soft fall
Now Love masters my limbs and shakes me, fatal creature, bitter-sweet.
- Sappho, Fragment 40, trans. H. T. Wharton
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Taken on Friday September 26, 2008
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Posted on Friday September 26, 2008
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14 comments
Armando Taborda said:
...we will see...Dave
Shi* replied to Armando Taborda:
Shi* replied to :
gin_able said:
it's conveying allurement and despondency at the same time......
Shi* replied to gin_able:
Sherry ~ Rebujito said:
I love this!
enchanted
mystery
*good shivers* right Mo? :-)
we are the shiver princesses :-)
Shi* replied to Sherry ~ Rebujito:
... and enchantment in one form or another is the water that this fishy swims in ... enchantment and dreams ... a delicious cocktail!
... and princesses are always welcome in this fairytale realm! :)
Christel Ehretsmann said:
Shi* replied to Christel Ehretsmann:
Immortal Aphrodite of the broidered throne, daughter of Zeus, weaver of wiles, I pray thee break not my spirit with anguish and distress, O Queen. But come hither, if ever before thou didst hear my voice afar, and listen, and leaving thy father's golden house camest with chariot yoked, and fair fleet sparrows drew thee, flapping fast their wings around the dark earth, from heaven through mid sky. Quickly arrived they; and thou, blessed one, smiling with immortal countenance, didst ask What now is befallen me, and Why now I call, and What I in my mad heart most desire to see. 'What Beauty now wouldst thou draw to love thee? Who wrongs thee, Sappho? For even if she flies she shall soon follow, and if she rejects gifts shall yet give, and if she loves not shall soon love, however loth.' Come, I pray thee, now too, and release me from cruel cares; and all that my heart desires to accomplish, accomplish thou, and be thyself my ally.
- Wharton's literal translation
Christel Ehretsmann replied to Shi*:
today was a marvellous autumn day high up in my Vosges mountains...I went up looking down at the lakes a little further down and sat among the blueberry plants, opened the book I took with me.
Roland Barthes' essay entitled Fragments d'un discours amoureux...
An in that book , there was a quote of Sappho's about languid desire...here it is in French :
"...car dès que je t'aperçois un instant,il ne m'est plus possible d'articuler une parole : mais ma langue se brise, et, sous ma peau, soudain se glisse un feu subtil : mes yeux sont sans regard, mes oreilles bourdonnent, la sueur ruisselle de mon corps, un frisson me saisit toute ; je deviens plus verte que l'herbe, et, peu s'en faut , je me sens mourir "
Shi* said:
... is the best I can do ... wow! ... what a feeling ... at once familiar and strange.
heres another note (www.turksheadreview.com/library/texts/barthes-loversdiscourse-notes.html) I found on this text by Barthes, one that struck me just now:
"In the loving calm of your arms"
étreinte / embrace
The gesture of the amorous embrace seems to fulfill, for a time, the subject's dream of total union with the loved being.
... I know the feeling, although the clinical description is not in my spirit.
What a joy to wander in the hills with a good book and a beautiful soul.
Shi* replied to Shi*:
31
That man to me seems equal to the gods,
the man who sits opposite you
and close by listens
to your sweet voice
5 and your enticing laughter—
that indeed has stirred up the heart in my breast.
For whenever I look at you even briefly
I can no longer say a single thing,
but my tongue is frozen in silence;
10 instantly a delicate flame runs beneath my skin;
with my eyes I see nothing;
my ears make a whirring noise.
A cold sweat covers me,
trembling seizes my body,
15 and I am greener than grass.
Lacking but little of death do I seem.
www.uh.edu/~cldue/texts/sappho.html
Christel Ehretsmann said:
I send you my afternoon place where I read Barthes
Shi* replied to Christel Ehretsmann: