the beauty, the terror, the sacrifice

entp | ravenclaw | she/they | messed-up bisexual

[drk-academia]

I get why people say dark academia is not healthy but let’s talk about the romanticism. I read again and again poems of things so trivial one might just take them for granted or overlook them, yet the poets give them life and importance and beauty. This way of falling in love with an open window, the light tap of the rain, the endless piles of books, the sunshine peeking through the curtains. This is what dark academia is really about. Making poetry out of overlooked events

[purritopancakegaynerd]

please recommend some poetry!!

[drk-academia]

Annabel Lee by E. A. Poe

Mirror by Sylvia Plath

She Walks in Beauty by Lord Byron

At a Window by Carl Sandburg

This is What you Shall Do by Walt Whitman (this is actually his preface for Leaves of Grass)

This is a masterpost for wlw poems

These are my two favourite war poems:

The Soldier by Rupert Brooke

Suicide in the Trenches by S. Sassoon

[drk-academia]

@edgarallangirl idk why they don’t appear in the notes but these are a few. They don’t all romanticize things but they’re all favourite poems of mine

[theosvangogh-deactivated2021041]

The Truth the Dead Know, You, Doctor Martin and Her Kind by Anne Sexton

All of Sylvia Plath’s poetry, especially from her posthumous collection; Ariel. Some of my favorites are:

The Disquieting Muses, Mad Girl’s Love Song, Nocturne, The Moon and the Yew Tree, Tulips, Lady Lazarus, Daddy and Fever 103°

The Final Toast, The Guest, Imagination With Submission, and The Evening Light is Broad and Yellow, ‘Drink my soul, as if with a straw’,  ‘Ah! You thought I’m the kind too,’,  and ‘Always so many pleas from a lover!’ by Anna Akhmatova

Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats  by Percy Shelley

Ode on a Grecian Urn, Endymion, Hyperion (this link just leads to an excerpt) and La Belle Dame sans Merci: A Ballad by John Keats

There Is Pleasure In The Pathless Woods (excerpt from Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage) by Lord Byron

The Great Improvisation, The Romantic and Within Their Silent, Perfect Glass by Adam Mickiewicz

The Waste Land and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot

I Will Wade Out, Spring is like perhaps a hand and somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond by e.e. cummings

Anyway, these are just a handful of my favorites, if anyone at all is interested, I’d be happy to make a masterpost.

[maneth985]

Flowers Of Evil by Charles Baudelaire

[desology]

[renaissance-art]

Details of Angel’s Wings

[boykeats]

Rural Boys Watch The Apocalypse (rough draft) by Keaton St. James

[artfilmfan]

Rooney Mara as Mary Magdalene smoking a cigarette beneath crucified Jesus

[danssesyeux]

Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923) as Hamlet (1899-1900)

[dourface]

shutting in. 

heather havrilesky // “last one up”, paul oxborough // from a letter to theo van gogh, vincent van gogh // on the beach at night alone (2017), dir. sang-soo hong // shauna niequist

[stylecouncil]

conversation between F. Scott Fitzgerald and Sheilah Graham, Beloved Infidel by Sheilah Graham // “Smoke Signals” by Phoebe Bridgers // Warsan Shire, “Backwards” // Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, quoted in Velvet Goldmine (1998) // “Tim I Wish You Were Born a Girl” by Of Montreal // Andrew Garfield and Jesse Eisenberg, interview // E. M. Forster, Maurice

[apricitystudies]

 what i read in july 2021:

(previous editions) bold = favourite

class & race

why do i write in my coloniser’s language? (india)

srebrenica genocide survivor: ‘it will happen to us again’ (bosnia and herzogovina)

‘poverty divides us’: gap between rich and poor poses threat to china

the whitewashing of rome

high time to talk about racism, but singapore society ill-equipped after decades of treating it as taboo

gender & sexuality

the disrespect of female mps has a long history, and it won’t end until we understand it (australia)

new anti-trans legislation has ties to a dark past (usa)

the bubblegum misogyny of 2000s pop culture

against carceral feminism: in the fight for gender justice, criminal law should be a last resort

kyrgyzstan: migrant women workers and a ‘lost generation’ of children

politics, environment, & covid

grappling with isolation, migrant workers in dorms long for a return to the wider community (singapore)

covid and a coup: the double crisis pushing myanmar to the brink

the revolt against liberalism: what’s driving poland and hungary’s nativist turn?

