Tag: classics

Anne Carson, Eros the Bittersweet

All at once a self never known before, which now strikes you as the true one, is coming into focus. A gust of godlikeness may pass through you and for an instant a great many things look knowable, possible, and present. Then the edge asserts itself. You are not god. You are not that enlarged self. Indeed, you are not even a whole self, as you now see. Your new knowledge of possibilities is also a knowledge of what is lacking in the actual.

Now it is because you approached the All and did not remain in a part of it, and you did not even say of yourself `I am just so much,’ but by rejecting the `so much’ you have become all. You will increase yourself then by rejecting all else, and the All will be present to you in your rejection.

Plotinus, The Enneads, 6.5.12.