Tag: Literature

From The Book of Hours (Rainer Maria Rilke)

Now the hour bends down and touches me

with it’s clear, metallic ring:

my senses tremble. The feeling forms: I can—–

and I grasp the malleable day.

Nothing was complete before I saw it,

all becoming stood still.

My eyes are ripe, and whatever they desire

approaches like a bride.

Nothing is too small: against a lovely background

I paint it large and lovingly

and hold it high, and I will never know

whose soul it may release…

The Poetry of Rilke. ISBN: 978-0-374-53271-0

From the Readings of CHUANG TZU

Moral: the more you pile up ethical

principles

And duties and obligations

To bring everyone in line

The more you gather LOOT

For a thief like Khang.

By ethical argument

And moral principal

The greatest crimes are eventually shown

To have been necessary, and, in fact,

A signal benefit

To mankind.

Love’s Blazon: Parzifal and the Lady he awoke

 

“The lady had fallen asleep. She wore Love’s blazon–a mouth of translucent red, torment to the hearts of amorous knights. She slept with parted lips that wore the Flames of Love’s hot fire.  Thus lay the loveliest challenge to adventure imaginable.”

‘Upon my word, you are Parzifal!’  She said of the red lips.  ‘Your name means ‘pierce-through-the-heart.’

Too knight

Musicality of a whirling fan.

Lyricality of a faucet running.

Night songs.

Lullaby white noise.

A single dog bark.

An æon in a cat’s eye’s

Blinkin’

Winken & Nod

Set out one knight.

By only the light of three moons.

Pyres burning into the misty lake night.

Wooden ships of exposure espied from a tower.

Bring your three medallions.

Parsifal/Sufi Connection

As I research Parsifal/-zifal, I like to jot unexpected correspondences. Here is one involving the Sufi tradition. The quick quote below is included in a Sufi meditation manual that came into my possession a year and a half ago.

“The radiance of the streamers emanating from the shoulder blades has, when unfolded, often been compared by Sufi’s with a mantle of light. In the Parsifal legends, it was because there were holes in the mantle of Anfortas that the evil forces of the night were able to attack him.” Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan. The Ecstasy Beyond Knowing: A Manual of Meditation. 2014. p47

Anafortas: the wounded Fisher King who guard the Grail at Munsalvaesche.

[Perceval arrives at the Grail Castle, to be greeted by the Fisher King. From a 1330 manuscript of Perceval ou Le Conte du Graal by Chrétien de Troyes, BnF Français 12577, fol. 18v]

Below is the context in which the quote above is presented. The reader is being given meditation methods to enliven these ideas. Parsifal is not mentioned again.

The (life) energy fields includes the electrostatic and electromagnetic fields, the aura, called bioluminescence (light body?), the sonic field, and perhaps fields of other alternate forces (chi force; etheric body, which pulses with your breath; celestial body.) p46

“The energy in the human electromagnetic field flows in manifold ways. You may distinguish [sic. seven total ways including]…..vi) streamers (plumes of energy). ” p46

The concept of energy pluming from your body can be illustrated by:

1) Energy streaming above the head, like the Pentecostal tongues of flame

2) Energy flashing from the temples “as the winged thoughts of Greek Mythology”

3) Energy pluming out from behind the shoulder blades as winglike or cloaklike.

4) Plumes around the temples, included with the wings of the Seraphim.

5) Plumes around the shoulder blades and ankles, as the wings found in images of Hermes or Mercury.

Khan proposes that attributing validity to the existence of such “higher” fields that have so far not yielded to the measurement of science, enables the accounting for some of the uncanny bouts of energy to which contemplatives refer. Examples:

  • The quickening of the Holy Spirit to Christian mystics
  • Ruh al-quddus to Sufi
  • The Shekina among Jewish mystics.

“Actually, we [sic. science & mysticism] have been going along with the assumption that the body emits these fields, but what if the electromagnetic field, in fact, all components of the life field, were the templates, the mold, in which the body is being formed?” p. 47

One related meditation practice is listed among other practices given in this section.

