produce any act for which we are responsible, we are even no longer living beings, since we undergo the impulsion of bodies that affect us just as they do inanimate things.

ENNEAD 03.02 - Of Providence., #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04, #Plotinus, #Christianity
  1. When Epicurus21 derives the existence and constitution of the universe from automatism and chance, he commits an absurdity, and stultifies himself. That is self-evident, though the matter have elsewhere been thoroughly demonstrated.22 But (if the world do not owe its origin to chance) we will be compelled to furnish an adequate reason for the existence and creation of all these beings. This (teleological) question deserves the most careful consideration. Things that seem evil do indeed exist, and they do suggest doubts about universal Providence; so that some (like Epicurus23) insist there is no providence, while others (like the Gnostics24), hold that the demiurgic creator is evil. The subject, therefore, demands thorough investigation of its first principles.
  PARTICULAR AND UNIVERSAL PROVIDENCE ASSUMED AS PREMISES.
  --
  Every individual, therefore, occupies, according to justice, the place he deserves, just as each string of1073 the lyre is fixed to the place assigned to it by the nature of the sounds it is to render. In the universe everything is good and beautiful if every being occupy the place he deserves, if, for instance, he utter discordant sounds when in darkness and Tartarus; for such sounds fit that place. If the universe is to be beautiful, the individual must not behave "like a stone" in it; he must contri bute to the unity of the universal harmony by uttering the sound suitable to him (as thought Epictetus75). The sound that the individual utters is the life he leads, a life which is inferior in greatness, goodness and power (to that of the universe). The shepherd's pipe utters several sounds, and the weakest of them, nevertheless, contri butes to the total Harmony, because this harmony is composed of unequal sounds whose totality constitutes a perfect harmony. Likewise, universal Reason though one, contains unequal parts. Consequently, the universe contains different places, some better, and some worse, and their inequality corresponds to the inequality of the soul. Indeed, as both places and souls are different, the souls that are different find the places that are unequal, like the unequal parts of the pipe, or any other musical instrument. They inhabit different places, and each utters sounds proper to the place where they are, and to the universe. Thus what is bad for the individual may be good for the totality; what is against nature in the individual agrees with the nature in the whole. A sound that is feeble does not change the harmony of the universe, asto use another exampleone bad citizen does not change the nature of a well-regulated city; for often there is need of such a man in a city; he therefore fits it well.
  1074

ENNEAD 03.07 - Of Time and Eternity., #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 03, #Plotinus, #Christianity
  POLEMIC AGAINST EpicURUS: TIME IS NOT AN ACCIDENT OR CONSEQUENCE OF MOVEMENT.
  9. (10). When ( Epicurus457) says that time is a consequence of movement, he is not explaining the nature of time; this would demand a preliminary definition of the consequence of movement. Besides, this alleged consequence of movementgranting the possibility of such a consequencemust be prior, simultaneous, or posterior. For, in whatever way we conceive of it, it is within time. Consequently, if the consequence of movement be time, the result would be that time is a consequence of movement in time (which is nonsense).
  --
  54 As Epicurus thought the divinities alone enjoyed perfect happiness, Diog. Laert. x. 121.
  55 See Aristotle, Nic. Ethics, 1.10.
  --
  186 Such as Strato the Peripatetic, and the Epicureans.
  187 Plato, Rep. x. p. 596c; Cary, 1.
  --
  435 In this book Plotinos studies time and eternity comparatively; first considering Plato's views in the Timaeus, and then the views of Pythagoras (1), Epicurus (9), the Stoics (7), and Aristotle (4, 8, 12).
  436 The bracketed numbers are those of the Teubner edition; the unbracketed, those of the Didot edition.

ENNEAD 04.05 - Psychological Questions III. - About the Process of Vision and Hearing., #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 02, #Plotinus, #Christianity
  2. If vision166 presupposes the union of the "light of the eye,"167 with the light interposed (between the eye) and the sense-object itself, the interposed medium is the light, and this medium is necessary, on this hypothesis. (On the theory of Aristotle) the colored substance produces a modification in the medium; but nothing here would hinder this modification from reaching the eye itself, even when there is no medium. For, in this case, the medium is necessarily modified before the eye is. (The Platonic philosophers) teach that vision operates by an effusion of the light of the eye. They have no need to postulate a medium, unless indeed they should fear that the ray of the eye should lose its way; but this ray is luminous, and the light travels in a straight line. (The Stoics) explain vision by the resistance experienced by the visual ray. They cannot do without a medium.168 (The Atomists and) the believers in "images" (such as Epicurus), insist that these images move in emptiness, thereby implying the existence of a free space to avoid hindering the images. Consequently as they will be hindered in a direct ratio to the existence of a medium, this opinion does not run counter to our own hypothesis (that there is no medium).
  517

ENNEAD 04.07 - Of the Immortality of the Soul: Polemic Against Materialism., #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 01, #Plotinus, #Christianity
  3. (b.) (No aggregation of atoms could form a whole that would be one and sympathetic with itself.) Others, on the contrary, insist that the soul is constituted by the union of atoms or indivisibles (as thought Leucippus, Democritus and Epicurus.41) To refute this error, we have to examine the nature of sympathy (or community of affection, a Stoic characteristic of a living being,42) and juxtaposition.43 On the one hand an aggregation of corporeal molecules which are incapable of being united, and which do not feel cannot form a single sympathetic whole such as is the soul, which is sympathetic with herself. On the other hand, how could a body or extension be constituted by (a juxtaposition of) atoms?
  SOUL IS A SIMPLE SUBSTANCE, WHILE EVERY BODY IS COMPOSED OF MATTER AND FORM.

ENNEAD 06.05 - The One and Identical Being is Everywhere Present In Its Entirety.345, #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04, #Plotinus, #Christianity
  His last period was Stoic practise, for so zealously did he practise austerities that his death was, at1281 least, hastened thereby.446 It is unlikely that he would have followed Stoic precepts without some sympathy for, or acquaintance with their philosophical doctrines; and as we saw above, Porphyry acknowledges Plotinos's writings contain hidden Stoic pieces.447 Then, Plotinos spent the last period of his life in Rome, where ruled, in philosophical circles, the traditions of Cicero, Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius.
  That these Stoic practices became fatal to him is significant when we remember that this occurred during the final absence of Porphyry, who may, during his presence, have exerted a friendly restraint on the zealous master. At any rate, it was during Porphyry's regime that the chief works of Plotinos were written, including a bitter diatribe against the Gnostics, who remained the chief protagonists of dualism and belief in positive evil. Prophyry's work, "De Abstinentia," proves clearly enough his Stoic sympathies.
  --
  20 A Stoic confutation of Epicurus and the Gnostics. As soon as Porphyry has left him, Plotinos harks back to Amelius, on whose leaving he had written against the Gnostics. He also returns to Numenian thoughts. Bouillet notices that here Plotinos founded himself on Chrysippus, Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus, and was followed by Nemesius. This new foundation enabled him to assume a rather independent attitude. Against Plato, he taught that matter derived existence from God, and that the union of the soul and body is not necessarily evil. Against Aristotle, he taught that God is not only the final, but also the efficient cause of the universe. Against the Stoics, he taught that the human soul is free, and is a cause, independent of the World Soul from which she proceeded. Against the Gnostics, he insisted that the creator is good, the world is the best possible, and Providence extends to mundane affairs. Against the Manicheans, he taught that the evil is not positive, but negative, and is no efficient cause, so that there is no dualism.
  21 Diog. Laert. x. 133.
  --
  51 As thought Epictetus, Manual, 31.
  52 In his Republic, vi. p. 488; Cary, 4.
  --
  66 As thought Epictetus in his Manual, 2, 6.
  67 In his Philebus, p. 48, Cary, 106.
  68 As thought Epictetus in his Manual. 8.
  69 See iii. 8.
  --
  97 In this book we no longer find detailed study of Plato, Aristotle and the Epicureans, as we did in the works of the Porphyrian period. Well indeed did Plotinos say that without Porphyry's objections he might have had little to say.
  98 Porphyry, Principles of the theory of the Intelligibles, 31.
  --
  Medium not needed in Atomism and Epicurianism, iv. 5.2 (29-516).
  Medium of sight, Aristotle's unnecessary iv. 5.1 (29-515).

Gorgias, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  SOCRATES: Must I then say with Epicharmus, 'Two men spoke before, but now one shall be enough'? I suppose that there is absolutely no help. And if I am to carry on the enquiry by myself, I will first of all remark that not only I but all of us should have an ambition to know what is true and what is false in this matter, for the discovery of the truth is a common good. And now I will proceed to argue according to my own notion. But if any of you think that I arrive at conclusions which are untrue you must interpose and refute me, for I do not speak from any knowledge of what I am saying; I am an enquirer like yourselves, and therefore, if my opponent says anything which is of force, I shall be the first to agree with him. I am speaking on the supposition that the argument ought to be completed; but if you think otherwise let us leave off and go our ways.
  GORGIAS: I think, Socrates, that we should not go our ways until you have completed the argument; and this appears to me to be the wish of the rest of the company; I myself should very much like to hear what more you have to say.

Ion, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  SOCRATES: I perceive, Ion; and I will proceed to explain to you what I imagine to be the reason of this. The gift which you possess of speaking excellently about Homer is not an art, but, as I was just saying, an inspiration; there is a divinity moving you, like that contained in the stone which Euripides calls a magnet, but which is commonly known as the stone of Heraclea. This stone not only attracts iron rings, but also imparts to them a similar power of attracting other rings; and sometimes you may see a number of pieces of iron and rings suspended from one another so as to form quite a long chain: and all of them derive their power of suspension from the original stone. In like manner the Muse first of all inspires men herself; and from these inspired persons a chain of other persons is suspended, who take the inspiration. For all good poets, Epic as well as lyric, compose their beautiful poems not by art, but because they are inspired and possessed. And as the Corybantian revellers when they dance are not in their right mind, so the lyric poets are not in their right mind when they are composing their beautiful strains: but when falling under the power of music and metre they are inspired and possessed; like Bacchic maidens who draw milk and honey from the rivers when they are under the influence of Dionysus but not when they are in their right mind. And the soul of the lyric poet does the same, as they themselves say; for they tell us that they bring songs from honeyed fountains, culling them out of the gardens and dells of the Muses; they, like the bees, winging their way from flower to flower. And this is true. For the poet is a light and winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his senses, and the mind is no longer in him: when he has not attained to this state, he is powerless and is unable to utter his oracles. Many are the noble words in which poets speak concerning the actions of men; but like yourself when speaking about Homer, they do not speak of them by any rules of art: they are simply inspired to utter that to which the Muse impels them, and that only; and when inspired, one of them will make dithyrambs, another hymns of praise, another choral strains, another Epic or iambic versesand he who is good at one is not good at any other kind of verse: for not by art does the poet sing, but by power divine. Had he learned by rules of art, he would have known how to speak not of one theme only, but of all; and therefore God takes away the minds of poets, and uses them as his ministers, as he also uses diviners and holy prophets, in order that we who hear them may know them to be speaking not of themselves who utter these priceless words in a state of unconsciousness, but that God himself is the speaker, and that through them he is conversing with us. And Tynnichus the Chalcidian affords a striking instance of what I am saying: he wrote nothing that any one would care to remember but the famous paean which is in every one's mouth, one of the finest poems ever written, simply an invention of the Muses, as he himself says. For in this way the God would seem to indicate to us and not allow us to doubt that these beautiful poems are not human, or the work of man, but divine and the work of God; and that the poets are only the interpreters of the Gods by whom they are severally possessed. Was not this the lesson which the God intended to teach when by the mouth of the worst of poets he sang the best of songs? Am I not right, Ion?
  ION: Yes, indeed, Socrates, I feel that you are; for your words touch my soul, and I am persuaded that good poets by a divine inspiration interpret the things of the Gods to us.

Liber 46 - The Key of the Mysteries, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
   kneaded Epics. He twisted together the sword of right and the sceptre
   of duty; and upon this column of gold and steel he placed the creative
  --
   epitome of all legends which forms the prologue to his great Epic
   novel, "The Wandering Jew."<   --
   Eliphas, who is an Epicure in magic, was delighted with this find. In
   the nineteenth century, a real sorcerer of the middle ages, a
  --
   in 1485.>> there was in his gesture the whole {169} Epic or martyrdom;
   it was an acceptance and an offering; a prayer for his people, and a

r1912 02 07, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   Chiefly occupied with the annamaya disturbance. The sahitya siddhi successfully invaded poetry, the Epic & dramatic styles. The thought is working to establish the inspired instead of the effective as the persistent style of thought expression and to rise from it to absolute inevitability. It does not now sink below the effective. There has been farther trouble about the vani, the anandabuddha being misused; it now tends to be finally replaced by the anandamahat. Trikaldrishti is so far advanced that the turns of flight of a butterfly, or a bird can all be predicted during the flight, but there is a difficulty about the prediction of the next movement of an animal in a state of rest. It can be foretold but the action is capricious. Trikaldrishti of things unseen is hampered by diffidence, unless there is a knowledge of the actual occupation in which case the general stages, eg of the progress of cooking, can be told without any material data to go upon, by mere trikaldrishti. There is strong & almost perfect prakamya of inner movements, forces, intentions etc, but not yet of the determining force, movement or action. Visvagati revived in force; frequency of sight but not yet the stability. Sukshma smell has revived its activity, but is infrequent.
   ***

r1912 07 24, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   A day of reaction in the body, suspension of health in the stomach, activity of bhautic tejas, visrishti (all the results of excess in madya which the nabhichakra failed to bear), cessation of kamananda, failure of utthapana, return of tamasic sleep tendency. The rest of the siddhi proceeded slowly & indeterminately. Epic poetry resumed.
   ***

r1913 01 09, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   The siddhi of the visrishti & freedom from satiety long combated and diminished has momentarily collapsed. Kamananda, although its activity has not disappeared, has at present no hold on the body. The physical siddhi persists in its retrograde motion. The external tapas is now falling away again from the system and is giving place to tapas under control of the dasyabuddhi .. The samadhi has suddenly & without farther difficulty acquired siddhi in the vijnana & saviveka samadhi, corresponding to the savichara and savitarka of the intellectual classification. The thought, whether as perception or vangmaya, maintains itself on the vijnanamay level, the intellect in a state of perfect passivity, only receiving it, even in the deepest swapnasamadhi which amounts to a practical sushupti of the manas & its silence in the mahat. It was because the system was accustomed to fall into sushupti whenever the manas-buddhi became inert, that this siddhi could not formerly be accomplished. Now the mind becomes inert, sushupta, but activity proceeds on the vijnanamaya level on which the Purusha is now jagrat in the body, and that activity is received by the inert intellect. Nevertheless owing to the great inertia of the intellect at the time, the thought is sometimes caught with difficulty, hardly remembered on waking, or, if remembered, then soon afterwards lost to the recollection. The intellect catches it, but does not get a good grasp upon it. The vijnanamay memory must become active, if the thought & vision of samadhi are to be remembered. This higher memory is developing, not swe dame, but on the intellectual plane; things are now remembered permanently without committing them to heart, which formerly would not have been remembered even for a day if they had been even carefully learned by heart eg the first verse of Bharatis poem, in Tamil, not a line of which was understood without a laborious consultation of the dictionary. Yet although an unknown tongue, although no particular attention was paid to the words or their order everything remains in the mind even after several days. Formerly even a verse of Latin, English, Sanscrit carefully studied & committed to memory, would be lost even in a shorter time. The siddhi of the vijnana samadhi shows that the Purusha is now rising into the vijnana or preparing to rise; the manomaya is becoming passive, the vijnanamaya Purusha, so long secret & veiled by the hiranmaya patra of the buddhi, is beginning to reveal himself, no longer indirectly, but face to face with the lower man.An initial siddhi is also preparing in script communication.As was predicted earlier in the day, the sahitya-siddhi has extended itself to poetry this evening & the long obstruction of the poetic faculty is passing away. The Epic style has been recovered and only the dramatic remains. Fluency in all will come back during the month, spontaneous & immediate perfection hereafter within these two months .. The lipi is now being freely & naturally utilised for knowledge; there is no farther need of any attention to its development or to the farther development of the vani or script. Only the trikaldrishti & the Power still need attention (apramattata), and the rupadrishti & samadhi still need the help of the Will for their wider development or their more perfect perfection.
   The siddhi of the vijna[na]maya level for the Thought in samadhi does not extend to the vision; for this reason the dreams are still intellectual records or attempts to record rather than the actual vision of things and events, except when the dream is replaced by vision. Even then it is often savikalpa rather than sadarsha samadhi. The dreams last night (those remembered) were again of consecutive & well connected records; this time the present ego sense was carefully excluded and only once a present association interfered with the accuracy of the record. A rapid movement in trikaldrishti is promised and one in rupa indicated.

r1913 04 01, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   There has been a great activity of the poetical power which has acquired rapidity accompanied with forceful & effective inspiration, but not always with inevitable & illuminating inspiration. The attempt is now to maintain the invariability of the illuminated & inspired inevitability without diminishing the rapidity. This is in Epic poetry. The foundations of a rapid & sure inevitability are being laid in other literary powers. Equipment (bare) for three months has been effected.
   The two great disappointments of the aishwarya have been the fall of Janina & Adrianople & the outrages in Bengal; the aishwarya has failed to avoid these disasters. In Albania the line of the Aishwarya has been followed, but not in every respect, eg Djakov[ic]a seems to be lost to Albania. The continued frequency of great calamities confirms the trikaldrishti. In small matters trikaldrishti is now very usually correct, but limited in its range. Time, place & order of circumstance, oftener right than before have still the anrita tendency very pronounced. All the parts of knowledge in the third chatusthaya are in action, but they are neither perfect, vigorous, fruitful nor organised.

Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna (text), #Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  contemplation of Epic heroes and heroines. And it was perhaps the artist in him that led him to revolt
  against the dull routine of the school and its curriculum of stereotyped studies, and to show a special
  --
  mastering the Hindu Epics embodying the
  Introduction 3

Symposium translated by B Jowett, #Symposium, #Plato, #Philosophy
  He agrees with Pausanias in maintaining that there are two kinds of love; but his art has led him to the further conclusion that the empire of this double love extends over all things, and is to be found in animals and plants as well as in man. In the human body also there are two loves; and the art of medicine shows which is the good and which is the bad love, and persuades the body to accept the good and reject the bad, and reconciles conflicting elements and makes them friends. Every art, gymnastic and husbandry as well as medicine, is the reconciliation of opposites; and this is what Heracleitus meant, when he spoke of a harmony of opposites: but in strictness he should rather have spoken of a harmony which succeeds opposites, for an agreement of disagreements there cannot be. Music too is concerned with the principles of love in their application to harmony and rhythm. In the abstract, all is simple, and we are not troubled with the twofold love; but when they are applied in education with their accompaniments of song and metre, then the discord begins. Then the old tale has to be repeated of fair Urania and the coarse Polyhymnia, who must be indulged sparingly, just as in my own art of medicine care must be taken that the taste of the Epicure be gratified without inflicting upon him the attendant penalty of disease.
  There is a similar harmony or disagreement in the course of the seasons and in the relations of moist and dry, hot and cold, hoar frost and blight; and diseases of all sorts spring from the excesses or disorders of the element of love. The knowledge of these elements of love and discord in the heavenly bodies is termed astronomy, in the relations of men towards gods and parents is called divination. For divination is the peacemaker of gods and men, and works by a knowledge of the tendencies of merely human loves to piety and impiety. Such is the power of love; and that love which is just and temperate has the greatest power, and is the source of all our happiness and friendship with the gods and with one another. I dare say that I have omitted to mention many things which you, Aristophanes, may supply, as I perceive that you are cured of the hiccough.
  --
  Eryximachus spoke as follows: Seeing that Pausanias made a fair beginning, and but a lame ending, I must endeavour to supply his deficiency. I think that he has rightly distinguished two kinds of love. But my art further informs me that the double love is not merely an affection of the soul of man towards the fair, or towards anything, but is to be found in the bodies of all animals and in productions of the earth, and I may say in all that is; such is the conclusion which I seem to have gathered from my own art of medicine, whence I learn how great and wonderful and universal is the deity of love, whose empire extends over all things, divine as well as human. And from medicine I will begin that I may do honour to my art. There are in the human body these two kinds of love, which are confessedly different and unlike, and being unlike, they have loves and desires which are unlike; and the desire of the healthy is one, and the desire of the diseased is another; and as Pausanias was just now saying that to indulge good men is honourable, and bad men dishonourable:so too in the body the good and healthy elements are to be indulged, and the bad elements and the elements of disease are not to be indulged, but discouraged. And this is what the physician has to do, and in this the art of medicine consists: for medicine may be regarded generally as the knowledge of the loves and desires of the body, and how to satisfy them or not; and the best physician is he who is able to separate fair love from foul, or to convert one into the other; and he who knows how to eradicate and how to implant love, whichever is required, and can reconcile the most hostile elements in the constitution and make them loving friends, is a skilful practitioner. Now the most hostile are the most opposite, such as hot and cold, bitter and sweet, moist and dry, and the like. And my ancestor, Asclepius, knowing how to implant friendship and accord in these elements, was the creator of our art, as our friends the poets here tell us, and I believe them; and not only medicine in every branch but the arts of gymnastic and husbandry are under his dominion. Any one who pays the least attention to the subject will also perceive that in music there is the same reconciliation of opposites; and I suppose that this must have been the meaning of Heracleitus, although his words are not accurate; for he says that The One is united by disunion, like the harmony of the bow and the lyre. Now there is an absurdity saying that harmony is discord or is composed of elements which are still in a state of discord. But what he probably meant was, that harmony is composed of differing notes of higher or lower pitch which disagreed once, but are now reconciled by the art of music; for if the higher and lower notes still disagreed, there could be no harmony,clearly not. For harmony is a symphony, and symphony is an agreement; but an agreement of disagreements while they disagree there cannot be; you cannot harmonize that which disagrees. In like manner rhythm is compounded of elements short and long, once differing and now in accord; which accordance, as in the former instance, medicine, so in all these other cases, music implants, making love and unison to grow up among them; and thus music, too, is concerned with the principles of love in their application to harmony and rhythm. Again, in the essential nature of harmony and rhythm there is no difficulty in discerning love which has not yet become double. But when you want to use them in actual life, either in the composition of songs or in the correct performance of airs or metres composed already, which latter is called education, then the difficulty begins, and the good artist is needed. Then the old tale has to be repeated of fair and heavenly lovethe love of Urania the fair and heavenly muse, and of the duty of accepting the temperate, and those who are as yet intemperate only that they may become temperate, and of preserving their love; and again, of the vulgar Polyhymnia, who must be used with circumspection that the pleasure be enjoyed, but may not generate licentiousness; just as in my own art it is a great matter so to regulate the desires of the Epicure that he may gratify his tastes without the attendant evil of disease. Whence I infer that in music, in medicine, in all other things human as well as divine, both loves ought to be noted as far as may be, for they are both present.
  The course of the seasons is also full of both these principles; and when, as I was saying, the elements of hot and cold, moist and dry, attain the harmonious love of one another and blend in temperance and harmony, they bring to men, animals, and plants health and plenty, and do them no harm; whereas the wanton love, getting the upper hand and affecting the seasons of the year, is very destructive and injurious, being the source of pestilence, and bringing many other kinds of diseases on animals and plants; for hoar-frost and hail and blight spring from the excesses and disorders of these elements of love, which to know in relation to the revolutions of the heavenly bodies and the seasons of the year is termed astronomy. Furthermore all sacrifices and the whole province of divination, which is the art of communion between gods and menthese, I say, are concerned only with the preservation of the good and the cure of the evil love. For all manner of impiety is likely to ensue if, instead of accepting and honouring and reverencing the harmonious love in all his actions, a man honours the other love, whether in his feelings towards gods or parents, towards the living or the dead. Wherefore the business of divination is to see to these loves and to heal them, and divination is the peacemaker of gods and men, working by a knowledge of the religious or irreligious tendencies which exist in human loves. Such is the great and mighty, or rather omnipotent force of love in general. And the love, more especially, which is concerned with the good, and which is perfected in company with temperance and justice, whether among gods or men, has the greatest power, and is the source of all our happiness and harmony, and makes us friends with the gods who are above us, and with one another. I dare say that I too have omitted several things which might be said in praise of Love, but this was not intentional, and you, Aristophanes, may now supply the omission or take some other line of commendation; for I perceive that you are rid of the hiccough.

Tablet 1 -, #The Epic of Gilgamesh, #Anonymous, #Various

Talks With Sri Aurobindo 1, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  But this is the dactylic six-foot line, the metre in which the Epics of Homer
  and Virgil are written. It has a very fine movement which is most suitable
  for Epic. I wrote most of my hexametres the poem Ilionin Pondicherry.
  Amal and Arjava saw them and considered them a success. I may cite a few
  --
  Here Purani brought in the subject of Epic and the experiments that were
  being made in Gujarat to search for a proper medium for it. He regretted
  that no Indian vernacular had any genuine and successful Epic poetry.
  SRI AUROBINDO: Why do you say that? Madhusudan has succeeded in Epic.
  He has excellent movement, form and swing, but the substance is poor. It is
  surprising that he could write an Epic, for Bengalis haven't got an Epic mind.
  The Bengali Ramayana and Mahabharata are not worth much. But I believe
  --
  NIRODBARAN: What exactly do you mean by "an Epic mind"?
  SRI AUROBINDO: The Epic mind is something high, vast and powerful. The
  Bengali mind is more delicate and graceful. Compare Bengal's painting with
  the Epic statues of the Pallavas in South India. For the same reason the
  French couldn't write an Epic. Their language is too lucid and orderly and
  graceful for it.
  --
  (Turning to Purani) Is there any Epic in the Marathi language?
  PURANI: I don't know. I have heard about Moropant.
  --
  something like an Epic. I hear Jnanadev wrote brilliantly but he died at an
  early age: twenty-one. And jnaneshwar wrote his Gita at fifteen.
  PURANI: They say Tulsidas's Manas is a recognised Epic in Hindi.
  SRI AUROBINDO: The South Indians say that Kamban's is a great Epic. I remember somebody trying to prove that Kamban the world's greatest poet.
  (Looking at Nirodbaran) Nishikanto also aspires to write an Epic
  NIRODBARAN: He may be able to do it. For he seems to have the necessary
  --
  PURANI: Do present conditions permit the writing of an Epic It is said that
   Epic subjects may be there but there is not the Epic poet to write of them.
  SRI AUROBINDO: I can't say. It is believed that the Epic poet comes only once
  in centuries. Look at the world's Epic poets, How many are they? As for subject, what subject could be more suitable to an Epic than the career of
  Napoleon?
  It is surprising the large number of Epic poets in Sanskrit. The very
  language is Epic. Valmiki, Vyasa, even classical poets like Kalidasa, Bharavi
  and others have all achieved Epic heights.
  NIRODBARAN: Has your own Epic Savitri anything to do with the Mahabharata
  story?
  --
  PURANI: Critics say that in the future the Epic will be more and more subjective.
  SRI AUROBINDO: It looks like that. The idea has always been that an Epic requires a story. But now it seems to have been exhausted. Besides, there is
  the demand of the present time for subjectivity and the Epic too will have to
  answer it.
  --
  not an Epic.
  SRI AUROBINDO: It is certainly an Epic. Paradise Lost has very little story in it
  and very few incidents. Yet it is an Epic.
  PURANI: Some think that Keats' Hyperion would have been as great as Milton's poem if he had finished it.
  --
  PURANI: There is an idea that the new form may be a combination of Epic and
  drama or like the odes of Meredith on the French Revolution. They give
  some clue to a possible Epic form in the future.
  SRI AUROBINDO: There has been such an effort by Victor Hugo. His Legendes
  des siecles is an Epic in conception, thought, tone and movement. It is the
  only Epic in French. But as yet, I think, it has not been given its proper
  place. It does not deal with a story but with episodes.
  --
  PURANI: It is a pity Tagore has not written an Epic.
  SRI AUROBINDO: Tagore? He has not the Epic mind. But he has written some
  very fine narrative poems.
  --
  NIRODBARAN: You have written an Epic called Aeneid?
  SRI AUROBINDO: No, Ilion: it is in hexameter and about the end of the siege of
  --
  PURANI: Yes, Kalelkar explains that Valmiki used to go from cottage to cottage reciting the Ramayana and that when the Epic was finished the Rishis
  presented him with a Kamandalu (water pot), a Kaupin (loin-cloth) and a
  --
  SRI AUROBINDO: In the Epic and the drama also, and, as I have said, in a series
  of sonnets. But the modern poets say that long poems are not poetry, only in
  --
  SRI AUROBINDO: By "long poems" they mean long like Epics.
  PURANI: Thomas Hardy or somebody else has written some short poems on
  --
  the Mahabharata and portrayed her as weeping whereas in the original Epic
  there is not a trace of tears. Even when her heart was being sawn in two, not
  --
  that it has no force or thought in it. It is an Epic-but it is not creative. It has
  no vital substance.

The Act of Creation text, #The Act of Creation, #Arthur Koestler, #Psychology
  They were Epics centred on heroic events; their name is derived from the Latin
  gesta : deeds, exploits. With the coming of the Renaissance, satire tended to re-
  place the Epics of chivalry, and in the sixteenth century the heroic 'geste' turned
  into *jest\
  --
  pouring of homely, trivial contents into these Epic moulds 'beautiful
  soup, so rich and green' creates a comic effect of the same type as the
  --
  Instead of an Epic mould, a soft, lyrical one will equally do:
  . . . And what could be moister
  --
  the device of Epicycles and eccentrics an imaginary clockwork of
  circles turning on circles turning on circles. Copernicus, for instance,
  --
  be fed up with cycles and Epicycles, to mock the slavish imitators of
  Aristode was one thing; to assign an entirely new, lopsided, implausible
  --
  upheld by Epicureans such as Lucretius, went into a long period of
  hibernation, but awoke with renewed vigour at the dawn of the
  --
  the hooked atoms of Epicurus. During the complete repose of the
  mind, these atoms are motionless, they are, so to speak, hooked to the
  --
  matter 'got into a state which is strongly suggestive of the Epicycles
  of astronomy before Copernicus'; in the lifetime of the next genera-
  --
  transformed into symbolic rituals, mythological Epics, and mystery
  plays: into the magic of illusion. The shadows in Plato's cave are
  --
  culous. When the events in Epic or drama take an unexpected turn
  Odysseus's companions transformed into swine or chaste Ophelia
  --
  hints. The dramatization of an Epic recital aims, like stage-craft from
  3io
  --
  in Euripides. At some stage, the Epic recital of events branched off
  from their direct representation by actors in disguise. The early bards
  --
  Somewhere around 600 B.C. the Homeric Epics were consolidated
  in their final version, disguised in written symbols, and folded into
  --
  pursue his researches, and in 1761 he published Fingal, an ancient Epic
  Poem in Six Books, together with several other poems composed by Ossian,
  --
  still larger Ossianic Epic called Temora, and this by a collected edition,
  The Works of Ossian, The au thenticity of Macpherson s text was at
  --
  sciences led to the untramelled proliferation of Epicycles in a closed
  system, divorced from reality.
  --
  tragedy and Epic; a similar act of magic carving or painting a thing
  which is meant to be something else was the origin of representational
  --
  of art, the Epicycles and phlogistons of science.
  Associative skills, on the other hand, even of the sophisticated kind
  --
  The atomists next let us praise, Epicurus,
  Lucretius, and all;
  --
  teurization of Burgundy wines. This Epic dialogue starts with:
  Pasteur: Do you heat your wines, M. Make?
  --
  in the Strasbourg newspaper La Veriti, ending with the Epic words:
  'Never was treasure sought, never adored beauty pursued over hill

Theaetetus, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  Theaetetus replies, that knowledge is what he learns of Theodorus, i.e. geometry and arithmetic; and that there are other kinds of knowledgeshoemaking, carpentering, and the like. But Socrates rejoins, that this answer contains too much and also too little. For although Theaetetus has enumerated several kinds of knowledge, he has not explained the common nature of them; as if he had been asked, 'What is clay?' and instead of saying 'Clay is moistened earth,' he had answered, 'There is one clay of image-makers, another of potters, another of oven-makers.' Theaetetus at once divines that Socrates means him to extend to all kinds of knowledge the same process of generalization which he has already learned to apply to arithmetic. For he has discovered a division of numbers into square numbers, 4, 9, 16, etc., which are composed of equal factors, and represent figures which have equal sides, and oblong numbers, 3, 5, 6, 7, etc., which are composed of unequal factors, and represent figures which have unequal sides. But he has never succeeded in attaining a similar conception of knowledge, though he has often tried; and, when this and similar questions were brought to him from Socrates, has been sorely distressed by them. Socrates explains to him that he is in labour. For men as well as women have pangs of labour; and both at times require the assistance of midwives. And he, Socrates, is a midwife, although this is a secret; he has inherited the art from his mother bold and bluff, and he ushers into light, not children, but the thoughts of men. Like the midwives, who are 'past bearing children,' he too can have no offspringthe God will not allow him to bring anything into the world of his own. He also reminds Theaetetus that the midwives are or ought to be the only matchmakers (this is the preparation for a biting jest); for those who reap the fruit are most likely to know on what soil the plants will grow. But respectable midwives avoid this department of practicethey do not want to be called procuresses. There are some other differences between the two sorts of pregnancy. For women do not bring into the world at one time real children and at another time idols which are with difficulty distinguished from them. 'At first,' says Socrates in his character of the man-midwife, 'my patients are barren and stolid, but after a while they "round apace," if the gods are propitious to them; and this is due not to me but to themselves; I and the god only assist in bringing their ideas to the birth. Many of them have left me too soon, and the result has been that they have produced abortions; or when I have delivered them of children they have lost them by an ill bringing up, and have ended by seeing themselves, as others see them, to be great fools. Aristides, the son of Lysimachus, is one of these, and there have been others. The truants often return to me and beg to be taken back; and then, if my familiar allows me, which is not always the case, I receive them, and they begin to grow again. There come to me also those who have nothing in them, and have no need of my art; and I am their matchmaker (see above), and marry them to Prodicus or some other inspired sage who is likely to suit them. I tell you this long story because I suspect that you are in labour. Come then to me, who am a midwife, and the son of a midwife, and I will deliver you. And do not bite me, as the women do, if I abstract your first-born; for I am acting out of good-will towards you; the God who is within me is the friend of man, though he will not allow me to dissemble the truth. Once more then, Theaetetus, I repeat my old question"What is knowledge?" Take courage, and by the help of God you will discover an answer.' 'My answer is, that knowledge is perception.' 'That is the theory of Protagoras, who has another way of expressing the same thing when he says, "Man is the measure of all things." He was a very wise man, and we should try to understand him. In order to illustrate his meaning let me suppose that there is the same wind blowing in our faces, and one of us may be hot and the other cold. How is this? Protagoras will reply that the wind is hot to him who is cold, cold to him who is hot. And "is" means "appears," and when you say "appears to him," that means "he feels." Thus feeling, appearance, perception, coincide with being. I suspect, however, that this was only a "facon de parler," by which he imposed on the common herd like you and me; he told "the truth" (in allusion to the title of his book, which was called "The Truth") in secret to his disciples. For he was really a votary of that famous philosophy in which all things are said to be relative; nothing is great or small, or heavy or light, or one, but all is in motion and mixture and transition and flux and generation, not "being," as we ignorantly affirm, but "becoming." This has been the doctrine, not of Protagoras only, but of all philosophers, with the single exception of Parmenides; Empedocles, Heracleitus, and others, and all the poets, with Epicharmus, the king of Comedy, and Homer, the king of Tragedy, at their head, have said the same; the latter has these words
  "Ocean, whence the gods sprang, and mother Tethys."
  --
  Yet, in spite of Plato and his followers, mankind have again and again returned to a sensational philosophy. As to some of the early thinkers, amid the fleetings of sensible objects, ideas alone seemed to be fixed, so to a later generation amid the fluctuation of philosophical opinions the only fixed points appeared to be outward objects. Any pretence of knowledge which went beyond them implied logical processes, of the correctness of which they had no assurance and which at best were only probable. The mind, tired of wandering, sought to rest on firm ground; when the idols of philosophy and language were stripped off, the perception of outward objects alone remained. The ancient Epicureans never asked whether the comparison of these with one another did not involve principles of another kind which were above and beyond them. In like manner the modern inductive philosophy forgot to enquire into the meaning of experience, and did not attempt to form a conception of outward objects apart from the mind, or of the mind apart from them. Soon objects of sense were merged in sensations and feelings, but feelings and sensations were still unanalyzed. At last we return to the doctrine attri buted by Plato to Protagoras, that the mind is only a succession of momentary perceptions. At this point the modern philosophy of experience forms an alliance with ancient scepticism.
  The higher truths of philosophy and religion are very far removed from sense. Admitting that, like all other knowledge, they are derived from experience, and that experience is ultimately resolvable into facts which come to us through the eye and ear, still their origin is a mere accident which has nothing to do with their true nature. They are universal and unseen; they belong to all timespast, present, and future. Any worthy notion of mind or reason includes them. The proof of them is, 1st, their comprehensiveness and consistency with one another; 2ndly, their agreement with history and experience. But sensation is of the present only, is isolated, is and is not in successive moments. It takes the passing hour as it comes, following the lead of the eye or ear instead of the comm and of reason. It is a faculty which man has in common with the animals, and in which he is inferior to many of them. The importance of the senses in us is that they are the apertures of the mind, doors and windows through which we take in and make our own the materials of knowledge. Regarded in any other point of view sensation is of all mental acts the most trivial and superficial. Hence the term 'sensational' is rightly used to express what is shallow in thought and feeling.
  We propose in what follows, first of all, like Plato in the Theaetetus, to analyse sensation, and secondly to trace the connexion between theories of sensation and a sensational or Epicurean philosophy.
  Paragraph I. We, as well as the ancients, speak of the five senses, and of a sense, or common sense, which is the abstraction of them. The term 'sense' is also used metaphorically, both in ancient and modern philosophy, to express the operations of the mind which are immediate or intuitive. Of the five senses, twothe sight and the hearingare of a more subtle and complex nature, while two othersthe smell and the tasteseem to be only more refined varieties of touch. All of them are passive, and by this are distinguished from the active faculty of speech: they receive impressions, but do not produce them, except in so far as they are objects of sense themselves.
  --
  By those who rest knowledge immediately upon sense, that explanation of human action is deemed to be the truest which is nearest to sense. As knowledge is reduced to sensation, so virtue is reduced to feeling, happiness or good to pleasure. The different virtuesthe various characters which exist in the worldare the disguises of self-interest. Human nature is dried up; there is no place left for imagination, or in any higher sense for religion. Ideals of a whole, or of a state, or of a law of duty, or of a divine perfection, are out of place in an Epicurean philosophy. The very terms in which they are expressed are suspected of having no meaning. Man is to bring himself back as far as he is able to the condition of a rational beast. He is to limit himself to the pursuit of pleasure, but of this he is to make a far-sighted calculation;he is to be rationalized, secularized, animalized: or he is to be an amiable sceptic, better than his own philosophy, and not falling below the opinions of the world.
  Imagination has been called that 'busy faculty' which is always intruding upon us in the search after truth. But imagination is also that higher power by which we rise above ourselves and the commonplaces of thought and life. The philosophical imagination is another name for reason finding an expression of herself in the outward world. To deprive life of ideals is to deprive it of all higher and comprehensive aims and of the power of imparting and communicating them to others. For men are taught, not by those who are on a level with them, but by those who rise above them, who see the distant hills, who soar into the empyrean. Like a bird in a cage, the mind confined to sense is always being brought back from the higher to the lower, from the wider to the narrower view of human knowledge. It seeks to fly but cannot: instead of aspiring towards perfection, 'it hovers about this lower world and the earthly nature.' It loses the religious sense which more than any other seems to take a man out of himself. Weary of asking 'What is truth?' it accepts the 'blind witness of eyes and ears;' it draws around itself the curtain of the physical world and is satisfied. The strength of a sensational philosophy lies in the ready accommodation of it to the minds of men; many who have been metaphysicians in their youth, as they advance in years are prone to acquiesce in things as they are, or rather appear to be. They are spectators, not thinkers, and the best philosophy is that which requires of them the least amount of mental effort.
  As a lower philosophy is easier to apprehend than a higher, so a lower way of life is easier to follow; and therefore such a philosophy seems to derive a support from the general practice of mankind. It appeals to principles which they all know and recognize: it gives back to them in a generalized form the results of their own experience. To the man of the world they are the quintessence of his own reflections upon life. To follow custom, to have no new ideas or opinions, not to be straining after impossibilities, to enjoy to-day with just so much forethought as is necessary to provide for the morrow, this is regarded by the greater part of the world as the natural way of passing through existence. And many who have lived thus have attained to a lower kind of happiness or equanimity. They have possessed their souls in peace without ever allowing them to wander into the region of religious or political controversy, and without any care for the higher interests of man. But nearly all the good (as well as some of the evil) which has ever been done in this world has been the work of another spirit, the work of enthusiasts and idealists, of apostles and martyrs. The leaders of mankind have not been of the gentle Epicurean type; they have personified ideas; they have sometimes also been the victims of them. But they have always been seeking after a truth or ideal of which they fell short; and have died in a manner disappointed of their hopes that they might lift the human race out of the slough in which they found them. They have done little compared with their own visions and aspirations; but they have done that little, only because they sought to do, and once perhaps thought that they were doing, a great deal more.
  The philosophies of Epicurus or Hume give no adequate or dignified conception of the mind. There is no organic unity in a succession of feeling or sensations; no comprehensiveness in an infinity of separate actions. The individual never reflects upon himself as a whole; he can hardly regard one act or part of his life as the cause or effect of any other act or part. Whether in practice or speculation, he is to himself only in successive instants. To such thinkers, whether in ancient or in modern times, the mind is only the poor recipient of impressionsnot the heir of all the ages, or connected with all other minds. It begins again with its own modicum of experience having only such vague conceptions of the wisdom of the past as are inseparable from language and popular opinion. It seeks to explain from the experience of the individual what can only be learned from the history of the world. It has no conception of obligation, duty, consciencethese are to the Epicurean or Utilitarian philosopher only names which interfere with our natural perceptions of pleasure and pain.
  There seem then to be several answers to the question, Why the theory that all knowledge is sensation is allied to the lower rather than to the higher view of ethical philosophy:1st, Because it is easier to understand and practise; 2ndly, Because it is fatal to the pursuit of ideals, moral, political, or religious; 3rdly, Because it deprives us of the means and instruments of higher thought, of any adequate conception of the mind, of knowledge, of conscience, of moral obligation.

The Aleph, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
    As in many of Borges' short stories, the protagonist is a fictionalized version of the author. At the beginning of the story, he is mourning the recent death of a woman whom he loved, named Beatriz Viterbo, and resolves to stop by the house of her family to pay his respects. Over time, he comes to know her first cousin, Carlos Argentino Daneri, a mediocre poet with a vastly exaggerated view of his own talent who has made it his lifelong quest to write an Epic poem that describes every single location on the planet in excruciatingly fine detail.
    Later in the story, a business on the same street attempts to tear down Daneri's house in the course of its expansion. Daneri becomes enraged, explaining to the narrator that he must keep the house in order to finish his poem, because the cellar contains an Aleph which he is using to write the poem. Though by now he believes Daneri to be quite insane, the narrator proposes without waiting for an answer to come to the house and see for himself.
  --
  Only once in my life have I had occasion to look into the fifteen thousand alexandrines of the Polyolbion, that topographical Epic in which Michael Drayton recorded the flora, fauna, hydrography, orography, military and monastic history of England. I am sure, however, that this limited but bulky production is less boring than Carlos Argentino's similar vast undertaking. Daneri had in mind to set to verse the entire face of the planet, and, by 1941, had already dispatched a number of acres of the State of Queensland, nearly a mile of the course run by the River Ob, a gasworks to the north of Veracruz, the leading shops in the Buenos Aires parish of Concepcin, the villa of Mariana Cambaceres de Alvear in the Belgrano section of the Argentine capital, and a Turkish baths establishment not far from the well-known Brighton Aquarium. He read me certain long-winded passages from his Australian section, and at one point praised a word of his own coining, the colour "celestewhite," which he felt "actually suggests the sky, an element of utmost importance in the landscape of the Down Under." But these sprawling, lifeless hexameters lacked even the relative excitement of the so-called Augural Canto. Along about midnight, I left.
  Two Sundays later, Daneri rang me up -- perhaps for the first time in his life. He suggested we get together at four o'clock "for cocktails in the salon-bar next door, which the forward-looking Zunino and Zungri -- my landlords, as you doubtless recall -- are throwing open to the public. It's a place you'll really want to get to know."
  --
  Postscript of March first, 1943 -- Some six months after the pulling down of a certain building on Garay Street, Procrustes & Co., the publishers, not put off by the considerable length of Daneri's poem, brought out a selection of its "Argentine sections". It is redundant now to repeat what happened. Carlos Argentino Daneri won the Second National Prize for Literature. ["I received your pained congratulations," he wrote me. "You rage, my poor friend, with envy, but you must confess -- even if it chokes you! -- that this time I have crowned my cap with the reddest of feathers; my turban with the most caliph of rubies."] First Prize went to Dr. Aita; Third Prize, to Dr. Mario Bonfanti. Unbelievably, my own book The Sharper's Cards did not get a single vote. Once again dullness and envy had their triumph! It's been some time now that I've been trying to see Daneri; the gossip is that a second selection of the poem is about to be published. His felicitous pen (no longer cluttered by the Aleph) has now set itself the task of writing an Epic on our national hero, General San Martn.
  I want to add two final observations: one, on the nature of the Aleph; the other, on its name. As is well known, the Aleph is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Its use for the strange sphere in my story may not be accidental. For the Kabbala, the letter stands for the En Soph, the pure and boundless godhead; it is also said that it takes the shape of a man pointing to both heaven and earth, in order to show that the lower world is the map and mirror of the higher; for Cantor's Mengenlehre, it is the symbol of transfinite numbers, of which any part is as great as the whole. I would like to know whether Carlos Argentino chose that name or whether he read it -- applied to another point where all points converge - - in one of the numberless texts that the Aleph in his cellar revealed to him. Incredible as it may seem, I believe that the Aleph of Garay Street was a false Aleph.

The Dwellings of the Philosophers, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  value; one cannot dispute, for example, that the works of the Epic of the round Table have a
  certain charm which arises from a more careful form. Thibaut, Count of Champagne, in his

the Eternal Wisdom, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  11) But in what circumstances does our reason teach us that there is vice or virtue? How does this continual mystery work? Tell me, inhabitants of the Malay Archipelago, Africans, Canadians and you, Plato, Cicero, Epictetus! You all feel equally that it is better to give away the superfluity of your bread, your rice or your manioc to the indigent than to kill him or tear out his eyes. It is evident to all on earth that an act of benevolence is better than an outrage, that gentleness is preferable to wrath. We have merely to use our Reason in order to discern the shades which distinguish right and wrong. Good and evil are often close neighbours and our passions confuse them. Who will enlighten us? We ourselves when we are calm. ~ Voltaire
  12) In order to live a happy life, man should understand what life is and what he can or cannot do. The best and wisest men in all nations have taught it to us from all times. All the doctrines of the sages meet in their foundation and it is this general sum of their doctrines, revealing the aim of human life and the conduct to be pursued, that constitutes real religion. ~ Tolstoi
  --
  31) He becomes master of all this universe who has this knowledge.-Know thyself, sound the divinity ~ Epictetus, "Conversations." III.22
  Self-Consecration View Similar The Paths of the Understanding
  --
  19) If thou wouldst make progress, be resigned to passing for an idiot or an imbecile in external things; consent to pass for one who understands nothing of them at all. ~ Epictetus: Manual. 13
  20) The sage is not a savant nor the savant a sage. ~ Lao-Tse. 44
  --
  20) In what then consists progress? He who detaching him self from external things devotes himself entirely to the education and preparation of his faculty of judgment and will in order to put it into accord with Nature and give it elevation, freedom, independence, self-possession,-he it is who is really progressing. ~ Epictetus : Conversations
  21) Who truly travels beyond the Illusion? He who renounces evil associations, who keeps company with lofty spirits; who has no longer the sense of possession; who frequents solitary places; who wrests himself out of slavery to the world, passes beyond the three qualities and abandons all anxiety about his existence; renounces the fruits of works, renounces his works and becomes free from the opposites; who renounces even the Vedas and aids others to travel beyond; he truly travels beyond and helps others to make the voyage. ~ Narada Sutra
  --
  1) And, first, ordinarily be silent. ~ Epictetus 33. 2
  2) For the ignorant there is no better rule than silence and if he knew its advantage he would not be ignorant. ~ Sadi : Gulistan VIII
  --
  24) Thou wouldst exhort men to good ? but hast thou exhorted thyself ? Thou wouldst be useful to them ? Show by thy own example what men philosophy can make and do not prate uselessly. ~ Epictetus
  25) Improve others not by reasoning but by example. Let your existence, not your words be your preaching. ~ Amiel
  --
  5) What purity is for the soul, cleanliness is for the body. ~ Epicietus
  6) The body is not distinct from the soul but makes of part it and the soul is not distinct from the whole but one of its members ~ Farid-ud-din-aitar: Mantic uttair
  --
  6) In all things to do what depends on oneself and for the rest to remain firm and calm. ~ Epictetus
  7) It is no use being in a rage against things, that makes no difference to them. ~ Marcus Aurelius
  --
  8) True good can only be obtained by our effort towards spiritual perfection and this effort is always in our power. ~ Epictetus
  9) Who is the enemy? Lack of energy. ~ The Jewel-wreath of Questions and Answers
  --
  26) Man! renounce all that thou mayst be happy, that thou mayst be free, that thou mayst have thy soul large and great. Carry high thy head,...and thou art delivered from servitude. ~ Epictetus
  27) So live as if thou hadst at once to say farewell to life and the time yet accorded thee were an unexpected gift. ~ Marcus Aurelius
  --
  27) Knowest thou not that thou nurturest in thyself a god? It is a god whom thou usest for thy strength, a god whom thou carriest with thee everywhere, and thou knowest it not at all, O unhappy man. And thinkest thou that I speak of a silver or golden idol outside thee? The god of whom I speak, thou carriest within thee and perceivest not that thou pollutest him by thy impure thoughts and infamous actions. ~ Epictetus
  28) Purify thyself and thou shalt see God. Transform thy body into a temple, cast from thee evil thoughts and contemplate God with the eye of thy conscious soul. ~ Vemana
  --
  24) There is in all this only transformations of things one into another; there is no annihilation: a regulated order, a disposition of the ensemble, that is all. There is nothing else in a departure, it is only a slight change. There is nothing else in death, it is only a great change. The actual being changes, not into a non-existence, but into something it is not at present. ~ Epictetus
  25) All manifest things are born from that which is unmanifest at the coming of the day, and when the night arrives they dissolve into the unmanifest; thus all this host of beings continually come into existence and they disappear at the advent of the night and are born with the approach of the day. But beyond the non-manifestation of things there is another and greater unmanifest state of being which is supreme and eternal, and when all existences perish, that does not perish. ~ Bhagavad Gita, VIII. 18, 20
  --
  2) And shall I then no longer be? Yes, thou shalt be, but thou shalt be something else of which the world will have need at that moment. ~ Epictetus
  3) Can it be that change terrifies thee? But nothing is done without it. ~ Marcus Aurelius
  --
  3) This world is a republic all whose citizens are made of one and the same substance. ~ Epictetus
  4) Thus even though it is not durable, there is no interruption in substance. ~ Lalita Vistara
  --
  12) This world is a people of friends, and these friends are first the gods and next men whom Nature has made for each other. ~ Epictetus
  13) Listen to Nature: she cries out to us that we are all members of one family. ~ Sadi
  --
  2) When we act with obstinacy, malice, anger, violence, to whom do we make ourselves near and like? To wild beasts. ~ Epictetus
  3) Anger is an affection of the soul which, if it is not treated, degenerates into a malady of the body. ~ Apollonius of Tyana
  --
  23) What then is the duty of the citizen? Never to consider his particular interest, never to calculate as if he were an isolated individual. ~ Epictetus
  24) An off-cast from the city is he who tears his soul away from the soul of reasoning beings, which is one. ~ Marcus Aurelius

The Garden of Forking Paths 1, #Selected Fictions, #unset, #Zen
  With slow precision, he read two versions of the same Epic chapter. In the first, an army marches into battle over a desolate mountain pass. The bleak and somber aspect of the rocky landscape made the soldiers feel that life itself was of little value, and so they won the battle easily. In the second, the same army passes through a palace where a banquet is in progress. The splendor of the feast remained a memory throughout the glorious battle, and so victory followed.
  With proper veneration I listened to these old tales, although perhaps with less admiration for them in themselves than for the fact that they had been thought out by one of my own blood, and that a man of a distant empire had given them back to

The Garden of Forking Paths 2, #Selected Fictions, #unset, #Zen
  His face, within the vivid circle of the lamplight, was unquestionably that of an old man, but with something unalterable about it, even immortal. He read with slow precision two versions of the same Epic chapter. In the first, an army marches to a battle across a lonely mountain; the horror of the rocks and shadows makes the men undervalue their lives and they gain an easy victory. In the second, the same army traverses a palace where a great festival is taking place; the resplendent battle seems to them a continuation of the celebration and they win the victory. I listened with proper veneration to these ancient narratives, perhaps less admirable in themselves than the fact that they had been created by my blood and were being restored to me by a man of a remote empire, in the course of a desperate adventure, on a Western isle. I remember the last words, repeated in each version like a secret commandment: Thus fought the heroes, tranquil their admirable hearts, violent their swords, resigned to kill and to die.
  From that moment on, I felt about me and within my dark body an invisible, intangible swarming. Not the swarming of the divergent, parallel and finally coalescent armies, but a more inaccessible, more intimate agitation that they in some manner prefigured. Stephen Albert continued:

The Riddle of this World, #unknown, #Unknown, #unset
  write an Epic but rather perhaps slight but elegant and beautiful lyrics
  such as he wanted to write, but did not succeed, in Rome. In another

The Zahir, #Labyrinths, #Jorge Luis Borges, #Poetry
  In the figure of speech called oxymoron a word is modified by an epithet which seems to contradict it: thus, the Gnostics spoke of dark light, and the alchemists of a black sun. For me it was a kind of oxymoron to go straight from my last visit with Clementina Villar to buy a drink at a bar; I was intrigued by the coarseness of the act, by its ease. (The contrast was heightened by the circumstance that there was a card game in progress.) I asked for a brandy. They gave me the Zahir in my change. I stared at it for a moment and went out into the street, perhaps with the beginnings of a fever. I reflected that every coin in the world is a symbol of those famous coins which glitter in history and fable. I thought of Charon's obol; of the obol for which Belisarius begged; of Judas' thirty coins; of the drachmas of La's, the famous courtesan; of the ancient coin which one of the Seven Sleepers proffered; of the shining coins of the wizard in the 1001 Nights, that turned out to be bits of paper; of the inexhaustible penny of Isaac Laquedem; of the sixty thousand pieces of silver, one for each line of an Epic, which Firdusi sent back to a king because they were not of
  'The Zahir is the shadow of the Rose, and the Rending of the Veil.' "

Timaeus, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  The first work of creation is perfected, the second begins under the direction of inferior ministers. The supreme God is withdrawn from the world and returns to his own accustomed nature (Tim.). As in the Statesman, he retires to his place of view. So early did the Epicurean doctrine take possession of the Greek mind, and so natural is it to the heart of man, when he has once passed out of the stage of mythology into that of rational religion. For he sees the marks of design in the world; but he no longer sees or fancies that he sees God walking in the garden or haunting stream or mountain. He feels also that he must put God as far as possible out of the way of evil, and therefore he banishes him from an evil world. Plato is sensible of the difficulty; and he often shows that he is desirous of justifying the ways of God to man. Yet on the other hand, in the Tenth Book of the Laws he passes a censure on those who say that the Gods have no care of human things.
  The creation of the world is the impression of order on a previously existing chaos. The formula of Anaxagoras'all things were in chaos or confusion, and then mind came and disposed them'is a summary of the first part of the Timaeus. It is true that of a chaos without differences no idea could be formed. All was not mixed but one; and therefore it was not difficult for the later Platonists to draw inferences by which they were enabled to reconcile the narrative of the Timaeus with the Mosaic account of the creation. Neither when we speak of mind or intelligence, do we seem to get much further in our conception than circular motion, which was deemed to be the most perfect. Plato, like Anaxagoras, while commencing his theory of the universe with ideas of mind and of the best, is compelled in the execution of his design to condescend to the crudest physics.
  --
  The Timaeus of Plato, like the Protagoras and several portions of the Phaedrus and Republic, was translated by Cicero into Latin. About a fourth, comprehending with lacunae the first portion of the dialogue, is preserved in several MSS. These generally agree, and therefore may be supposed to be derived from a single original. The version is very faithful, and is a remarkable monument of Cicero's skill in managing the difficult and intractable Greek. In his treatise De Natura Deorum, he also refers to the Timaeus, which, speaking in the person of Velleius the Epicurean, he severely criticises.
  The commentary of Proclus on the Timaeus is a wonderful monument of the silliness and prolixity of the Alexandrian Age. It extends to about thirty pages of the book, and is thirty times the length of the original. It is surprising that this voluminous work should have found a translator (Thomas Taylor, a kindred spirit, who was himself a Neo-Platonist, after the fashion, not of the fifth or sixteenth, but of the nineteenth century A.D.). The commentary is of little or no value, either in a philosophical or philological point of view. The writer is unable to explain particular passages in any precise manner, and he is equally incapable of grasping the whole. He does not take words in their simple meaning or sentences in their natural connexion. He is thinking, not of the context in Plato, but of the contemporary Pythagorean philosophers and their wordy strife. He finds nothing in the text which he does not bring to it. He is full of Porphyry, Iamblichus and Plotinus, of misapplied logic, of misunderstood grammar, and of the Orphic theology.

Verses of Vemana, #is Book, #unset, #Zen
  The unholy wretch who joins the skull-sect is ignorant of the beginning and the end of life; and in folly reviles Siva, alas he is ruined, (This sect is atheistical and Epicurean. They deny both creation and destruction.)
  1034

WORDNET



--- Overview of noun epic

The noun epic has 1 sense (first 1 from tagged texts)
                      
1. (3) epic poem, heroic poem, epic, epos ::: (a long narrative poem telling of a hero's deeds)

--- Overview of adj epic

The adj epic has 2 senses (first 2 from tagged texts)
                      
1. (2) epic, heroic, larger-than-life ::: (very imposing or impressive; surpassing the ordinary (especially in size or scale); "an epic voyage"; "of heroic proportions"; "heroic sculpture")
2. (1) epic, epical ::: (constituting or having to do with or suggestive of a literary epic; "epic tradition")


--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun epic

1 sense of epic                            

Sense 1
epic poem, heroic poem, epic, epos
   => poem, verse form
     => literary composition, literary work
       => writing, written material, piece of writing
         => written communication, written language, black and white
           => communication
             => abstraction, abstract entity
               => entity


--- Hyponyms of noun epic

1 sense of epic                            

Sense 1
epic poem, heroic poem, epic, epos
   HAS INSTANCE=> Aeneid
   HAS INSTANCE=> Divine Comedy, Divina Commedia
   HAS INSTANCE=> Iliad
   HAS INSTANCE=> Odyssey
   HAS INSTANCE=> Nibelungenlied
   => chanson de geste
   => rhapsody
   => heroic verse, heroic meter, heroic


--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun epic

1 sense of epic                            

Sense 1
epic poem, heroic poem, epic, epos
   => poem, verse form


--- Similarity of adj epic

2 senses of epic                            

Sense 1
epic, heroic, larger-than-life
   => large (vs. small), big (vs. little)

Sense 2
epic, epical


--- Antonyms of adj epic

1 of 2 senses of epic                        

Sense 1
epic, heroic, larger-than-life

INDIRECT (VIA large, big) -> small, little
INDIRECT (VIA large, big) -> small, little


--- Coordinate Terms (sisters) of noun epic

1 sense of epic                            

Sense 1
epic poem, heroic poem, epic, epos
  -> poem, verse form
   => abecedarius
   => Alcaic, Alcaic verse
   => ballad, lay
   => ballade
   => blank verse
   => elegy, lament
   => epic poem, heroic poem, epic, epos
   => free verse, vers libre
   => haiku
   => lyric, lyric poem
   => rondeau, rondel
   => sonnet
   => tanka
   => terza rima
   => verse, rhyme
   => versicle


--- Pertainyms of adj epic

2 senses of epic                            

Sense 1
epic, heroic, larger-than-life

Sense 2
epic, epical
   Pertains to noun epic (Sense 1)
   =>epic poem, heroic poem, epic, epos
   => poem, verse form


--- Derived Forms of adj epic

1 of 2 senses of epic                        

Sense 2
epic, epical
   RELATED TO->(noun) epic#1
     => epic poem, heroic poem, epic, epos
   RELATED TO->(noun) epos#2
     => epic poem, heroic poem, epic, epos


--- Grep of noun epic
epic
epic poem
epic poetry
epicalyx
epicanthic fold
epicanthus
epicardia
epicardium
epicarp
epicene
epicene person
epicenter
epicentre
epicondyle
epicondylitis
epicranium
epictetus
epicure
epicurean
epicureanism
epicurism
epicurus
epicycle
epicyclic gear
epicyclic gear train
epicyclic train
epicycloid
tepic



