Skip to main content

more Hugo. tell me if you're tired of him (not that i'll pay much heed...).

'The mind's eye can find nothing more dazzling or dark anywhere outside mankind; it cannot fix on anything more fearful or more complex, more mysterious or more infinite. There is a spectacle greater than the sea, and that is the sky; there is a spectacle greater than the sky, and that is the human soul.
'To write the poem of the human conscience, were it only that of a single man, were it only that of the most insignificant man, would be to meld all epics into one superior epic, the epic to end all. Conscience means the chaos of chimeras, of lusts and temptations, the furnace of dreams, the den of ideas we are ashamed of; it is the pandemonium of sophisms, it is the battlefield of passions. Pierce through the livid face of a human being at certain moments as they ponder, look behind the facade, look into the soul, look into the darkness. There, beneath the outer silence, titanic struggles are taking place.... What a somber thing is this infinity that each man carries within him and against which he measures in despair what his brain wants and what his life puts into action!'

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Can someone please explain why my Quicktime isn't working? Anyone with prophetic awareness of my little Atlas, none so old but recently behaving so?
because you were all wondering what I'm writing my dissertation on, here's a brief synopsis of my 'research context': When James Macpherson published his Fragments of Ancient Poetry in 1760, he went to great lengths to make the Fragments appear to be authentic remains of an ancient, heroic oral tradition. His reasons for this were largely political, and as such, influenced the content of the epics themselves. As an attempt to establish a particularly Scottish identity, the poems were quite effective. However, to do so required both a simplification and a manipulation of traditional mythology. Stripped of anagogical significance, the Ossian epics more or less represented an Enlightenment version of history, tradition, and mythic heritage. The stories themselves were changed by their very purpose and in turn changed the manner of representing myth in future narratives. Moreover, the emphasis on the Ossian epics as authentic tales from the past, as ‘fragments,’ served...
Kathryn, do NOT be jealous of me going to the opera. It was weird. They were wearing these bulky animal costumes and clonking boots which might have been okay except that their footsteps drowned out the sound of the orchestra (Oh look! A band!). The plot was supposed to be about the circle of life or something deep, but it really seemed to be more about animals getting it on. It was an opera, though, so plot really shouldn't matter as long as the music is good. It wasn't. I mean, it wasn't BAD - but most of the singing was monotonous, the orchestration was unremarkable, and I hope to heaven no one from the production reads this. It would be so disheartening! They were all skillful - I just wasn't interested in the piece itself. But then, I have only ever seen very classical sorts of pieces. The Marriage of Figaro. Samson and Delilah. And I was listening to Puccini before leaving the house! What do you do? But then again, I was distracted by my seating companion. Five so...