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April 19, 2008
auguries of Innocence
To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.
A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all heaven in a rage.
A dove-house fill'd with doves and pigeons
Shudders hell thro' all its regions.
A dog starv'd at his master's gate
Predicts the ruin of the state.
A horse misused upon the road
Calls to heaven for human blood.
Each outcry of the hunted hare
A fibre from the brain does tear.
A skylark wounded in the wing,
A cherubim does cease to sing.
The game-cock clipt and arm'd for fight
Does the rising sun affright.
Every wolf's and lion's howl
Raises from hell a human soul.
The wild deer, wand'ring here and there,
Keeps the human soul from care.
The lamb misus'd breeds public strife,
And yet forgives the butcher's knife.
The bat that flits at close of eve
Has left the brain that won't believe.
The owl that calls upon the night
Speaks the unbeliever's fright.
He who shall hurt the little wren
Shall never be belov'd by men.
He who the ox to wrath has mov'd
Shall never be by woman lov'd.
The wanton boy that kills the fly
Shall feel the spider's enmity.
He who torments the chafer's sprite
Weaves a bower in endless night.
The caterpillar on the leaf
Repeats to thee thy mother's grief.
Kill not the moth nor butterfly,
For the last judgement draweth nigh.
He who shall train the horse to war
Shall never pass the polar bar.
The beggar's dog and widow's cat,
Feed them and thou wilt grow fat.
The gnat that sings his summer's song
Poison gets from slander's tongue.
The poison of the snake and newt
Is the sweat of envy's foot.
The poison of the honey bee
Is the artist's jealousy.
The prince's robes and beggar's rags
Are toadstools on the miser's bags.
A truth that's told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.
It is right it should be so;
Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.
Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine.
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine.
The babe is more than swaddling bands;
Every farmer understands.
Every tear from every eye
Becomes a babe in eternity;
This is caught by females bright,
And return'd to its own delight.
The bleat, the bark, bellow, and roar,
Are waves that beat on heaven's shore.
The babe that weeps the rod beneath
Writes revenge in realms of death.
The beggar's rags, fluttering in air,
Does to rags the heavens tear.
The soldier, arm'd with sword and gun,
Palsied strikes the summer's sun.
The poor man's farthing is worth more
Than all the gold on Afric's shore.
One mite wrung from the lab'rer's hands
Shall buy and sell the miser's lands;
Or, if protected from on high,
Does that whole nation sell and buy.
He who mocks the infant's faith
Shall be mock'd in age and death.
He who shall teach the child to doubt
The rotting grave shall ne'er get out.
He who respects the infant's faith
Triumphs over hell and death.
The child's toys and the old man's reasons
Are the fruits of the two seasons.
The questioner, who sits so sly,
Shall never know how to reply.
He who replies to words of doubt
Doth put the light of knowledge out.
The strongest poison ever known
Came from Caesar's laurel crown.
Nought can deform the human race
Like to the armour's iron brace.
When gold and gems adorn the plow,
To peaceful arts shall envy bow.
A riddle, or the cricket's cry,
Is to doubt a fit reply.
The emmet's inch and eagle's mile
Make lame philosophy to smile.
He who doubts from what he sees
Will ne'er believe, do what you please.
If the sun and moon should doubt,
They'd immediately go out.
To be in a passion you good may do,
But no good if a passion is in you.
The whore and gambler, by the state
Licensed, build that nation's fate.
The harlot's cry from street to street
Shall weave old England's winding-sheet.
The winner's shout, the loser's curse,
Dance before dead England's hearse.
Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born,
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.
We are led to believe a lie
When we see not thro' the eye,
Which was born in a night to perish in a night,
When the soul slept in beams of light.
God appears, and God is light,
To those poor souls who dwell in night;
But does a human form display
To those who dwell in realms of day.
--William Blake, Auguries of Innocence
Posted by ali at 6:44 PM | TrackBack
April 14, 2008
همه روز، روزه بودن |
همه شب نماز کردن |
همه ساله حج نمودن، سفر حجازکردن ز مدينه تا به کعبه سر و پا برهنه رفتند |
و لب از براي لبيک به وظيفه باز کردن |
به مساجد و معابد همه اعتکاف جستن ز ملاهي و مناهي همه احتراز کردن |
شب جمعه ها نخفتن به خداي راز گفتن |
ز وجود بي نيازش طلب نياز کردن |
به خدا که هيچ کس را ثمر آنقدر نباشد |
که به روي نااميدي در بسته بازکردن |
Posted by ali at 11:43 PM | TrackBack
a supernatural revelation
Faust: ...
