Book of Sand

https://tarnmoor.com/2016/09/30/borges-milton-and-the-rose/ Borges, Milton, and the Rose Posted on September 30, 2016 by Tarnmoor “A Rose and Milton” What do these writers have in common: Homer, John Fante, Benito Pérez Galdós, John Milton, and Jose Luis Borges? For at least part of their lives, all were blind. So when Argentinian poet Jorge Luis Borges honors Milton, it is by way of acknowledging a common fate. The name of this poem is “A Rose and Milton”: A Rose and Milton (SP, 199) From the generations of roses That are lost in the depths of time I want one saved from oblivion, One spotless rose, of all things That ever were. Fate permits me The gift of choosing for once That silent flower, the last rose That Milton held before him, Unseen. O vermilion, or yellow Or white rose of a ruined garden, Your past still magically remains Forever shines in these verses, Gold, blood, ivory or shadow As if in his hands, invisible rose. Of ...

DOOMSDAY  It will be when the trumpet sounds, as Saint John the Theologian writes.  It was in 1757, according to Swedenborg's testimony.  It was in Israel (when the she-wolf nailed Christ's flesh to the cross),                                                                                                 [but not only then.  It happens in every pulsation of your blood.  There is not an instant that cannot be the crater of Hell.  There is not an instant that cannot be the water of Paradise.  There is not an instant that is not loaded like a weapon.  In every moment you can be Cain or Siddhartha, the mask or the face.  At every moment Helen of Troy can revea...

SOMEONE DREAMED IT [ ALGUIEN SUEÑA ] What has Time dreamed up to now, which is, like all now, the apex? The sword has dreamed, whose best place is the verse. He has dreamed and wrought the sentence, which can simulate wisdom. He has dreamed of faith, he has dreamed of the atrocious Crusades. He has dreamed of the Greeks who discovered dialogue and doubt. He has dreamed of the annihilation of Carthage by fire and salt. He has dreamed the word, that awkward and rigid symbol. He has dreamed the happiness that we had or that we now dream of having had. He has dreamed the first morning of Ur. He has dreamed the mysterious love of the compass. He has dreamed the bow of the Norwegian and the bow of the Portuguese. He has dreamed the ethics and metaphors of the strangest of men, the one who died one afternoon on a cross. He has dreamed the taste of hemlock on Socrates' tongue. He has dreamed of those two curious brothers, the echo and the mirror. He has dreamed of the book, that mirror tha...

I have been reading The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller lately.  I discovered she has written another novel, CIRCE, at least since that first one.  It is remarkable that for 800 years, the epic of Troy was THE (Western anyway) World Literature, despite not even being written down. It formed the basis of Western Civilization, in large part. It blends history and myth with a foundation tale and set the imprint for heroic action, virtue and morality that governed the Hellenic world for hundreds of years. I have been re-watching Rookie Historian Goo on Netflix. It is amazing to watch court historians portrayed in such a positive light. Should also check out the Sungkyunkwan Scandal show.  Much of the story hinges on the Veritable Records of the Joseon Dynasty and the Office of Royal Decrees, (Yemun-gwan): During the reign of a king, professional historiographers maintained extensive records on national affairs and the activities of the state. They collected documents ...

  Judgment Against Nineveh … 5 “Behold, I am against you,” declares the LORD of Hosts. “I will lift your skirts over your face. I will show your nakedness to the nations and your shame to the kingdoms. 6 I will pelt you with filth and treat you with contempt; I will make a spectacle of you.* 7 Then all who see you will recoil from you and say, ‘Nineveh is devastated; who will grieve for her?’ Where can I find comforters for you?”… Nahum 3:5-7  ====================== Nahum is a minor prophet recorded in the Tanakh and the Old Testament. Nahum's writings could be taken as prophecy or as history. One account suggests that his writings are a prophecy written in about 615 BC, just before the downfall of Assyria, while another account suggests that he wrote this passage as liturgy just after its downfall in 612 BC. * The only worthwhile takeaway from the otherwise pointless film, Nope (2022), the 6th verse alone was the film's epigraph.

The last three stanzas of What is Lost (Lo perdido) by J.L. Borges: In the minutes of the sand I believe I feel the cosmic time: the history That memory locks up in its mirrors Or that magic Lethe has dissolved. The pillar of smoke and the pillar of fire , Carthage and Rome and their crushing war , Simon Magnus , the seven feet of earth That the Saxon proffered the Norway king, This tireless subtle thread of unnumbered Sand degrades all down to loss. I cannot save myself, a come-by-chance Of time, being matter that is crumbling. [From Dreamtigers , by Jorge Luis Borges, translated by Harold Morland] ============================== It strikes me as amazing and wonderful that in the space of just four lines, Borges manages to effortlessly reference the Battle of Stamford Bridge - a victory for King Harald that preceded his defeat at Hastings by only 3 weeks - the span of the Punic Wars with Hannibal and all his elephants, the mysteries of the Old Testament, and the controversi...

 “Apropos of sleep, that sinister adventure of all our nights, we may say that men go to bed daily with an audacity that would be incomprehensible if we did not know that it is the result of ignorance of the danger.” — Charles Baudelaire, Fusées [Rockets], IX. Epigraph of H.P. Lovecraft's Hypnos. ================================================================ I have not yet read much farther than the epigraph, attributed to Baudelaire, but I had to stop and find the citation, which is from Fusees {Rockets}.  I wonder if in collecting Notes Toward a Philosophy of Sleep what sources one might turn to.  Years ago, I posed this question, (or rather it was posed to me) and I failed. Now I feel that I could make an attempt. One might start by seeing what Sir Thomas Browne had to say on the matter, in conjunction with folktales of sleep in Pseudodoxia, or perhaps his essay on the Deipnosophistae of Athnaeus.  Surely, he touched on sleep metaphorically in the Urne Buri...

In Greek mythology, Hypnos is the personification of sleep; the Roman equivalent is known as Somnus . Hypnos is usually the fatherless son of Nyx ("The Night"), although sometimes Nyx's consort Erebus ("The Darkness") is named as his father. His brother is Thanatos ("Death"). Both siblings live in the underworld ( Hades ). According to rumors, Hypnos lived in a big cave, which the river Lethe ("Forgetfulness") comes from and where night and day meet. His bed is made of ebony, on the entrance of the cave grow a number of poppies and other soporific plants. No light and no sound would ever enter his grotto. According to Homer , he lives on the island Lemnos , which later on has been claimed to be his very own dream-island. He is said to be a calm and gentle god, as he helps humans in need and, due to their sleep, owns half of their lives. Hypnos lived next to his twin brother, Thanatos in the Underworld, where the rays of the sun n...

  Bight is defined as "a curve or recess in a coastline, river, or other geographical feature." It can also refer to a loop of rope, as distinct from it's end.  Blight is a thing that spoils or damages, for example a plant disease, typically one caused by fungi such as mildews, rusts, and smuts.   " Blighty " was first used in India in the 1800's, and meant an English or British visitor. It's thought to have derived from the Urdu word "vilāyatī" which meant foreign . The term then gained popularity during trench warfare in World War One, where "Blighty" was used affectionately to refer to Britain.   Bright - Middle English, from Old English beorht ; akin to Old High German beraht bright, Sanskrit bhrājate it shine. Radiating or reflecting light, illustrious, glorious, beautiful, lively, intelligent, clever. Radiant, auspicious, promising.

From The Rose of Paracelsus: "Do you truly believe that something may be turned to nothing? Do you believe that the first Adam in paradise was able to destroy a single flower, a single blade of grass?" "We are not in paradise," the young man stubbornly replied. "Here, in the sublunary world , all things are mortal." Paracelsus had risen to his feet. "Where are we, then, if not in paradise?" he asked. "Do you believe that the deity is able to create a place that is not paradise? Do you believe that the Fall is something other than not realizing that we are in paradise?" ==================================================  Note p. 504: De Quincey, Writings, XIII, 345: "Insolent vaunt of Paracelsus, that he would restore the original rose or violet out of the ashes settling from its combustion— that is now rivalled in this modern achievement" ("The Palimpsest of the Hu-man Brain," Suspiriade Profundis).  The introducto...

I encountered the phrase "I too have been in Boeotia..." in the Forward to Six Problems for Don Isidro Parodi by Bioy-Casares and J.L. Borges.  The Forward was "written" by Gervasio Montenegro, who is in fact, just a character in the H. Bustos Domecq stories.  I did not immediately get the reference, but recalled, perhaps because I had just been reading about the Sphinx, that seven-gated Thebes is in Boeotia and that is where the scene of Oedipus takes place.  That reference did not seem apt, but this one, {below} remarking upon Hesiod encountering the Muses there, fits.   How subtle these clues, how like a labyrinthine mind, in which references divers and divergent lie ready at hand to be deployed so casually. Without the internet, these gems would have been arduous to track down. I can with a flick of the finger, translate any passage from Greek, Latin, German, French, Spanish, scour libraries for learned references, read pages from books published ...

De Quincey, around 1849, suggested a second interpretation,* which complements the traditional one. The subject of the riddle according to him is not so much man in general as it is Oedipus in particular, orphaned and helpless at birth, alone in his manhood, and supported by Antigone in his blind and hopeless old age. (from The Book of Imaginary Beings, J.L.Borges) If the answer, as suggested by De Quincey, to the riddle the Sphinx posed to Oedipus, was not as is commonly understood, Man, but instead Me; it would explain why no one else was able to answer it correctly. Did the Sphinx only pose the riddle in order to find Oedipus, the only person who could answer it, because it was tailor made for him specifically? Was the Sphinx an agent of Fate, set up in order to locate Oedipus and give him cause to enter Thebes in triumph and marry Jocasta? If that is the case, than the nameless throngs of Boeotia devoured by the Sphinx all died as mistakes, without any hope of understanding w...

The Deipnosophistae was originally in fifteen books. [14] The work survives in one manuscript from which the whole of books 1 and 2, and some other pages too, disappeared long ago. An Epitome or abridgment (to about 60%) was made in medieval times, and survives complete: from this it is possible to read the missing sections, though in a disjointed form. The English polymath Sir Thomas Browne noted in his encyclopaedia Pseudodoxia Epidemica : Athenæus, a delectable Author, very various, and justly stiled by Casaubon, Græcorum Plinius . [15] There is extant of his, a famous Piece, under the name of Deipnosophista , or Coena Sapientum* , containing the Discourse of many learned men, at a Feast provided by Laurentius. It is a laborious Collection out of many Authors, and some whereof are mentioned no where else. It containeth strange and singular relations, not without some spice or sprinkling of all Learning. The Author was probably a better Grammarian then Philosopher, deal...

   Cosmogony No darkness and no chaos. Darkness demands eyes that can see, the same way sound and silence demand ears with the power of hearing and the mirror a form to fill it with an image. No space, no time. Not even a divine inventor of the original silence preceding the first night of the beginning time, a night that must be infinite. The great river of Heraclitus the Obscure has not set out on its relentless course, flowing from the past toward the future, flowing from oblivion toward oblivion. Something suffering. Something that implores. And then the history of the universe. Now.    [S.K. tr.](The Sonnets, 163) In the cosmogonies of the Gnostics, the demiurges knead up a red Adam who cannot manage to stand; as rude and inept and elementary as that Adam of dust was the Adam of dream wrought from the sorcerer's nights.   (The Circular Ruins)

Oedipus and the Enigma Four-footed at dawn, in the daytime tall, and wandering three-legged down the hollow reaches of evening: thus did the sphinx, the eternal one, regard his restless fellow,    mankind; and at evening came a man who, terror-struck, discovered as in a mirror his own decline set forth in the monstrous image, his destiny, and felt a chill of terror.   We are Oedipus and everlastingly we are the long tripartite beast; we are all that we were and will be, nothing less.   It would destroy us to look steadily at our full being. Mercifully God grants us the ticking of the clock, forgetfulness. [Alan.S.Trueblood., tr.](The Sonnets, 95)   ---------------------------------------------------   OEDIPUS AND THE RIDDLE At dawn four-footed, at midday erect, And wandering on three legs in the deserted Spaces of afternoon, thus the eternal Sphinx had envisioned her changing brother Man, and with afternoon there came a person Deciphering, appalled at the m...