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Wikipedia - Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy -- Controversy relating to the publication of depictions of Muhammad
Wikipedia - Kalevala -- 19th-century work of epic poetry
Wikipedia - Kalevi (mythology) -- Ancient Finnish ruler, known from the Finnish epic Kalevala
Wikipedia - Kalyanasundara -- iconographical depiction of the wedding of the Hindu deities Shiva and Parvati
Wikipedia - Kamehameha I (Gould) -- Bronze sculpture depicting the founder and first ruler of the Kingdom of Hawaii
Wikipedia - Karna -- Major character in the epic Mahabharata
Wikipedia - Kennedy half dollar -- 50-cent piece depicting John F Kennedy minted after his assassination in 1963
Wikipedia - Khanda (Sikh symbol) -- Sikh symbol depicting Deg Tegh Fateh doctrine
Wikipedia - Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il portraits -- Mandatory depictions of the North Korean rulers
Wikipedia - King Arthur: Legend of the Sword -- 2017 British-American epic adventure film directed by Guy Ritchie
Wikipedia - Korean Unification Flag -- Flag depicting the Korean Peninsula
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Wikipedia - Landscape painting -- Depiction of landscapes in art
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Wikipedia - List of games by Epic Games -- Video games by developer/publisher
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Wikipedia - Monochroa sepicolella -- Species of moth
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Wikipedia - Mortal Engines Quartet -- epic tetralogy of steampunk fantasy novels
Wikipedia - Mountains and Rivers Without End -- Epic poem by Gary Snyder
Wikipedia - Muhammad: The Messenger of God (film) -- 2015 Islamic epic Iranian film directed by Majid Majidi
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Wikipedia - National epic
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Wikipedia - Network topology -- Arrangement of the various elements of a computer network; topological structure of a network and may be depicted physically or logically
Wikipedia - Nibelungenlied -- Middle High German epic poem from around 1200
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Wikipedia - Nonnus -- Ancient Greek epic poet
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Wikipedia - Nyctalope -- The first cyborg depicted in fiction
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Wikipedia - Oghuz Khagan -- Epic ancestor of all Oghuz Turks
Wikipedia - Oliver Sacks: His Own Life -- 2019 American epic documentary directed by Ric Burns
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Wikipedia - On Nature (Epicurus)
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Wikipedia - Orientalism -- Imitation or depiction of Eastern culture
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Wikipedia - Paleoart -- Art genre attempting to depict prehistoric life according to scientific evidence
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Wikipedia - Panipat (film) -- 2019 Indian epic war film
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Wikipedia - Paralepetopsis lepichoni -- Species of mollusk
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Wikipedia - Patro the Epicurean
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Wikipedia - Pharsalia -- Roman epic poem by Lucan
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Wikipedia - Portrait painting -- Genre in painting, where the intent is to depict a specific human subject
Wikipedia - Posthomerica -- Epic poem by Quintus of Smyrna
Wikipedia - Poteidania -- Ancient town in Aetolia Epictetus, modern Greece
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Wikipedia - Primo and Epico -- Professional wrestling tag team
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Wikipedia - Qissa-i Sanjan -- Epic poem about early Zoroastrians
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Wikipedia - Queerbaiting -- In media, hinting at but not depicting queer relationships
Wikipedia - Rabirius (Epicurean)
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Wikipedia - Raji: An Ancient Epic -- Indie video game
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Wikipedia - Ramayana -- Ancient Sanskrit Epic by Valmiki
Wikipedia - Ramcharitmanas -- Epic poem by Tulsidas
Wikipedia - Ravananugraha -- Hindu depiction of the demon Ravana lifting Mount Kailash; god Shiva blessing him
Wikipedia - Ravana -- Important figure in the Hindu epic Ramayana
Wikipedia - Reds (film) -- 1981 historical drama film epic by Warren Beatty
Wikipedia - Reepicheep -- Fictional mouse in The Chronicles of Narnia, books 2 and 3
Wikipedia - Return of the Jedi -- 1983 American epic space-opera film directed by Richard Marquand
Wikipedia - Roman Catholic Diocese of Tepic
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Wikipedia - Sahadeva -- Character from Indian epic Mahabharata; 5th Pandava
Wikipedia - Salih Uglla Peshteri -- Albanian performer of epic poetry
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Wikipedia - Santo (art) -- Wooden or ivory statues that depict saints, angels
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Wikipedia - Satyavati -- Character from Indian epic Mahabharata
Wikipedia - Schwurhand -- Heraldic charge depicting the hand gesture that is used in Germanic Europe and neighboring countries
Wikipedia - Scott Cepicky -- American politician
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Wikipedia - Sepicana -- Genus of beetles
Wikipedia - Serbian epic poetry
Wikipedia - Sexual content -- Material depicting sexual behavior
Wikipedia - Shahnameh -- Long epic Persian poem written by Ferdowsi
Wikipedia - Shakuntala (epic) -- Epic by Lakshmi Prasad Devkota
Wikipedia - Shalya -- A character in the epic Mahabharata
Wikipedia - Shantanu -- King in the epic Mahabharata
Wikipedia - Shikhandi -- Character in the Hindu epic Mahabharata
Wikipedia - Shishupala -- Character of the epic Mahabharata
Wikipedia - Shravan -- Indian epic character
Wikipedia - Shundi (fictional kingdom) -- Fictional kingdom depicted in Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne
Wikipedia - Shurpanakha -- A character of the epic Ramayana
Wikipedia - Silk painting depicting a man riding a dragon -- Silk painting
Wikipedia - Siro the Epicurean
Wikipedia - Siyer-i Nebi -- Turkish epic about the life of Muhammad
Wikipedia - Slice of life -- Depiction of everyday experience in art and entertainment
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Wikipedia - Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones -- 2002 American epic space-opera film directed by George Lucas
Wikipedia - Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith -- 2005 American epic space-opera film directed by George Lucas
Wikipedia - Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace -- 1999 American epic space-opera film directed by George Lucas
Wikipedia - Star Wars (film) -- 1977 American epic space-opera film directed by George Lucas
Wikipedia - Star Wars: The Force Awakens -- 2015 American epic space-opera film directed by J. J. Abrams
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Wikipedia - Star Wars: The Last Jedi -- 2017 American epic space-opera film written and directed by Rian Johnson
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Wikipedia - Stations of the Cross -- Series of artistic representations, depicting Jesus Christ carrying the Cross to his crucifixion
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Wikipedia - Statue of William King -- Marble sculpture depicting Maine's first governor of the same name by Franklin Simmons, installed in the US Capitol, in Washington, DC
Wikipedia - Stele of the Vultures -- Historical and mythical limestone account / depiction
Wikipedia - Still life photography -- Genre of photography used for the depiction of inanimate subject matter, typically a small group of objects. It is the application of photography to the still life artistic style and it really cool and stuff
Wikipedia - Strike! (musical) -- Musical depicting the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike in Canada
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Wikipedia - Stucky (fandom) -- Depictions of a relationship between Captain America and the Winter Soldier
Wikipedia - Subhadra -- Character from Indian epic Mahabharata
Wikipedia - Sudeshna -- Character in the Hindu epic Mahabharata
Wikipedia - Supporter -- Figures usually placed on either side of an heraldic shield and depicted holding it up
Wikipedia - Susan B. Anthony dollar -- United States dollar coin depicting Susan B. Anthony
Wikipedia - Template talk:Epicureanism
Wikipedia - The Alamo (1960 film) -- 1960 American historical epic film directed by John Wayne
Wikipedia - The Books of Jacob -- Epic novel by Olga Tokarczuk
Wikipedia - The Changing Light at Sandover -- epic poem by James Merrill
Wikipedia - The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
Wikipedia - The Emperor Has No Balls -- Series of sculptures depicting Donald Trump by Indecline
Wikipedia - The Empire Strikes Back -- 1980 American epic space-opera film directed by Irvin Kershner
Wikipedia - The Epic of Everest -- 1924 film
Wikipedia - The Guns of Navarone (film) -- 1961 Anglo-American epic adventure war film by J. Lee Thompson
Wikipedia - The Icewind Dale Trilogy -- A trilogy of epic fantasy novels by R.A. Salvatore
Wikipedia - The Last Emperor -- 1987 epic biographical drama film by Bernardo Bertolucci
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Wikipedia - The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot -- 2015 video game
Wikipedia - The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power -- Non-fiction book
Wikipedia - The Second of May 1808 -- 1814 painting by Francisco de Goya depicting rebellion against the French occupation of Spain
Wikipedia - The Slav Epic -- Cycle of paintings by Alphonse Mucha
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Wikipedia - The Stormlight Archive -- A series of epic fantasy novels by Brandon Sanderson
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Wikipedia - The Taking of Tiger Mountain -- 2014 Chinese-Hong Kong epic action film by Tsui Hark
Wikipedia - The Tale of Kieu -- Epic poem in Vietnamese written by NguyM-aM-;M-^En Du (1766-1820)
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Wikipedia - The Ugly American -- 1958 political novel by Eugene Burdick and William Lederer depicting failures of U.S. diplomacy in Southeast Asia
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Wikipedia - The White Angel (1936 film) -- 1936 American film depicting Florence Nightingale directed by William Dieterle
Wikipedia - The World Before the Flood -- 1828 painting by William Etty depicting a scene from John Milton's Paradise Lost
Wikipedia - Torse -- Exterior ornament of the shield, depicted as a roll of fabric laid about the top of helmet and base of crest
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Wikipedia - United Nations in popular culture -- United Nations as depicted in popular culture
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Wikipedia - XHNF-FM -- Radio station in Tepic, Nayarit
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Wikipedia - XHPNA-FM -- Radio station in Tepic, Nayarit
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Epictetus ::: Born: 55; Died: 135; Occupation: Philosopher;
Epicurus ::: Born: 341 BC; Died: 270 BC; Occupation: Philosopher;
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https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31751.Ship_of_Ghosts_The_Story_of_the_USS_Houston__FDR_s_Legendary_Lost_Cruiser__and_the_Epic_Saga_of_Her_Survivors
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31842603-the-epic-of-ronyn
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/318757.Epics_on_Everest
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32795959-the-epic-of-garthel-parts-i-iii
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33507274-el-manual-de-epicteto-enkiridion
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33572513-the-book-of-massively-epic-engineering-disasters
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33781503-el-manual-de-epicteto-enkiridion
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33889833-the-epic-of-gilbert-mesh
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35170765-scenes-from-the-epic-life-of-a-total-genius
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36200760-epic-hikes-of-the-world
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36203673-this-is-kind-of-an-epic-love-story
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/363383.Epic_Encounters
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36490964-catching-epics
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36899531-professor-ione-d-and-the-epicurean-incident
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37805230-101-epic-dishes
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38497003-the-epic-adventures-of-huggie-stick
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39000._Six_Frigates__The_Epic_History_of_the_Founding_of_the_U_S__Navy
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39350941-the-revelation-epic
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/396752.Vegetarian_Epicure_Book_Two
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/396753.The_New_Vegetarian_Epicure
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39739192-doctor-strange-epic-collection-vol-1
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39859310-zombie-epicdemic
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39864489-angelfall-epic
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39899328-the-epic-of-garthel-parts-iv-vii
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40538206-epic
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40748953-epic-origins
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42198395-where-epics-fail
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42737879-epic-is-her-future
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4275560-epic-geography
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42980308-where-epics-fail
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43063259-epic-zero
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44092382-epic-devotions
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4443995-epicuro
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45427744-il-lamento-di-epicuro
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4652828-life-letters-and-epicurean-philosophy-of-ninon-de-l-enclos
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4668.Some_Sort_of_Epic_Grandeur
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/473954.Epic_Dawn_of_Destiny
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5755436-epic
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/595069.Into_Africa_The_Epic_Adventures_of_Stanley___Livingstone
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/599752.Epictetus_Handbook_and_the_Tablet_of_Cebes
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6050976-lucretius-epictetus-marcus-aurelius-plotinus
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60813.Brethren_An_Epic_Adventure_of_the_Knights_Templar__Brethren_Trilogy___1_
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/617495.The_Epic_of_Gilgamesh
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/626363.Marius_the_Epicurean
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6493321.Logicomix_An_Epic_Search_for_Truth
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6506224-stonepicker-and-the-book-of-mirrors
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7206043.Teeth___The_Epic_Novel_with_Bite__Vol__1__The_South_Pacific_Trilogy_
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7246332-the-garden-of-epicurus
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/738810.The_Revelation_Epic
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7663677-meditations-of-marcus-aurelius-and-epictetus-enchiridion
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7664334.Amy___Roger_s_Epic_Detour
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7664334-amy-roger-s-epic-detour
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/799949.The_Epics_of_Celtic_Ireland
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/807504.Stonepicker
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8167301.Firefly_Island__an_Epic_Fantasy
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8171378.The_Warmth_of_Other_Suns_The_Epic_Story_of_America_s_Great_Migration
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8185017.Dawn_of_Destiny__Epic___1_
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/828180.Lusitania_An_Epic_Tragedy
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8578133-marius-the-epicurean---volume-1
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/885677.Epicurus
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/910630.My_Almost_Epic_Summer
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9266776-epic-fail
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9679718-new-italian-epic
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9768990-the-epic-of-man
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/114041.Epicurean
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/114041.Epicurus
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/13852.Epictetus
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/14253493.Epicteto
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/15123037.Epictete
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/15683665.Epicuro
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/16876627.Epic_Rios
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/17095051.EPIC_Television_s_popular
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/18282006.Epicread
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/18897092.Epic_Summary
Goodreads author - Epicurus
Goodreads author - Epictetus
Goodreads author - Epicteto
http://epicduel.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page
http://epicmickey.wikia.com/
https://greekmythology.wikia.org/wiki/File:1280px-Black-Figured_Amphora_depicting_the_Battle_of_Gods_and_Giants.jpg
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Buddhahood#Depictions_of_the_Buddha_in_art
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Cabeiri#Depiction_in_literary_sources
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Castor_and_Pollux#Depictions
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Cherub#Depictions
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Cultural_depictions_of_Jesus
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Debbie_Zepick
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Depiction_of_Jesus
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Depictions_of_Gautama_Buddha_in_film
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Depictions_of_Muhammad
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Dike_(mythology)#Depiction
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Epiclesis
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gilgamesh
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Epic_of_King_Gesar
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Epictetus
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/File:Bm-epic-g.jpg
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/File:Coin_of_Kanishka_depicting_Gautam_Buddha.jpg
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/File:Sermon_in_the_Deer_Park_depicted_at_Wat_Chedi_Liem-KayEss-1.jpeg
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Gandaberunda#Depiction
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Ganesha#Vedic_and_epic_literature
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Indian_epic_poetry
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Christians_in_the_New_Testament#Depictions_in_Luke-Acts
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Rakshasa#Artistic_and_folkloric_depictions_of_Rakshasas
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Rakshasa#Depictions_of_Rakshasas_at_Angkor_in_Cambodia
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Rakshasa#In_Hindu_epics
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Saint_George#Later_depictions_and_occurrences
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Yam_(god)#In_the_Epic_of_Ba.27al
http://malankazlev.com/kheper/topics/postmaterialism/epicofevolution.html -- 0
Integral World - Epic Rap Battle of Integral, Ken Wilber takes on Frank Visser in the very first Epic Rap Battle of Integral, Ryan Nakade
selforum - sri aurobindos two epics savitri llion
selforum - savitri is epic of triumphof conquest
selforum - read epics in native tongue
https://thoughtsandvisions-searle88.blogspot.com/2012/10/sant-mat-depictions-of-higher-planes.html
https://circumsolatious.blogspot.com/2014/03/a-cover-up-of-epic-proportions.html
wiki.auroville - Ritam_"The_Word_in_the_Rig-Veda_and_in_Sri_AurobindoM-bM-^@M-^Ys_epic_poem_Savitri"
Psychology Wiki - Epicureanism
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - depiction
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - epictetus
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - epicurus
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/crowner.php/ImagePickin/ImageSuggestions152
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/crowner.php/ImagePickin/LetThePastBurn
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https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Creator/IcePickLodge
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Creator/MarvelEpicComics
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https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Fanfic/EpicUnicornHistoryTheBeardsOfHarmony
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http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Tropers/EpicBleye
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Tropers/EpicFantasyStory
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Tropers/EpicFightingTroper
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Tropers/EpicLevelNerd
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Tropers/EpicLinkSam
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Tropers/EpicLover
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Tropers/Epiclyrice
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Tropers/Epicparadox
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Tropers/MtOlivePickles
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Tropers/ProbablyNotEpic
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Tropers/Writerepic
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Tropers/Zackepic22
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Category:Epic_films
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Category:Epic_poetry
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Category:Epic_poets
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Depictions_of_Muhammad
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Epic_(2013_film)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Epicharmus_of_Kos
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Epic_of_Evolution
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gilgamesh
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Epictetus
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Epicurus
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/File:Chanakya_artistic_depiction.jpg
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/File:Editorial_cartoon_depicting_Charles_Darwin_as_an_ape_(1871).jpg
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/File:Epicteti_Enchiridion_Latinis_versibus_adumbratum_(Oxford_1715)_frontispiece.jpg
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/File:Epictetus.jpg
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/File:Epictetus.png
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/File:Epicurus_Louvre.jpg
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/File:Epicurus-PergamonMuseum.png
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Indian_epic_poetry
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Special:GlobalUsage/Chanakya_artistic_depiction.jpg
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Special:GlobalUsage/Epicurus_Louvre.jpg
https://www.poetry-chaikhana.com/Poets/S/ShihtePickup/index.html
Doug (1991 - 1994) - 11 year old Doug Funnie moves to Bluffington from Bloatsburg, with his dog Porkchop. Doug finds himself being torn between being Patty Mayonase' friend and wanting to pursue a real relationship with her. This show pretty acurately depicts the becoming of age events that happen during this time in...
Tales from The Darkside (1983 - 1988) - Tales from the Darkside was a weekly half hour horror series. The show ran from it's Halloween 1983 pilot episode until 1988, with a total of 90 episodes in all.Each episode of this TV series depicts a short, strange tale...with a twist! With eerie stories vaguely reminiscent of 'The Twilight Zone,...
Grimm's Fairy Tale Classics (1987 - 1989) - Grimms fairy Tale classics were Japanese interpretations of classic fairy tales that aired on Nick Jr. beginning in 1988. The show was a thirty-minute anime cartoon that depicted a different Grimm fairytale from the more well known to the lesser known ones. There were a total of 48 episodes in al...
Blazing Dragons (1992 - 1994) - This series followed the epic clash of humans and dragons during the Middle Ages--except in this case, the dragons were the noble heroes, and the humans were the evil savages!
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kids (1973 - 1974) - Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kids was a Saturday morning cartoon produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions in 1973 for NBC. Very similar to both Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! and Josie and the Pussycats, the show depicted the adventures of a team of teenage intelligence agents (Butch, Merilee, Stephanie,...
The Invisible Man (1958 - 1960) - A brittish scientist"Dr.Peter Brady"experiments with a machine that deals with light refection..but..because of a malfunction..A beam from the device makes him invisible.Stories depic "Dr.Brady's"efforts to help the Brittish government.
Baby Looney Tunes (2001 - 2006) - Baby Looney Tunes is an American animated television series taking place in an alternate universe depicting the Looney Tunes characters as infant versions of themselves. It was produced by Warner Bros. Animation. The show is similar to Muppet Babies, with the main characters taken care of by Granny...
The Marshmallow Times (2004 - 2005) - The anime series, consisting of a total 52 episodes, was broadcast from April 4, 2004 until March 27, 2005 on the TXN Network in Japan.The series focuses on 7 children and a sheep-like character who hang out together and work as a team. Each character is depicted with a varying hairstyle and flavor...
Silver Spoon (2013 - 2014) - a Japanese coming-of-age[2] manga series written and illustrated by Hiromu Arakawa, serialized in Shogakukan's Weekly Shnen Sunday since April 2011. The story is set in the fictional Ooezo Agricultural High School in Hokkaido, and depicts the daily life of Yuugo Hachiken, a high school student from...
Master of Epic (2007 - Current) - a free Japanese MMORPG. It has not been released outside of Japan. It was adapted into an anime (Master of Epic: The Animation Age) by Gonzo and Palm Studio, and aired on TV Tokyo in 2007. Unlike many MMORPGs, Master of Epic has dispensed with levels and instead the player has an extensive list of s...
Earth Maiden Arjuna (2001 - Current) - a Japanese animated television series created by Shoji Kawamori. The series follows Juna Ariyoshi, a high school girl chosen to be the "Avatar of Time" and entrusted with saving the dying Earth.Arjuna" refers to the legendary archer Arjuna from the Hindu epic Mahbhrata, which explains why Juna's w...
The Naked Brothers Band (2007 - 2009) - The Naked Brothers Band is an American musical comedy television series created by Polly Draper for Nickelodeon. It depicts the daily lives of Draper's sons, who lead a fictional world-renowned rock band in New York City. As a mockumentary, the storyline is an embellishment of their real lives, and...
Noozles (1984 - Current) - also known as The Wondrous Koala Blinky, is a 26-episode anime by Nippon AnimationCompany that was originally released in Japan in 1984. It depicts the adventures of a 12-year-old girl named Sandy and her koala friends, Blinky and Pinky, who are from the extra-dimensional realm of Koalawalla Land. N...
Pop Team Epic (2018 - 2018) - An anime television series adaptation animated by Kamikaze Douga and produced by King Records aired between January and March 2018. (Beauty sisters got dank)The manga chronicles the misadventures of two 14-year-old girls named Popuko and Pipimi, who encounter a variety of both mundane and bizarre si...
Red Garden (2006 - 2007) - a Japanese animated television series produced by Gonzo studios and broadcast in Japan on TV Asahi since October 3, 2006. The plot revolves around four girls who become involved in a series of supernatural murders happening throughout the vicinity of a fictional depiction of New York City. It combin...
Incredible Games (1994 - 1995) - ncredible Games was a popular children's game show which was broadcast in 1994-1995 (two series) by the BBC. It included a variety of games, performed by contestants between the ages of 11 and 14. The show itself was set in a fictional skyscraper (which was depicted in the titles by a London council...
This Is America, Charlie Brown (1988 - 1989) - An eight-part animated TV mini-series, depicting events in American history with characters from the Charles M. Schulz comic strip Peanuts. Due to the nature of the events portrayed and the historical figures included - such as The Wright Brothers and George Washington - many adults were shown in fu...
Judge Dredd(1995) - A violent, effects-heavy science fiction adventure, Judge Dredd depicts a nightmarish future in which overcrowded cities are terrorized by brutal gun battles and policed by "Judges," law officers who act as judge, jury, and executioner. Sylvester Stallone stars as Judge Dredd, a punishing enforcer w...
Waterworld(1995) - Widely considered to be an expensive failure, Waterworld was an epic vehicle for Kevin Costner, who starred in and co-produced the film, with his friend Kevin Reynolds as director. It was based on a 1986 screenplay by Peter Rader and cost an estimated $235 million, more than any film in history up t...
Gone With The Wind(1939) - Gone with the Wind is a 1939 American epic historical romance film adapted from Margaret Mitchell's Pulitzer-winning 1936 novel and produced by David O. Selznick, of Selznick International Pictures. Set in the 19th-century American South, the film tells the story of Scarlett O'Hara (Vivien Leigh) an...
Apocalypse Now(1979) - Loosely based Joesph Conrad's story "Heart of Darkness",this modern-day epic set during the Vietnam war tells the story of a solider sent on a mission to kill an insane and power hungry officer.
Red Dawn(1984) - A film depicting the invasion of the United States from the north and south by Soviet forces from Cuba and Russia in the beginning of WWIII and the efforts of partisans from a small mid-western town to turn back the invasion. This film is one of the basis of the beliefs of the citizens militias and...
Whore(1991) - Russell's avowed purpose with Whore was to avoid the glamorous depiction of prostitution common to such slick Hollywood products as Pretty Woman. As played by Theresa Russell (no relation to Ken), the eponymous character lives a hellish existence. Relating her story directly to the camera, Russell i...
Brainscan(1994) - A lonely teenage horror-movie fan discovers a mysterious computer game that uses hypnosis to custom-tailor the game into the most terrifying experience imaginable. When he emerges from the hypnotic trance he is horrified to find evidence that the brutal murder depicted in the game actually happened...
Electric Dreams(1984) - Electric Dreams is a 1984 movie set in San Francisco, California that depicts a love triangle between a man, a woman, and a home computer. It stars Lenny Von Dohlen, Virginia Madsen and Bud Cort (voice) and was directed by Stev
Memphis Belle(1990) - Unabashedly sentimental, this war film was produced by David Putnam in partnership with Catherine Wyler, whose father William Wyler directed an acclaimed documentary about the real-life events depicted in the film. The ensemble cast is composed of ten young actors portraying the crew of the World Wa...
Frozen(2013) - Anna sets off on an epic journeyteaming up with rugged mountain man Kristoff and his loyal reindeer Svento find her sister Elsa, whose icy powers have trapped the kingdom of Arendelle in eternal winter. Encountering Everest-like conditions, mystical trolls and a hilarious snowman named Olaf, Anna...
Used Cars(1980) - Before Robert Zemeckis made fantasy movies, he made this rollicking comedy about a young car salesman named Rudy Russo (Kurt Russell). When his boss dies, the boss' brother wants to move in on the territory. Now a prank war of epic proportions is on.
A River Runs Through It(1992) - This movie is the tale of the MacLean brothers, Norman (Craig Sheffer) and Paul (Brad Pitt). The two of them are very different in behavior. One of the only things they have in common is an enjoyment of fly-fishing. The movie depicts their lives and how they each turn out.
A Chinese Ghost Story 3(1991) - This is the third in a series of movies featuring creatures from Chinese ghost stories. It begins with a scene from the first movie of the series, which shows the hero in an epic conflict with something called the Tree Devil, which has been put to sleep for a hundred years. Now it is "later," and th...
Basic Instinct(1992) - This cold, stylish erotic-thriller grossed over $100 million at the box-office despite vigorous protests at its depiction of gays and women. The shocking opening sequence features a graphic sexual encounter involving a rock-star bound with a white Hermes scarf by an unidentified blond woman. Despite...
Orlando(1992) - Independent filmmaker Sally Potter's gender-bending epic, which views four centuries of sexual politics through the eyes of a sex-switching main character, is based on the 1928 novel by Virginia Woolf. The androgynous title character is played with delicate quietude by Tilda Swinton. The story begin...
The Missing Link(1980) - A young caveman named Oh, who was raised by a brontosaurus, finds out who he really is and sets out on an epic quest to find his own kind that abandoned him as a baby. On the way, he discovers the wheel, fire, and sex. Featuring songs by Le
The Last Prom(1980) - Driver's education film depicting the dangers of drinking and driving, and teenage alcohol use. The movie was frequently shown during the spring of the year, as such milestone events as prom and graduation were upcoming in many students' lives. The underscoring idea was, of course, to encourage stud...
Joy Ride: An Auto Theft(1976) - "Joy Ride: An Auto Theft" was an educational film depicting the dangers of teen-aged joy riding (taking a vehicle without the owner's consent), and according to the movie trailer was based on a real-life event. In addition to being shown in driver's education classes, "...
Gandhi(1982) - This movie depicts Gandhi's (Ben Kingsley) life from his time as a lawyer through his non-violent yet government-changing action against the British.
Inchon(1982) - A war epic directed by Terence Young and based on the Battle of Inchon during the Korean war, starring General Douglas MacArthur (played by legend Lawrence Oliver), Barbara Hallsworth (played by Jacqueline Bisset), and U.S. Major Frank Hallsworth (Ben Gazarra). The film starts in 1950, with a North...
Chariots of Fire(1981) - In the year 1924, two runners are looking to be in the Olympics. One of them is a Jew named Harold Abrahams (Ben Cross), who races to prove his worth to society. The other is a Christian named Eric Liddell (Ian Charleson), who runs for the Glory of God. The movie depicts their friendship from their...
Let's Spend The Night Together(1983) - Known in some territories as "Time Is On Our Side", this documentary depicts a concert that the Rolling Stones performed in Texas in the early 80s. The Stones perform many of their greatest hits as well as a few cover songs. Basically, they're just doing their thing and doing it well.
The Right Stuff(1983) - The Right Stuff is a 1983 American epic drama film that was adapted from Tom Wolfe's best-selling 1979 book of the same name about the Navy, Marine and Air Force test pilots who were involved in aeronautical research at Edwards Air Force Base, California, as well as the seven military pilots who wer...
Young Harry Houdini(1987) - This biographical movie depicts the youth of the magician Harry Houdini (1874 - 1926). As a boy his name was Eric Weiss and his father wanted him to become a locksmith. But he ran away and joined the traveling show of Dr. Grimaldi, where he learned the tricks of a magician and a little mystery from...
Elvis (Made For TV)(1979) - Elvis is an early TV film by John Carpenter and is based upon the life of 'The King of Rock 'n' Roll' Elvis Presley. However, it ends in 1970 and does not depict the last few years of Elvis' life and career.
Windwalker (1980)(1980) - "1 hr. 48 min. American Indian life is depicted with careful attention paid to authenticity and detail in this fine film. A Cheyenne chief relates his life memories to his grandchildren
Far And Away(1992) - In this epic Ron Howard film, Joseph Donelly (Tom Cruise) is an impoverished 19th-century Irish tenant farmer who has recently lost both his father and his home to the agents of his unscrupulous landlord. On a mission to avenge his family's injustice at the hands of the ruthless land baron Joseph me...
It Could Happen to You(1994) - Loosely based on a true story, this uneven romantic comedy depicts the unexpected way in which a winning lottery ticket unites a pair of strangers. Waitress Yvonne (Bridget Fonda) first meets police officer Charlie (Nicolas Cage) when he eats in her restaurant. Realizing that he doesn't have enough...