  • “Try to feel such streamers emanating from your shoulder blades. Envision them as unfolded and draped around your back, affording a kind of protection, or even as the robe investing the initiate into the Hermetic tradition. All the above practices will need to be extended to the aura of light.”p48

Poly-sal’ went acourtin’: Orientation Day

The tradition of Courtly Love in literature comes in three types: allegories, lyricals, and romance (aka færy tales).

In prudence of full disclosure, be aware that Richard Wagner’s opera was tentatively titled Parzifal (just as WOLFRAM VON ESCHENBACH had titled the protagonist) until 1877, when he switched to the handle Parsifal. This change was informed by one theory about the origin and etymology of the name (Perceval > Parzifal > Parsifal).

Vidēre licet the name as of Persian order Fal (Pure) Parsi (Fool).

At this time, your historian has been unable to validate any other origin theories for the name.

Though we shall encounter, virtually, every story ever told within Parzifal, a breakdown of the tradition of Courtly Love and Chivalry during the High Middle Ages as Eschebach tells it is justly prudent.

We concern ourselves, as the reader, with (1) Provençal troubadours, (2) French trovères, and (3) minnesänger.

I’m Wolfram von Eschenbach. I’m a bit of a minnesänger.

Note that Eschenbach states that a Provençal called Kyot (my research suggest Pyot to be a correspondant name in other texts) sent ” the book” to him.

Of keen interest to your historian is the patron enabling Eschenbach to afford the luxury of his composition. Wolfram was under the patronage of Medieval German Mæcenas Herman Landgrave of Thuringia.

taube.jpg

The tradition of Courtly Love and Chivalry during the High Middle Ages as seen from the Critical perspective:

The overall gist, to be concisely reductive) of works concerned with courtly love seems to be the romance of self-perfection in knighthood, where both the chivalric and the spiritual receive their due as part of Love and Sensualism.

Parzifal had the knowledge of chivalry concealed from him until he was of an age able to think for himself.

In C.S. Lewis’ Allegory of Love, he presents the literary tradition of courtly love to include four basic characteristics: humility ; courtesy ; adultery ; Religion of Love.

A feudalization of love.

We will consider the meaning of the above shortly.

The genius of the above description will be revealed in history of words.

Love and Do What Thou Will. St. Augustine

Every man and every woman is a star.

Every number is infinite; there is no difference.

In the sphere I am everywhere the center, as she, the circumference, is nowhere found.

I am the axle of the wheel, and the cube in the circle.

Pt2 Steppenwolf

A wild longing for strong emotions and sensations seethes in me, a rage against this torreless, flat, normal, and sterile life. I have a mad impulse to smash something. P 27

It is remarkable all that men can swallow… Steppenwolves could sipalittle heart and courage from their glasses. p34

Of all the things that pleased and charmed me about her, the prettiest and most characteristic was her rapid changes from the deepest seriousness to the drollest merriment, and this without doing herself the least violence, with the facility of a gifted child. P107

[Hemine to the steppenwolf/Harry] the reason why I please you and mean so much to you is because I’m a kind of looking glass for you, because there’s something in me that answers to you? Really, we ought all to be such looking glasses to each other and answer and correspond to each other, but such owls as you are a bit particular. P108

I felt my partner’s taut hips, her quick and pliant knees, and looking in her radiantface I owned that this was the first time in my life that I had really danced. Harry quote P122.

I am going to teach you to dance and play and smile, and still not be happy. And you are going to teach me to think and to know and yet not be happy… We have fallen out of nature and hang suspended in space… Every human being it says, consists of ten, or a hundred, or a thousand souls. P126

You have a dimension too many. Whoever wants to live and enjoy his life today must not be like you and me. P151

“…the laughter of the immortals. It was a laughter without an object. It was simply light and lucidity…and eternity was nothing else than the redemption of true, its return to innocence, so to speak, and its transformation again into space. P154

Never did sinner show more haste to get to hell. P164

Such contrasts, seen from a little distance, always tend to show their increasing similarity. P206

Casey Adams shared an answer on Quora with you

What are the best translations for Hesse? by Casey Adams https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-translations-for-Hesse/answer/Casey-Adams-78?ch=99&share=2ca2d868&srid=CWTwk

Quote from Tao te Ching

Thirty spokes will converge

in the hub of a wheel;

But the use of the cart

will depend on the part

of the hub that is void.

