das Dämonische hat mich getroffen

Shortly after meeting Hannah Arendt, Heidegger wrote: "The demonic has struck me. Nothing like this has ever happened to me. In the rainstorm on the way home, you were even more beautiful and impressive. I should have liked to wander with you for nights on end".


Das Dämonische hat mich getroffen. Nie noch ist mir so etwas geschehen. Im Regensturm auf dem Rückweg warst du noch schöner und größer. Und ich hätte mit Dir Nächte durchwandern können.

the white queen dreaming of white flowers...

The flake of snow grew larger and larger; and at last it was like a young lady, dressed in the finest white gauze, made of a million little flakes like stars. She was so beautiful and delicate, but she was of ice, of dazzling, sparkling ice; yet she lived; her eyes gazed fixedly, like two stars; but there was neither quiet nor repose in them. She nodded towards the window, and beckoned with her hand. The little boy was frightened, and jumped down from the chair; it seemed to him as if, at the same moment, a large bird flew past the window.

Andersen, The Snow Queen

the woman and the cat

not long ago, I saw a picture of a woman and a cat. the woman was beautifully riped, contained within herself, peacefully glowing, as the poet would have put it, "like a fruit full of sweetness and dark". she was caressing the cat, and the cat's ecstasy was such that the air stood still. it was a languid afternoon making all angles soft, and the light suffused with a voluptuous tremble. you could almost wonder which was which. the woman the cat the cat the woman. I took my camera, and started to take pictures of the cat and the woman in front of me. but my woman was a girl. she was tall and slender, moved quickly through her own dreams, and her shapes were that of a young warrior. the camera couldn't capture her swift pulsating blood. then the cat - so young also - went once around the flower vase, and when she turned to look at me, I shuddered.

flowers and the Tree of Life 1

Simplitatea nu este un ţel în artă, dar ajungi fără voie la ea pe măsură ce te apropii de sensul real al lucrurilor.
Constantin Brancusi

Simplicity is not an aim in art, but one reaches it unwillingly, as one approaches the real meaning of things.

flowers and the Tree of Life 2

flowers and the Tree of Life 3

Das Spiel ist aus

Mein lieber Bruder, wann bauen wir uns ein Floss
und fahren den Himmel hinunter?
Mein lieber Bruder, bald ist die Fracht zu gross
und wir gehen unter.

Mein lieber Bruder, wir zeichnen aufs Papier
viele Länder und Schienen.
Gib acht, vor den schwarzen Linien hier
fliegst du hoch mit den Minen.

Mein lieber Bruder, dann will ich an den Pfahl
gebunden sein und schreien.
Doch du reitest schon aus dem Totental
und wir fliehen zu zweien.

Ingeborg Bachmann

The Game is Over

My dear brother, when will we build a raft
to float down the sky on?
My dear brother, soon our load will be so heavy
that we'll sink.

My dear brother, onto paper
we'll draw many countries and tracks.
Watch out for the black lines
or you'll fly sky high with the land mines.

My dear brother, I want to be tied to a stake
and scream.
Already you ride out of death valley
and together we will flee.

chrysanthemum

I find her to be the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. But I am resolved never to tell her, never to speak my mind in front of her.

For I cannot bear to look upon her as she stands in front of me, breaking the chrysanthemum between her fingers.

chimeric

remembering some Chinese calligraphy ponds I saw sometimes ago. a little sad, a little dreamy. my lake is not chinese, but maybe it is just for the better. I can imagine the whole trip to that distant misty country, myself by the border of those chimeric lakes, again and again, untainted by memory.

I wonder about the name of this one.

Being perfect artists and ingenuous poets, the Chinese have piously preserved the love and holy cult of flowers; one of the very rare and most ancient traditions which has survived their decadence. And since flowers had to be distinguished from each other, they have attributed graceful analogies to them, dreamy images, pure and passionate names which perpetuate and harmonize in our minds the sensations of gentle charm and violent intoxication with which they inspire us. So it is that certain peonies, their favorite flower, are saluted by the Chinese, according to their form or color, by these delicious names, each an entire poem and an entire novel: The Young Girl Who Offers Her Breasts, or: The Water That Sleeps Beneath the Moon, or: The Sunlight in the Forest, or: The First Desire of the Reclining Virgin, or: My Gown Is No Longer All White Because in Tearing It the Son of Heaven Left a Little Rosy Stain; or, even better, this one: I Possessed My Lover in the Garden.

Octave Mirbeau, Torture Garden, "The Garden," Chapter 5.

purple mistake (1)

"in your pink bedroom, and I could never understand it, pink doesn't agree with you at all", she said, and I could have almost slapped her. Pink! How dared she. Through your painfully tightly-shut eyelids, my dear, I'll teach you the colours, I'll teach you lilac, because this is my flower in the spring rain, I'll teach you purple and thistle, palatinate purple even, I'll give you amethyst and heliotrope, and maybe even a drop of fuchsia, you could have said lavender if you had wanted, when I was little I thought, for no reason that I can think of, lavender was the colour of courtesans, especially Zola's Nana, you could have said whisteria, because it's fuji in japanese and it's in my Genji's name, you could have even said mauve, with a slight french accent that would have made you look playful.

purple jazz-girl-rattling-nights (2)

but among my lilac still lifes, in the amaranth shades of my bedroom, I long for the dusking jazz girls, for their glamorous blood and swift breath which will never be mine, wondering about the wild men with their jazz-girl-rattling nights:

Und unsere Mädchen, die haben denselben hitzigen Puls in den Händen und Hüften. Und ihr Lachen ist heiser und brüchig und klarinettenhart. Und ihr Haar, das knistert wie Phosphor. Das brennt. Und ihr Herz, das geht in Synkopen, wehmütig wild. Sentimental. So sind unsere Mädchen: wie Jazz. Und so sind die Nächte, die mädchenklirrenden Nächte: wie Jazz: heiß und hektisch. Erregt.

Wer schreibt für uns eine neue Harmonielehre? Wir brauchen keinewohltemperierten Klaviere mehr. Wir selbst sind zuviel Dissonanz.Wer macht für uns ein lilanes Geschrei? Eine lilane Erlösung ? Wir brauchen keine Stilleben mehr. Unser Leben ist laut.Wir brauchen keine Dichter mit guter Grammatik. Zu guter Grammatik fehlt uns Geduld. Wir brauchen die mit dem heißen heiser geschluchzten Gefühl. Die zu Baum Baum und zu Weib Weib sagen und ja sagen und nein sagen: laut und deutlich und dreifach und ohne Konjunktiv.

Für Semikolons haben wir keine Zeit und Harmonien machen uns weich und die Stilleben überwältigen uns: Denn lila sind nachts unsere Himmel. Und das Lisa gibt keine Zeit für Grammatik, das Lila ist schrill und ununterbrochen und toll. Über den Schornsteinen, über den Dächern : die Welt: lila.
(Wolfgang Borchert)

And our girls, they have the same fevered pulse in their hands and hips. And their laughter is hoarse and brittle and hard as a clarinet. And their hair, it
crackles like phosphorus. It burns. And their heart, it has a syncopated beat, wistfully wild. Sentimental. Our girls are like that: like jazz. And so are our
nights, the girl-rattling nights: like jazz, hot and hectic. Aroused.
Who will write new laws of harmony for us? We no longer need well-tempered pianos. We ourselves are too much dissonance.
Who will make a purple shout for us? A purple deliverance? We no longer need any still-lives. Our life is loud.
We don't need poets with good grammar. We lack patience for good grammar. We need those with the hot feeling that's been sobbed hoarse. Who call a tree tree
and a woman woman and say yes and say no: loud and distinctly and threefold and without a subjunctive.
For semicolons we have no time and harmonies make us weak and the still-lives overwhelm us: for purple are our skies at night. And the purple gives no time for
grammar, the purple is shrill and incessant and mad. Above the chimneys, above the roofs: the world: purple.

colours amidst today's snow, remembering the autumn leaves starting to fall

Christine told me in class some time ago that she was also fond of photography. This image is for her.

blind

the gods have turned blind.
our prayers are taken for blasphemy.
the angels have died on our lips.
in silence we are waiting
for the last snow.
it could never be whiter
than our thin bones.
the gods have turned blind.

silence. happiness.

keine Rettung mehr

Zu Bacharach am Rheine
Wohnt eine Zauberin,
Sie war so schön und feine
Und riß viel Herzen hin.

Und brachte viel zu schanden
Der Männer rings umher,
Aus ihren Liebesbanden
War keine Rettung mehr.

Near Bacharach on the Rhine

lived a witch.

She was so beautiful and fine,

and seduced many hearts.

And she brought many men

to shame all around her;

From her love's bindings

there was no rescue.

(Clemens Brentano, Lore Lay ballad)

and what is it to be the sister (4)

ein flammender Demon, die Schwester.

(a flaming demon, the sister)

Trakl, aus "Traum und Umnachtung"

and the dark red flowers are always...

gladiolus means sword and it was the official symbol of gladiators preparing to die. especially red gladiolus stands for martyrdom.