“Readers may be divided into four classes: I. Sponges, who absorb all they read, and return it nearly in the same state, only a little dirtied. II. Sand-glasses, who retain nothing, and are content to get through a book for the sake of getting through the time. III. Strain-bags, who retain merely the dregs of what they read. IV. Mogul diamonds, equally rare and valuable, who profit by what they read, and enable others to profit by it also.” ― Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Notes And Lectures Upon Shakespeare And Some Of The Old Poets And Dramatists   “Sir, I admit your general rule, That every poet is a fool, But you yourself may serve to show it, That every fool is not a poet.” ― Samuel Taylor Coleridge

    Biblioteca personal de Borges 37. Herodoto. Los nueve libros de la Historia El espacio se mide por el tiempo. El mundo era más vasto entonces que ahora, pero Heródoto se echó a andar unos quinientos años antes de la era cristiana. Sus pasos lo llevaron a Tesalia y a la dilatada estepa de los escitas. Costeó el Mar Negro hasta el estuario del río Dnieper. Emprendió el arduo y peligroso viaje entre Sarolis y Susa, la capital de Persia. Visitó a Babilonia y a la Cólquida, que había sido la meta de Jasón. Estuvo en Grasa. De isla en isla exploró el Archipiélago. En el Egipto conversó con los sacerdotes del templo de Hephaistos. Para Heródoto las divinidades eran las mismas pero los nombres cambiaban en cada lengua. Remontó el sagrado curso del Nilo, acaso hasta la primera catarata. Curiosamente imaginó que el Danubio era como la antistrofa del Nilo, su correspondencia a la inversa. Vio en el campo de batalla las calaveras de los persas derrotad...

  Giuseppe Arcimboldo created a number of portraits of people by painting an assemblage of objects such as fruits and vegetables, flowers, or in this case, books; the objects typically had some connection to the person's life or depiction. Benno Geiger called it a "triumph of abstract art in the 16th century". In 1957, art historian Sven Alfons was the first to conclude that this was specifically a portrait of Lazius. The work has been interpreted as both a celebration and a satirical mocking of librarians and scholarship. K. C. Elhard suggests an opposing view that it may be specifically a parody of "materialistic book collectors more interested in acquiring books than in reading them." Elhard notes that various references to the librarian's trade are missing from the image, such as any kind of classification marks. He also argues that the painting focuses on the materialistic qualities of the books and not the subject matter, pointing to col...

Secret Knowledge David Hockney's Secret Knowledge is a documentary program on BBC in which the British artist examines and in some cases recreates famous art works from the Renaissance period (after 1430).  He starts with an examination of the Arnolfini Wedding, pointing out tiny details, not to try to understand their symbolism, but rather to try to understand the technique for creating such realistic depictions.  Notably, he looks at the curved branching chandelier above the couple.  It is so intricate with so many branching metal leaves, that he says it would not be possible to paint or even sketch this object and get it right, however with the use of 3D modeling techniques, he says that you can map the object just from the painting and get a perfect 3D likeness of the object.  After looking at other curious phenomenon and wondering aloud 'why did painting just get so much better after about 1420?' he presents a curious hypothesis.  One that we all must know,...