So advantage is had

from whatever is there;

But usefulness rises

from whatever is not.

Steppenwolf. Hermann Hesse. Notes from reread. Updates ongoing

A wolf of the Steppes that had lost it’s way and strayed into the towns and the life of the herd. p17

[Regarding Haller’s left behind manuscript] They are rather the deeply loved spiritual events which he has attempted to express by giving them the form of tangible experiences….I see them as a document of the times, for Haller’s sickness of the soul, as I now know, is not the eccentricity of a single individual, but the sickness of the times themselves, the neurosis of that generation to which Haller belongs……They are an attempt to present the sickness itself in its actual manifestation. p20-21

Human life is reduced to real suffering, to hell, only when two ages, two cultures and religions overlap…Now there are times when a whole generation is caught in this way between two ages, two modes of life and has no standard, no security, no simple acquiescence p22

I feel our contemporary world is existing between two ages and modes of life.

Those who remember before the internet and those who never lived in a world without the internet. Those who remember not having a cell phone. Those who learned cursive and those who didn’t.

I was in high school when our family ‘got internet.’ It was dialup and played very specific noises when connecting. I can still ‘sing’ those noises from memory. We would lose the connection if someone called our family landline. After one and a half hours, our connection would kick us off and we’d have to re-connect.

I remember high school research involving physical libraries.

At 35, I never wrote an academic paper without a word processor on a personal computer. In fact, I’m still in awe at my parents who did scholarly work without this benefit.

Watch “Into Dust, Mazzy Star” on YouTube

Dont own rights.

This song bursts my soul apart.

Not sure I can finish it now, in fact.

If you ain’t heard bout this ‘un, give it a listen all the way thru.

Powerful.

Идіотъ The Idiot…remarks from an idiot

Fyodor Dostoevsky, as this gal understands, is no fool.

I read The Idiot in highschool, for personal ed as opposed to curriculum and yes, it was because I wanted to impress myself by reading Russian lit unguided. And yes, referencing this on AP exams 15 yrs ago was conducive to high scores.

However, I was spared the light~gel of literary criticism in my reading of The Idiot.

It was only later I heard I heard this novel was widely allegeded to be a mere allegory for Christ.

Screw that. Dostoevsky knew better.

So did Augustine.

See it and them another way.

Watch “Iggy Pop – The Passenger” on YouTube

Dont own rights, but iggy owns rights to US punk verbe.

This has been reincarnated, to my limited experience, twice ( ala Michael Hutchence < of INXS, RIP > and the miraculous Deftones and MJK).

Listen to this track on great headphones and hear so much additional quintessence.

Casey Adams shared an answer on Quora with you

Why does this Harvard mathematician say that science is built upon the axiom “0 exists”? by Joshua Engel https://www.quora.com/Why-does-this-Harvard-mathematician-say-that-science-is-built-upon-the-axiom-0-exists/answer/Joshua-Engel?ch=99&share=e5b9759c&srid=CWTwk

I do the words and let others do the math, generally speaking.

So , I appreciate those that can communicate numbers into words.

Words should still not be considered second to numbers.

It’s not a competition, to say the absolute least.

Word of day (as probably mis-) heard from a talented actress…

Tartarus. Classical mythology

The place of punishment in the lower world. Originally, a dark abyss as far below Hades as earth is below heaven, and later the abode where the wicked undergo eternal punishment.

This is from my F&W dic. Spooky. There are 4 further percussions of this world. If interested, do ask.

Have you met the wolf of the steppes?

If not why the eff not. Barely over 200 pg and quite novel for a novel.

Re-reading it at mo, great bit from p8

He had thought more than other men, and in matters of the intellect he had that calm objectivity, that certainty of thought and knowledge, such as only really intellectual men have, who have no axe to grind, who never wish to shine, or to talk others down, or to appear always in the right.

 

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