Der Herbsttag by Johann Heinrich Voss

For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.

T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

Tags: language, new-year, voice, words
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.

Footfalls echo in the memory, down the passage we did not take, towards the door we never opened, into the rose garden.

Tags: missed-chances

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.

Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.

The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre-
To be redeemed from fire by fire.

Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.

So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years-
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l’entre deux guerres-
Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholy new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate,
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate - but there is no competition -
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

In my end is my beginning.

Do not let me hear
Of the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly,
Their fear of fear and frenzy, their fear of possession,

Of belonging to another, or to others, or to God.
The only wisdom we can hope to acquire
Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.

Footfalls echo in the memory
down the passage we did not take
towards the door we never opened
into the rose garden. My words echo
thus, in your mind

The only wisdom we can hope to acquire
Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.

The houses are all gone under the sea.

The dancers are all gone under the hill.

time past and time future
what might have been and what has been
point to one end, which is always present.

TS Elliot Four Quartets

Stefan Anton George

Come to the park they say is dead, and view
The shimmer of the smiling shores beyond,
The stainless clouds with unexpected blue
Diffuse a light on motley path and pond.
The tender grey, the burning yellow seize
Of birch and boxwood, mellow is the breeze.
Not wholly do the tardy roses wane,
So kiss and gather them and wreathe the chain.

The purple on the twists of wilding vine,
The last of asters you shall not forget,
And what of living verdure lingers yet,
Around the autumn vision lightly twine.

Stefan Anton George

Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.

Salvador Dali

& meno

The Sage

War

Lock & shy

Lock

How got here & she
Using tremendous energy & doesen’t know her

Out of sorrow and of the well of loneliness
And out the strangeness
Of the sheltering sky

meno

Charles Baudelaire’s
Fleurs du mal / Flowers of Evil

Les Métamorphoses du vampire
La femme cependant, de sa bouche de fraise,
En se tordant ainsi qu’un serpent sur la braise,
Et pétrissant ses seins sur le fer de son busc,
Laissait couler ces mots tout imprégnés de musc:
— «Moi, j’ai la lèvre humide, et je sais la science
De perdre au fond d’un lit l’antique conscience.
Je sèche tous les pleurs sur mes seins triomphants,
Et fais rire les vieux du rire des enfants.
Je remplace, pour qui me voit nue et sans voiles,
La lune, le soleil, le ciel et les étoiles!
Je suis, mon cher savant, si docte aux voluptés,
Lorsque j’étouffe un homme en mes bras redoutés,
Ou lorsque j’abandonne aux morsures mon buste,
Timide et libertine, et fragile et robuste,
Que sur ces matelas qui se pâment d’émoi,
Les anges impuissants se damneraient pour moi!»
Quand elle eut de mes os sucé toute la moelle,
Et que languissamment je me tournai vers elle
Pour lui rendre un baiser d’amour, je ne vis plus
Qu’une outre aux flancs gluants, toute pleine de pus!
Je fermai les deux yeux, dans ma froide épouvante,
Et quand je les rouvris à la clarté vivante,
À mes côtés, au lieu du mannequin puissant
Qui semblait avoir fait provision de sang,
Tremblaient confusément des débris de squelette,
Qui d’eux-mêmes rendaient le cri d’une girouette
Ou d’une enseigne, au bout d’une tringle de fer,
Que balance le vent pendant les nuits d’hiver.

— Charles Baudelaire

The Vampire’s Metamorphoses
The woman meanwhile, twisting like a snake
On hot coals and kneading her breasts against the steel
Of her corset, from her mouth red as strawberries
Let flow these words impregnated with musk:
— “I, I have moist lips, and I know the art
Of losing old Conscience in the depths of a bed.
I dry all tears on my triumphant breasts
And make old men laugh with the laughter of children.
I replace, for him who sees me nude, without veils,
The moon, the sun, the stars and the heavens!
I am, my dear scholar, so learned in pleasure
That when I smother a man in my fearful arms,
Or when, timid and licentious, frail and robust,
I yield my bosom to biting kisses
On those two soft cushions which swoon with emotion,
The powerless angels would damn themselves for me!”
When she had sucked out all the marrow from my bones
And I languidly turned toward her
To give back an amorous kiss, I saw no more
Than a wine-skin with gluey sides, all full of pus!
Frozen with terror, I closed both my eyes,
And when I opened them to the bright light,
At my side, instead of the robust manikin
Who seemed to have laid in a store of blood,
There quivered confusedly a heap of old bones,
Which of themselves gave forth the cry of a weather-cock
Or of a sign on the end of an iron rod
That the wind swings to and fro on a winter night.