Nixon(1995) - An all-star cast powers this epic look at American President Richard M. Nixon, a man carrying both the fate of the world on his shoulders while battling the self-destructive demands within. From his victorious presidential election to the shocking Watergate scandal that would seal his doom.
Hoffa(1992) - Danny DeVito tries hard to give his biopic Hoffa an epic scope, yet he just misses the mark. Starring Jack Nicholson as Jimmy Hoffa, the film traces the life, career and mysterious disappearance of the labor leader. Hoffa follows the rise of the controversial figure through his early work during the...
Stop Making Sense(1984) - This movie depicts a series of concerts that was used to promote the Talking Heads album "Speaking In Tongues". The songs that the group sang were combined with odd dancing, cool sets and peculiar visual ideas inspired by everything from Fred Astaire movies to Kabuki. This movie has oft-times been p...
Lawrence of Arabia(1962) - Lawrence of Arabia is a 1962 British epic adventure drama film based on the life of T. E. Lawrence. It was directed by David Lean and produced by Sam Spiegel through his British company, Horizon Pictures, with the screenplay by Robert Bolt and Michael Wilson. The film stars Peter O'Toole in the titl...
Videodrome(1983) - Max Renn (James Woods) runs a lowly television station and always looks for more extreme programming to attract an audience. Max picks up an unknown program called Videodrome that only depicts torture and murder. As Max becomes more obsessed with Videodrome, the more he begins to have hallucinations...
King of Kings(1961) - King of Kings is a 1961 American Biblical epic film made by Samuel Bronston Productions and distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Directed by Nicholas Ray, the film is a dramatization of the story of Jesus of Nazareth from his birth and ministry to his crucifixion and resurrection, with much dramatic...
The Powerpuff Girls Movie(2002) - The Powerpuff Girls Movie might well be the first and only theatrically released big screen feature film to ever portray a kindergartner hero (or, in this case, three cute if deformed kindergarten children who happened to fight monsters with their rather super-heroic powers) at the heart of an epic...
The Incredible Rocky Mountain Race(1977) - An old man observes a boy bullying his playmates and treats him to a morality lesson. The man tells the story of the epic cross-country race between a young Mark Twain and his rival, Mike Fink. The bulk of the film depicts the race, which proves to be more a test of character than of stamina.
More American Graffiti(1979) - The film, set over the course of four consecutive New Year's Eves from 1964 to 1967, depicts scenes from each of these years, intertwined with one another as though events happen simultaneously. The audience is protected from confusion by the use of a distinct cinematic style for each section. For e...
Being Human(1994) - Being Human is a 1994 epic fantasy drama film written and directed by Bill Forsyth, and starring Robin Williams. The film portrays the experience of a single human soul, portrayed by Williams, through various incarnations. Williams is the only common actor throughout the stories that span man's hist...
Oblivion(2013) - A solitary drone repairman working on a war-ravaged planet Earth becomes humanity's last hope for survival in this ambitious sci-fi epic from "Tron: Legacy" director Joseph Kosinski, and "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" producer Peter Chernin. In the distant future, Earth has been decimated by an in...
Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens(2015) - In this thrilling continuation of the epic space opera, which takes place 30 years after "Return of the Jedi", ex-stormtrooper Finn, scrappy desert dweller Rey, and droid companion BB-8 get caught up in a galactic war when they come across a map containing the whereabouts of the vanished Luke Skywal...
Once Upon A Time In The West(1968) - Epic story of a mysterious stranger with a harmonica who joins forces with a notorious desperado to protect a beautiful widow from a ruthless assassin working for the railroad.
The Last Samurai(2003) - The Last Samurai is a 2003 American epic war film directed and co-produced by Edward Zwick, who also co-wrote the screenplay with John Logan. The film stars Tom Cruise, who also co-produced, as well as Ken Watanabe, Shin Koyamada, Tony Goldwyn, Hiroyuki Sanada, Timothy Spall, and Billy Connolly. Ins...
The Roaring Twenties(1939) - The Roaring Twenties is a 1939 crime thriller starring James Cagney, Priscilla Lane, Humphrey Bogart and Gladys George. The epic movie, spanning the periods between 1919 and 1933, was directed by Raoul Walsh, and written by Jerry Wald, Richard Macaulay and Robert Rossen based on "The World Moves On,...
The World's End(2013) - Gary King (Simon Pegg) is an immature 40-year-old who's dying to take another stab at an epic pub-crawl that he last attempted 20 years earlier. He drags his reluctant buddies back to their hometown and sets out for a night of heavy drinking. As they make their way toward their ultimate destination...
Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie(2017) - George Beard and Harold Hutchins are two overly imaginative pranksters who spend hours in a treehouse creating comic books. When their mean principal threatens to separate them into different classes, the mischievous boys accidentally hypnotize him into thinking that he's a ridiculously enthusiastic...
The Ideon: Be Invoked(1982) - The epic conclusion to the Ideon saga, featuring what was meant to be the final 5 episodes of the TV series. The Solo Ship and its crew continue their intense battle with the Buff Clan leading to a final battle that will determine the fate of all life in the universe.
Parsifal(1982) - Richard Wagner's last opera has remained controversial since its first performance for its unique, and, for some, unsavory blending of religious and erotic themes and imagery. Based on one of the medieval epic romances of King Arthur and the search for the holy grail (the chalice touched by the lips...
Doctor Zhivago(1965) - Doctor Zhivago (Italian: Il dottor ivago) is a 1965 epic romantic drama film directed by David Lean with a screenplay by Robert Bolt. It is set in Russia between the years prior to World War I and the Russian Civil War of 19181922, and is based on the 1957 Boris Pasternak novel Doctor Zhivago. Whi...
California(1947) - Epic account of how California became a state, featuring a wagon train, the Gold Rush, a wicked saloon queen, and an evil profiteer.
Ben-Hur(1959) - Ben-Hur is a 1959 American epic historical drama film directed by William Wyler, produced by Sam Zimbalist, and starring Charlton Heston as the title character. A remake of the 1925 silent film with a similar title, it was adapted from Lew Wallace's 1880 novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. The scre...
Ike: Countdown To D-Day(2004) - This TV movie depicts the tense 90 days leading up to the D-Day invasion and how Dwight Eisenhower, against all odds, brilliantly orchestrated the most important military maneuver in modern history.
The Great Escape(1963) - The Great Escape is a 1963 American World War II epic film by DeLuxe Color based on an escape by British Commonwealth prisoners of war from a German POW camp during World War II, starring Steve McQueen, James Garner and Richard Attenborough filmed i
Giant(1956) - Sprawling epic covering the life of a Texas cattle rancher and his family and associates.
Capitalism: A Love Story(2009) - Capitalism: A Love Story examines the impact of corporate dominance on the everyday lives of Americans (and by default, the rest of the world). The film moves from Middle America, to the halls of power in Washington, to the global financial epicenter in Manhattan. With both humor and outrage, the fi...
Epic Movie(2007) - A comic parody film taking on adventure movies and epics. Lucy finds her adopted father, a museum curator, has been attacked. He tells her of a golden ticket in a candy bar from a museum vending machine. Ignacio lives in a Mexican monastery and has become angered at the living conditions, deciding t...
Treasure Planet(2002) - he film's prologue depicts Jim Hawkins as a five-year-old (voiced by Austin Majors) reading a storybook in bed. Jim is enchanted by stories of the legendary pirate Captain Flint and his ability to appear from nowhere, raid passing ships, and disappear in order to hide the loot on the mysterious "Tre...
March of the Penguins(2005) - March of the Penguins is a 2005 French nature documentary film directed and co-written by Luc Jacquet, and co-produced by Bonne Pioche and the National Geographic Society. The film depicts the yearly journey of the Emperor Penguins of Antarctica. In autumn, all the penguins of breeding age (five yea...
Son of God(2014) - Son of God is a 2014 American epic biblical drama film directed by Christopher Spencer, and produced by Mark Burnett and Roma Downey. The film premiered in New York, and Los Angeles for a limited release on February 21, 2014, and then into a wide release on February 28, 2014. The film retells the li...
The Robe(1953) - The Robe is a 1953 American Biblical epic film that tells the story of a Roman military tribune who commands the unit that is responsible for the Crucifixion of Jesus. The film was released by 20th Century Fox and was the first film released in the widescreen process CinemaScope. Like other early Ci...
The Greatest Story Ever Told(1965) - The Greatest Story Ever Told is a 1965 American epic film produced and directed by George Stevens. It is a retelling of the Biblical account about Jesus of Nazareth, from the Nativity through to the Ascension. Along with the ensemble cast, it marked Claude Rains's final film role.
Battle of the Bulge(1965) - This epic war movie starring Henry Fonda as Lt. Con. Daniel Kiley, Robert Shaw as Col. Martin Hessler, Robert Ryan as Gen. Grey, Dana Andrews as Col. Pritch, Charles Bronson as Maj. Wolenski, James MacArthur as Lt. Weaver, and Telly Savalas as Sgt. Guffy.
The Guns of Navarone(1961) - This epic war film starring Gregory Peck, David Niven and Anthony Quinn.
The Longest Day(1962) - The Longest Day is a 1962 American epic war film based on Cornelius Ryan's 1959 non-fiction of the same name about the D-Day landings at Normandy on June 6, 1944. The film was produced by Darryl F. Zanuck, who paid author Ryan $175,000 for the film rights. The screenplay was by Ryan, with additional...
Hotel Transylvania 2(2015) - Hotel Transylvania 2 is a 2015 American 3D computer animated comedy film, the second installment in the Hotel Transylvania franchise and the sequel to the 2012 film Hotel Transylvania. Hotel Transylvania 2 depicts events taking place 7 years after the first film, with the hotel now open to human gue...
War of the Worlds: Goliath(2012) - A retro-futuristic epic of steampunk battle set in 1914. It has been 15 years since the original H.G. Wells Martian invasion. Fearing another attack, the human race has prepared itself. This is the story of the battle tripod 'Goliath' and its young crew. 'Goliath' is the vanguard of an army of steam...
A Taste Of Hell(1973) - An explosive war epic depicting the heroic stand for patriotism from the hills down to the devastated countryside.
Curious George 3: Back to the Jungle(2015) - Curious George goes on an epic adventure to space that crash lands in the jungles of Africa leading to an unforgettable journey with some new animal friends.
Conan the Barbarian(2011) - A powerful Cimmerian warrior, Conan (Jason Momoa) carves a bloody path across the land of Hyboria on a personal vendetta. That soon turns into a an epic battle against evil, for Conan's mortal enemy, Khalar Zym (Stephen Lang), seeks the legendary Mask of Acheron. The artifact will enable Khalar Zym...
Office Christmas Party(2016) - When the CEO tries to close her hard-partying brother's branch, he and his Chief Technical Officer must rally their co-workers and host an epic office Christmas party in an effort to impress a potential client and close a sale that will save their jobs.
North Country(2005) - Inspired by a true story, as depicted on a book, this drama is Directed by Niki Carlo ("Whale Rider").
Straight Outta Compton(2015) - A 2015 American biographical drama film directed by F. Gary Gray, depicting the rise and fall of the gangsta rap group N.W.A and its members Eazy-E, Ice Cube, and Dr. Dre. The members of N.W.A were involved in the production of the film, including Ice Cube and Dr. Dre as producers, as was Eazy-E's w...
Abominable(2019) - A teenage girl named Yi encounters a young Yeti on the roof of her apartment building in Shanghai, names him Everest and embarks on an epic quest to reunite the magical creature with his family at the highest point on Earth along with her mischievous friends Jin and Peng, but the trio of friends wil...
https://myanimelist.net/anime/10545/The_Epic_Of_ZektBach --
https://myanimelist.net/anime/1885/Master_of_Epic__The_Animation_Age -- Fantasy, Game, Comedy
https://myanimelist.net/manga/117241/Fate_Grand_Order__Epic_of_Remnant_-_Ashu_Tokuiten_III_Ashu_Heikou_Sekai_-_Shizan_Ketsuga_Butai_Shimousa_no_Kuni_-_Eirei_Kengou_Nanaban_Shoubu
https://myanimelist.net/manga/6971/Radiata_Stories__The_Epic_of_Jack
https://myanimelist.net/manga/88723/Monster_Hunter_Epic
Adventure, Fantasy | TV Series ::: Connections -- 9 episodes -- Epic drama set thousands of years before the events of J.R.R. Tolkien's 'The Hobbit' and 'The Lord of the Rings' follows an ensemble cast of characters, both familiar and new, as they confront the long-feared re-emergence of evil to Middle-earth. Creators: Patrick McKay, John D. Payne Stars: Cynthia Addai-Robinson, Maxim Baldry, Ian Blackburn
Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters (2007) ::: 6.7/10 -- R | 1h 26min | Animation, Action, Adventure | 13 April 2007 (USA) -- An action epic that explores the origins of Master Shake, Frylock, and Meatwad, better known as the Aqua Teen Hunger Force, who somehow become pitted in a battle over an immortal piece of exercise equipment. Directors: Matt Maiellaro, Dave Willis Writers:
Baara (2009) ::: 6.9/10 -- Not Rated | 2h 43min | Comedy, Drama | 25 September 2009 (Italy) -- Baaria is Sicilian slang for Bagheria where Tornatore was born and this is an autobiographic epic of three generations in the Sicilian village where he was born. Director: Giuseppe Tornatore Writer:
Babylon Berlin ::: TV-MA | 45min | Crime, Drama, Thriller | TV Series (2017- ) Episode Guide 29 episodes Babylon Berlin Poster -- Colognian commissioner Gereon Rath moves to Berlin, the epicenter of political and social changes in the Golden Twenties. Creators: Henk Handloegten, Tom Tykwer, Achim von Borries
Beavis and Butt-Head Do America (1996) ::: 6.8/10 -- PG-13 | 1h 21min | Animation, Adventure, Comedy | 20 December 1996 -- Beavis and Butt-Head Do America Poster -- Our intrepid adolescent heroes wake up to find their beloved television stolen, and embark on an epic journey across America to recover it, and, who knows, maybe even score. Directors: Mike Judge, Mike de Seve (as Mike DeSeve) | 2 more credits Writers:
Chappaquiddick (2017) ::: 6.4/10 -- PG-13 | 1h 46min | Biography, Drama, History | 6 April 2018 (USA) -- Depicting Ted Kennedy's involvement in the fatal 1969 car accident that claims the life of a young campaign strategist, Mary Jo Kopechne. Director: John Curran Writers: Taylor Allen, Andrew Logan
Critical Role ::: TV-14 | 3h | Adventure, Fantasy | TV Series (2015 ) A live weekly show, where a band of professional voice actors improvise, role-play and roll their way through an epic Dungeons & Dragons campaign. Stars: Liam O'Brien, Taliesin Jaffe, Marisha Ray
Critical Role ::: TV-14 | 3h | Adventure, Fantasy | TV Series (2015- ) Episode Guide 273 episodes Critical Role Poster A live weekly show, where a band of professional voice actors improvise, role-play and roll their way through an epic Dungeons & Dragons campaign. Stars: Liam O'Brien, Taliesin Jaffe, Marisha Ray
Damnation ::: TV-MA | 1h | Crime, Drama, Western | TV Series (20172018) -- An epic saga about the secret history of the 1930s American heartland, centering on the mythic conflict and bloody struggle between big money and the downtrodden. Creator:
Dirty John ::: TV-14 | 44min | Crime, Drama | TV Series (2018 ) -- Anthology series in which each season is based on a true crime story featuring an epic tale of love gone wrong. Creator: Alexandra Cunningham
EarthBound (1994) ::: 8.9/10 -- Mother 2: Ggu no gyakushuu (original title) -- EarthBound Poster -- Ness, a boy from Onett, Eagleland, teams up with new friends to defeat an Evil Destroyer named Giygas. During the epic pursuits, Ness and his allies attempt to find the sacred Eight Melodies. Director: Shigesato Itoi Writers:
Epic (2013) ::: 6.7/10 -- PG | 1h 42min | Animation, Adventure, Family | 24 May 2013 (USA) -- A teenager finds herself transported to a deep forest setting where a battle between the forces of good and the forces of evil is taking place. She bands together with a rag-tag group of characters in order to save their world -- and ours. Director: Chris Wedge Writers:
Epic Rap Battles of History ::: TV-14 | Short, Comedy, History | TV Series (2010 ) A YouTube video series that pits famous historical, pop culture, or fictional characters against one another in rap battle format. Creators: Epic Lloyd, Nice Peter Stars:
Giant (1956) ::: 7.6/10 -- G | 3h 21min | Drama, Western | 24 November 1956 (USA) -- Sprawling epic covering the life of a Texas cattle rancher and his family and associates. Director: George Stevens Writers: Edna Ferber (from the novel by), Fred Guiol (screen play) | 1 more
Good Boys (2019) ::: 6.7/10 -- R | 1h 30min | Adventure, Comedy | 16 August 2019 (USA) -- Three 6th grade boys ditch school and embark on an epic journey while carrying accidentally stolen drugs, being hunted by teenage girls, and trying to make their way home in time for a long-awaited party. Director: Gene Stupnitsky Writers:
Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994) ::: 7.5/10 -- R | 2h 3min | Drama, Horror | 11 November 1994 (USA) -- A vampire tells his epic life story: love, betrayal, loneliness, and hunger. Director: Neil Jordan Writers: Anne Rice (screenplay), Anne Rice (novel)
Kon-Tiki (2012) ::: 7.2/10 -- PG-13 | 1h 58min | Adventure, Biography, Drama | 26 April 2013 (USA) -- Legendary explorer Thor Heyerdahl's epic 4,300-mile crossing of the Pacific on a balsawood raft in 1947, in an effort to prove that it was possible for South Americans to settle in Polynesia in pre-Columbian times. Directors: Joachim Rnning, Espen Sandberg Writer:
Kung Fu Panda 3 (2016) ::: 7.1/10 -- PG | 1h 35min | Animation, Action, Adventure | 29 January 2016 (USA) -- Continuing his "legendary adventures of awesomeness", Po must face two hugely epic, but different threats: one supernatural and the other a little closer to home. Directors: Alessandro Carloni, Jennifer Yuh Nelson Writers:
La Grande Vadrouille (1966) ::: 8.0/10 -- La grande vadrouille (original title) -- La Grande Vadrouille Poster -- Several ordinary Frenchmen, helping British pilots avoid Nazi captivity, go on an epic voyage through the occupied country to the free zone. Director: Grard Oury Writers:
La piovra ::: TV-14 | 6h 42min | Crime, Drama, Mystery | TV Series (19841998) An epic crime saga of power, money, violence and corruption, the mafia controls everything like an Octopus but when law enforcement tries to bring them down they pay the ultimate price. Creators: Lucio Battistrada, Massimo De Rita Stars:
Last Cab to Darwin (2015) ::: 7.2/10 -- Not Rated | 2h 3min | Adventure, Comedy, Drama | 10 June 2016 (USA) -- When Rex, a Broken Hill cab driver, is told he doesn't have long to live, he sets out on an epic journey to Darwin in a bid to die on his own terms. Director: Jeremy Sims Writers:
Le Mans (1971) ::: 6.8/10 -- Approved | 1h 46min | Action, Adventure, Drama | 23 June 1971 (USA) -- Almost at the verge of documentary, film depicts a single auto race from the ground up. Director: Lee H. Katzin Writer: Harry Kleiner
Life of Pi (2012) ::: 7.9/10 -- PG | 2h 7min | Adventure, Drama, Fantasy | 21 November 2012 (USA) -- A young man who survives a disaster at sea is hurtled into an epic journey of adventure and discovery. While cast away, he forms an unexpected connection with another survivor: a fearsome Bengal tiger. Director: Ang Lee Writers:
Loving Vincent (2017) ::: 7.8/10 -- PG-13 | 1h 34min | Animation, Biography, Crime | 22 September 2017 -- Loving Vincent Poster -- In a story depicted in oil painted animation, a young man comes to the last hometown of painter Vincent van Gogh (Robert Gulaczyk) to deliver the troubled artist's final letter and ends up investigating his final days there. Directors: Dorota Kobiela, Hugh Welchman
Magnolia (1999) ::: 8.0/10 -- R | 3h 8min | Drama | 7 January 2000 (USA) -- An epic mosaic of interrelated characters in search of love, forgiveness, and meaning in the San Fernando Valley. Director: Paul Thomas Anderson Writer: Paul Thomas Anderson
Malcolm X (1992) ::: 7.7/10 -- PG-13 | 3h 22min | Biography, Drama, History | 18 November 1992 (USA) -- Biographical epic of the controversial and influential Black Nationalist leader, from his early life and career as a small-time gangster, to his ministry as a member of the Nation of Islam. Director: Spike Lee Writers:
Max (2002) ::: 6.5/10 -- R | 1h 46min | Drama, War | 20 June 2003 (UK) -- A film studying the depiction of a friendship between an art dealer named Rothman and his student, Adolf Hitler. Director: Menno Meyjes Writer: Menno Meyjes
Metalocalypse ::: TV-MA | 11min | Animation, Comedy, Music | TV Series (20062013) -- The epic and over-the-top adventures of Dethklok, the world's most successful death metal band. Creators: Tommy Blacha, Brendon Small
Minecraft Epic ::: TV-14 | Action, Adventure, Comedy | TV Series (2019 ) Pewdiepie has epic adventures in Minecraft. With the help of his friends, he can conquer the hostile world, and maybe learn some life lessons. Stars: Felix Kjellberg, Joergen, Water Sheep
Mommie Dearest (1981) ::: 6.7/10 -- R | 2h 9min | Biography, Drama | 25 September 1981 (USA) -- The abusive and traumatic adoptive upbringing of Christina Crawford at the hands of her mother, screen queen Joan Crawford, is depicted. Director: Frank Perry Writers: Christina Crawford (book), Frank Yablans (screenplay) | 3 more
Oasis (2017) ::: 8.1/10 -- TV-MA | 1h | Drama, Sci-Fi | TV Movie 17 March 2017 -- A Scottish chaplain embarks on an epic journey through space. Director: Kevin Macdonald Writers: Michel Faber (based on the book "The Book of Strange New Things"), Matt Charman Stars:
O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) ::: 7.7/10 -- PG-13 | 1h 47min | Adventure, Comedy, Crime | 2 February 2001 (USA) -- In the deep south during the 1930s, three escaped convicts search for hidden treasure while a relentless lawman pursues them. Directors: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen (uncredited) Writers: Homer (epic poem "The Odyssey"), Ethan Coen | 1 more credit
Paranormal ::: TV-14 | 45min | Drama, Fantasy, Horror | TV Series (2020- ) Episode Guide 6 episodes Paranormal Poster -- Set in the 1960s, the series, packed with mystery and suspense, depicts the adventures of PARANORMAL leading character Dr. Refaat Ismail, a single hematologist who finds himself faced with a series of supernatural events. Stars:
Paranormal ::: TV-14 | 45min | Drama, Fantasy, Horror | TV Series (2020 ) -- Set in the 1960s, the series, packed with mystery and suspense, depicts the adventures of PARANORMAL leading character Dr. Refaat Ismail, a single hematologist who finds himself faced with a series of supernatural events. Stars:
Peaky Blinders ::: TV-MA | 1h | Crime, Drama | TV Series (2013 ) -- A gangster family epic set in 1900s England, centering on a gang who sew razor blades in the peaks of their caps, and their fierce boss Tommy Shelby. Creator:
Peaky Blinders ::: TV-MA | 1h | Crime, Drama | TV Series (2013- ) Episode Guide 36 episodes Peaky Blinders Poster -- A gangster family epic set in 1900s England, centering on a gang who sew razor blades in the peaks of their caps, and their fierce boss Tommy Shelby. Creator:
Queen of the Mountains (2014) ::: 7.4/10 -- Kurmanjan datka (original title) -- Queen of the Mountains Poster The relevant epic story of the strong-willed, courageous and independent woman before her time, Kurmanjan, who is revered to this day for her diplomacy for saving her nation from complete destruction when the Russians invaded. Director: Sadyk Sher-Niyaz Writers: Sadyk Sher-Niyaz (screenplay), Bakytbek Turdubaev | 1 more credit
Rescue Dawn (2006) ::: 7.3/10 -- PG-13 | 2h | Action, Biography, Drama | 27 July 2007 (USA) -- A U.S. fighter pilot's epic struggle of survival after being shot down on a mission over Laos during the Vietnam War. Director: Werner Herzog Writer: Werner Herzog
Selma (2014) ::: 7.5/10 -- PG-13 | 2h 8min | Biography, Drama, History | 9 January 2015 (USA) -- A chronicle of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s campaign to secure equal voting rights via an epic march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, in 1965. Director: Ava DuVernay Writer:
Sita Sings the Blues (2008) ::: 7.6/10 -- Not Rated | 1h 22min | Animation, Comedy, Fantasy | 12 August 2009 -- Sita Sings the Blues Poster An animated version of the epic Indian tale of Ramayana set to the 1920s jazz vocals of Annette Hanshaw. Director: Nina Paley Writers: Nina Paley, Valmiki (book) Stars:
Star-Crossed ::: TV-14 | 1h | Drama, Romance, Sci-Fi | TV Series (2014) -- About an epic romance between a human girl and an alien boy when he and others of his kind are integrated into a suburban high school 10 years after they landed on Earth and were consigned to an internment camp. Creator:
Steve Jobs (2015) ::: 7.2/10 -- R | 2h 2min | Biography, Drama | 23 October 2015 (USA) -- Steve Jobs takes us behind the scenes of the digital revolution, to paint a portrait of the man at its epicenter. The story unfolds backstage at three iconic product launches, ending in 1998 with the unveiling of the iMac. Director: Danny Boyle Writers:
Syriana (2005) ::: 6.9/10 -- R | 2h 8min | Drama, Thriller | 9 December 2005 (USA) -- A politically charged epic about the state of the oil industry in the hands of those personally involved in and affected by it. Director: Stephen Gaghan Writers: Stephen Gaghan, Robert Baer (book)
The Aviator (2004) ::: 7.5/10 -- PG-13 | 2h 50min | Biography, Drama | 25 December 2004 (USA) -- A biopic depicting the early years of legendary Director and aviator Howard Hughes' career from the late 1920s to the mid 1940s. Director: Martin Scorsese Writer: John Logan
The Best of Youth (2003) ::: 8.5/10 -- La meglio giovent (original title) -- The Best of Youth Poster An Italian epic that follows the lives of two brothers, from the 1960s to the 2000s. Director: Marco Tullio Giordana Writers: Sandro Petraglia, Stefano Rulli Stars:
The Dragon Prince ::: TV-Y7 | 26min | Animation, Adventure, Drama | TV Series (2018- ) Episode Guide 27 episodes The Dragon Prince Poster -- Two human princes forge an unlikely bond with the elfin assassin sent to kill them, embarking on an epic quest to bring peace to their warring lands. Creators:
The Dragon Prince ::: TV-Y7 | 26min | Animation, Adventure, Drama | TV Series (2018 ) -- Two human princes forge an unlikely bond with the elfin assassin sent to kill them, embarking on an epic quest to bring peace to their warring lands. Creators:
The End of the Tour (2015) ::: 7.3/10 -- R | 1h 46min | Biography, Drama | 12 November 2015 (Brazil) -- The story of the five-day interview between Rolling Stone reporter David Lipsky and acclaimed novelist David Foster Wallace, which took place right after the 1996 publication of Wallace's groundbreaking epic novel, 'Infinite Jest.' Director: James Ponsoldt Writers:
The Fast Show ::: TV-14 | 30min | Comedy | TV Series (19942014) UK comedy sketch show depicting most forms of stereotypical British society. Stars: Paul Whitehouse, Charlie Higson, Arabella Weir Available on Amazon
The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) ::: 6.6/10 -- G | 4h 20min | Biography, Drama, History | 9 April 1965 (UK) -- An all-star, large scale epic movie that chronicles the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. Directors: George Stevens, David Lean (uncredited) | 1 more credit Writers: Fulton Oursler (book), Henry Denker (source writings) | 3 more
The Great Race (1965) ::: 7.3/10 -- Passed | 2h 40min | Action, Adventure, Comedy | 17 December 1965 (USA) -- In the early 20th century, two rivals, the heroic Leslie and the despicable Professor Fate, engage in an epic automobile race from New York to Paris. Director: Blake Edwards Writers:
The Great Waldo Pepper (1975) ::: 6.7/10 -- PG | 1h 47min | Adventure, Drama | 13 March 1975 (USA) -- After WW1, an ex-pilot takes up barn-storming and chance-meets a former German ace fighter pilot with whom he co-stars in Hollywood war movies depicting aerial dog-fights. Director: George Roy Hill Writers: George Roy Hill (story), William Goldman (screenplay) Stars:
The House That Jack Built (2018) ::: 6.8/10 -- R | 2h 32min | Crime, Drama, Horror | 17 October 2018 (France) -- The story follows Jack, a highly intelligent serial killer, over the course of twelve years, and depicts the murders that really develop his inner madman. Director: Lars von Trier Writers:
The Message (1976) ::: 8.2/10 -- PG | 2h 57min | Biography, Drama, History | 8 July 1977 (France) -- This epic historical drama chronicles the life and times of Prophet Muhammad and serves as an introduction to early Islamic history. Director: Moustapha Akkad Writers: H.A.L. Craig, Tewfik El-Hakim | 3 more credits Stars:
The Mill and the Cross (2011) ::: 6.9/10 -- Mlyn i krzyz (original title) -- The Mill and the Cross Poster -- This movie focuses on a dozen of the five hundred characters depicted in Bruegel's painting. The theme of Christ's suffering is set against religious persecution in Flanders in 1564. Director: Lech Majewski Writers:
The Peanuts Movie (2015) ::: 7.1/10 -- G | 1h 28min | Animation, Comedy, Family | 6 November 2015 (USA) -- Snoopy embarks upon his greatest mission as he and his team take to the skies to pursue their archnemesis, while his best pal Charlie Brown begins his own epic quest back home to win the love of his life. Director: Steve Martino Writers:
The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939) ::: 7.1/10 -- Approved | 1h 46min | Biography, Drama, History | 11 November 1939 -- The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex Poster -- A depiction of the love/hate relationship between Queen Elizabeth I and Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex. Director: Michael Curtiz Writers:
The Son ::: TV-14 | 44min | Drama, Western | TV Series (20172019) -- A multi-generational epic telling of the story of America's birth as a superpower through the bloody rise and fall of one Texas oil empire. Creators: Brian McGreevy, Philipp Meyer, Lee Shipman
The War Game (1966) ::: 8.0/10 -- 48min | Drama, War | TV Movie 1 November 1967 -- A docudrama depicting a hypothetical nuclear attack on Britain. Director: Peter Watkins Writer: Peter Watkins Stars: Michael Aspel, Peter Graham, Dave Baldwin
The White Tiger (2021) ::: 7.2/10 -- R | 2h 5min | Crime, Drama | 22 January 2021 (USA) -- An ambitious Indian driver uses his wit and cunning to escape from poverty and rise to the top. An epic journey based on the New York Times bestseller. Director: Ramin Bahrani Writers:
The World's End (2013) ::: 7.0/10 -- R | 1h 49min | Comedy, Sci-Fi | 23 August 2013 (USA) -- Five friends who reunite in an attempt to top their epic pub crawl from twenty years earlier unwittingly become humanity's only hope for survival. Director: Edgar Wright Writers:
Troy (2004) ::: 7.3/10 -- R | 2h 43min | Drama, History | 14 May 2004 (USA) -- An adaptation of Homer's great epic, the film follows the assault on Troy by the united Greek forces and chronicles the fates of the men involved. Director: Wolfgang Petersen Writers:
Twin Sisters (2002) ::: 7.4/10 -- De Tweeling (original title) -- Twin Sisters Poster Twin Sisters is an epic love story based on the Dutch bestseller by Tessa de Loo that has been read by more than 3.5 million readers in Holland and Germany. Director: Ben Sombogaart Writers: Tessa de Loo (novel), Marieke van der Pol (screenplay)
Ulysses (1954) ::: 6.7/10 -- Ulisse (original title) -- Ulysses Poster -- A movie adaptation of Homer's second epic, that depicts Ulysses' efforts to return to his home after the end of ten years of war. Director: Mario Camerini Writers:
War of the Worlds (2005) ::: 6.5/10 -- PG-13 | 1h 56min | Adventure, Sci-Fi, Thriller | 29 June 2005 (USA) -- An updated version of H.G Wells' seminal sci-fi classic about an alien invasion threatening the future of humanity. The catastrophic nightmare is depicted through the eyes of one American family fighting for survival. Director: Steven Spielberg Writers:
Where'd You Go, Bernadette (2019) ::: 6.5/10 -- PG-13 | 1h 49min | Comedy, Drama | 16 August 2019 (USA) -- A loving mom becomes compelled to reconnect with her creative passions after years of sacrificing herself for her family. Her leap of faith takes her on an epic adventure that jump-starts her life and leads to her triumphant rediscovery. Director: Richard Linklater Writers:
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Akagami no Shirayuki-hime -- -- Bones -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Fantasy Romance Drama Shoujo -- Akagami no Shirayuki-hime Akagami no Shirayuki-hime -- Although her name means "snow white," Shirayuki is a cheerful, red-haired girl living in the country of Tanbarun who works diligently as an apothecary at her herbal shop. Her life changes drastically when she is noticed by the silly prince of Tanbarun, Prince Raji, who then tries to force her to become his concubine. Unwilling to give up her freedom, Shirayuki cuts her long red hair and escapes into the forest, where she is rescued from Raji by Zen Wistalia, the second prince of a neighboring country, and his two aides. Hoping to repay her debt to the trio someday, Shirayuki sets her sights on pursuing a career as the court herbalist in Zen's country, Clarines. -- -- Akagami no Shirayuki-hime depicts Shirayuki's journey toward a new life at the royal palace of Clarines, as well as Zen's endeavor to become a prince worthy of his title. As loyal friendships are forged and deadly enemies formed, Shirayuki and Zen slowly learn to support each other as they walk their own paths. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- 485,510 7.78
Appleseed Alpha -- -- Sola Digital Arts -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Action Adventure Police Mecha Military Sci-Fi Seinen -- Appleseed Alpha Appleseed Alpha -- Set in a different series of events, this story does not follow the previous Appleseed movie canon (despite being directed by the same director of the previous movies); it is an alternate story to their beginnings. Briareos is already a cyborg and did not become separated from Deunan to be later reunited in Olympus to join ESWAT. -- -- Appleseed Alpha depicts the early days of Deunan Knute and Briareos in the 22nd century, as they embark on a journey throughout dystopic ruins of New York in search of the city of Olympus. They are hired by Two Horns, the warlord of the ruined city, to eliminate bipedal combat machines. During the fight, they encounter Iris and Olson, both on a mission. Deunan and Briareos befriend them and decide to join their mission. -- -- Iris is tasked with preventing the malevolent cyborg Talos from capturing a secret weapon humans were building. Talos uses Iris to activate the gigantic war machine. -- -- (Source: Wikipedia) -- Movie - Jan 17, 2015 -- 15,823 7.03
Area no Kishi -- -- Shin-Ei Animation -- 37 eps -- Manga -- Comedy School Shounen Sports -- Area no Kishi Area no Kishi -- Kakeru and Suguru are brothers who both have a flaming passion for soccer. However, while Suguru becomes a rising star in the Japanese youth soccer system, Kakeru decides to take on a managerial role after struggling on the field. But due to a cruel twist of fate, Kakeru ends up reevaluating the role he has chosen. -- -- In hopes of one day being able to enter the World Cup by becoming a member of the national team, Kakeru trains harder than anyone else. He isn’t alone in this quest for glory, though. Kakeru's childhood friend, Nana, is a soccer prodigy of her own, with the wicked nickname “Little Witch”. She is a top-ranked player and is already playing for Nadeshiko Japan, the Japanese women’s national team. Nana's success gives Kakeru the extra push he needs to reach for his goals. -- -- Soccer and adolescent fervor combine for an epic, emotional ride. Check it out for yourself in Area no Kishi! -- 61,244 7.21
Binchou-tan -- -- Studio Deen -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Slice of Life Comedy -- Binchou-tan Binchou-tan -- This is a story about a little girl who lives in an old house in the mountains. Her name is Bincho-tan. Each episode depicts a day in the life of Bincho-tan as she prepares her breakfast in the morning, goes to the forest to gather vegetables, does her household chores and rests at night after a day's work. She is surrounded by a group of close friends who add color to her ordinary yet simple life. -- TV - Feb 2, 2006 -- 9,544 6.92
Bobunemimimmi Specials -- -- - -- 2 eps -- 4-koma manga -- Comedy Parody Dementia -- Bobunemimimmi Specials Bobunemimimmi Specials -- The official website for the Pop Team Epic anime announced on Monday that the series' Bobunemimimmi (Bob Epic Team) segments will be compiled into a standalone Blu-ray Disc release. The release will include all 22 previously released segments by the production team AC-bu, plus two new segments, a "high speed kamishibai (paper theater) collection" of the "Hellshake Yano" segment, and original stickers. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- Special - Sep 15, 2018 -- 2,171 5.74
"Bungaku Shoujo" Memoire -- -- Production I.G -- 3 eps -- Light novel -- Drama Romance School -- "Bungaku Shoujo" Memoire "Bungaku Shoujo" Memoire -- Episodes which depict the background stories of "Bungaku Shoujo" Movie's main heroines. -- OVA - Jun 25, 2010 -- 25,649 7.33
Captain Tsubasa: Road to 2002 -- -- Group TAC, Madhouse -- 52 eps -- Manga -- Action Sports Shounen -- Captain Tsubasa: Road to 2002 Captain Tsubasa: Road to 2002 -- Tsubasa Oozora loves everything about soccer: the cheer of the crowd, the speed of the ball, the passion of the players, and the excitement that comes from striving to be the best soccer player he can be. His goal is to aim for the World Cup, and to do that, he’s spent countless hours practicing soccer, ever since the moment he could walk on two legs. Now, as he plays for the Barcelona team in a fierce game, it seems as though his dreams are on the verge of coming true. -- -- Captain Tsubasa: Road to 2002 tells the story of how Tsubasa climbed his way through the ranks, featuring his roots in the town of Nankatsu as well as his epic journey to master the art of soccer. -- TV - Oct 7, 2001 -- 43,226 7.40
Cheonnyeon-yeowoo Yeowoobi -- -- Sunwoo Entertainment -- 1 ep -- Original -- Sci-Fi Drama Fantasy -- Cheonnyeon-yeowoo Yeowoobi Cheonnyeon-yeowoo Yeowoobi -- Yobi, The Five Tailed Fox revolves around a kumiho, a nine-tailed fox that can assume different forms including human. Kumiho are familiar figures in Korean folk tales, and they are usually depicted as magical creatures that take female form to lure and prey on humans. This time, however, our protagonist is a young, kind-hearted fox with only five tails, instead of nine. -- -- After losing her family to fox hunters, five-tailed Yobi lives in the forest with some shipwrecked aliens, far away from the humans. When one of her alien friends gets captured by a villager, Yobi has no choice but to adventure into the human world to rescue him. At the village, Yobi meets many humans, including Geum Yee who studies at a school for maladjusted children. Interested in Geum Yee, Yobi joins the students and revels in the fun of human life, but both a fox hunter and a mysterious shadow man are on her trail. -- -- (Source: YesAsia) -- Movie - Jan 25, 2007 -- 12,569 7.30
Crayon Shin-chan Gaiden: Alien vs. Shinnosuke -- -- Shin-Ei Animation -- 13 eps -- Manga -- Sci-Fi Space Comedy Ecchi Seinen -- Crayon Shin-chan Gaiden: Alien vs. Shinnosuke Crayon Shin-chan Gaiden: Alien vs. Shinnosuke -- Unlike the main television anime series which is mostly set in modern-day Japan, the new series will be a "sealed room" suspense comedy set 100 years in the future. The story begins when Shinnosuke and the entire Nohara family wake up from cold sleep to find themselves aboard a space ship drifting in space. The anime will depict the various events that take place inside the ship. (Source: ANN) -- ONA - Aug 3, 2016 -- 1,914 6.59
Days: Touin Gakuen-sen! -- -- MAPPA -- 3 eps -- Manga -- Sports School Shounen -- Days: Touin Gakuen-sen! Days: Touin Gakuen-sen! -- Sequel to DAYS. -- -- It will depict the All-Japan High School Soccer Tournament's Tokyo Preliminary Round with Touin Academy. -- -- (Source: anilist.co) -- OVA - Mar 16, 2018 -- 19,243 7.48
Divine Gate -- -- Studio Pierrot -- 12 eps -- Game -- Action Sci-Fi Fantasy -- Divine Gate Divine Gate -- The legend of the Divine Gate is a story told to young children that depicts the merging of the living world, the heavens, and the underworld. "Adapters"—people born with unique elemental abilities gifted to them from the union of these worlds—formed the World Council, an organization which controls the chaos of the Gate by portraying its legend as nothing more than a myth. These Adapters train in a special academy owned by the World Council that allows the students to hone their skills. -- -- Aoto, a teenage boy with exceptional water powers and a tragic past, rejects the offer to join the academy numerous times—until he is successfully pressured by the energetic wind user Midori and stubborn fire user Akane. Together, with the World Council and their mysterious leader Arthur, they seek out the Gate in the hopes of uncovering the truth. But in order to reach their goals, they must unite and overcome their own despair while dealing with behind the scene mischief. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- 147,125 5.58
Fate/Grand Order: Shinsei Entaku Ryouiki Camelot 2 - Paladin; Agateram -- -- Production I.G -- 1 ep -- Game -- Action Supernatural Magic Fantasy -- Fate/Grand Order: Shinsei Entaku Ryouiki Camelot 2 - Paladin; Agateram Fate/Grand Order: Shinsei Entaku Ryouiki Camelot 2 - Paladin; Agateram -- Part two of Fate/Grand Order: Shinsei Entaku Ryouiki Camelot - Wandering; Agateram; an adaptation of the the Sixth Holy Grail War, The Sacred Round Table Realm Camelot Singularity of Fate/Grand Order. -- -- (Source: TYPE-MOON Wiki) -- Movie - May 8, 2021 -- 29,606 N/A -- -- .hack//G.U. Trilogy -- -- CyberConnect2 -- 1 ep -- Game -- Action Fantasy Game Sci-Fi -- .hack//G.U. Trilogy .hack//G.U. Trilogy -- Based on the CyberConnect2 HIT GAME, now will be released in a CG Movie! -- -- The Movie will be placed in the storyline of each .hack//G.U. games trilogy. The story follows Haseo, a player in the online MMORPG called The World:R2 at first depicted as a PKK (Player Killer Killer) known as the "Terror of Death", a former member of the disbanded Twilight Brigade guild. Haseo encounters Azure Kite (believing him to be Tri-Edge and blaming him for what happened to Shino) but is hopelessly outmatched. Azure Kite easily defeats Haseo and Data Drains him, reducing his level from 133 to 1 and leaving him without any items, weapons, or member addresses. He is left with a mystery on his hands as to the nature of the Data Drain and why Azure Kite is in possession of such a skill. -- -- Eventually Haseo gains the "Avatar" of Skeith. Acquiring the ability to call Skeith and wield his abilities, such as Data Drain. With Skeith as his strength, Haseo begins the quest for a way to save Shino. -- -- He is seen seeking out a PK (Player Killer) known as Tri-Edge, whose victims supposedly are unable to return to The World after he PKs them. Haseo's friend, Shino, was attacked six months prior to the events of the game by Tri-Edge, and the player herself, Shino Nanao, was left in a coma. -- -- (Source: AniDB) -- -- Licensor: -- Bandai Entertainment, Funimation -- Movie - Mar 25, 2008 -- 29,585 7.13
Fate/Zero -- -- ufotable -- 13 eps -- Light novel -- Action Supernatural Magic Fantasy -- Fate/Zero Fate/Zero -- With the promise of granting any wish, the omnipotent Holy Grail triggered three wars in the past, each too cruel and fierce to leave a victor. In spite of that, the wealthy Einzbern family is confident that the Fourth Holy Grail War will be different; namely, with a vessel of the Holy Grail now in their grasp. Solely for this reason, the much hated "Magus Killer" Kiritsugu Emiya is hired by the Einzberns, with marriage to their only daughter Irisviel as binding contract. -- -- Kiritsugu now stands at the center of a cutthroat game of survival, facing off against six other participants, each armed with an ancient familiar, and fueled by unique desires and ideals. Accompanied by his own familiar, Saber, the notorious mercenary soon finds his greatest opponent in Kirei Kotomine, a priest who seeks salvation from the emptiness within himself in pursuit of Kiritsugu. -- -- Based on the light novel written by Gen Urobuchi, Fate/Zero depicts the events of the Fourth Holy Grail War—10 years prior to Fate/stay night. Witness a battle royale in which no one is guaranteed to survive. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Aniplex of America -- 1,142,933 8.33
Fullmetal Alchemist -- -- Bones -- 51 eps -- Manga -- Action Adventure Comedy Drama Fantasy Magic Military Shounen -- Fullmetal Alchemist Fullmetal Alchemist -- Edward Elric, a young, brilliant alchemist, has lost much in his twelve-year life: when he and his brother Alphonse try to resurrect their dead mother through the forbidden act of human transmutation, Edward loses his brother as well as two of his limbs. With his supreme alchemy skills, Edward binds Alphonse's soul to a large suit of armor. -- -- A year later, Edward, now promoted to the fullmetal alchemist of the state, embarks on a journey with his younger brother to obtain the Philosopher's Stone. The fabled mythical object is rumored to be capable of amplifying an alchemist's abilities by leaps and bounds, thus allowing them to override the fundamental law of alchemy: to gain something, an alchemist must sacrifice something of equal value. Edward hopes to draw into the military's resources to find the fabled stone and restore his and Alphonse's bodies to normal. However, the Elric brothers soon discover that there is more to the legendary stone than meets the eye, as they are led to the epicenter of a far darker battle than they could have ever imagined. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Aniplex of America, Funimation -- 1,197,219 8.15
Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu -- -- Kyoto Animation -- 12 eps -- Light novel -- Action Comedy School -- Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu -- Sergeant Sousuke Sagara returns to Jindai High School to protect the precious war asset, Kaname Chidori, from any threat. However, his lack of social skills and real-life experience result in comical yet dangerous situations, endangering the peaceful school life Kaname longs for. As Sousuke continues to bring a wide range of weapons to school as a means to solve threats—real or fake—Kaname struggles to fulfill her duty as the student council vice president all while keeping him in check. -- -- To ensure a successful mission, Sousuke is occasionally forced to use the costume of a famous amusement park mascot called Bonta-kun. With his technical expertise, he eventually transforms the exuberant uniform into a cutting-edge exoskeleton that has only one dysfunction: the voice translator can only produce the sound "mofu." -- -- Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu depicts the adventures of Kaname and Sousuke as they try to live their normal school lives despite the chaos they inadvertently cause. -- -- -- Licensor: -- ADV Films, Funimation -- TV - Aug 26, 2003 -- 258,935 8.06
Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu -- -- Kyoto Animation -- 12 eps -- Light novel -- Action Comedy School -- Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu -- Sergeant Sousuke Sagara returns to Jindai High School to protect the precious war asset, Kaname Chidori, from any threat. However, his lack of social skills and real-life experience result in comical yet dangerous situations, endangering the peaceful school life Kaname longs for. As Sousuke continues to bring a wide range of weapons to school as a means to solve threats—real or fake—Kaname struggles to fulfill her duty as the student council vice president all while keeping him in check. -- -- To ensure a successful mission, Sousuke is occasionally forced to use the costume of a famous amusement park mascot called Bonta-kun. With his technical expertise, he eventually transforms the exuberant uniform into a cutting-edge exoskeleton that has only one dysfunction: the voice translator can only produce the sound "mofu." -- -- Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu depicts the adventures of Kaname and Sousuke as they try to live their normal school lives despite the chaos they inadvertently cause. -- -- TV - Aug 26, 2003 -- 258,935 8.06
Fuse: Teppou Musume no Torimonochou -- -- TMS Entertainment -- 1 ep -- Book -- Action Drama Historical Supernatural -- Fuse: Teppou Musume no Torimonochou Fuse: Teppou Musume no Torimonochou -- In Kyokutei Bakin's classic Japanese epic novel Nansou Satomi Hakkenden, eight samurai serve the Satomi clan during Japan's tumultuous Sengoku (Warring States) era. The Edo-era samurai are the reincarnations of the spirits that Princess Fuse mothered with a dog named Yatsufusa. In Fuse Gansaku: Satomi Hakkenden, the female hunter Hamaji comes to her brother in order to hunt Fuse. Thus, the karmic cycle of retribution that began long ago with the Satomi family begins anew. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- -- Licensor: -- NIS America, Inc. -- Movie - Oct 20, 2012 -- 28,075 7.35
Fuse: Teppou Musume no Torimonochou -- -- TMS Entertainment -- 1 ep -- Book -- Action Drama Historical Supernatural -- Fuse: Teppou Musume no Torimonochou Fuse: Teppou Musume no Torimonochou -- In Kyokutei Bakin's classic Japanese epic novel Nansou Satomi Hakkenden, eight samurai serve the Satomi clan during Japan's tumultuous Sengoku (Warring States) era. The Edo-era samurai are the reincarnations of the spirits that Princess Fuse mothered with a dog named Yatsufusa. In Fuse Gansaku: Satomi Hakkenden, the female hunter Hamaji comes to her brother in order to hunt Fuse. Thus, the karmic cycle of retribution that began long ago with the Satomi family begins anew. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- Movie - Oct 20, 2012 -- 28,075 7.35
Ga no Iru Tokoro -- -- - -- 1 ep -- Original -- Dementia -- Ga no Iru Tokoro Ga no Iru Tokoro -- A Place Where There Are Moths depicts the conflict between drab concrete block apartment living and the natural environment in Japanese cities. The forces of nature are represented by the motif of a tree whose leaves metamorphose into orange moths and take over a middle-aged woman's apartment, pushing her room higher and higher within the building. -- -- (Source: Midnight Eye) -- Movie - ??? ??, 2001 -- 831 4.44
Godzilla: S.P -- -- Bones, Orange -- 13 eps -- Original -- Action Sci-Fi Mecha -- Godzilla: S.P Godzilla: S.P -- This series features an original story, which depicts the young geniuses Mei Kamino, a female researcher, and Yun Arikawa, a male engineer, as they take on an unprecedented threat with their companions. When danger comes up from the depths, only young geniuses Mei, Yun, and their team can face the threat in Godzilla Singular Point! -- -- (Source: Netflix) -- 30,055 7.02
Guilstein -- -- - -- 1 ep -- - -- Action Horror Sci-Fi -- Guilstein Guilstein -- The theatrical anime film is a full digital (3-D) action/horror film based on a manga by Tamaki Hisao, best known to Western fans for his manga adaptation of Star Wars: A New Hope. Characters were designed by Yasushi Nirasawa, a well acclaimed maker of creature action figures. Monkey Punch (Lupin III creator) served as the film's script superviser. Set in the year 2088, it depicts a dark future in which humans have been transformed into the "Guilstein," creatures with no human souls in them... -- -- (Source: AniDB) -- Movie - Jun 15, 2002 -- 665 N/A -- -- Alice in Voodooland -- -- - -- 1 ep -- Other -- Music Dementia Horror Fantasy -- Alice in Voodooland Alice in Voodooland -- Music video by Kousuke Sugimoto for the title track Alice In Voodooland by RoughSketch and featuring Aikapin. -- Music - Oct 5, 2016 -- 655 5.60
Gungrave -- -- Madhouse -- 26 eps -- Game -- Action Drama Sci-Fi Seinen Super Power -- Gungrave Gungrave -- Brandon Heat and Harry MacDowel, two friends so close they could be called brothers, receive an abrupt and violent reminder one fateful day of how appallingly merciless the world around them can be. Their whole lives before then were simple and easygoing, consisting largely of local brawls, seducing women, and committing petty theft to make a living and pass the time. What they failed to realize is that in this cruel world, happiness is fleeting, and change is inevitable. -- -- Enter Millennion, the largest and most infamous mafia syndicate in the area, which accepts Brandon and Harry into their ranks and starts them at the bottom of the food chain. Harry has ambitions to ascend the ranks and one day replace Big Daddy as the supreme leader of Millennion, while Brandon only wishes to support his friend and appease Big Daddy who has taken custody of the woman Brandon loves. -- -- Based off the third-person shooter video game under the same name, Gungrave is an epic story of friendship, betrayal, and avarice that spans the course of several years, ultimately tying back to the gripping and foreboding first episode, all the while building up to the story's thrilling conclusion. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation, Geneon Entertainment USA -- TV - Oct 7, 2003 -- 157,169 7.86
.hack//G.U. Trilogy -- -- CyberConnect2 -- 1 ep -- Game -- Action Fantasy Game Sci-Fi -- .hack//G.U. Trilogy .hack//G.U. Trilogy -- Based on the CyberConnect2 HIT GAME, now will be released in a CG Movie! -- -- The Movie will be placed in the storyline of each .hack//G.U. games trilogy. The story follows Haseo, a player in the online MMORPG called The World:R2 at first depicted as a PKK (Player Killer Killer) known as the "Terror of Death", a former member of the disbanded Twilight Brigade guild. Haseo encounters Azure Kite (believing him to be Tri-Edge and blaming him for what happened to Shino) but is hopelessly outmatched. Azure Kite easily defeats Haseo and Data Drains him, reducing his level from 133 to 1 and leaving him without any items, weapons, or member addresses. He is left with a mystery on his hands as to the nature of the Data Drain and why Azure Kite is in possession of such a skill. -- -- Eventually Haseo gains the "Avatar" of Skeith. Acquiring the ability to call Skeith and wield his abilities, such as Data Drain. With Skeith as his strength, Haseo begins the quest for a way to save Shino. -- -- He is seen seeking out a PK (Player Killer) known as Tri-Edge, whose victims supposedly are unable to return to The World after he PKs them. Haseo's friend, Shino, was attacked six months prior to the events of the game by Tri-Edge, and the player herself, Shino Nanao, was left in a coma. -- -- (Source: AniDB) -- -- Licensor: -- Bandai Entertainment, Funimation -- Movie - Mar 25, 2008 -- 29,585 7.13
Halo Legends -- -- Bones, Production I.G, Studio 4°C, Toei Animation -- 9 eps -- Game -- Action Drama Military Sci-Fi -- Halo Legends Halo Legends -- Halo Legends features seven different stories set in the Halo universe, each made by a different studio. -- -- The Babysitter follows the Helljumpers, Orbital Drop Shock Troopers who are sent behind enemy lines to perform an assassination. -- -- The Duel features the tale of an ancient Arbiter who refused to bow down to the Covenant religion. Branded a heretic, he must now face the consequences of his actions. -- -- The Package depicts a group of Spartans, including the Master Chief, who are deployed to infiltrate a Covenant flagship and retrieve a “package” in a secret operation. -- -- Origins shows Master Chief and Cortana stranded following the events of Halo 3, with Cortana summarizing the fall of the Forerunners, the defeat of the Flood, and the rise of humanity as well as the events of the Human-Covenant War. -- -- Homecoming centers on the Spartan Daisy, who reminisces on her past, and the SPARTAN-II project while evacuating UNSC soldiers pinned down by Covenant forces. -- -- Prototype is viewed from the perspective of Marine Sergeant Ghost, who is determined to fight for all he is worth in order to make up for past grievances. -- -- Odd One Out is a non-canon parody of Halo featuring Spartan 1337, who suffers from extremely bad luck. -- -- Licensor: -- Warner Bros. Japan -- ONA - Nov 7, 2009 -- 34,711 7.02
Hanma Baki: Son of Ogre -- -- TMS Entertainment -- ? eps -- Manga -- Action Martial Arts Shounen -- Hanma Baki: Son of Ogre Hanma Baki: Son of Ogre -- Third part of the Baki series. -- ONA - ??? ??, 2021 -- 11,668 N/ASenjuushi -- -- TMS Entertainment -- 12 eps -- Game -- Action Military -- Senjuushi Senjuushi -- Despair War is a battle between ancient guns and contemporary guns. Due to a nuclear war, the world was destroyed. Under the full governance of a world empire, people are living with their freedom taken. Despite the forbidden rule of owning any weapons, there is a resistance that secretly fights against the world empire. They own ancient guns left as art and fight using these. Then, the Kijuushi appear as the souls of the ancient guns. Proud and magnificent, the "Absolute Royal" are the only ones that can give hope to this world. The story depicts the everyday life of the Kijuushi. Laughter, despair, happiness, confusion, pain; they would still pursue their own absolute loyalty to fight. What do they fight for? What should they protect? -- -- (Source: MAL News) -- -- Licensor: -- Sentai Filmworks -- 11,661 4.92
High School DxD BorN -- -- TNK -- 12 eps -- Light novel -- Action Comedy Demons Ecchi Harem Romance School -- High School DxD BorN High School DxD BorN -- The Red Dragon Emperor, Issei Hyoudou, and the Occult Research Club are back in action as summer break comes for the students of Kuoh Academy. After their fight with Issei’s sworn enemy, Vali and the Chaos Brigade, it is clear just how inexperienced Rias Gremory's team is. As a result, she and Azazel lead the club on an intense training regime in the Underworld to prepare them for the challenges that lie ahead. -- -- While they slowly mature as a team, Issei will once again find himself in intimate situations with the girls of the Occult Research Club. Meanwhile, their adversaries grow stronger and more numerous as they rally their forces. And with the sudden appearance of Loki, the Evil God of Norse Mythology, the stage is set for epic fights and wickedly powerful devils in High School DxD BorN! -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- 604,761 7.44
Hybrid Child -- -- Studio Deen -- 4 eps -- Manga -- Drama Historical Romance Sci-Fi Shounen Ai -- Hybrid Child Hybrid Child -- The skilled craftsman Kuroda created artificial humans called Hybrid Child—creatures who are neither machines nor dolls, but rather a reflection of the love shown to them. While they can feel human emotions and have their own consciousness, they are not real humans and require love to grow. -- -- Kotarou Izumi is the young heir to the noble Izumi family, so it is frowned upon when he brings an abandoned Hybrid Child he found in the garbage into their household. His family even attempts to throw away Hazuki—Kotarou's name for the Hybrid Child—multiple times when he is not paying attention. But through overcoming these obstacles, their love and the bond connecting them grow stronger. However, ten years pass before a horrifying realization dawns on them: a Hybrid Child might not have an endless life span. -- -- Hybrid Child is a collection of three short love stories, depicting the relationship between the artificial humans and their owners. -- -- OVA - Oct 29, 2014 -- 63,832 7.65
Ingress the Animation -- -- Craftar Studios -- 11 eps -- Game -- Action Game Sci-Fi Mystery -- Ingress the Animation Ingress the Animation -- A project was launched where scientists discovered a mysterious substance that can interface directly with the human brain. This substance, called "Exotic Matter (XM)," has existed since ancient times, influencing human minds and the progress of humanity. In the wake of this discovery, a battle of powerful nations and corporate giants has been unleashed. Organizations across the globe have embarked on a secret race to exploit XM. It represents both an opportunity and a threat to humanity. Two Factions seeks to control the XM. The Enlightened view XM's power as a gift that enhances human experience and discovery. The Resistance sees XM as a hostile takeover of the human mind, choosing technology as humanity's best path forward. XM, and the mystery behind it lie at the center of this battle for the fate of humanity. -- -- 2018—Now, a new struggle is about to unfold in Tokyo and across the globe. Dangerous and powerful forces seeking to exploit the potential of XM will collide. This groundbreaking project will mark the beginning of an epic augmented-reality experience combining the three elements of animation, location-based gaming, and the real world. -- -- (Source: MAL News) -- ONA - Oct 18, 2018 -- 22,463 6.36
Isu -- -- - -- 1 ep -- - -- Dementia -- Isu Isu -- What would you do if you were in a room with nothing to do for 15 minutes? This stop-motion animation depicts what people from different occupations would do with that time. -- Movie - ??? ??, 1964 -- 732 4.51
Kaibutsu Gakushou -- -- Yamamura Animation, Inc. -- 1 ep -- Original -- Dementia -- Kaibutsu Gakushou Kaibutsu Gakushou -- An animated archive of imaginary monsters written by a fictitious monsterologist in Medieval Europe. -- This work depicts the habits of monsters using movement inspired by short phrases such as “Taste of Tears”, “Tamed Wildness”, etc. -- -- (Source: Yamamura Animation) -- Movie - Nov ??, 2016 -- 322 5.80
Kangaeru Renshuu -- -- - -- 1 ep -- Original -- Dementia -- Kangaeru Renshuu Kangaeru Renshuu -- The description of Suwami Nogami's minimalistic line drawing piece, Imagination Practice, calls it an unending "thought loop". It depicts an artist sitting in front of a window with a self-portrait, like a miniature mirror image, on the desk in front of him. The window frame and the blue sky filled with moving clouds are in colour, but the figure of the artist is not coloured in. The soundtrack sounds like a skipping record that is punctuated by humourous springing noises (a la Bugs Bunny) as the image 'bounces' in an unending loop from the establishing shot into the "drawing." A philosophical piece, Imagination Practice considers the circular dialogue between an artist and his work. -- -- (Source: Midnight Eye) -- Movie - ??? ??, 2003 -- 483 4.27
K -- -- GoHands -- 13 eps -- Original -- Action Mystery Super Power Supernatural -- K K -- "Kings" are individuals who have been bestowed with incredible supernatural powers and granted the ability to recruit others into their clans. Protecting the lives and honor of their clansmen is an integral part of the Kings' duties. After a video depicting the heinous murder of a Red Clansman spreads virally, the unassuming student Yashiro Isana is accused of homicide. Now, a manhunt is underway for his head, bringing him into contact with the infamous "Black Dog" Kurou Yatogami—a skilled swordsman and martial artist determined to follow the wishes of his late master, the Seventh King. -- -- Meanwhile, the current Red King, Mikoto Suou, faces his own imminent demise as the search for Yashiro narrows. But during Yashiro's struggle to prove his innocence, a greater conspiracy is unraveling behind the scenes; clouds begin to appear in his memory, and close friends start to question his very existence. What began as a simple murder is now leading towards a full blown war between Kings with the very fate of the world at stake. -- -- -- Licensor: -- VIZ Media -- TV - Oct 5, 2012 -- 621,325 7.49
Kengan Ashura -- -- Larx Entertainment -- 12 eps -- Web manga -- Action Martial Arts -- Kengan Ashura Kengan Ashura -- Business deals are usually made through meetings and contracts; but in the world of Kengan Ashura, businesses resort to other means to make their decisions: by hiring gladiators. Yabako Sandrovich's Kengan Ashura depicts a world brimming with action, violence, and martial arts—one where powerful gladiators have fought in grand arenas since the Edo Period to settle the disputes of wealthy businesses and merchants. -- -- Ouma Tokita, who is nicknamed "The Ashura," is a fighter trying to prove himself as the strongest. Hideki Nogi, a member of the Nogi Group, hires Ouma to fight for him and makes Kazuo Yamashita, an average middle-aged man, his manager. The duo is thrown into fights facilitated by the Kengan Association. Their journey will be full of ruthless battles with other fighters aiming for the same goal. Do they have what it takes to be the best? -- -- -- Licensor: -- Ponycan USA -- ONA - Jul 31, 2019 -- 82,364 7.46
Kishin Douji Zenki -- -- Studio Deen -- 51 eps -- Manga -- Action Comedy Drama Ecchi Fantasy Horror Magic Shounen -- Kishin Douji Zenki Kishin Douji Zenki -- In ancient times, a great battle was waged between a master mage, Enno Ozuno, and an evil demon goddess, Karuma. Unfortunately, Enno didn't have the strength to defeat her alone and was forced to call upon Zenki, a powerful protector demon. After Karuma was defeated, Enno sealed Zenki away in a pillar located inside his temple. -- -- 1,200 years after this epic battle, Enno's descendant, Chiaki, spends her days showing tourists around her hometown of Shikigami-cho and doing exorcisms to pay the bills. One day, two thieves enter the town in hopes of opening a seal in the Ozuno temple and releasing the hidden treasure from within. However, what actually pops out is a dark entity that attaches itself to the henchmen, transforming them into demonic beings. After this transformation, they begin a rampage through the temple, terrorizing poor Chiaki. -- -- It is now up to this young progeny to unleash her family's powers to summon Zenki and save Shikigami-cho from these demons, as well as the evil entities sure to follow in their footsteps. -- -- Licensor: -- Media Blasters -- 11,177 6.97
Kono Sekai no Katasumi ni -- -- MAPPA -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Historical Drama Seinen -- Kono Sekai no Katasumi ni Kono Sekai no Katasumi ni -- Suzu Urano is a pure and kindhearted girl who loves to draw and keep her head in the clouds. Growing up in the outskirts of Hiroshima with her family, she is more than happy to help with her grandmother's nori business. -- -- However, when she becomes of age, Suzu leaves her beloved home to marry Shuusaku Houjou, a man she barely knows. As she integrates into her new husband's household, the homesick bride struggles to adjust to the unfamiliar environment as the war effort extends far beyond its point of no return. When the war reaches Suzu's own backyard and peace gives way to brutality, how will she support herself and those she comes to love along the way? -- -- Kono Sekai no Katasumi ni paints a colorful yet haunting depiction of everyday life in the years before and after World War II, showcasing the perseverance and fortitude of ordinary Japanese during one of the darkest periods of modern history. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Shout! Factory -- Movie - Nov 12, 2016 -- 130,034 8.23
Kuroko no Basket: Mou Ikkai Yarimasen ka -- -- Production I.G -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Comedy School Shounen Sports -- Kuroko no Basket: Mou Ikkai Yarimasen ka Kuroko no Basket: Mou Ikkai Yarimasen ka -- Bundled with the 6 Blu-ray/DVD. It will adapt the 124th chapter of the manga, which depicts when Kuroko and Aomine first met. -- Special - Jun 20, 2014 -- 37,702 7.65
Love Live! The School Idol Movie -- -- Sunrise -- 1 ep -- Original -- Music School Slice of Life -- Love Live! The School Idol Movie Love Live! The School Idol Movie -- Hot on the heels of the third year students' graduation, μ's is invited to New York in hopes of spreading the joy of school idols to other parts of the world. Due to the events of the recent Love Live!, μ's has reached eminent stardom which results in crowds swarming them whenever they appear in public. With the increased attention, however, comes a difficult choice. -- -- Having yet to publicly announce the decision they came to regarding their future, the young members of μ's are pushed to continue performing by rival group A-RISE, Otonokizaka High School, and even Love Live! itself. As leader, Honoka Kousaka is left wondering if the path they have chosen is truly for the best, as μ's must re-evaluate their choices and come to a final decision on what they want for the future. -- -- Love Live! The School Idol Movie depicts the final chapter in μ's story as the girls explore just what being an idol means to them as well as the bond that connects the nine of them together. -- -- -- Licensor: -- NIS America, Inc. -- Movie - Jun 13, 2015 -- 105,457 7.94
Machine Robo: Cronos no Dai Gyakushuu -- -- Production Reed -- 47 eps -- Original -- Action Martial Arts Mecha Sci-Fi Space -- Machine Robo: Cronos no Dai Gyakushuu Machine Robo: Cronos no Dai Gyakushuu -- The journey of a robot prince begins! The planet Cronos is a world of super-robotic lifeforms, ruled by the wise Master Kirai. But their peaceful existence is shattered by the conquering armies of the Gandora robots. Now, machine combats machine in an epic battle for the planet. Master Kurai's son, Rom, must lead a company of transformable mecha warriors into the fray! -- -- (Source: centralparkmedia) -- TV - Jul 3, 1986 -- 1,434 6.27
Macross -- -- Tatsunoko Production -- 36 eps -- Original -- Action Mecha Military Music Romance Sci-Fi Space -- Macross Macross -- After a mysterious spaceship crashes into Earth, humanity realizes that they are not alone. Fearing a potential threat from space, the world pushes aside their nationalism, conflicting interests, and cultural differences, unifying under the banner of the United Nations. The newly formed UN forces decide to repurpose the alien spacecraft, naming it SDF-1 Macross. Unfortunately, on the day of its maiden voyage, a fleet of spaceships belonging to a race of aliens known as the Zentradi descend upon Earth, and the SDF-1 Macross, acting of its own accord, shoots down the incoming squadron, sparking an intergalactic war. -- -- In an attempt to escape, the Macross tries to launch itself into the Moon's orbit, but the ship—as well as the city it was in—is teleported to the far reaches of space. Caught up in this mess are Hikaru Ichijou, a free-spirited acrobatic pilot, and Minmay Lynn, an aspiring singer. These two, alongside Macross' crew, experience an epic journey rife with grief and drama, coming face-to-face with the cruelties of war along the way. -- -- 85,330 7.93
Macross -- -- Tatsunoko Production -- 36 eps -- Original -- Action Mecha Military Music Romance Sci-Fi Space -- Macross Macross -- After a mysterious spaceship crashes into Earth, humanity realizes that they are not alone. Fearing a potential threat from space, the world pushes aside their nationalism, conflicting interests, and cultural differences, unifying under the banner of the United Nations. The newly formed UN forces decide to repurpose the alien spacecraft, naming it SDF-1 Macross. Unfortunately, on the day of its maiden voyage, a fleet of spaceships belonging to a race of aliens known as the Zentradi descend upon Earth, and the SDF-1 Macross, acting of its own accord, shoots down the incoming squadron, sparking an intergalactic war. -- -- In an attempt to escape, the Macross tries to launch itself into the Moon's orbit, but the ship—as well as the city it was in—is teleported to the far reaches of space. Caught up in this mess are Hikaru Ichijou, a free-spirited acrobatic pilot, and Minmay Lynn, an aspiring singer. These two, alongside Macross' crew, experience an epic journey rife with grief and drama, coming face-to-face with the cruelties of war along the way. -- -- -- Licensor: -- ADV Films, AnimEigo -- 85,330 7.93
Madan no Ou to Vanadis -- -- Satelight -- 13 eps -- Light novel -- Adventure Ecchi Fantasy Harem Romance -- Madan no Ou to Vanadis Madan no Ou to Vanadis -- In a fantasy version of Europe, a war between enemy countries is brewing. One of these countries, Zhcted, has its seven regions ruled by War Maidens, known as Vanadis. Equipped with powerful dragon-carved weapons, Eleonora "Elen" Viltaria, one of the Vanadis, launches an invasion against their neighboring rival country of Brune. Eventually, Tigrevurmud "Tigre" Vorn, a young archer and an earl for Brune's region of Alsace, has his entire army decimated at Elen's hands. In a strange twist of events, Elen spares Tigre, and gives him the order, "Become mine!" What could be the meaning behind this new alliance? -- -- Adapted from the light novel written by Tsukasa Kawaguchi, Madan no Ou to Vanadis is an epic adventure filled with complex war tactics and beautiful women. Trapped in a multinational conflict, Tigre and Elen are swept up in a war filled with dark secrets, conspiracies, and corruption. -- -- 274,637 7.16
Magi: Sinbad no Bouken (TV) -- -- Lay-duce -- 13 eps -- Manga -- Action Adventure Fantasy Magic Shounen -- Magi: Sinbad no Bouken (TV) Magi: Sinbad no Bouken (TV) -- In the small, impoverished Tison Village of the Parthevia Empire, a boy, Sinbad, is born to the jaded ex-soldier Badr and his kind-hearted wife Esra. His birth creates a radiant surge throughout the rukh, a declaration of a singularity to those who stand at the pinnacle of magical might: the "Child of Destiny" is here. Despite his country being plagued by economic instability and the repercussions of war, Sinbad leads a cheerful life—until a stranger's arrival shatters his peaceful world, and tragedy soon befalls him. -- -- Years later, mysterious edifices called "dungeons" have been erected all over the world. Rumored to contain great power and treasures, these dungeons piqued the interest of adventurers and armies alike; though to this day, none have returned therefrom. Sinbad, now 14, has grown into a charming and talented young boy. Inspired by the shocking events of his childhood and by his father's words, he yearns to begin exploring the world beyond his village. As though orchestrated by fate, Sinbad meets an enigmatic traveler named Yunan. Stirred by Sinbad's story and ambitions, Yunan directs him to a dungeon which he claims holds the power Sinbad needs to achieve his goals—the "power of a king." -- -- Magi: Sinbad no Bouken tells the epic saga of Sinbad's early life as he travels the world, honing his skill and influence, while gathering allies and power to become the High King of the Seven Seas. -- -- 364,891 7.89
Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic -- -- A-1 Pictures -- 25 eps -- Manga -- Action Adventure Fantasy Magic Shounen -- Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic -- Dispersed around the world, there are several bizarre labyrinths hiding incredible treasures within them. These mysterious places, known as "Dungeons," are said to be the work of Magi, a class of rare magicians, who also help people build their empires by guiding them to a dungeon. Djinns, supernatural beings that rule over the labyrinths, grant successful conquerors access to their immense power and choose them as potential king candidates to rule the world. -- -- Having spent life in isolation, Aladdin, a kind and young magician, is eager to explore the world upon finally leaving his home behind. He begins his journey only accompanied by his mentor Ugo—a djinn that Aladdin can summon with his flute. However, Aladdin soon becomes friends with the courageous Alibaba Saluja after causing the destruction of a local merchant's supply cart. In order to pay for the damages, Alibaba suggests that they attempt to conquer the nearest dungeon, taking the first step in an epic adventure that will decide the fate of the world itself. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Aniplex of America -- 807,447 8.06