But now, that deep contentment in my breast,
Alas, wells up no more, in spite of all my best
Endeavours. Oh, how soon the stream runs dry,
And in what parching thirst again we lie!
How often this has happened to me!
And yet, there is a remedy:
We learn to seek a higher inspiration,
A supernatural revelation--
And where does this shine in its fullest glory,
If not in that old Gospel story?
Here is the Greek text; I am moved to read
Its sacred words, I feel the need
Now to translate them true and clear
Into the German tongue I hold so dear.
'In the beginning was the Word': why, now
I'm stuck already! I must change that; how?
Is then 'the word' so great and high a thing?
There is some other rendering,
Which with the spirit's guidance I must find.
We read: 'In the beginning was the Mind.'
Before you write this first phrase, think again;
Good sense eludes the overhasty pen.
Does 'mind' set worlds on their creative course?
It means: 'In the beginning was the Force'.
So it should be--but as I write this too,
Some instinct warns me that it will not do.
The spirit speaks! I see how it must read,
And boldly write: 'In the beginning was the Deed!'
--Goethe, Faust: Part One - 6. Faust's Study (I)
Posted by ali at 11:17 PM | TrackBack
at the gate of death
Choose a poem that finds you, as Coleridge says, and read it deeply and often, out loud to yourself and to others. Internalizing the poems of Shakespeare, Milton, Whitman will teach you to think more comprehensively than Plato can. We cannot all become philosophers, but we can follow the poets in their ancient quarrel with philosophy, which may be a way of life but whose study is death. I do not think that poetry offers a way of life (except for a handful like Shelley or Hart Crane); it is too large, too Homeric for that. At the gate of death, I have recited poems to myself, but not searched for an interlocutor to engage in dialectic.
--Harold Bloom - Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?
Posted by ali at 6:06 PM | TrackBack
the dying christian to his soul
VITAL spark of heav'nly flame!
Quit, O quit this mortal frame:
Trembling, hoping, ling'ring, flying,
O the pain, the bliss of dying!
Cease, fond Nature, cease thy strife,
And let me languish into life.
Hark! they whisper; angels say,
Sister Spirit, come away!
What is this absorbs me quite?
Steals my senses, shuts my sight,
Drowns my spirits, draws my breath?
Tell me, my soul, can this be death?
The world recedes; it disappears!
Heav'n opens on my eyes! my ears
With sounds seraphic ring!
Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly!
O Grave! where is thy victory?
O Death! where is thy sting?
--Alexander Pope
Posted by ali at 3:43 PM | TrackBack
April 9, 2008
my soul and thought
How barren is my soul and thought, and yet incessantly tormented by vacuous, rapturous and agonizing birth pangs! Is my spirit to be forever tongue-tied? Must I always babble? What I need is a voice as penetrating as the glance of Lynceus, terrifying as the sigh of the giants, persistent as a sound of nature, mocking as a frost-chilled gust of wind, malicious as Echo's callous scorn, with a compass from the deepest bass to the most melting chest-notes, modulating from the whisper of gentle holiness to the violent fury of rage. That is what I need to get air, to give expression to what is on my mind, to stir the bowels of my wrath and of my sympathy. - But my voice is only hoarse like the cry of a gull, or dying away like the blessing upon the lips of the dumb.
--Soren Kierkegaard, Either/Or (Diapsalmata)
Posted by ali at 11:25 PM | TrackBack
the authenticity of old writings
750. ‘Among the many curious stupidities of the schools, none seems to me so ridiculous as the strife about the authenticity of old writings, old works. For I ask you, is it the author or the works we are admiring or censuring? Our sole concern is always and only the author before us; why should we bother about the names when we are interpreting a work of the spirit?’
751. ‘Who can maintain that it is Virgil or Homer we have before us when we are reading the works ascribed to them? But our business is with the writers, and what more do we want? And, indeed, it seems to me that the scholars who are so pernickety about this unimportant matter are no wiser than a very pretty woman who once asked me, with the sweetest possible smile, who was, in fact, the author of Shakespeare’s plays.’