The Metamorphoses of the Vampire

The crimson-fruited mouth that I desired —
While, like a snake on coals, she twinged and twired,
Kneading her breasts against her creaking busk —
Let fall those words impregnated with musk,
— “My lips are humid: by my learned science,
All conscience, in my bed, becomes compliance.
My breasts, triumphant, staunch all tears; for me
Old men, like little children, laugh with glee.
For those who see me naked, I replace
Sun, moon, the sky, and all the stars in space.
I am so skilled, dear sage, in arts of pleasure,
That, when with man my deadly arms I measure,
Or to his teeth and kisses yield my bust,
Timid yet lustful, fragile, yet robust,
On sheets that swoon with passion — you might see
Impotent angels damn themselves for me.”
When of my marrow she had sucked each bone
And, languishing, I turned with loving moan
To kiss her in return, with overplus,
She seemed a swollen wineskin, full of pus.
I shut my eyes with horror at the sight,
But when I opened them, in the clear light,
I saw, instead of the great swollen doll
That, bloated with my lifeblood, used to loll,
The debris of a skeleton, assembling
With shrill squawks of a weathercock, lie trembling,
Or sounds, with which the howling winds commingle,
Of an old Inn-sign on a rusty tringle.

— Roy Campbell, Poems of Baudelaire (New York: Pantheon Books, 1952)

Metamorphoses of the Vampire
Meanwhile from her red mouth the woman, in husky tones,
Twisting her body like a serpent upon hot stones
And straining her white breasts from their imprisonment,
Let fall these words, as potent as a heavy scent:
“My lips are moist and yielding, and I know the way
To keep the antique demon of remorse at bay.
All sorrows die upon my bosom. I can make
Old men laugh happily as children for my sake.
For him who sees me naked in my tresses, I
Replace the sun, the moon, and all the stars of the sky!
Believe me, learnèd sir, I am so deeply skilled
That when I wind a lover in my soft arms, and yield
My breasts like two ripe fruits for his devouring — both
Shy and voluptuous, insatiable and loath —
Upon this bed that groans and sighs luxuriously
Even the impotent angels would be damned for me!”
When she had drained me of my very marrow, and cold
And weak, I turned to give her one more kiss — behold,
There at my side was nothing but a hideous
Putrescent thing, all faceless and exuding pus.
I closed my eyes and mercifully swooned till day:
And when I looked at morning for that beast of prey
Who seemed to have replenished her arteries from my own,
The wan, disjointed fragments of a skeleton
Wagged up and down in a lewd posture where she had lain,
Rattling with each convulsion like a weathervane
Or an old sign that creaks upon its bracket, right
Mournfully in the wind upon a winter’s night.

— George Dillon, Flowers of Evil (NY: Harper and Brothers, 1936)

Metamorphoses of a Vampire
Meanwhile the woman, writhing like a snake
On fiery coals, kneaded her breasts to make
Them hug their steely corset; and she said,
Her lips redder than strawberries are red:
“Behold, my mouth is moist, and on my deep
Couch I can lull grim Conscience fast asleep,
I dry all tears on my triumphant breasts,
Where old men laugh like boys at boyish jests.
For him who sees me naked, I comprise
All moons and suns and stars and clouds and skies!
I am so skilled, fond scholar, in love’s charms
That when I hug you in my ruthless arms,
Or, shy and lustful, frail and forceful, when
I yield taut nipples to the teeth of men,
My bosom’s pillows, palpitant, would doom
Angels to ruin for coveting my womb…”
When she had sucked my marrow dry, I turned,
Languid, to give her back the kiss she earned,
Only to view, I fond and amorous,
A viscid wineskin, nidorous with pus…
Frozen with fear, I shut my eyelids tight,
Then, opening them against the garish light,
I saw no solid puppet by my side
Whose lusts my blood, drained dry, had satisfied,
But a debris of quavering bone on bone,
Moaning as only weathervanes can moan,
And creaking as a rusty signpost might
Lashed by the furies of a winter night.

