‘One can only say that those who experience it [the aesthetic emotion] feel it to have a peculiar quality of “reality” which makes it a matter of infinite importance in their lives. Any attempt I might make to explain this would probably land me in the depths of mysticism. On the edge of that gulf I stop’.
“For only thinking which has the ability to tolerate uncertainty is powerful, that is, non-violent.”
–Gillian Rose
He whose soul remains ever turned toward God though the nail pierces it finds himself nailed to the very center of the universe,
Extended, the lines of relationships intersect in the eternal You.
“Always think of one you love as though he were dead.”
—Rhees, Rush, et al. Discussions of Simone Weil. State University of New York Press, 1999. SUNY Series, Simone Weil Studies.
Blanchot, from “Literature and The Right to Death” (full text here)
Anne Carson, from “Variations on the Right to Remain Silent” by Anne Carson, A Public Space, Issue 7 / 2008 (full text here)
Susan Sontag from “The Aesthetics of Silence”
Rembrandt, Self Portrait with Beret and Turned-Up Collar, 1659
Francis Bacon, Self Portrait, 1973.
Anne Carson, from Nox
Louise Gluck from Proofs & Theories
Anne Carson, from “Variations on the Right to Remain Silent” by Anne Carson, A Public Space, Issue 7 / 2008 (full text here)
“Bitterrness must be the taste of enmity. That would be hate. “To love one’s friends and hate one’s enemies” is a standard archaic prescription for moral response. Love and hate construct between them the machinery of human contact. Does it make sense to locate both poles of this affect within the single emotional event of eros? Presumably, yes, if friend and enemy converge in the being who is its occasion. The convergence creates a paradox, but one that is almost a cliché for the modern literary imagination. “And hate begins where love leaves off…” whispers Anna Karenina, as she heads for Moscow Station and an end to the dilemma of desire.”
simone weil
The anorexic prefigures this culture in rather a poetic fashion by trying to keep it at bay. He refuses lack. He says: I lack nothing, therefore I shall not eat. With the overweight person, it is the opposite: he refuses fullness, repletion. He says: I lack everything, so I will eat anything at all. The anorexic staves off lack by emptiness, the overweight person staves off fullness by excess. Both are homeopathic final solutions, solutions by extermination.
We must prefer real hell to an imaginary paradise.
The beautiful is a carnal attraction which keeps us at a distance and implies a renunciation. This includes the renunciation of that which is most deep-seated, the imagination. We want to eat all the other objects of desire. The beautiful is that which we desire without wishing to eat it. We desire that it should be.
Little Bristling Soul 