--Goethe, Maxims and Reflections
Posted by ali at 1:13 AM | TrackBack
the madman
§125
The madman. - Haven't you heard of that madman who in the bright morning lit a lantern and ran around the marketplace crying incessantly, `I'm looking for God! I'm looking for God!' Since many of those who did not believe in God were standing around together just then, he caused great laughter. Has he been lost, then? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone to sea? Emigrated? - Thus they shouted and laughed, one interrupting the other. The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. 'Where is God" he cried; 'I'll tell you! We have killed him - you and I! We are all his murderers. But how did we do this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Where is it moving to now? Where are we moving to? Away from all suns? Are we not continually falling? And backwards, sidewards, forwards, in all directions? Is there still an up and a down? Aren't we straying as though through an infinite nothing? Isn't empty space breathing at us? Hasn't it got colder? Isn't night and more night coming again and again? Don't lanterns have to be lit in the morning? Do we still hear nothing of the noise of the grave-diggers who are burying God? Do we still smell nothing of the divine decomposition? - Gods, too, decompose! God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him! How can we console ourselves, the murderers of all murderers! The holiest and the mightiest thing the world has ever possessed has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood from us? With what water could we clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what holy games will we have to invent for ourselves! Is the magnitude of this deed not too great for us? Do we not ourselves have to become gods merely to appear worthy of it? There was never a greater deed and whoever is born after us will on account of this deed belong to a higher history than all history up to now!' Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; they too were silent and looked at him disconcertedly. Finally he threw his lantern on the ground so that it broke into pieces and went out. 'I come too early', he then said; 'my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder need time; the light of the stars needs time; deeds need time, even after they are done, in order to be seen and heard. This deed is still more remote to them than the remotest stars – and yet they have done it themselves!’ It is still recounted how on the same day the madman forced his way into several churches and there started singing his requiem aeternam deo.† Led out and called to account, he is said always to have replied nothing but, ‘What then are these churches now if not the tombs and sepulchers of God?’
† ‘Grant God eternal rest.’ A transformation of that part of the service for the dead which reads ‘Requiem aeternam dona eis [scilicet, mortuis], Domine’ (‘Lord, grant them [the dead] eternal rest’)
--Nietzsche, The Gay Science
Posted by ali at 12:39 AM | TrackBack
April 8, 2008
wing-footed wanderer
He only can create the greatest imaginable beauty who has endured all imaginable pangs, for only when we have seen and foreseen what we dread shall we be rewarded by that dazzling, unforeseen, wing-footed wanderer. We could not find him if he were not in some sense of our being, and yet of our own being but as water with fire, a noise with silence. He is of all things not impossible the most difficult, for that which comes easily can never be a portion of our being; soon got, soon gone, as the proverb says. I shall find the dark grown luminous, the void fruitful when I understand I have nothing, that the ringers in the tower have appointed for the hymen of the soul a passing bell.
--W.B. Yeats
Posted by ali at 11:40 AM | TrackBack
April 7, 2008
تا درین زندان فانی زندگانی باشدت
کنج عزلت گیر تا گنج معانی باشدت
این جهان را ترک کن تا چون گذشتی زین جهان
این جهانت گر نباشد آن جهانی باشدت
کام و ناکام این زمان در کام خود درهم شکن
تا به کام خویش فردا کامرانی باشدت
روزکی چندی چو مردان صبر کن در رنج و غم
تا که بعداز رنج گنج شایگانی باشدت
روی خود را زعفرانی کن به بیداری شب
تا به روز حشر روی ارغوانی باشدت
گر به ترک عالم فانی بگویی مردوار
عالم باقی و ذوق جاودانی باشدت
صبحدم درهای دولتخانهها بگشادهاند
عرضه کن گر آن زمان راز نهانی باشدت
تا کی از بی حاصلی ای پیرمرد بچه طبع
در هوای نفس مستی و گرانی باشدت
از تن تو کی شود این نفس سگ سیرت برون
تا به صورت خانهی تن استخوانی باشدت
گر توانی کشت این سگ را به شمشیر ادب
زان پس ار تو دولتی جویی نشانی باشدت
گر بمیری در میان زندگی عطاروار
چون درآید مرگ عین زندگانی باشدت
--عطار
Posted by ali at 11:06 PM | TrackBack
جمعه
توي قاب خيس اين پنجره ها
عكسي از جمعه ي غمگين ميبينم
چه سياهه به تنش رخت عزا
تو چشاش ابراي سنگين ميبينم
داره از ابر سياه خون مي چكه
جمعه ها خون جاي بارون مي چكه
نفسم در نمياد جمعه ها سر نمياد
كاش مي بستم چشامو
اين ازم برنمياد
داره از ابر سياه خون مي چكه
جمعه ها خون جاي بارون مي چكه
عمر جمعه به هزار سال ميرسه
جمعه ها غم ديگه بيداد مي كنه
ادم از دست خودش خسته ميشه
با لباي خسته فرياد مي كنه
داره از ابر سياه خون مي چكه
جمعه ها خون جاي بارون مي چكه
جمعه وقت رفتنه موسم دل كندنه
خنجر از پشت ميزنه
اون كه همراه منه
داره از ابر سياه خون مي چكه
جمعه ها خون جاي بارون مي چكه
Posted by ali at 1:15 AM | TrackBack
April 6, 2008
stages of life
806. Every stage of life corresponds to a certain philosophy. A child appears as a realist; for it is as certain of the existence of pears and apples as it is of its own being. A young man, caught up in the storm of his inner passions, has to pay attention to himself, look and feel ahead; he is transformed into an idealist. A grown man, on the other hand, has every reason to be a sceptic; he is well advised to doubt whether the means he has chosen to achieve his purpose can really be right. Before action and in the course of action he has every reason to keep his mind flexible so that he will not have to grieve later on about a wrong choice. An old man, however, will always avow mysticism. He sees that so much seems to depend on chance: unreason succeeds, reason fails, fortune and misfortune unexpectedly come to the same thing in the end; this is how things are, how they were, and old age comes to rest in him who is, who was and ever will be.