King of pain

If you were Queen of pleasure
And I were King of pain
We'd hunt down Love together,
Pluck out his flying-feather,
And teach his feet a measure,
And find his mouth a rein;
If you were Queen of pleasure
And I were King of pain.

(Swinburne - A Match)

Tomorrow doesn't exist

Amanhã não existe. Meu somente
É o momento, eu só quem existe
Neste instante, que pode o derradeiro
Ser de quem finjo ser.


Tomorrow doesn't exist. This moment
Alone is mine, and I am only who
Exists in this instant, which might be the last
Of the self I pretend to be.

(Fernando Pessoa)

A saudade de coisa nenhuma

because I've been dreaming all day about women lost on a winter forest path, their wings fallen, trapped in the same moment, the same place forever, longing for the nameless.

Tenho em mim como uma bruma
Que nada é nem contém
A saudade de coisa nenhuma,
O desejo de qualquer bem.

I have in me like a haze
Which holds and which is nothing
A nostalgia for nothing at all,
The desire for something vague.

(Fernando Pessoa)

the unconceivable end

I dreamt of an image closely resembling this one, except one thing: instead of the bench, the lovers walking in the darkness found a white sofa by the road, open to wholeness. The lovers sat there for hours, holding each other, the moonlight filling the alleys with a strange transparency. I wonder: will my dreams give them back to me, again and again, the lovers with soft eyes and uncertain future, their countenance motionless, untouched by the cold passage of time, the sofa drifting away gently towards the unconceivable end.

deserving punishment is worse

The gods delight in instances of such testimony,

since they, thereby, give witness of their powers.

They often ease punishments and restore the sight

they've taken, when they see true penitence for sin.

Oh, I repent! If anything the wretched say's believed,

I repent, and feel the real torment of my actions.

Though exile is grief, my offence is more so:

and deserving punishment's worse than suffering it.

If the gods favoured me, and he most visible of them

should annul my sentence, the fault still exists forever.

At least death will make me, when it comes, no longer an exile:

but death can't arrange things so I never offended either.

So it's no wonder if my mind's decaying,

melting like water dripping from the snow.

(Ovid: Ex Ponto I. Ovid was banished to Tomis on the Pontus Euxinus - nowadays the Romanian town of Constanta on the Black Sea. He died in exile, after spending no less than ten years in sad solitude).

dead asters from exile

drinking xi hu long jing

The best quality tea must have creases like the leathern boot of Tartar horsemen, curl like the dewlap of a mighty bullock, unfold like a mist rising out of a ravine, gleam like a lake touched by a zephyr, and be wet and soft like a fine earth newly swept by rain.

(Lu Yu, died 804, Chinese sage)

but there is also the refined voice - so familiar, so close, always here - whispering to my ear:

Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

(T.S. Eliot, from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock")

what makes the day sacred

oh gentle, your prayer - Show me the world that can not be erased -
I know enough about such worlds, but my blog is surely none of them. one simple click and it would be gone, and I fight this temptation every day now. perhaps I am too tired even for such a small gesture, despite its highly dramatic tension which I would normally find a way to enjoy :-)
I seam to have forgotten what makes the day sacred.

and the flowers for him are always dark red.

L'Amour, Le Dedain et l'Esperance

Je t'ai prise avec toute ta beauté ta beauté plus riche que tous

.......les placers de la Californie ne le furent au temps de la

.......fièvre de l'or

J'ai empli mon avidité sensuelle de ton sourire de tes regards de

.......tes frémissements

J’ai eu à moi à ma disposition ton orgueil même quand je te tenais

.......courbée et que tu subissais ma puissance et ma domination

J’ai cru prendre tout cela ce n'était qu'un prestige

Et je demeure semblable à Ixion après qu'il eut fait l'amour avec

.......le fantôme de nuées fait à la semblance de celle qu'on appelle

.......Héra ou bien Junon l'invisible

Et qui peut prendre qui peut saisir des nuages qui peut mettre la

.......main sur un mirage et qu'il se trompe celui-là qui croit emplir

.......ses bras de l'azur céleste

Guillaume Apollinaire

(Poèmes à Lou, L’amour, le dédain et l’espérance)