My mind is haunted by objects, images, impressions; The labyrinth, the clepsydra, the hourglass, the chessboard.   A secret longing, an unstated desire; A game of nights and days played on a checkerboard pieces, black and white, arrayed in line for battle, a game of kings or gods, played on a table...   A need that remains unfulfilled, something stolen,  but from long ago.  Unremembered,  but still a vague awareness that something is missing...   There are some the things that appear to me,  objects that populate my notion of eternity, and space.   The chessboard peopled with abstract kings and knights wars fought on a checkerboard of nights and days;   A white sepulchral obelisk, rising in tiers like the ziggurat at Ur or the Tower of Babel, pointing skyward toward the black heavens, bedecked with stars, on a reticulated plain of onyx and ivory.   The music of the spheres, the Antikythera mechanism, an orrery.  A clock in the tower...

 Avelino Arredondo was written in 1975 and included in the Book of Sand collection.  It was written 25 years after The Wait, which appeared in El Aleph (1949). The Wait tells of a criminal on the run, who is hiding out in a northwest part of the city. The setting of the story is mostly a patio, a bedroom, a house, a street, that all become part of the prison holding a condemned man awaiting execution. It is a pensive meditation on time, death and the excruciating wait for the resolution. It ends in the anticlimactic death of the villain in his bedroom at dawn. Avelino Arredondo tells a very similarly constructed story, in that is features many of the same settings and could just as easily be titled The Wait as well.  The name of the protagonist in this story is the eponymous title, but just who that is, we do not know, nor do we know why he is important enough to have this story told. As his wait progresses, we are led to wonder what he is waiting for, and we join in the ...

 Insomnia again, but rather than view it as a curse, I tried to view it as a gift.  I lay there awake for a while but then turned the light on and started to read.  I read several chapters of Borges and Me by Jay Parini. (I will have more to say about this later, or perhaps not). In the course of which, I had a few ideas of a scattered nature. 1) Why do we view insomnia as a drawback?  Usually because we are on a fixed schedule, and failing to get enough sleep, means that we will be flagging in our forced labors tomorrow.  However, that is no longer the case.  If I am tired in the mid-afternoon, I can simply move to the couch for a brief nap.  I am no longer trapped at work, in an inhospitable gray room, with an uncomfortable chair and no way to lay down of close my eyes for even a minute.  Insomnia is now just a way of reallocating our productivity to different hours.  If my body does not wish to sleep in the nighttime between 3 and 5 am, t...

There are many different Borges, as I am sure he would agree. There is the old Borges who writes moody poems about being old and blind. A young Borges who writes fervent poetry about Buenos Aires. There is a Borges who writes poems about Danish swords, Persian moons, Cervantes and Ariosto. There is the Borges who writes gaucho stories and milongas, and the one who writes weird tales, and the one who plays with lost books. There is the Borges who writes only book reviews and prologues. The one who writes about imaginary beasts, folktales and the Thousand and One Nights. But also the Borges who writes learned articles about infinity, paradox and eternity. The one who is enamored of Berkeley and Schopenhauer.  The one who quotes Dante and Virgil. Or the one who loves Stevenson and Chesterton. Then there is the Borges who wrote detective fiction under the name Bustos H. Domecq. The one who was friends with Bioy Casares and Silvia Ocampo. And the one who lectured on Anglo-Saxon poe...

Found this piece in the usual place and proceeded to translate and examine it.  It was not in any of my previous translated editions, although it has a familiar feel, touching as it does upon so many of the favored topics and references; Illiad and Odyssey, myths of Ragnarök , Anglo-Saxon poetry, Sir Gawain, Jason and the Golden Fleece, the Simurgh, Captain Ahab and Kafka, Odin and Christ.  In so doing I followed (forged?) the links to Rosetti's Troy Town and Yeats' Leda and the Swan.  I found out about the Game of the Gods (tafl) recounted in the Voluspa (which also has a long roll call of familiar dwarfs, including Gandalf), and the castrated Phrygian fertility god, Attis.  I veered then back into Beckford's Vathek, and found out about the Sultan Moulay Ismail ibn Sharif of Morocco , one of the true inspirations for the cruel Caliph Vathek.  In the same edition, Beckford wrote about his dream and described some of his travels in letters (hilarious!).  I ...