--Goethe, Maxims and Reflections
Posted by ali at 11:44 PM | TrackBack
only listen with attention
When you are listening to a friend or reading a book, do not assign great value to individual words or even to phrases. Forget separate thoughts, and give no great consideration even to logically arranged ideas. Remember that though your friend desires it, he cannot express himself save by ready-made forms of speech. Look well to the expression of his face, listen to the intonation of his voice-this will help you to penetrate through his words to his soul. Not only in conversation, but even in a written book, can one over hear the sound, even the timbre of the author's voice, and notice the finest shades of expression in his eyes and face. Do not fasten upon contradictions, do not dispute, do not demand argument: only listen with attention.
--Lev Shestov, Penultimate Words
Posted by ali at 11:37 PM | TrackBack
April 1, 2008
what is it that binds me?
What is it that binds me? Of what was the fetter that bound the Fenris wolf formed? It was wrought of the noise of the cat's paws as it walks on the ground, of women's beards, of the roots of rocks, the sinews of the bear, the breath of fish, and the spittle of birds. So, too, am I bound by a fetter formed of dark fancies, of disturbing dreams, of restless thoughts, of dire misgivings, of inexplicable anxieties. This chain is 'very supple, soft as silk, resilient to the strongest tensions, and cannot be torn in two.'
--Soren Kierkegaard, Either/Or (Diapsalmata)
Posted by ali at 10:16 PM | TrackBack
the Beloved
Once when I was shedding bitter tears, when, dissolved in pain, my hope was melting away, and I stood alone by the barren mound which in its narrow dark bosom hid the vanished form of my Life, lonely as never yet was lonely man, driven by anxiety unspeakable, powerless, and no longer anything but a conscious misery;--as there I looked about me for help, unable to go on or to turn back, and clung to the fleeting, extinguished life with an endless longing: then, out of the blue distances -- from the hills of my ancient bliss, came a shiver of twilight -- and at once snapt the bond of birth, the chains of the Light. Away fled the glory of the world, and with it my mourning; the sadness flowed together into a new, unfathomable world. Thou, soul of the Night, heavenly Slumber, didst come upon me; the region gently upheaved itself; over it hovered my unbound, newborn spirit. The mound became a cloud of dust, and through the cloud I saw the glorified face of my beloved. In her eyes eternity reposed. I laid hold of her hands, and the tears became a sparkling bond that could not be broken. Into the distance swept by, like a tempest, thousands of years. On her neck I welcomed the new life with ecstatic tears. Never was such another dream; then first and ever since I hold fast an eternal, unchangeable faith in the heaven of the Night, and its Light, the Beloved.
--Novalis, Hymns to the Night
Posted by ali at 12:16 PM | TrackBack
the dreams of youth
Old age realizes the dreams of youth; look at Swift: in his youth he built an asylum, in his old age he himself entered it.
--Soren Kierkegaard, Either/Or (Diapsalmata)
Posted by ali at 1:27 AM | TrackBack
the melancholic
The melancholic has the best-developed sense of humor, the most extravagant person is often the one most prone to the picturesque, the dissolute one often the most moral, the doubter often the most religious.
--Soren Kierkegaard, Either/Or (Diapsalmata)
Posted by ali at 1:20 AM | TrackBack
aren't people absurd!
Aren't people absurd! They never use the freedoms they do have but demand those they don't have; they have freedom of thought, but demand freedom of speech.
--Soren Kierkegaard, Either/Or (Diapsalmata)