I have held you with all your beauty your beauty richer

.......than all the sands of California at the time of the

.......gold rush

I have filled my hunger for your sensuality with your

.......smile your looks your trembling

I have even had your pride in my power when I made

.......you bend and you submitted to my dominance

I thought to keep all that it was only a dream

And I am left like Ixion when he had made love to a

.......phantom of cloud in the shape of the goddess

.......called Hera or the unseeable Juno

And who can seize who can grasp cloud who can put

.......his hand on a mirage how he deceives himself

.......thinking he can fill his arms with the blue sky

(Poems to Lou, Love and Scorn and Hope)

Or I'd crawl to you baby
And I'd fall at your feet
And I'd howl at your beauty
Like a dog in heat
And I'd claw at your heart
And I'd tear at your sheet
I'd say please, please
I'm your man

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic till Im gathered safely in
Touch me with your naked hand or touch me with your glove
Dance me to the end of love

geisha

Many men have loved the bells
you fastened to the rein,
and everyone who wanted you
they found what they will always want again.

Bruderschaft

Alles ist Wundenschlagen,
und keiner hat keinem verziehn.
Verletzt wie du und verletzend,
lebte ich auf dich hin.

Die reine, die Geistberührung,
um jede Berührung vermehrt,
wir erfahren sie alternd,
ins kälteste Schweigen gekehrt

(Ingeborg Bachmann)

Brotherhood

Each and every thing cuts wounds,
and neither of us has forgiven the other.
Hurting like you and hurtful,
I lived towards you.

Every touch augments
the pure, the spiritual touch;
we experience it as we age,
turned into coldest silence.

Lady of the Lake

Then she caused it that a mist should arrive at that place, and the mist was of such sort that no one could penetrate into it, or sever it asunder, nor could any human eye see what was within.

Howard Pyle (The Story of King Arthur and His Knights)

Lady of the Lake

Then, when she had done all this, she went her way with all of her Court from that valley, making great joy in that she triumphed over Merlin.

Howard Pyle (The Story of King Arthur and His Knights)

the sleeping God

und die goldene blume der dankbarkeit bluehte zu den fuessen des schlafenden Gottes.

in the night of the glowing irises
I first found out what loneliness meant.

ueber gott und reh

Oft wenn ich dich in Sinnen sehe,
verteilt sich deine Allgestalt:
du gehst wie lauter lichte Rehe
und ich bin dunkel und bin Wald.


(Rilke)




Often when I imagine you
your wholeness cascades into many shapes.
You run like a herd of luminous deer
and I am dark, I am forest.

Rose, oh reiner Widerspruch

Rose, oh reiner Widerspruch, Lust,
Niemandes Schlaf zu sein unter soviel
Lidern.

Rose, oh pure contradiction, joy
of being No-one's sleep, under so
many lids.

This enigmatic poem marks Rilke's gravestone. As the legend goes, it was the thorn of a rose which caused his death, poisoning his blood with supreme beauty (or so the poet believed). The most aethereal of all the deaths that I know of.

unter so viel lidern

the roses ah the roses

Macedonski, Stefan George's Romanian double, is said to have died on his poetry throne (though a very material one, since he used to sit there when receiving the homage of his worshippers). He had asked for a handkerchief imbued with rose fragrance and whispered - still loud enough for the devotees gathered at his feet to hear - 'the roses, ah the roses.' One knew how to die in beauty those days, and how to make the perfect show of it. Alas the likes of Wilde and George are so hard to find nowadays - I know perhaps three or four obsessed with pure beauty and possibly only one harbouring enough madness to be able to stage such a mortal rose libation.

I vanish

Like dew drops
on a lotus leaf
I vanish.

( Senryu, died June 2, 1827 , his death poem).

es kommen haertere tage

Drüben versinkt dir die Geliebte im Sand,
er steigt um ihr wehendes Haar,
er fällt ihr ins Wort,
er befiehlt ihr zu schweigen,
er findet sie sterblich
und willig dem Abschied
nach jeder Umarmung.

Sieh dich nicht um.
Schnür deinen Schuh.
Jag die Hunde zurück.
Wirf die Fische ins Meer.
Lösch die Lupinen!

Es kommen härtere Tage.


(Ingeborg Bachmann)

Over there your love sinks in the sand

It climbs around her waving hair,

it breaks into her words,

it commands her to be still,

it finds her mortal

and willing to part

after every embrace.

Don't turn around.
Lace up your shoe.
Chase back the dogs.
Throw the fish in the sea.
Extinguish the lupins.

Harder days are coming.

when in dreams

住の江の
岸による波
よるさへや
夢の通ひ路
人目よくらむ


The waves are gathered
On the shore of Sumi Bay,
And in the gathered night,
When in dreams I go to you,
I hide from people's eyes.

(Fujiwara no Toshiyuki)