Master of Epic: The Animation Age -- -- Gonzo, Palm Studio -- 12 eps -- Game -- Fantasy Game Comedy -- Master of Epic: The Animation Age Master of Epic: The Animation Age -- Over millions of years, there have been many ages - war, gods, and future to name a few. Each of these was infinitely less exciting than the current Animation Age! In this RPG-esque existence, becoming stronger is paramount to one's survival and leveling up is a must. From pacifists to news casting, from fishing woes to love advice, there's nothing the Animation Age can't show or teach us about life in a game world! Armed with healing spells, changes of clothes and plenty of summoned familiars, the characters of Master of Epic will do what it takes to level up and live to fight another day! -- -- (Source: Anime-Planet) -- TV - Jan 8, 2007 -- 1,687 6.05
Minami no Shima no Dera-chan -- -- Kyoto Animation -- 1 ep -- Original -- Comedy Slice of Life -- Minami no Shima no Dera-chan Minami no Shima no Dera-chan -- The story follows Dera after he returns to the southern islands from the Usagiyama Shopping District, and depicts his gentle slapstick daily life with the Prince and Choi. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- Movie - Apr 26, 2014 -- 19,765 6.51
Mobile Suit Gundam Battlefield Record: Avant-Title -- -- Sunrise -- 1 ep -- - -- Mecha Sci-Fi Space -- Mobile Suit Gundam Battlefield Record: Avant-Title Mobile Suit Gundam Battlefield Record: Avant-Title -- A short animation serving as a prequel to the events depicted in the PlayStation 3 game, Mobile Suit Gundam: Battlefield Record U.C. 0081. -- -- (Source: AniDB) -- ONA - Sep 3, 2009 -- 2,356 6.21
Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin - Advent of the Red Comet -- -- Sunrise -- 13 eps -- Manga -- Action Military Sci-Fi Space Mecha Shounen -- Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin - Advent of the Red Comet Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin - Advent of the Red Comet -- What was the tragedy that decided the fates of Char Aznable, the man later nicknamed the "Red Comet" as an ace pilot of the Zeon forces, and his sister Sayla Mass? -- -- The two siblings' journeys, brought on by the sudden death of their father Zeon Zum Deikun who was a leader of the Spacenoids, are depicted in the four episodes of "Chronicle of Char and Sayla." -- -- The Zabi family who seize control of Side 3 and lead the Principality of Zeon, the early days of many renowned Zeon ace pilots who later fight in the One Year War, the secrets of mobile suit development, conflicts with the Earth Federation Forces, and the road leading to the outbreak of war—all will be revealed. -- -- (Source: Official Website) -- -- Note: A re-edited TV version of the six OVAs released from 2015 through 2018. -- TV - Apr 29, 2019 -- 11,990 8.09
Mononoke Hime -- -- Studio Ghibli -- 1 ep -- Original -- Action Adventure Fantasy -- Mononoke Hime Mononoke Hime -- When an Emishi village is attacked by a fierce demon boar, the young prince Ashitaka puts his life at stake to defend his tribe. With its dying breath, the beast curses the prince's arm, granting him demonic powers while gradually siphoning his life away. Instructed by the village elders to travel westward for a cure, Ashitaka arrives at Tatara, the Iron Town, where he finds himself embroiled in a fierce conflict: Lady Eboshi of Tatara, promoting constant deforestation, stands against Princess San and the sacred spirits of the forest, who are furious at the destruction brought by the humans. As the opposing forces of nature and mankind begin to clash in a desperate struggle for survival, Ashitaka attempts to seek harmony between the two, all the while battling the latent demon inside of him. Princess Mononoke is a tale depicting the connection of technology and nature, while showing the path to harmony that could be achieved by mutual acceptance. -- -- -- Licensor: -- GKIDS -- Movie - Jul 12, 1997 -- 916,477 8.71
Neko Machi -- -- Toei Video -- 1 ep -- - -- Fantasy Horror -- Neko Machi Neko Machi -- A fantasy world with only cats as far as the eye can see. The awe and fear a person can feel in a world that doesn’t know mankind, the world of Cat City invented by HAGIWARA Sakutaro, is depicted with sense by the art of KANAIDA Etsuko. The commercial editor URAHAMA Shojiro edits the story narrated by the musician and poet MACHIDA Kou with a taste of fantastic for this new Ga-nime. -- -- (Source: Toei-anim.co.jp) -- OVA - Aug 1, 2006 -- 1,190 6.25
Noblesse: Pamyeol-ui Sijak -- -- Studio Animal -- 1 ep -- Web manga -- Action Adventure Supernatural -- Noblesse: Pamyeol-ui Sijak Noblesse: Pamyeol-ui Sijak -- Humans live their lives driven by ambition and greed, prepared to kill their own kind with no hesitation. Since the beginning of humanity, wars have raged on throughout the human world, with the other races watching on. -- -- A victim of one war and orphaned, Ashleen was saved by the lord of the werewolves, Muzaka. Muzaka had abandoned his duties as lord and left the werewolf clan, travelling with Ashleen to secure her happiness. However, during his absence, members of Muzaka's species began orchestrating further wars on humans, disgusted by Muzaka's compassion. A secret and powerful organization established itself in the human realm, intending to manipulate Muzaka. When he is misinformed by the Union, Muzaka starts directing his rage toward the humans. Can his only friend, Cadis Etrama Di Raizel, the Noblesse, stop Muzuka's madness? -- -- Set 820 years before the events of Noblesse, Noblesse: Pamyeol-ui Sija depicts the tragic history of Muzaka, and how it led to the Noblesse's indefinite slumber. -- -- OVA - Dec 4, 2015 -- 43,210 7.29
Nozoki Ana -- -- Studio Fantasia -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Comedy Drama Ecchi -- Nozoki Ana Nozoki Ana -- After moving into his new apartment, art school student Tatsuhiko Kido discovers a crack in his wall. When he peeks inside, he makes eye contact with his neighbor, Emiru Ikuno, as she masturbates. He rushes next door to clear the misunderstanding and inform her of the crack, but accidentally trips and falls over her in the process. To make matters even worse, Emiru now has photographic evidence that would plainly depict Kido as a sexual offender. Kido then learns that Emiru has a voyeurism fetish, and is blackmailed into leaving the crack as is. -- -- Unfortunately for Kido, it doesn't stop here! Emiru is also attending the same art school that he is, and he will be seeing her far more than he would like to. Emiru and Kido are set to embark on a unique friendship with wildly erotic potential. -- -- OVA - Feb 28, 2013 -- 42,454 6.50
Nurse Witch Komugi-chan R -- -- Tatsunoko Production -- 12 eps -- Original -- Comedy Magic Parody -- Nurse Witch Komugi-chan R Nurse Witch Komugi-chan R -- The new "slapstick" story will depict Komugi-chan and her rivals as they juggle their daily lives as students, idols, and magical girls "with laughter and tears." -- -- Komugi Yoshida is a somewhat clumsy second-year middle-school student whose strong point is her spiritedness. She performs as an idol like Kokona Saionji (her classmate and close friend) and Tsubasa Kisaragi (an idol who dresses in male clothing). However, unlike Kokona whose popularity is skyrocketing and Tsubasa with her charisma in male attire, Komugi's only gigs are low-end ones like those at the local shopping district. Still, Komugi has her "dream" as she lives her dual lives as a idol and a middle school girl. -- -- One day, a mysterious injured creature named Usa-P appears before Komugi. Komugi gives Usa-P medical treatment, and Usa-P, in consideration of Komugi's kindness, asks if she wants to be a Legendary Girl who can use magical powers. -- -- Having become a reluctant Legendary Girl, Komugi battles strange masked figures who suddenly appear! As a newly deemed Magical Nurse, she fights still more waves of masked figures. Meanwhile, a Magical Maid, a Magical Sister, and more also appear to make it a three-way battle!? Can Komugi handle the three roles of middle school girl, idol, and Magical Nurse? And, what lies ahead in these battles and her "dream"...?! -- -- (Source: ANN) -- -- Licensor: -- Sentai Filmworks -- 10,886 5.95
One Piece: Episode of Luffy - Hand Island no Bouken -- -- Toei Animation -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Action Adventure Comedy Super Power Fantasy Shounen -- One Piece: Episode of Luffy - Hand Island no Bouken One Piece: Episode of Luffy - Hand Island no Bouken -- The story of the Hand Island no Bouken special is set a little before the events of One Piece Film Z and depicts a major "Hand Island" incident during the New World storyline. The story is set at "Cannon Town" where a parent and a child work as craftspeople. The incident revolves around them and a commodore of a marine base. The special will also have a flashback scene to the story in the first chapter of the manga, but with new animation. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- Special - Dec 15, 2012 -- 39,400 7.65
One Piece: Episode of Sabo - 3 Kyoudai no Kizuna Kiseki no Saikai to Uketsugareru Ishi -- -- Toei Animation -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Action Adventure Comedy Super Power Drama Fantasy Shounen -- One Piece: Episode of Sabo - 3 Kyoudai no Kizuna Kiseki no Saikai to Uketsugareru Ishi One Piece: Episode of Sabo - 3 Kyoudai no Kizuna Kiseki no Saikai to Uketsugareru Ishi -- The special will revisit the childhood past of the three sworn brothers Luffy, Ace, and Sabo, when they all dreamed of becoming pirates. In addition, it will depict how Sabo originally came into the kingdom of Dressrosa (which was not depicted in Eiichiro Oda's original manga or the television anime), as well as his reunion with Luffy from his point of view. -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- Special - Aug 22, 2015 -- 29,518 7.72
One Piece: Episode of Sabo - 3 Kyoudai no Kizuna Kiseki no Saikai to Uketsugareru Ishi -- -- Toei Animation -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Action Adventure Comedy Super Power Drama Fantasy Shounen -- One Piece: Episode of Sabo - 3 Kyoudai no Kizuna Kiseki no Saikai to Uketsugareru Ishi One Piece: Episode of Sabo - 3 Kyoudai no Kizuna Kiseki no Saikai to Uketsugareru Ishi -- The special will revisit the childhood past of the three sworn brothers Luffy, Ace, and Sabo, when they all dreamed of becoming pirates. In addition, it will depict how Sabo originally came into the kingdom of Dressrosa (which was not depicted in Eiichiro Oda's original manga or the television anime), as well as his reunion with Luffy from his point of view. -- Special - Aug 22, 2015 -- 29,518 7.72
Oni-Tensei -- -- - -- 4 eps -- Original -- Hentai Horror Supernatural -- Oni-Tensei Oni-Tensei -- There is an ancient legend that says if a tattoo is drawn to perfection, it will come to life. Reiko Kure is a female detective with a strange massacre on her hands. Some kind of huge animal savagely murdered thirteen members of the mafia, and only the quiet Ema Nozomi was left at the scene. Ema is taken into protective custody. However, every man left with her is killed, and every woman left with her is raped. There are no clues, except the innocent Ema's strange tattoo, perfectly depicting a demon. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- -- Licensor: -- Media Blasters -- OVA - Mar 25, 2000 -- 2,482 6.16
Orbital Era -- -- Sunrise -- 1 ep -- Original -- Sci-Fi Adventure Space -- Orbital Era Orbital Era -- Orbital Era is set in the near-future on a space colony under construction. The film features a coming-of-age action-adventure story following the lives of young boys surviving in this peculiar environment and society as they are tossed around by fate. "The reality found in mankind's future" will be depicted through their perspective. -- -- The story will take place over four seasons in the space colony. The characters relationships will unfold over these seasons. Otomo noted that the film is set in the future, but instead of being rooted in science fiction, the story will skew more toward fantasy. -- -- (Source: MAL News) -- Movie - ??? ??, ???? -- 2,451 N/A -- -- Uchuu no Kishi Tekkaman -- -- Tatsunoko Production -- 26 eps -- Original -- Action Adventure Mecha Sci-Fi Shounen Space -- Uchuu no Kishi Tekkaman Uchuu no Kishi Tekkaman -- Tekkaman is just an average bright boy in his everyday life. However, modern science can turn him into a mighty space warrior. This becomes a reality when aggressive aliens come from space to invade our planet. Armed with a space lance, Tekkaman gallantly goes into action against the grotesque space creatures. During his battles he encounters a mysterious young man from another planet who helps him out whenever he is in danger. -- -- (Source: Absoluteanime) -- TV - Jul 2, 1975 -- 2,442 6.19
Persona 5 the Animation -- -- CloverWorks -- 26 eps -- Game -- Action Fantasy Supernatural -- Persona 5 the Animation Persona 5 the Animation -- Ren Amamiya, a new transfer student at Shujin Academy, is sent to Tokyo to live with his family friend Sojiro Sakura after wrongly being put on probation for defending a woman from sexual assault. While on the way to attend his first day at his new school, Ren notices a strange app has appeared on his phone, transferring him to a world known as the Metaverse, which contains people's "shadows": distorted depictions of their true selves. In the Metaverse, he awakens his Persona, a power from deep within that gives him the strength to fight the shadows. With the help of similarly troubled students, he forms the Phantom Thieves of Hearts, attempting to save people from their sinful desires by "taking their heart," making evildoers regret their actions and turn over a new leaf. The group's reputation continues to grow explosively, bringing along fame both positive and negative. -- -- However, during the peak of their popularity, Ren gets captured and taken into custody. Here, he wakes up to a harsh interrogation, but this is cut short by the arrival of Sae Niijima—a prosecutor seeking answers. Just how will she react to his story, and what will become of the Phantom Thieves? -- -- 187,758 6.45
Persona 5 the Animation -- -- CloverWorks -- 26 eps -- Game -- Action Fantasy Supernatural -- Persona 5 the Animation Persona 5 the Animation -- Ren Amamiya, a new transfer student at Shujin Academy, is sent to Tokyo to live with his family friend Sojiro Sakura after wrongly being put on probation for defending a woman from sexual assault. While on the way to attend his first day at his new school, Ren notices a strange app has appeared on his phone, transferring him to a world known as the Metaverse, which contains people's "shadows": distorted depictions of their true selves. In the Metaverse, he awakens his Persona, a power from deep within that gives him the strength to fight the shadows. With the help of similarly troubled students, he forms the Phantom Thieves of Hearts, attempting to save people from their sinful desires by "taking their heart," making evildoers regret their actions and turn over a new leaf. The group's reputation continues to grow explosively, bringing along fame both positive and negative. -- -- However, during the peak of their popularity, Ren gets captured and taken into custody. Here, he wakes up to a harsh interrogation, but this is cut short by the arrival of Sae Niijima—a prosecutor seeking answers. Just how will she react to his story, and what will become of the Phantom Thieves? -- -- -- Licensor: -- Aniplex of America -- 187,758 6.45
Pokemon -- -- OLM -- 276 eps -- Game -- Action Adventure Comedy Kids Fantasy -- Pokemon Pokemon -- Pokemon are peculiar creatures with a vast array of different abilities and appearances; many people, known as Pokemon trainers, capture and train them, often with the intent of battling others. Young Satoshi has not only dreamed of becoming a Pokemon trainer but also a "Pokemon Master," and on the arrival of his 10th birthday, he finally has a chance to make that dream a reality. Unfortunately for him, all three Pokemon available to beginning trainers have already been claimed and only Pikachu, a rebellious Electric type Pokemon, remains. However, this chance encounter would mark the start of a lifelong friendship and an epic adventure! -- -- Setting off on a journey to become the very best, Satoshi and Pikachu travel across beautiful, sprawling regions with their friends Kasumi, a Water type trainer, and Takeshi, a Rock type trainer. But danger lurks around every corner. The infamous Team Rocket is always nearby, seeking to steal powerful Pokemon through nefarious schemes. It'll be up to Satoshi and his friends to thwart their efforts as he also strives to earn the eight Pokemon Gym Badges he'll need to challenge the Pokemon League, and eventually claim the title of Pokemon Master. -- -- -- Licensor: -- 4Kids Entertainment, VIZ Media -- 485,459 7.34
Poputepipikku TV Special -- -- - -- 2 eps -- 4-koma manga -- Comedy Parody Dementia -- Poputepipikku TV Special Poputepipikku TV Special -- Episode 13 and 14 of Poputepipikku. The special has four versions shown on four different broadcasters: Tokyo MX (Blue Dragon ver.), Nico Nico Douga (Vermilion Bird ver.), Abema TV Anilive (White Tiger ver.) and Abema TV Pop Team Epic Channel (Black Tortoise ver.). Each version has a unique combination of seiyuus. -- -- (Source: AniDB) -- Special - Apr 1, 2019 -- 20,418 7.38
Project Scard: Praeter no Kizu -- -- GoHands -- 13 eps -- Other -- Action Super Power -- Project Scard: Praeter no Kizu Project Scard: Praeter no Kizu -- Project Scard depicts the encounters and battles of those who have tattoos which possess the sealed powers of divine beasts and gods. The story is set in the Akatsuki Special Zone, a lawless zone in Tokyo. -- -- "Helios" are those who use the ability of the tattoos to protect the city, "Artemis" are committed to maintain security and control, whilst having a strong commercial motive, and the "Public Security Special Service" are Scard Staff of the metropolitan police department. They live through the turbulent days to keep on going. -- -- (Source: MAL News) -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- 22,414 5.78
Ravex in Tezuka World -- -- - -- 1 ep -- - -- Space Music -- Ravex in Tezuka World Ravex in Tezuka World -- As "another story" set after the end of the original manga, this what-if "Return" plot depicts what happens to the title character after his final act to save Earth. After drifting in space, the robot boy is rescued by the three members of ravex, and he is miraculously revived — not by Tezuka's Black Jack surgeon character, but by "Space Jack." The newly evolved robot boy will be named "Ratom." The Princess Knight and other Tezuka characters will appear in this all-new story. Musical artists BoA, Maki Goto, Anna Tsuchiya, Tohoshinki, and TRF are contributing to the album, and an event is planned at Tokyo's National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation on April 10. The album marks Avex's 20th anniversary and what would have been Tezuka's 80th birthday. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- OVA - Apr 29, 2009 -- 1,122 5.59
RoboMasters the Animated Series -- -- DandeLion Animation Studio, Gonzo -- 6 eps -- Original -- Action Mecha School -- RoboMasters the Animated Series RoboMasters the Animated Series -- The series will depict college students as they prepare and participate in a RoboMasters tournament. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- 11,368 6.41
Saint Seiya -- -- Toei Animation -- 114 eps -- Manga -- Adventure Fantasy Sci-Fi Shounen -- Saint Seiya Saint Seiya -- In ancient times, a group of young men devoted their lives to protecting Athena, the Goddess of Wisdom and War. These men were capable of fighting without weapons—a swing of their fist alone was powerful enough to rip the very sky apart and shatter the earth beneath them. These brave heroes became known as Saints, as they could summon up the power of the Cosmos from within themselves. -- -- Now, in present day, a new generation of Saints is about to come forth. The young and spirited Seiya is fighting a tough battle for the Sacred Armor of Pegasus, and he isn't about to let anyone get in the way of him and his prize. Six years of hard work and training pay off with his victory and new title as one of Athena's Saints. -- -- But Seiya's endeavor doesn't end there. In fact, plenty of perils and dangerous enemies face him and the rest of the Saints throughout the series. What new quests await the heroes of the epic Saint Seiya saga? -- -- Licensor: -- ADV Films, DiC Entertainment, Flatiron Film Company -- TV - Oct 11, 1986 -- 149,298 7.76
Saint Seiya -- -- Toei Animation -- 114 eps -- Manga -- Adventure Fantasy Sci-Fi Shounen -- Saint Seiya Saint Seiya -- In ancient times, a group of young men devoted their lives to protecting Athena, the Goddess of Wisdom and War. These men were capable of fighting without weapons—a swing of their fist alone was powerful enough to rip the very sky apart and shatter the earth beneath them. These brave heroes became known as Saints, as they could summon up the power of the Cosmos from within themselves. -- -- Now, in present day, a new generation of Saints is about to come forth. The young and spirited Seiya is fighting a tough battle for the Sacred Armor of Pegasus, and he isn't about to let anyone get in the way of him and his prize. Six years of hard work and training pay off with his victory and new title as one of Athena's Saints. -- -- But Seiya's endeavor doesn't end there. In fact, plenty of perils and dangerous enemies face him and the rest of the Saints throughout the series. What new quests await the heroes of the epic Saint Seiya saga? -- TV - Oct 11, 1986 -- 149,298 7.76
Samurai 7 -- -- Gonzo -- 26 eps -- Other -- Historical Mecha Samurai Sci-Fi -- Samurai 7 Samurai 7 -- In the far distant future, on a planet that might have been called "earth", there was a war between samurai who mechanized their bodies. After the long war, people enjoyed a modest peace. -- -- Facing starvation and abductions at the hands of fearsome mechanized bandits (Nobuseri), the farmers of Kanna Village make the dangerous choice to hire samurai for protection. The village's water priestess, Kirara, her younger sister, Komachi, and a heartbroken villager, Rikichi, set off to hire willing samurai with nothing to offer but rice from their meager harvests. Through dangerous encounters and a bit of luck, seven samurai of varying specialties and experience are gathered for an epic battle against the bandits and the merchants that influence them. -- -- Samurai 7 is based loosely upon Kurosawa Akira's famous movie "Seven Samurai"/"Shichinin no Samurai" -- TV - Jun 12, 2004 -- 112,688 7.48
Samurai Champloo -- -- Manglobe -- 26 eps -- Original -- Action Adventure Comedy Historical Samurai Shounen -- Samurai Champloo Samurai Champloo -- Fuu Kasumi is a young and clumsy waitress who spends her days peacefully working in a small teahouse. That is, until she accidentally spills a drink all over one of her customers! With a group of samurai now incessantly harassing her, Fuu desperately calls upon another samurai in the shop, Mugen, who quickly defeats them with his wild fighting technique, utilizing movements reminiscent to that of breakdancing. Unfortunately, Mugen decides to pick a fight with the unwilling ronin Jin, who wields a more precise and traditional style of swordfighting, and the latter proves to be a formidable opponent. The only problem is, they end up destroying the entire shop as well as accidentally killing the local magistrate's son. -- -- For their crime, the two samurai are captured and set to be executed. However, they are rescued by Fuu, who hires the duo as her bodyguards. Though she no longer has a place to return to, the former waitress wishes to find a certain samurai who smells of sunflowers and enlists the help of the now exonerated pair to do so. Despite initially disapproving of this idea, the two eventually agree to assist the girl in her quest; thus, the trio embark upon an adventure to find this mysterious warrior—that is, if Fuu can keep Mugen and Jin from killing each other. -- -- Set in an alternate Edo Period of Japan, Samurai Champloo follows the journey of these three eccentric individuals in an epic quest full of action, comedy, and dynamic sword fighting, all set to the beat of a unique hip-hop infused soundtrack. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation, Geneon Entertainment USA -- 935,197 8.50
s.CRY.ed -- -- Sunrise -- 26 eps -- Original -- Action Sci-Fi Adventure Super Power Drama -- s.CRY.ed s.CRY.ed -- A strange environmental phenomenon 22 years ago in the Kanazawa prefecture caused the land to split and protrude upwards reaching unprecedented heights, creating the secluded area known as The Lost Ground. Kazuma is a young mercenary who lives in the Lost Ground, looking for any work he can find to sustain his livelihood within the harsh environment. He is one of the few people that are gifted with the Alter ability, which allows him to plaster his right arm and torso with a metallic alloy. When this mercenary encounters HOLY, an order whose purpose is to suppress and capture what they call Native Alter Users, and one of the elite members of HOLY, Ryuho, an epic rivalry begins. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- 73,269 7.37
s.CRY.ed -- -- Sunrise -- 26 eps -- Original -- Action Sci-Fi Adventure Super Power Drama -- s.CRY.ed s.CRY.ed -- A strange environmental phenomenon 22 years ago in the Kanazawa prefecture caused the land to split and protrude upwards reaching unprecedented heights, creating the secluded area known as The Lost Ground. Kazuma is a young mercenary who lives in the Lost Ground, looking for any work he can find to sustain his livelihood within the harsh environment. He is one of the few people that are gifted with the Alter ability, which allows him to plaster his right arm and torso with a metallic alloy. When this mercenary encounters HOLY, an order whose purpose is to suppress and capture what they call Native Alter Users, and one of the elite members of HOLY, Ryuho, an epic rivalry begins. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- -- Licensor: -- Bandai Entertainment, Discotek Media, Sentai Filmworks -- 73,269 7.37
Sengoku Basara: Judge End -- -- Telecom Animation Film -- 12 eps -- Game -- Action Super Power Martial Arts Samurai Historical -- Sengoku Basara: Judge End Sengoku Basara: Judge End -- Based on CAPCOM's 2010 game Sengoku Basara 3 (Sengoku Basara: Samurai Heroes), Sengoku Basara: Judge End will depict the epic Battle of Sekigahara. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- TV - Jul 6, 2014 -- 24,104 6.87
Senjuushi -- -- TMS Entertainment -- 12 eps -- Game -- Action Military -- Senjuushi Senjuushi -- Despair War is a battle between ancient guns and contemporary guns. Due to a nuclear war, the world was destroyed. Under the full governance of a world empire, people are living with their freedom taken. Despite the forbidden rule of owning any weapons, there is a resistance that secretly fights against the world empire. They own ancient guns left as art and fight using these. Then, the Kijuushi appear as the souls of the ancient guns. Proud and magnificent, the "Absolute Royal" are the only ones that can give hope to this world. The story depicts the everyday life of the Kijuushi. Laughter, despair, happiness, confusion, pain; they would still pursue their own absolute loyalty to fight. What do they fight for? What should they protect? -- -- (Source: MAL News) -- -- Licensor: -- Sentai Filmworks -- 11,661 4.92
Seven Knights Revolution: Eiyuu no Keishousha -- -- domerica, LIDENFILMS -- ? eps -- Game -- Action Adventure Magic Fantasy -- Seven Knights Revolution: Eiyuu no Keishousha Seven Knights Revolution: Eiyuu no Keishousha -- Seven Knights Revolution: Eiyuu no Keishousha is set in a world where eons ago valiant heroes fought against the forces of "Destruction." While their deeds passed into legend, the power of these heroes was later inherited by "successors" who fought to protect the world. One day, Faria, a successor of the Seven Knights, saves an ordinary boy named Nemo from the forces of Destruction. -- -- During the ensuing battle, Nemo summons the power of a hero and becomes a successor as well. However, Nemo's hero is a stranger that is unknown to history, and so an epic journey where the past and present collide begins. -- -- (Source: Crunchyroll, edited) -- 21,986 6.34
Shihaisha no Tasogare -- -- Madhouse, Production Reed -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Action Sci-Fi Horror Demons Supernatural Drama Shoujo -- Shihaisha no Tasogare Shihaisha no Tasogare -- Since the beginning of time, monstrous Demons and noble Guardians have battled for Earth - the everlasting gift of the one great Mother, creator of all life. A deep hatred burns between Demon and Guardian; the Guardians prevented the Demons from destroying humanity and the world itself. -- -- Eons later, Neo-Shinjuku City: few Demons or Guardians remain to continue their epic war. Humans rule the Earth, with no real memory of either Demons or Guardians. Yet deep within the dark underworld of the city, one supreme Demon is alive and plotting to subjugate mankind. Only one Guardian is left to do battle, and the fate of the human race is at stake. -- -- Based on the Graphic Novel -- "Twilight of the Dark Master (Shihaisha no Tasogare)" (Shinshokan) by Saki Okuse -- -- (Source: DVD Back Cover) -- -- Licensor: -- Urban Vision -- OVA - Jan 21, 1998 -- 7,475 5.82
Shihaisha no Tasogare -- -- Madhouse, Production Reed -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Action Sci-Fi Horror Demons Supernatural Drama Shoujo -- Shihaisha no Tasogare Shihaisha no Tasogare -- Since the beginning of time, monstrous Demons and noble Guardians have battled for Earth - the everlasting gift of the one great Mother, creator of all life. A deep hatred burns between Demon and Guardian; the Guardians prevented the Demons from destroying humanity and the world itself. -- -- Eons later, Neo-Shinjuku City: few Demons or Guardians remain to continue their epic war. Humans rule the Earth, with no real memory of either Demons or Guardians. Yet deep within the dark underworld of the city, one supreme Demon is alive and plotting to subjugate mankind. Only one Guardian is left to do battle, and the fate of the human race is at stake. -- -- Based on the Graphic Novel -- "Twilight of the Dark Master (Shihaisha no Tasogare)" (Shinshokan) by Saki Okuse -- -- (Source: DVD Back Cover) -- OVA - Jan 21, 1998 -- 7,475 5.82
Shingeki no Bahamut: Genesis -- -- MAPPA -- 12 eps -- Card game -- Action Adventure Demons Supernatural Magic Fantasy -- Shingeki no Bahamut: Genesis Shingeki no Bahamut: Genesis -- Thousands of years ago, the ancient dragon Bahamut wrought havoc upon the land of Mistarcia, a world where both gods and demons live amongst mankind. Working together to prevent the world's destruction, the rival deities barely managed to seal Bahamut, agreeing to split the key between them so that the dragon would remain eternally imprisoned. -- -- With the world safe from the destruction of Bahamut, it is business as usual for bounty hunters like Favaro Leone. Living a laid-back, self-serving lifestyle, the amoral Favaro goes about his work while on the run from fellow bounty hunter Kaisar Lidfard, a righteous man who swears vengeance upon Favaro. However, Favaro's carefree life is thrown into chaos when he meets Amira, a mysterious woman who holds half of the key to the world's fragile peace. -- -- Shingeki no Bahamut: Genesis tells the story of a group of unlikely heroes who find themselves caught in the middle of an epic clash between gods and demons, forced to carve their own path in the face of the imminent storm. -- -- 339,162 7.66
Shingeki no Bahamut: Genesis -- -- MAPPA -- 12 eps -- Card game -- Action Adventure Demons Supernatural Magic Fantasy -- Shingeki no Bahamut: Genesis Shingeki no Bahamut: Genesis -- Thousands of years ago, the ancient dragon Bahamut wrought havoc upon the land of Mistarcia, a world where both gods and demons live amongst mankind. Working together to prevent the world's destruction, the rival deities barely managed to seal Bahamut, agreeing to split the key between them so that the dragon would remain eternally imprisoned. -- -- With the world safe from the destruction of Bahamut, it is business as usual for bounty hunters like Favaro Leone. Living a laid-back, self-serving lifestyle, the amoral Favaro goes about his work while on the run from fellow bounty hunter Kaisar Lidfard, a righteous man who swears vengeance upon Favaro. However, Favaro's carefree life is thrown into chaos when he meets Amira, a mysterious woman who holds half of the key to the world's fragile peace. -- -- Shingeki no Bahamut: Genesis tells the story of a group of unlikely heroes who find themselves caught in the middle of an epic clash between gods and demons, forced to carve their own path in the face of the imminent storm. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- 339,162 7.66
Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu -- -- Studio Deen -- 13 eps -- Manga -- Drama Historical Josei -- Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu -- Yotarou is a former yakuza member fresh out of prison and fixated on just one thing: rather than return to a life of crime, the young man aspires to take to the stage of Rakugo, a traditional Japanese form of comedic storytelling. Inspired during his incarceration by the performance of distinguished practitioner Yakumo Yuurakutei, he sets his mind on meeting the man who changed his life. After hearing Yotarou's desperate appeal for his mentorship, Yakumo is left with no choice but to accept his very first apprentice. -- -- As he eagerly begins his training, Yotarou meets Konatsu, an abrasive young woman who has been under Yakumo's care ever since her beloved father Sukeroku Yuurakutei, another prolific Rakugo performer, passed away. Through her hidden passion, Yotarou is drawn to Sukeroku's unique style of Rakugo despite learning under contrasting techniques. Upon seeing this, old memories and feelings return to Yakumo who reminisces about a much earlier time when he made a promise with his greatest rival. -- -- Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu is a story set in both the past and present, depicting the art of Rakugo, the relationships it creates, and the lives and hearts of those dedicated to keeping the unique form of storytelling alive. -- -- 231,915 8.60
Strike Witches: Operation Victory Arrow -- -- SILVER LINK. -- 3 eps -- Original -- Action Ecchi Magic Military Sci-Fi -- Strike Witches: Operation Victory Arrow Strike Witches: Operation Victory Arrow -- Operation Victory Arrow is set in the period between the end of Operation Mars in the second television series and the 2012 Strike Witches movie. The three 30-minute short stories depict the lives of the members who returned to their respective homes. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- OVA - Dec 12, 2014 -- 21,126 7.37
Sword Art Online: Alicization - War of Underworld 2nd Season -- -- A-1 Pictures -- 11 eps -- Light novel -- Action Game Adventure Romance Fantasy -- Sword Art Online: Alicization - War of Underworld 2nd Season Sword Art Online: Alicization - War of Underworld 2nd Season -- The final battle against the Dark Territory drags on, as players from all over the world flood the Underworld's servers and plunge the Human Empire into utter chaos. Asuna Yuuki and her friends defend their new allies with everything they have, but their numbers are falling. Meanwhile, Alice Zuberg heads toward the World's End Altar while Gabriel "Vecta" Miller relentlessly pursues her. -- -- Meanwhile, members of Rath strategize a plan in an attempt to restore Kirito's damaged fluctlight. However, the intruders occupying the main control room have other plans. Surrounded by death and despair, when all hope seems to be lost, one voice reaches out to Kirito—a familiar one saying, "I will always be by your side." -- -- Sword Art Online: Alicization - War of Underworld 2nd Season is the epic conclusion to Akihiko Kayaba's dream of creating artificial human intelligence. Now it is up to Kirito and his friends to protect this collapsing world from the people that still think it is just a game. -- -- 352,245 7.42
Sword Art Online: Alicization - War of Underworld 2nd Season -- -- A-1 Pictures -- 11 eps -- Light novel -- Action Game Adventure Romance Fantasy -- Sword Art Online: Alicization - War of Underworld 2nd Season Sword Art Online: Alicization - War of Underworld 2nd Season -- The final battle against the Dark Territory drags on, as players from all over the world flood the Underworld's servers and plunge the Human Empire into utter chaos. Asuna Yuuki and her friends defend their new allies with everything they have, but their numbers are falling. Meanwhile, Alice Zuberg heads toward the World's End Altar while Gabriel "Vecta" Miller relentlessly pursues her. -- -- Meanwhile, members of Rath strategize a plan in an attempt to restore Kirito's damaged fluctlight. However, the intruders occupying the main control room have other plans. Surrounded by death and despair, when all hope seems to be lost, one voice reaches out to Kirito—a familiar one saying, "I will always be by your side." -- -- Sword Art Online: Alicization - War of Underworld 2nd Season is the epic conclusion to Akihiko Kayaba's dream of creating artificial human intelligence. Now it is up to Kirito and his friends to protect this collapsing world from the people that still think it is just a game. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Aniplex of America -- 352,245 7.42
