Now Lies the Earth...

I was reminded of this gorgeous, sexy poem while reading (the excellent) The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark:

Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal (Alfred, Lord Tennyson)

Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white;

Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk;

Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font;

The firefly wakens, waken thou with me.

Now droops the milk-white peacock like a ghost,

And like a ghost she glimmers on to me.

Now lies the Earth all Danaë to the stars,

And all thy heart lies open unto me.

Now slides the silent meteor on, and leaves

A shining furrow, as thy thoughts, in me.

Now folds the lily all her sweetness up,

And slips into the bosom of the lake.

So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip

Into my bosom and be lost in me.

Titian's Danaë (1553: Prado, Madrid)

Failure

Walter Benjamin on Kafka:

"One is tempted to say: once he was certain of eventual failure, everything worked out for him en route as in a dream."

Source: W. Benjamin 'Max Brod's Book on Kafka and Some of My Own Reflections', [letter to Gerhard Scholem: June 12, 1938] in Illuminations (London: Fontana, 1992; tr. H.Zohn), 136-143 [quotation, p.143].

Famous Blaggers, No. 83

Where did I first see this image which I've been transferring from notebook to notebook for many years? I can't recall now; however it is reproduced in Steve Pile's The Body and the City: Psychoanalysis, Space, and Subjectivity (Routledge, 1996) with ©BIFF Products.

Books in Long Rows

In her memorial essay for Sylvia Beach of 'Shakespeare & Co.', Janet Flanner wrote: "Sylvia had a vigorous clear mind, an excellent memory, tremendous respect for books as civilizing objects and was really a remarkable librarian. She loved the printed word and books in long rows."

Source: Shari Benstock, Women of the Left Bank: Paris, 1900-1940 (U. Texas Press, 1986).