— Jacques LeClercq, Flowers of Evil (Mt Vernon, NY: Peter Pauper Press, 1958)

The Metamorphoses of the Vampire
Then the woman with the strawberry mouth,
Squirming like a snake upon the coals,
Kneading her breasts against the iron of her corset,
Let flow these words scented with musk:
— “I have wet lips, and I know the art
Of losing old conscience in the depths of a bed.
I dry all tears on my triumphing breasts
And I make old men laugh with the laughter of children.
For those who see me naked, without any covering,
I am the moon and the sun and the sky and the stars!
I am so dexterous in voluptuous love, my dear, my wise one,
When I strangle a man in my dreadful arms,
Or abandon my breast to his biting,
So shy and lascivious, so frail and vigorous,
That on these cushions that swoon with passion
The powerless angels damn their souls for me!”
When she had sucked the pith from my bones
And, drooping, I turned towards her
To give her the kiss of love, I saw only
An old leather bottle with sticky sides and full of pus!
I shut both eyes in cold dismay
And when I opened them both to clear reality,
By my side, instead of that powerful puppet
Which seemed to have taken some lease of blood,
There shook vaguely the remains of a skeleton,
Which itself gave the cry of a weathercock
Or of a sign-board, at the end of a rod of iron,
Which the wind swings in winter nights.

Baudelaire

Sorry. for triplicate.

youtu.be/luUCgQ84sO4

"It was late in December, the sky turned to snow
All round the day was going down slow
Night like a river beginning to flow
I felt the beat of my mind go
Drifting into time passages
Years go falling in the fading light
Time passages
Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight

Well I’m not the kind to live in the past
The years run too short and the days too fast
The things you lean on are the things that don’t last
Well it’s just now and then my line gets cast into these
Time passages
There’s something back here that you left behind
Oh time passages
Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight

Hear the echoes and feel yourself starting to turn
Don’t know why you should feel
That there’s something to learn
It’s just a game that you play"

Al Stewart

“Hell is of this world and there are men who are unhappy escapees from hell, escapees destined ETERNALLY to reenact their escape.”

“All true language is incomprehensible, like the chatter of a beggar’s teeth”

Antonyn Artaud

"A man must dream a long time in order to act with grandeur, and dreaming is nursed in darkness.

To achieve harmony in bad taste is the height of elegance.

Worse than not realizing the dreams of your youth, would be to have been young and never dreamed at all.

Would Hamlet have felt the delicious fascination of suicide if he hadn’t had an audience, and lines to speak?

Crimes of which a people is ashamed constitute its real history. The same is true of man.

Anyone who hasn’t experienced the ecstasy of betrayal knows nothing about ecstasy at all.

Anyone who knows a strange fact shares in its singularity.

Power may be at the end of a gun, but sometimes it’s also at the end of the shadow or the image of a gun.

I recognize in thieves, traitors and murderers, in the ruthless and the cunning, a deep beauty - a sunken beauty.

The fame of heroes owes little to the extent of their conquests and all to the success of the tributes paid to them."

Jean Genet

Life’s Ironies as Alchemy for transformation

Shield not heart, mind and soul

from inherent ironic incongruities

by nurturing creative solutions

letting the tree of life

branch and blossom

directly to the light.

~ namasté,

Leah Spence

Now I see this clearly. My whole life is pointed in one direction. There never has been a choice for me.

Travis Bickle

a taxi driver from the movie of the same name

"I am a sick man … …

It is impossible for an intelligent man to become anything, only fools become something. …

To be overly conscious is a sickness. …

The pleasure lay precisely in the vivid consciousness of one’s own humiliation.

Dostoevsky, ’ Letters from underground’

You’ll never know why you exist, but you’ll always allow yourselves to be easily persuaded to take life seriously.” …

“I speak only of myself since I do not wish to convince, I have no right to drag others into my river, I oblige no one to follow me and everybody practices his art in his own way."

Tristan Tzara

“Dawn was breaking, like the light from another world.” …

“It is one of the great joys of home ownership to fire a pistol in one’s own bedroom” …

“It is conventional to call ‘‘monster’’ any blending of dissonant elements. …

“That’s a beautiful speech, but nobody’s listening."

Alfred Jarry

You measure a democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists.

Abbie hoffman

Wikiquote

Paul Erdős

Hungarian mathematician (1913–1996)
Language

Paul Erdős [also Erdős Pál, Pál Erdős, Erdos or Erdös] (26 March 1913 – 20 September 1996) was an immensely prolific and famously eccentric mathematician who, with hundreds of collaborators, worked on problems in combinatorics, graph theory, number theory, classical analysis, approximation theory, set theory and probability theory.

My brain is open!
Quotes Edit

If numbers aren’t beautiful, I don’t know what is.

It is not enough to be in the right place at the right time. You should also have an open mind at the right time.

This one’s from the Book!

We’ll continue tomorrow — if I live.

What is the purpose of Life? — Proof and conjecture, and keep the SF’s score low.
I’m not competent to judge. But no doubt he was a great man.

Response to a question by an agent of the US Immigration and Naturalization Service in 1954 as to what he thought of Karl Marx, often cited as an indication of his detachment from political sensibilities and the situations of the McCarthy era. He was afterwards denied a return visa for re-entering the US until 1959, after attending the International Congress of Mathematicians in Amsterdam; as quoted in The Man Who Loved Only Numbers : The Story of Paul Erdős and the Search for Mathematical Truth (1998) by Paul Hoffman, p. 128

Another roof, another proof.
His motto, as he roamed about the world, as the guest of other mathematicians, as quoted in A Tribute to Paul Erdős (1990) edited by Alan Baker, Béla Bollobás, A. Hajnal, Preface, p. ix
Suppose aliens invade the earth and threaten to obliterate it in a year’s time unless human beings can find the Ramsey number for red five and blue five. We could marshal the world’s best minds and fastest computers, and within a year we could probably calculate the value. If the aliens demanded the Ramsey number for red six and blue six, however, we would have no choice but to launch a preemptive attack.
As quoted in “Ramsey Theory” by Ronald L. Graham and Joel H. Spencer, in Scientific American (July 1990), p. 112-117

Television is something the Russians invented to destroy American education.

As quoted in Comic Sections : The Book of Mathematical Jokes, Humour, Wit, and Wisdom (1993) by Des MacHale

The SF created us to enjoy our suffering. … The sooner we die, the sooner we defy His plans.
SF was an abbreviation for “Supreme Fascist” — the term Erdős often used to refer to God, as quoted in The Man Who Loved Only Numbers : The Story of Paul Erdős and the Search for Mathematical Truth (1998) by Paul Hoffman, p. 4
Some French socialist said that private property was theft … I say that private property is a nuisance.
Referring to a famous statement by the French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon that “Property is theft!”, as quoted in The Man Who Loved Only Numbers (1998) by Paul Hoffman, p. 7
My brain is open!

A standard greeting he would make when he was not contemplating some mathematical problem, as quoted in My Brain Is Open : The Mathematical Journeys of Paul Erdos (1998) by Bruce Schechter, p. 10

If numbers aren’t beautiful, I don’t know what is.
Frequent remark, as quoted in My Brain Is Open : The Mathematical Journeys of Paul Erdos (1998) by Bruce Schechter, p. 14

It is not enough to be in the right place at the right time. You should also have an open mind at the right time.

My Brain Is Open : The Mathematical Journeys of Paul Erdos (1998) by Bruce Schechter, p. 99
Végre nem butulok tovább

Finally I am becoming stupider no more.
A suggestion for his own epitaph, as quoted in Variety in Religion and Science: Daily Reflections (2005) by Varadaraja Raman, p. 256

We’ll continue tomorrow — if I live.
Common remark when breaking off work for the night, as quoted in “The Magician of Budapest”
in The Edge of the Universe : Celebrating Ten Years of Math Horizons (2007) by Deanna Haunsperger and Stephen Kennedy, p. 111

This one’s from the Book!
Said in regard to any particularly beautiful or elegant proof, referring to a mythical “book” in which God wrote the proofs for all theorems, as quoted in Philosophy of Mathematics (2008) by John Francis, p. 51

SF means Supreme Fascist — this would show that God is bad. I don’t claim that this is correct, or that God exists, but it is just sort of half a joke. … As a joke I said, “What is the purpose of Life?” “Proof and conjecture, and keep the SF’s score low.”

Now, the game with the SF is defined as follows:
If you do something bad the SF gets at least two points.
If you don’t do something good which you could have done, the SF gets at least one point.
And if nothing — if you are okay, then no one gets any point.

And the aim is to keep the SF’s score low.
Paul Erdős - SF means Supreme Fascist

MisattributedEdit

God may not play dice with the universe, but something strange is going on with the prime numbers. ~ A paraphrase of a fictional anecdote created by Carl Pomerance

God may not play dice with the universe, but something strange is going on with the prime numbers.
Referencing Albert Einstein’s famous remark that “God does not play dice with the universe”, this is attributed to Erdős in “Mathematics : Homage to an Itinerant Master” by D. Mackenzie, in Science 275:759 (1997), but has also been stated to be a comment originating in a talk given by Carl Pomerance on the Erdős-Kac theorem, in San Diego in January 1997, a few months after Erdős’s death.
Confirmation of this by Pomerance is reported in a statement posted to the School of Engineering, Computer Science & Mathematics, University of Exeter, where he states it was a paraphrase of something he imagined Erdős and Mark Kac might have said, and presented in a slide-show, which subsequently became reported in a newspaper as a genuine quote of Erdős the next day. In his slide show he had them both reply to Einstein’s assertion: “Maybe so, but something is going on with the primes.”

A mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems.
Widely attributed to Erdős, this actually originates with Alfréd Rényi, according to My Brain Is Open : The Mathematical Journeys of Paul Erdos (1998) by Bruce Schechter, p. 155
Variant: A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems.

The first sign of senility is that a man forgets his theorems, the second sign is that he forgets to zip up, the third sign is that he forgets to zip down.

Though Erdős used this remark, it is said to have originated with his friend Stanisław Ulam, as reported in The Man Who Loved Only Numbers : The Story of Paul Erdős and the Search for Mathematical Truth (1998) by Paul Hoffman
Variants:

The first sign of senility is when a man forgets his theorems. The second sign is when he forgets to zip up. The third sign is when he forgets to zip down.

As quoted in Wonders of Numbers : Adventures in Mathematics, Mind, and Meaning (2002) by Clifford A. Pickover, p. 64

There are three signs of senility. The first sign is that a man forgets his theorems. The second sign is that he forgets to zip up. The third sign is that he forgets to zip down.

The Raven Quotes

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
Tis some visitor," I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door —
Only this, and nothing more.”

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; — vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow — sorrow for the lost Lenore —
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore —
Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me — filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating,
Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door —
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; —
This it is, and nothing more."

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
Sir," said I, “or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you”— here I opened wide the door; —
Darkness there, and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore?”
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore!” —
Merely this, and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
Surely," said I, “surely that is something at my window lattice:
Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore —
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; —
'Tis the wind and nothing more.”

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore;
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door —
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door —
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore.
Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, “art sure no craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly shore —
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”

Much I marveled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning— little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blest with seeing bird above his chamber door —
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.

"Nevermore.

Leave my loneliness unbroken

Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore…

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore —
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door —
Only this and nothing more.
Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven

Here I opened wide the door;— Darkness there, and nothing more.

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose footfalls tinkled on the tufted floor.
“Wretch,” I cried, “thy God hath lent thee–by these angels he hath sent thee–
Respite–respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore!
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!”

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore?”
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore!” —
Merely this, and nothing more

Darkness there, and nothing more.

Other friends have flown before — On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.” Quoth the raven, “Nevermore.

Tell me truly, I implore-- Is there-- is there balm in Gilead?–tell me–tell me, I implore!
Edgar Allen Poe, The Raven

Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!” I shrieked, upstarting—

“Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore!

Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!

Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my door!

Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!”

Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.

Actually, I do have doubts, all the time. Any thinking person does. There are so many sides to every question.

Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven

"The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough.

Literature is news that stays news.
Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree.

Properly, we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one’s hand.

Your mind and you are our Sargasso Sea.
The image is more than an idea. It is a vortex or cluster of fused ideas and is endowed with energy.

The curse of me & my nation is that we always think things can be bettered by immediate action of some sort, any sort rather than no sort.

Gloom and solemnity are entirely out of place in even the most rigorous study of an art originally intended to make glad the heart of man.

There is no reason why the same man should like the same books at eighteen and at forty-eight

No verse is libre for the man who wants to do a good job.“”

Ezra Pound

"Friends are not made, but recognized.

At the time, there were very few foreign names in the press and they were all factory workers. I

thought I’d never get a job at a university with a foreign name.

I fell in love with social work, and that was my undoing as a poet.

Carl Rakosi

Aristophenes

“The trickiest thing is the nature of man, apparent in everything.” ― Aristophanes, Birds. …

The bees are a different kinds of ’ birds of a feather’ in a manner of speaking:

Meno
Plato

Sections 70 - 80

Socrates’ discussion with Meno begins as Meno asks whether virtue can be taught. Meno suggests that it may be a result of practice or an inherent trait. Socrates answers by reminding Meno that Meno’s own countrymen, the Thessalians, have recently gained a reputation for wisdom, due chiefly to the rising fame of Gorgias (a Sophist teacher). Gorgias, Socrates says, has taught people “to give a bold and grand answer to any question you may be asked, as experts are likely to do.”

Athenians, on the other hand, do not claim to be able to answer such questions, says Socrates, noting that he himself is certainly among the ignorant. We should note that Socrates’ modesty here is somewhat false, at least in the context of the dialogue that is to follow. For Socrates (and for Plato), it is much better to know that one does not know than “boldly and grandly” to claim knowledge when one is in fact ignorant. Thus, Socrates’ modesty simply sets up Meno, the Thessalians, Gorgias, and the Sophists in general for a fall later on in the elenchus.

Socrates adds to his admission of ignorance the statement that he has not yet met anyone who knows what virtue is (though he qualifies this statement with regard to Gorgias, claiming not to remember his meeting with him clearly). This claim astonishes Meno, who moves quickly, at Socrates’ behest, to give a definition of virtue. Meno says that there are different virtues for men (managing public affairs, helping friends, harming enemies, and protecting oneself), for women (managing the home, protecting possessions, and being submissive to one’s husband), and for children, slaves, the elderly, and so on.

This, of course, is not a definition but a list of different kinds of virtue. Socrates points this error out with a metaphor about Meno’s “swarm” of virtues being like a swarm of bees. The bees differ in size and shape, but “do not differ from one and other in being bees.” In other words, Socrates is after the definitive characteristics of virtue in general, the “form” (eidos) of virtue. This idea of forms, which suggests that there is an ideal, non-physical model for each kind of thing, will eventually play a major role in Plato’s dialogues. Here, the term is used sparingly, and Plato seems to be thinking of forms as somehow inherent in each physical thing rather than as separated in some mental or divine realm.

In addition to the bees metaphor, Socrates also uses qualities like health and strength to show Meno that he is asking after the single form common to all kinds of virtue (strength in a man, for example, is the same thing as it is in a woman, regardless of how much of it is present).

Meno, however, is still somewhat unsure what Socrates is getting at. This persistent confusion should remind us of the originality of Socrates’ and Plato’s thought at the time (ideas that are now commonplace to us). The idea that the term “virtue” must refer to one thing in all of its individual examples (i.e., the idea of a definition) is quite different from the ancient Greek conception of virtue as various kinds of success in worldly affairs.

Socrates reminds Meno that no virtuous quality is any good without “moderation and justice.” Meno agrees, and Socrates points out that this idea gets at something common to all cases of virtue. Meno seems to understand this and makes a second attempt to define virtue: “What else” is it, he asks, but “to be able to rule over people?”

This definition is immediately thrown out, however, as Socrates reminds Meno that ruling over others is not virtuous in slaves or children. In any case, Socrates asks, shouldn’t Meno have added “justly and not unjustly” to the phrase “ruling over people?” Meno agrees, noting that “justice is virtue.” Socrates takes that statement as an opportunity to make a further point about definitions: does Meno mean that justice is virtue or that it is a virtue?

Meno, however, still fails to grasp this distinction between instances of virtue and the definition of virtue, and Socrates must use another example. Roundness, he notes, is a shape, but is not shape itself. Meno again seems to grasp the difference, and clarifies his statement about justice: it is a virtue, not virtue itself. “There are many other virtues,” he says, and he goes on to list some of them (“courage…moderation, wisdom, and munificence, and very many others”).

This third attempt by Meno to define virtue contains, of course, the same mistake as his first attempt. Socrates notes that they have again “found many virtues while looking for one.” Meno again professes confusion, and Socrates again resorts to the example of “a shape” versus “shape” in general. He also mentions color in the same regard.

Meno, however, simply asks Socrates to answer his own question and define “shape” and “color” himself, so that Meno will have an example to follow in defining virtue. This turning of the tables, in which Socrates’ interlocutor asks him the questions, is a relatively rare occurrence in Plato’s dialogues. Here, it serves to give Plato the opportunity to contrast Socrates’ style of definition with that of the Sophists.

Socrates, after making sure that Meno knows the geometrical terms “limit” and “solid,” defines shape as “that which limits a solid; in a word, a shape is the limit of a solid.” Then, after chastising Meno for ordering him around, Socrates proceeds to define color “after the manner of Gorgias” (rather than after his own manner, in which he defined shape). He mentions Empedocles’ concept of effluvia, those elements that travel into us via our sense organs and allow us to sense the external world. Using this concept, and quoting Pindar along the way, Socrates defines color as “an effluvium from shapes which fits the sight and is perceived.” The main contrast highlighted here is between Socrates’ simple, direct account and the “theatrical” accounts of Gorgias and the Sophists (which are full of high-flown theories and quotations).

In return for these definitions, Meno makes a fourth attempt at defining virtue: using a literary quote (in true Sophist style), he says that virtue is “to desire beautiful things and and have the power to acquire them.” Like his idea about virtue as the power to rule, however, this definition is quickly broken down by Socrates’ questions. Socrates points out that some men desire bad things, and further that they do not know these things to be bad (since no one desires what will harm them). “What else is being miserable,” he asks, “but to desire bad things and secure them [for oneself]?”

Meno’s most recent definition, then, amounts to virtue as “the power of securing good things.” Even this is not enough for Socrates, however, who points out that the acquisition of good things is only good if it is done “justly and piously” (otherwise such acquisition is “wickedness”).

But now Socrates and Meno are back to square one, having stumbled into another error with regard to the nature of a definition. If virtue is to acquire good things justly, and if justice is a kind of virtue, Meno has simply repeated his earlier mistake of using kinds of virtue to define virtue itself. This mistake, however, is slightly different from the earlier mistake in which Meno defined the thing simply by listing its instances. Here, Plato is also showing us that a definition cannot contain the term to be defined–one cannot give a definition of virtue as “virtue” or as “that which is a part of virtue.”

Meno, at the end of his rope, calls Socrates a torpedo fish (a fish that numbs whatever touches it). “Both my mind and my tongue are numb,” he says. Though he has “made many speeches about virtue before large audiences on a thousand occasions…now [he] cannot even say what it is.” This state of coming to know that one does not know is typical of Socrates’ method in Plato’s dialogues, and is known as aporia.

Meno

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What’s small, buzzes here and there and visits flowers?

If you said bees or hummingbirds, you got it. And you wouldn’t be the first if you mixed the two up. In Medieval Europe, some called bees the smallest birds. In Chinese and Japanese, the words for hummingbird translate into “bee bird.” Today we call the smallest hummingbird — weighing less than a penny and only a bit larger than the biggest bee — the bee hummingbird.