Sword Art Online: Progressive Movie - Hoshi Naki Yoru no Aria -- -- A-1 Pictures -- 1 ep -- Light novel -- Action Game Adventure Romance Fantasy -- Sword Art Online: Progressive Movie - Hoshi Naki Yoru no Aria Sword Art Online: Progressive Movie - Hoshi Naki Yoru no Aria -- "There's no way to beat this game. The only difference is when and where you die..." -- -- One month has passed since Akihiko Kayaba's deadly game began, and the body count continues to rise. Two thousand players are already dead. -- -- Kirito and Asuna are two very different people, but they both desire to fight alone. Nonetheless, they find themselves drawn together to face challenges from both within and without. Given that the entire virtual world they now live in has been created as a deathtrap, the surviving players of Sword Art Online are starting to get desperate, and desperation makes them dangerous to loners like Kirito and Asuna. As it becomes clear that solitude equals suicide, will the two be able to overcome their differences to find the strength to believe in each other, and in so doing survive? -- -- Sword Art Online: Progressive is a new version of the Sword Art Online tale that starts at the beginning of Kirito and Asuna's epic adventure—on the very first level of the deadly world of Aincrad! -- -- (Source: Yen Press) -- -- Licensor: -- Aniplex of America -- Movie - ??? ??, 2021 -- 94,949 N/A -- -- Chihayafuru 3 -- -- Madhouse -- 24 eps -- Manga -- Game Slice of Life Sports Drama School Josei -- Chihayafuru 3 Chihayafuru 3 -- Winning the high school team tournament was a great accomplishment for the Mizusawa members. Each of them has made great strides in improving themselves, and the victory symbolizes how far they've come. But after accomplishing one goal, their individual aims are within reach. Chihaya Ayase has her sights set on Wakamiya Shinobu and the title of Queen, and now that Taichi Mashima has made it into Class A, he can finally compete against Arata Wataya. Everyone in Mizusawa wants to get better, and there's no telling what the future holds if they keep trying. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Sentai Filmworks -- 94,380 8.50
Sword Art Online: Progressive Movie - Hoshi Naki Yoru no Aria -- -- A-1 Pictures -- 1 ep -- Light novel -- Action Game Adventure Romance Fantasy -- Sword Art Online: Progressive Movie - Hoshi Naki Yoru no Aria Sword Art Online: Progressive Movie - Hoshi Naki Yoru no Aria -- "There's no way to beat this game. The only difference is when and where you die..." -- -- One month has passed since Akihiko Kayaba's deadly game began, and the body count continues to rise. Two thousand players are already dead. -- -- Kirito and Asuna are two very different people, but they both desire to fight alone. Nonetheless, they find themselves drawn together to face challenges from both within and without. Given that the entire virtual world they now live in has been created as a deathtrap, the surviving players of Sword Art Online are starting to get desperate, and desperation makes them dangerous to loners like Kirito and Asuna. As it becomes clear that solitude equals suicide, will the two be able to overcome their differences to find the strength to believe in each other, and in so doing survive? -- -- Sword Art Online: Progressive is a new version of the Sword Art Online tale that starts at the beginning of Kirito and Asuna's epic adventure—on the very first level of the deadly world of Aincrad! -- -- (Source: Yen Press) -- -- Licensor: -- Aniplex of America -- Movie - ??? ??, 2021 -- 94,949 N/A -- -- Rozen Maiden: Träumend -- -- Nomad -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Action Comedy Drama Magic Seinen -- Rozen Maiden: Träumend Rozen Maiden: Träumend -- As the story of Rozen Maiden closes, a new chapter begins in Rozen Maiden: Träumend. Shinku and the other sentient dolls of the Rozen Maiden collection are living life as usual at Jun Sakurada's house. Having settled into his role as Shinku's partner in the deadly Alice Game, Jun overcomes his former fears and prepares to return to school. And although Shinku and the other dolls idly pass the days by in the comfort of Jun's home, dark times lie ahead as a new foe presents herself: Barasuishou, the seventh Rozen Maiden. -- -- But Barasuishou is a mystery even to her sisters, none of whom have ever laid eyes on her until now. Shinku considers this a sign that the Alice Game is coming to an end, meaning the dolls will soon be forced to fight one another. Haunted by the upcoming battle and nightmares concerning another doll, Shinku begins distancing herself from the others. If she wishes to claim victory, it will come at a high cost—the lives of her sisters. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Geneon Entertainment USA, Sentai Filmworks -- 94,726 7.64
Sword Art Online: Progressive Movie - Hoshi Naki Yoru no Aria -- -- A-1 Pictures -- 1 ep -- Light novel -- Action Game Adventure Romance Fantasy -- Sword Art Online: Progressive Movie - Hoshi Naki Yoru no Aria Sword Art Online: Progressive Movie - Hoshi Naki Yoru no Aria -- "There's no way to beat this game. The only difference is when and where you die..." -- -- One month has passed since Akihiko Kayaba's deadly game began, and the body count continues to rise. Two thousand players are already dead. -- -- Kirito and Asuna are two very different people, but they both desire to fight alone. Nonetheless, they find themselves drawn together to face challenges from both within and without. Given that the entire virtual world they now live in has been created as a deathtrap, the surviving players of Sword Art Online are starting to get desperate, and desperation makes them dangerous to loners like Kirito and Asuna. As it becomes clear that solitude equals suicide, will the two be able to overcome their differences to find the strength to believe in each other, and in so doing survive? -- -- Sword Art Online: Progressive is a new version of the Sword Art Online tale that starts at the beginning of Kirito and Asuna's epic adventure—on the very first level of the deadly world of Aincrad! -- -- (Source: Yen Press) -- -- Licensor: -- Aniplex of America -- Movie - ??? ??, 2021 -- 94,949 N/ADragon Ball Z Movie 04: Super Saiyajin da Son Gokuu -- -- Toei Animation -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Action Sci-Fi Adventure Fantasy Shounen -- Dragon Ball Z Movie 04: Super Saiyajin da Son Gokuu Dragon Ball Z Movie 04: Super Saiyajin da Son Gokuu -- Gohan Son and Piccolo are peacefully playing when they sense a powerful entity approaching Earth. It soon reaches everyone's ears that this entity is in fact a small planet on a deadly collision course with Earth. Gokuu Son and Kuririn attempt to change the small planet's path with a Kamehameha, but the attack fails and the two warriors are blown away. However, after coming very close to Earth's surface, the object changes direction on its own and explodes soon after. -- -- The small planet reveals itself to be a vehicle for what seems to be a castle. A large army emerges out of the structure and declares that the planet is now in possession of Slug, king of the universe. While defending the city against the invaders' attack, Gohan loses his Dragon Ball, allowing Slug to take it. After reading Bulma's mind and stealing her Dragon Radar, Slug commands his army to collect the wish-granting relics. With the Dragon Balls in his possession, he uses them to wish his youth back. Now young, wise, and very powerful, Slug commences world domination. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- Movie - Mar 9, 1991 -- 94,615 6.58
Tai-Ari deshita.: Ojou-sama wa Kakutou Game nante Shinai -- -- - -- ? eps -- Manga -- Game Comedy School Seinen Shoujo Ai -- Tai-Ari deshita.: Ojou-sama wa Kakutou Game nante Shinai Tai-Ari deshita.: Ojou-sama wa Kakutou Game nante Shinai -- A hot fighting game played at the girls' school!! -- -- Aya transferred into Kuromi Girls Academy a month ago with the goal of changing herself into a proper lady. After meeting the breathtaking Shirayuri, Aya is blown away by her elegance and posterity. Imagine her surprise when she finds Shirayuri after school playing... a fighting game?! And if that wasn't perplexing enough, she is challenged to a duel by the unladylike Shirayuri! -- -- (Source: MU) -- - - ??? ??, ???? -- 1,330 N/AShin Tennis no Ouji-sama: Hyoutei vs. Rikkai - Game of Future -- -- M.S.C, Studio Kai -- 2 eps -- Manga -- Game Sports School Shounen -- Shin Tennis no Ouji-sama: Hyoutei vs. Rikkai - Game of Future Shin Tennis no Ouji-sama: Hyoutei vs. Rikkai - Game of Future -- The new anime will tell an original story, featuring a match between the Hyoutei Academy Secondary Department led by Keigo Atobe and Rikkai University-Affiliated Middle School led by Seiichi Yukimura. The story was previously not depicted in the manga. -- -- (Source: MAL News) -- ONA - Feb 13, 2021 -- 1,326 N/A -- -- Hortensia Saga -- -- - -- 7 eps -- Game -- Game Fantasy -- Hortensia Saga Hortensia Saga -- Animated commercials for Sega's Hortensia Saga: Aoi no Kishidan mobile game. -- ONA - Mar 26, 2015 -- 1,289 N/A -- -- Fei Ren Xueyuan -- -- - -- 1 ep -- Game -- Action Game -- Fei Ren Xueyuan Fei Ren Xueyuan -- The 3-minute animated promotional short for the Chinese MOBA of the same name. -- ONA - Jun 25, 2018 -- 1,278 6.21
Tamayura no Yume -- -- - -- 1 ep -- Original -- Psychological Drama -- Tamayura no Yume Tamayura no Yume -- A girl is informed by her doctor that she is pregnant. Surprised by the unexpected announcement, falls into an anguish. The fleeting dream is a despairing dream. -- -- (Source: Geidai Animation) -- Movie - ??? ??, 2011 -- 292 N/A -- -- Byulbyul Iyagi 2 -- -- - -- 6 eps -- - -- Psychological Drama -- Byulbyul Iyagi 2 Byulbyul Iyagi 2 -- This film consists of 6 animated shorts produced by the Human Rights Commission of Korea. Like the previous movie, the stories deal with seeing the world through the eyes of people who are different from social norms. The film was nominated for Best Animated Feature in 2008 from the Asia Pacific Screen Awards. -- -- 1. "The Third Wish” (AN Dong-hui, RYU Jeong-wu). A fairy godmother appears before a visually impaired young woman to grant her three wishes. But this is no fairytale. The irritable middle-aged fairy wants to finish her job as soon as possible. Yet she proves to be helpful as she leads the woman through a busy marketplace, which is delightfully reminiscent of "Amelie". But it's no walk in the park, as busy urbanites show no consideration for our protagonist. Yet she prevails through obstacles. With a walking stick, she taps together the heels of her shiny new shoes and follows the "yellow brick road" (guiding tiles for the visually impaired) around the city. -- -- 2. "Ajukari” (HONG Deok-pyo) is a street-style cartoon. It comically depicts how a certain macho "complex" can cripple men. Male circumcision becomes the ultimate standard for being "manly" and those who have failed to do the deed are forever fearful of going to public baths. -- -- 3. "Baby" (LEE Hong-su, LEE Hong-min) portrays the difficulties a career woman faces in having a child. "I'm not saying you can't have maternity leave, but can you afford to raise a child while working?" asks her boss. This smart story portrays everything from mother and daughter-in-law relationships to a parody of "Tazza: The High Rollers" and hilarious episodes where an "ambulance bus" picks up several patients en route. -- -- 4. "Shine Shine Shining" (KWON Mi-jeong) is drawn like a warm, watercolor storybook for children. Grade schooler Eun-jin is smart and popular, but she has a secret. She hides her curly hair, which she gets from her Filipino mother, in braids. -- -- 5. "Merry Golasmas" is an adorable claymation, or stop motion animation of models constructed from clay, plasticine, etc. It explores physical discrimination or stereotypes. In an open audition to find a Santa Claus, the real Santas ― one who's black, another who's Asian, a female Santa and one in a wheelchair ― lose to a fake Santa, a pot-bellied, Caucasian. -- -- 6. “Lies" explores homosexuality. Drawn in pastel-like sketches with art deco-esque details, it is a stunning digital cut-out animation, A homosexual man is forced by his parents to marry a woman, while others are pressured to fake having a girlfriend or receive "therapy" to become straight. -- -- (Source: The Korean Times) -- Movie - Apr 17, 2008 -- 257 N/A -- -- Hyoutan -- -- - -- 1 ep -- - -- Psychological -- Hyoutan Hyoutan -- Independent animation by Suzuki Shin'ichi. -- Movie - ??? ??, 1976 -- 252 N/A -- -- Pianoman Trailer -- -- Echoes -- 1 ep -- Original -- Music Psychological -- Pianoman Trailer Pianoman Trailer -- Trailer for Echoes' PIANOMAN with original animation that was not reused in the resulting short film. -- ONA - Dec 28, 2017 -- 243 5.41
Tantei wa Mou, Shindeiru. -- -- ENGI -- ? eps -- Light novel -- Mystery Comedy Drama Romance -- Tantei wa Mou, Shindeiru. Tantei wa Mou, Shindeiru. -- Kimizuka Kimihiko is a crisis-magnet. From getting caught up in a crime scene to accidentally witnessing a drug deal, trouble seems to find him around every corner. So it is no surprise when his rather mundane flight suddenly enters a state of emergency with a dire need of a detective onboard. Unfortunately, his attempt at avoiding trouble is foiled by a beautiful girl with silver hair who goes by the codename Siesta. Declaring herself a detective, she unceremoniously drags Kimizuka into the case as her assistant. -- -- That incident spelled the beginning of an adventure around the globe that went beyond his wildest imagination. Putting their lives on the line, the two took down criminal organizations, prevented disasters, and saved thousands. But the curtain closed to their epic journey with Siesta's untimely death three years later. -- -- Resolving to live an ordinary high school life this time, Kimizuka spends a year maintaining a low profile. However, as fate would have it, a girl with an uncanny resemblance to Siesta comes crashing into his life, threatening to throw his peaceful days into disarray. -- -- TV - Jul ??, 2021 -- 19,730 N/A -- -- Master Keaton -- -- Madhouse -- 24 eps -- Manga -- Adventure Drama Historical Mystery Seinen Slice of Life -- Master Keaton Master Keaton -- Taichi Keaton is a half-British half-Japanese archeologist and SAS veteran of the Falklands War. He solves mysteries and investigates insurance fraud for Lloyd's around the world. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- -- Licensor: -- Geneon Entertainment USA -- 19,713 7.60
Ten Little Gall Force -- -- animate Film, Artmic -- 1 ep -- Original -- Action Military Sci-Fi Space Comedy Parody Mecha -- Ten Little Gall Force Ten Little Gall Force -- A super deformed parody which depicts the "making of " Eternal Story and Destruction. A very humorous behind-the-scenes look (if "Gall Force" were a live-action series instead of being animated). -- -- Cast and crew members run into severe and embarrassing difficulties as things do not turn out as they should; for example, Lufy totally drowns in embarrassment as she is object of a whole crowd of spectators while in the nude; the director's obsession with realistic filming causes some real high-voltage friction with Catty; and in the end, after the premiere, the girls end up in an ongoing on-stage tussle about which one is the most popular character. -- -- (Source: Wikipedia) -- -- Licensor: -- AnimEigo -- OVA - Jul 3, 1988 -- 1,378 6.21
The Place Where We Were -- -- - -- 1 ep -- Original -- Dementia -- The Place Where We Were The Place Where We Were -- A couple are seen at home. The woman says a heartfelt prayer while the man looks up from his newspaper, holding a cup of tea. They both look out of the window. In the sky above their house a giant angel is flying past. A forest has grown on the angel's back. In the forest three creatures sit around a table and playing cards. The cards are laid out and feature different images: three cards depicting babies jump down a hole in the middle of the table and begin a journey through the body of the angel. They stop in a cave where a creature plays the harp for them and turns the cards into tears. The tears fly through the air out of the angel's eyes and one of them reaches the woman's womb. In the next scene she is seen sitting at home, with her cat, contentedly stroking her own pregnant belly. The next scene is an exterior: a field with a lone tree growing on it. The man is dancing and walking towards the tree: behind the tree he finds his partner, the woman, holding a baby. They all smile at each other. -- -- -- (Source: Tommaso Corvi-Mora) -- Movie - ??? ??, 2008 -- 428 N/A -- -- Kiseki -- -- - -- 1 ep -- - -- Music Dementia -- Kiseki Kiseki -- Experimental animation by Kuri Youji. -- Movie - ??? ??, 1963 -- 427 4.83
Tokyo Tribe 2 -- -- Madhouse -- 13 eps -- - -- Action Drama -- Tokyo Tribe 2 Tokyo Tribe 2 -- This is the other side of Tokyo, a Tokyo of a different color. There, various tribes are living. The SARU from Japan's Musashino, WU-RONZE of Bukuro, and HANDS of Shindyuku... Young men living in the city...the public of modern times builds a home out of corruption, these young men of the sordid side of life, a side called "reality," are depicted here! -- -- (Source: AnimeNfo) -- TV - Nov 12, 2006 -- 9,590 6.73
To LOVE-Ru -- -- Xebec -- 26 eps -- Manga -- Sci-Fi Harem Comedy Romance Ecchi School Shounen -- To LOVE-Ru To LOVE-Ru -- Timid 16-year-old Rito Yuuki has yet to profess his love to Haruna Sairenji—a classmate and object of his infatuation since junior high. Sadly, his situation becomes even more challenging when one night, a mysterious, stark-naked girl crash-lands right on top of a bathing Rito. -- -- To add to the confusion, Rito discovers that the girl, Lala Satalin Deviluke, is the crown princess of an alien empire and has run away from her home. Despite her position as the heiress to the most dominant power in the entire galaxy, Lala is surprisingly more than willing to marry the decidedly average Rito in order to avoid an unwanted political marriage. -- -- To LOVE-Ru depicts Rito's daily struggles with the bizarre chaos that begins upon the arrival of Lala. With an evergrowing legion of swooning beauties that continuously foil his attempted confessions to Haruna, To LOVE-Ru is a romantic comedy full of slapstick humor, sexy girls, and outlandishly lewd moments that defy the laws of physics. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Sentai Filmworks -- TV - Apr 4, 2008 -- 502,130 7.05
Tonagura! -- -- Daume -- 13 eps -- Manga -- Comedy Drama Ecchi Romance School -- Tonagura! Tonagura! -- Kazuki has been awaiting 10 years for the day when her neighbours moved back to their old house. She has a crush on Yuuji, whom she considers as her first love but to whom she never managed to express her feelings for him before they moved out. Yuuji often comes over to play with Kazuki, Kazuki's older sister Hatsune and Yuuji's sister Marie when they were kids. Her ideal depiction of Yuuji was soon shattered when he turned out more than she had expected, him acting all ecchi during their reunion. With their parents off in South America, both families must learn to live with each other and rekindle the childhood feelings they shared together. Things get even more crazy as they attend the same school. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- TV - Jul 9, 2006 -- 43,172 6.73
Tsurezure Children -- -- Studio Gokumi -- 12 eps -- 4-koma manga -- Comedy Romance School Shounen -- Tsurezure Children Tsurezure Children -- Young love—it takes many unique and fascinating forms that flourish as children begin to mature into adults. From being unable to confess to not knowing what real love actually feels like, various obstacles can arise when learning about romantic attraction for the first time. But underneath all that, young love is something truly beautiful to behold, leading to brand new experiences for those young and in love. -- -- Tsurezure Children depicts various scenarios of young love coming to fruition, along with the struggles and joys that it entails. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- 512,132 7.64
Usagi ga Kowai -- -- - -- 1 ep -- Original -- Game Dementia Horror -- Usagi ga Kowai Usagi ga Kowai -- Tetsuji Kurashige's nightmarish U-SA-GUI (2002) begins by citing a section from Brillat-Savarin's 1825 treatise, The Physiology of Taste, in which the renowned French epicure suggests that stimulating foods, meats in particular, can have an influence on one's dreams. The film depicts a macabre game played by two rabbits and a blindfolded woman. The rabbits face each other over an old-fashioned illustrated board game. When they land on a square, the woman must eat the food indicated in the illustration. If she has chosen correctly, a die pops out of her mouth and lands on the floor giving the rabbits their next move. -- -- (Source: Midnight Eye) -- Movie - ??? ??, 2002 -- 1,423 4.64
Usakame -- -- Millepensee -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Slice of Life Comedy Sports Shounen -- Usakame Usakame -- The girls of the Usakame High tennis club, Tanaka Kinako, Suzuki Ayako, Sato Kurumi, and Nishiarai-Taishi Nishi, pursue their various dreams... This high school comedy kind of thing starts now. Usakame, the official rival of the high intensity comedy Teekyuu, depicts the mostly ordinary but slightly strange daily lives of four girls who devote themselves to practice. All members of Earth Star Dream, an Earth Star Entertainment idol unit of nationally famous voice actors, appear in the show! Sit back, relax, and enjoy Teekyuu's rival Usakame. -- -- (Source: Crunchyroll) -- 10,521 5.79
Vanquished Queens -- -- Arms -- 4 eps -- Other -- Action Adventure Ecchi Fantasy -- Vanquished Queens Vanquished Queens -- Vanquished Queens OVAs depict what happened to various characters who were absent in Queen's Blade: Rebellion and what happened to them after Queen's Blade: Utsukushiki Toushitachi. -- OVA - Mar 29, 2013 -- 11,047 6.05
Versailles no Bara -- -- Tokyo Movie Shinsha -- 40 eps -- Manga -- Military Historical Drama Romance Shoujo -- Versailles no Bara Versailles no Bara -- In 1755, Marie Antoinette is born in the royal family of Austria and raised in luxury. However, the fate of the future queen of France is set in stone—at the young age of 15, she has to leave her family and marry the crown prince of France. -- -- At the same time in France, a girl is born in the family of the Commander of the Royal Guards. Upset at not having a male heir, her father decides to raise her as a man and names the girl Oscar. Oscar is trained from a young age to become the leader of the Royal Guards, but she is yet to discern that the will of the queen sometimes does not equal the good of the people. -- -- Based on the critically acclaimed manga by Riyoko Ikeda, Rose of Versailles depicts the fateful meeting of Marie Antoinette and Oscar, which is bound to influence history and change the life of the people facing the French Revolution as the clock ticks toward the end of the French royalty. -- -- 70,973 8.33
Versailles no Bara -- -- Tokyo Movie Shinsha -- 40 eps -- Manga -- Military Historical Drama Romance Shoujo -- Versailles no Bara Versailles no Bara -- In 1755, Marie Antoinette is born in the royal family of Austria and raised in luxury. However, the fate of the future queen of France is set in stone—at the young age of 15, she has to leave her family and marry the crown prince of France. -- -- At the same time in France, a girl is born in the family of the Commander of the Royal Guards. Upset at not having a male heir, her father decides to raise her as a man and names the girl Oscar. Oscar is trained from a young age to become the leader of the Royal Guards, but she is yet to discern that the will of the queen sometimes does not equal the good of the people. -- -- Based on the critically acclaimed manga by Riyoko Ikeda, Rose of Versailles depicts the fateful meeting of Marie Antoinette and Oscar, which is bound to influence history and change the life of the people facing the French Revolution as the clock ticks toward the end of the French royalty. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Discotek Media, Nozomi Entertainment -- 70,973 8.33
Wonderful Days -- -- - -- 1 ep -- Original -- Action Drama Romance Sci-Fi -- Wonderful Days Wonderful Days -- Set in 2142, Wonderful Days depicts a world that has been nearly destroyed by environmental pollution. Human life as we know it is almost extinct, and only a few were able to pull through the collapse of Earth's ecosystem. In order to deal with the chaos, a city named Ecoban was created. The city uses the very pollution that caused the disaster as an energy source. -- -- However, although the initial plan was successful to an extent, it didn't just create a new source of energy, but also an elite group of people. This prestigious faction believes that they are above the system, and are not willing to accept survivors from outside the city unless they are put to work as laborers. -- -- Among the people living in the wasteland outside Ecoban is a young man named Shua. He leads a very difficult life, but tries to make the most of it through the love that he feels for his childhood friend Jay. Unfortunately, Jay may be more interested in her security commander Cade than in Shua, and thus a love triangle is formed. Not only does Shua have to deal with the heartbreak, but he must also find a new way to survive in the crumbles left from the once-beautiful planet Earth. -- Movie - Jul 17, 2003 -- 31,680 7.04
Yasashii Kinyoubi -- -- - -- 1 ep -- Original -- Dementia -- Yasashii Kinyoubi Yasashii Kinyoubi -- An animation mixing hand-drawn and cut-out techniques depicting the daily rituals of weekday morning that is occasionally interrupted by flights of fantasy delivered in stroboscopic flashes. Showing scenes of brushing teeth and face washing, Tanaami describes the film to be like a self-portrait on his favorite day of the week. -- -- (Source: Collaborative Cataloging Japan) -- Movie - ??? ??, 1975 -- 897 4.07
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AC Hotel/Residence Inn Charlotte EpiCentre
Agonopterix epichersa
Agrotis epicremna
Albanian epic poetry
Albanian epic verse
Aloeides depicta
America, an Epic Rhapsody
American Epic
American Epic (film series)
American Epic: The Best of Blues
Anania epicroca
Andhra in Indian epic literature
An Epic No Less
Antaeotricha epicrossa
Antiscopa epicomia
Apollodorus the Epicurean
Aponotoreas epicrossa
Arabic epic literature
A Regular Epic Final Battle
Arta epicoenalis
Artistic depictions of the Bangladesh Liberation War
Artistic depictions of the Bengali Language Movement
Artistic depictions of the partition of India
Ascalenia epicrypta
Athletics in epic poetry
Autopista TepicSan Blas
Basilides the Epicurean
Batrachorhina vagepicta
Bec d'Epicoune
BepiColombo
Blepharophimosis, ptosis, epicanthus inversus syndrome
Bloodstone: An Epic Dwarven Tale
Blood vessel epicardial substance
Britannia Depicta
Bruce W. Pepich
Bucket & Skinner's Epic Adventures
Buff Epic Trail
Calyx-Krater by the artist called the Painter of the Berlin Hydria depicting an Amazonomachy
Cape Epic
Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie
CEPIC
Cercepiccola
Cercopes (epic poem)
Chepica Airport
Colomychus florepicta
Condylorrhiza epicapna
Congo: The Epic History of a People
Count Lepic and His Daughters
Crossotus vagepictus
Cultural depictions of Abraham Lincoln
Cultural depictions of thelred the Unready
Cultural depictions of Alcibiades
Cultural depictions of Alexander the Great
Cultural depictions of Anne Boleyn
Cultural depictions of Anne Frank
Cultural depictions of Anne, Queen of Great Britain
Cultural depictions of Augustus
Cultural depictions of Belshazzar
Cultural depictions of cats
Cultural depictions of dinosaurs
Cultural depictions of dogs
Cultural depictions of Edward the Black Prince
Cultural depictions of Edward VII
Cultural depictions of Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson
Cultural depictions of elephants
Cultural depictions of Elizabeth I
Cultural depictions of Elvis Presley
Cultural depictions of Emiliano Zapata
Cultural depictions of Empress Matilda
Cultural depictions of Eva Pern
Cultural depictions of George Armstrong Custer
Cultural depictions of George V
Cultural depictions of George VI
Cultural depictions of George Washington
Cultural depictions of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
Cultural depictions of James VI and I
Cultural depictions of Joan of Arc
Cultural depictions of John F. Kennedy
Cultural depictions of John, King of England
Cultural depictions of Julius Caesar
Cultural depictions of lions
Cultural depictions of Margaret Thatcher
Cultural depictions of Marie Antoinette
Cultural depictions of Matthew Shepard
Cultural depictions of Medea
Cultural depictions of Medusa and Gorgons
Cultural depictions of Napoleon
Cultural depictions of Ned Kelly
Cultural depictions of penguins
Cultural depictions of Philadelphia
Cultural depictions of prime ministers of the United Kingdom
Cultural depictions of Queen Victoria
Cultural depictions of ravens
Cultural depictions of Ronald Reagan
Cultural depictions of spiders
Cultural depictions of Stephen, King of England
Cultural depictions of Stonehenge
Cultural depictions of Theodore Roosevelt
Cultural depictions of the Salem witch trials
Cultural depictions of Tom Wills
Cultural depictions of Tony Blair
Cultural depictions of turtles
Cultural depictions of weasels
Cultural depictions of William the Conqueror
Cultural depictions of Winston Churchill
Cultural depictions of Yue Fei
Dante's Inferno: An Animated Epic
Deferent and epicycle
Depiction
Depiction of Hatshepsut's birth and coronation
Depiction of Italian immigrants in the media during Prohibition
Depiction of Jesus
Depiction of religious figures
Depictions of Gautama Buddha in film
Depictions of Muhammad
Depictions of nudity
Depictions of the sacrifice of Iphigenia
Deportivo Tepic F.C. Premier
Diaugasma epicharta
Dirty Epics
Discourses of Epictetus
Dmitrii Perepichka
Duma (epic)
Elachista epicaeria
Emmalocera sepicostella
Enchiridion of Epictetus
Entepicondylar foramen
EP 2003: Music for the Epicurean Harkener
Epic
Epic (1984 film)
Epic (2013 film)
EPIC 2014
Epica
Epica (Audiomachine album)
Epica Awards
Epica (band)
EPICAC
EPICAC (short story)
Epica discography
Epicaerus imbricatus
Epic Aircraft
Epicallia villica
Epicallima argenticinctella
Epicallima formosella
Epicallima icterinella
Epicampoptera
Epic and Novel
Epic and Other Hits
Epicanthic fold
Epicaridea
Epicasta turbida
Epicaste
Epicatechin gallate
Epicausis smithii
Epicauta funebris
Epicauta maculata
Epicauta pensylvanica
Epicauta vittata
Epic Bible College
Epic Card Game
Epic Comics
Epic Cycle
Epicedia maculatrix
Epicedia trimaculata
Epicenity
Epicenter
Epicenter (book)
Epicenter (disambiguation)
Epicenter (music festival)
Epicentric
Epicentr K
Epicephala
Epicephala acrobaphes
Epicephala albistriatella
Epicephala australis
Epicephala colymbetella
Epicephala epimicta
Epicephala euchalina
Epicephala nephelodes
Epicephala orientale
Epicephala trigonophora
Epicephala vitisidaea
Epicephisia
EpiCeram
Epiceraticelus
Epic Fail (House)
Epic film
Epic Fu
Epic (game)
Epic Games
Epic Games Store
Epic Games v. Apple
Epic (genre)
Epichalcia
Epicharis
Epicharis (bee)
Epicharis (Pisonian conspirator)
Epicharitus
Epicharmus of Kos
Epichilo irroralis
Epichilo obscurefasciellus
Epichirostenotes
Epichlo
Epichlo aotearoae
Epichlo australiensis
Epichlo coenophiala
Epichlo melicicola
Epichlorohydrin
Epichnopterix plumella
Epichnopterix sieboldii
Epicho
Epichorista allogama
Epichorista crypsidora
Epichorista elephantina
Epichorista emphanes
Epichorista eribola
Epichorista fraudulenta
Epichorista hemionana
Epichorista siriana
Epichorista zatrophana
Epichoristodes
Epichoristodes acerbella
Epichoristodes adustana
Epichoristodes apilectica
Epichoristodes cinerata
Epichoristodes dorsiplagana
Epichoristodes exanimata
Epichoristodes imbriculata
Epichoristodes incerta
Epichoristodes leucocymba
Epichoristodes licmaea
Epichoristodes niphosema
Epichoristodes phalaraea
Epichoristodes pylora
Epichoristodes spinulosa
Epic Horse
Epichostis antigama
Epichostis barathrias
Epichostis cryphaea
Epichostis dicremna
Epichostis leucorma
Epichostis melanocona
Epichostis metrodelta
Epichostis stelota
Epichostis tympanias
Epicillin
Epicimelia
Epic in Miami
Epic (Kostick novel)
Epic Laws of Folk Narrative
Epicleas (admiral)
Epicles
Epiclesis
Epicleta
Epic LT
EPIC Magazine
Epic (magazine)
Epic (Malta)
Epic Mazur
Epic Meal Time
EpicMealTime (video game)
Epic Mickey
Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two
Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion
Epic Movie
Epicoccum nigrum
Epico Coln
Epicne, or The Silent Woman
Epic of Bamana Segu
Epic of Darkness
Epic of evolution
Epic of Gilgamesh
Epic of Jangar
Epic of Katamaraju
Epic of King Gesar
Epic of Koroghlu
Epic of Manas
Epic of Siri
Epic of Sundiata
Epic of the Forgotten
Epicoma contristis
Epicoma melanospila
Epicoma melanosticta
Epicoma tristis
Epicondyle
Epicondyle of the humerus
Epicondylitis
Epicopeia battaka
Epicopeia caroli
Epicopeia hainesii
Epicopeia leucomelaena
Epicopeia mencia
Epicopeia philenora
Epicopeia polydora
Epicopeiidae
Epicopistis
Epicor
Epicormic shoot
Epicorsia
Epicorsia cerata
Epicorsia oedipodalis
Epic Pictures Group
Epic Pinball
Epic poetry
EPIC Racing
Epicranial aponeurosis
Epic Rap Battles of History
Epicrates
Epicrates (genus)
Epicrates maurus
Epicrates of Athens
Epicrea
Epic Recordings
Epic Records
Epic Records Japan
Epic Residences & Hotel
Epicriidae
Epicrionops columbianus
Epicrionops lativittatus
Epicrionops marmoratus
Epicrionops parkeri
Epicrionops peruvianus
Epicrionops petersi
Epicriptine
Epicrisias
Epic (R. Kelly album)
Epicrocis
Epicrocis abbreviata
Epicrocis africanella
Epicrocis albigeralis
Epicrocis ferrealis
Epicrocis festivella
Epicrocis gratella
Epicrocis hilarella
Epicrocis holophaea
Epicrocis laticostella
Epicrocis metallopa
Epicrocis nigricans
Epicrocis nigrilinea
Epicrocis oegnusalis
Epicrocis picta
Epicrocis piliferella
Epicrocis sahariensis
Epicrocis stibiella
Epicrocis striaticosta
Epicrocis vicinella
EPICS
Epic (Sandro Silva and Quintino song)
Epic Sciences
Epics (company)
Epic Series
Epic (Sharon Van Etten album)
Epic Soundtracks
Epic Soundtrax
Epic Split
Epic Systems
Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis
Epictetus
Epic theatre
Epic Theatre Ensemble
EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum
Epictia albifrons
Epictia albipuncta
Epictia ater
Epictia borapeliotes
Epictia goudotii
Epictia signata
Epictia striatula
Epictia tenella
Epictia vellardi
Epic TV
(+)-epicubenol synthase
Epicurea
Epicurean (disambiguation)
Epicureanism
Epicure (band)
Epicurious
Epicurus
Epicuticular wax
Epic (video game)
Epic (web browser)
Epicyclic gearing
Epicycloid
Epicyme
Epicynodontia
Epicyon
Epiphyas epichorda
Ethmiopsis epichthonia
Eudonia epicremna
Eudonia epicryma
Femur epicondyle
Films depicting Latin American military dictatorships
Final Liberation: Warhammer Epic 40,000
Five Great Epics
Flags depicting the Southern Cross
Gauri (epic)
Gmina Krzepice
Goniobranchus epicurius
Goona-goona epic
Greek epic in film
Helcystogramma compositaepictum
Helcystogramma epicentra
Heliophorus epicles
Heteroepichlo
Historicity of the Homeric epics
History of erotic depictions
Hometown (Ten Second Epic album)
Hoplomorpha epicosma
Horn epice
Hypochrysops epicurus
Icepick grip
Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular!
Indian epic poetry
Interruptions (epic theatre)
Intrepicalcin
Ivory carved tusk depicting Buddha life stories
I Was Feeling Epic
Kenyarctia epicaste
Khoisa epicentra
Kirby's Epic Yarn
Kepice (Beclav District)
Kepice (Znojmo District)
Krzepice, witokrzyskie Voivodeship
Lateral epicondyle
Lateral epicondyle of the femur
Lateral epicondyle of the humerus
Legal status of fictional pornography depicting minors
Lepicerus
List of artistic depictions of Grendel
List of artistic depictions of Mahatma Gandhi
List of artistic depictions of Steve Jobs
List of cultural depictions of Cleopatra
List of epic poems
List of Epic Rap Battles of History episodes
List of epics in the Kannada language
List of films depicting Colombia
List of films that depict class struggle
List of games by Epic Games
List of Irish Travellerrelated depictions and documentaries
List of Romanichal-related depictions and documentaries
List of The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants episodes
List of world folk-epics
Loona (Punjabi epic)
Lorimar-Telepictures
Ludovic Depickre
Ludovic-Napolon Lepic
Manalapan EpiCentre
Marius the Epicurean
Marvel Ultimate Collection, Complete Epic and Epic Collection lines
Matt Cepicky
Media depictions of body shape
Medial epicondyle
Medial epicondyle of the femur
Medial epicondyle of the humerus
Monochroa sepicolella
Mwindo epic
My Epic
Nataa Bajin-ljepica
National epic
Neoepicorsia claudiusalis
Neoepicorsia submundalis
Neoepicorsia tuisalis
Nepicastat
Netechma epicremna
Norwegian Epic
Oksana Stepicheva
Olympus Stylus Epic
mer Sepici
Palepicorsia
Paraleprodera epicedioides
Parepicedia fimbriata
Parepichlo
Patro the Epicurean
Penimepicycline
Phaegoptera depicta
Philippine epic poetry
Poepice
Polystratus the Epicurean
Porc-Epic Cave
Potemnemus sepicanus
Primo and Epico
Protepicorsia agraptalis
Protepicorsia albipennis
Protepicorsia costalis
Protepicorsia ectoxanthia
Protepicorsia flavidalis
Protepicorsia magnifovealis
Protepicorsia thyriphora
Pseudepicorsia flavidensalis
Pseudepicorsia trispinalis
Pseudodaphnella epicharis
Pseudoschrankia epichalca
Ramayana: The Epic
Reepicheep
epice
Rice Epicurean Markets
Roman Catholic Diocese of Tepic
Serbian epic poetry
Shadowline (Epic Comics)
Shakuntala (epic)
Siro the Epicurean
Starksia lepicoelia
Stephen Shepich
Sugata Saurabha (epic)
Sweet Smell of Success Best of the Epic Years
Sympycnodes epicycla
Symvoulos Epicheiriseon
Tarzan: The Epic Adventures
Telepictures
Ten Second Epic
Tensou Sentai Goseiger: Epic on the Movie
Tepic
Tepic Cathedral
Tepic International Airport
Tepic Municipality
The Epic
The Epic (building)
The Epic Masters
The Epic of Everest
The Epic of Gilgamesh (Martin)
The Epic of the Wheat
The Epic of Utnoa
The Epic Times
The Epicure's Almanac
The Epicure's Lament
The Essential Allman Brothers Band: The Epic Years
The Great South Land: An Epic Poem
The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot
The Modern Theatre Is the Epic Theatre
The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power
The Score An Epic Journey
The Slav Epic
Thiallela epicrociella
Thliptoceras epicrocalis
Thyrocopa epicapna
Titanomachy (epic poem)
Tliltocatl epicureanus
TruePic
Udea epicoena
Unepic
Universal's Epic Universe
User:Zanimum/Rob Ford cultural depictions
Winklepicker
Wizardry and Wild Romance: A Study of Epic Fantasy



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