the autocrat’s legacy (hungary)

struggling for work and food, indonesia’s poorest suffer as covid crisis deepens

what you need to know about fast fashion brands’ ‘eco’ collections

history

the secret deportations: how britain betrayed the chinese men who served the country in the war

tokyo keeps defending world war ii atrocities (japan)

new study reveals history of aboriginal trade with foreign visitors before british settlement (australia)

how the state department describes the brutal us occupation of haiti versus what actually happened

how a soviet miner from the 1930s helped create today’s intense corporate workplace culture (ussr)

rotting among the tsetse (kenya/uk)

culture, media, & other

whitney houston, american girl

sylvia plath: the literary icon destined to remain an enigma

eating disorders: not everyone is young, thin, white or a woman

uncovered signs in shanghai — a modernology collection (china)

pop music sold us on consumerism, one single at a time

[c0llar-bones]

The Setting of the Sun - François Boucher -1752

[somecunttookmyurl]

there is a tendency with history, i think, because we're so far removed from it, to kind of forget that all of the people were people

a child 10,000 years ago left a handprint on a wall. they were fingerpainting. a viking climbs up a rock just to carve the words "this is very high" 10ft off the ground. somebody centuries... milennia... ago burned their dinner so thoroughly that they buried the ruined pot in the backyard rather than attempt to clean it. shakespeare got drunk and wrote dick jokes. tutankhamun was a little boy who liked ducks more than anything. a roman carves his name into a monument in another country saying "i was here". a prisoner, centuries ago, in the tower of london scratches lines into the wall as a tally marking the days. a medieval monk scrawls in the margins bemoaning the boredom of his work.

every human being across history has said "i was here. i lived. i loved. i made something. i laughed. i cried. please do not forget me"

[hundredpages]

this. a thousand times this.

[influencedgenetics]

how to fall in love with life again

go cloud-gazing, lay down in the grass on a sunny day, or empty roads on a rainy day, stare up at the sky and let your mind wander.

read a book so complex that you don't understand anything, fill your arms with scrawled definitions.

writing poems and notes of kindness, hiding them for other people to find and pass along!

read passages of love in another language, untranslated and realise that love can surpass even the greatest of barriers.

find your favourite flower! hunt for it, research it, write an essay on why you love it and how much it means to you!

buy another copy of your favourite book, fill the pages with annotations and give it to a second hand shop for somebody else to experience it the way that you do.

fill a journal with moments of your life, even if you don't think they're very interesting.

listen to music whilst looking at the moon and stars, realising how beautiful life is.

visit an art gallery or a museum near you. become familiar with it, visit it until you know it inside out. make it your special place.

learn the little things about people, including yourself. find their favourite colour and why, find their music taste, their taste in books until you know them perfectly.

the small things! taking sips of warm beverages becomes the most comforting thing, closing your eyes for a moment on a bus and focusing on the lull of movement.

bake/cook your favourite treat. experiment and find the way that makes it taste simply ethereal.

[apocalyptic-cake-deactivated202]

Listen up!

You see a post like this? Where OP might hurt/kill themselves? You hit that button that I circled

Hit that.

Click Suicide or Self-harm Concern

Yes.

Fill in the rest of it, and hit submit. The "content you reported" will fill itself in

Tumblr will follow up and help them.

Warning: this is only for mobile. If anyone knows how to do this for desktop, please add it!

This could SAVE SOMEONE'S LIFE.

YOU HAVE NO EXCUSE NOT TO REBLOG THIS.

I DON'T GIVE A FUCK IF IT DOESN'T GO WITH YOUR BLOG'S THEME.

And yes, REBLOG. Liking does no shit at all. This isn't ig.

You reblog, people see it. You don't, people don't see it. This shit's that simple.

This could save someone's life. It's not a joke.

[somerabbitholes]

Essays

Here’s a (non-exhaustive) list of essays I like/find interesting/are food for thought; I’ve tried to sort them as much as possible. The starred (*) ones are those I especially love

also quick note: some of these links, especially the ones that are from books/anthologies redirect you to libgen or scihub, and if that doesn’t work for you, do message me; I’d be happy to send them across!

Literature + Writing

Godot Comes to Sarajevo - Susan Sontag

The Strangeness of Grief - V. S. Naipaul*

Memories of V. S. Naipaul - Paul Theroux*

A Rainy Day with Ruskin Bond - Mayank Austen Soofi

How Albert Camus Faced History - Adam Gopnik

Listen, Bro - Jo Livingstone

Rachel Cusk Gut-Renovates the Novel - Judith Thurman

Lost in Translation: What the First Line of “The Stranger” Should Be - Ryan Bloom

The Duke in His Domain - Truman Capote*

The Cult of Donna Tartt: Themes and Strategies in The Secret History - Ana Rita Catalão Guedes

Never Do That to a Book - Anne Fadiman*

Affecting Anger: Ideologies of Community Mobilisation in Early Hindi Novel - Rohan Chauhan*

Why I Write - George Orwell*

Rimbaud and Patti Smith: Style as Social Deviance - Carrie Jaurès Noland*

Art + Photography (+ Aesthetics)

Looking at War - Susan Sontag*

Love, sex, art, and death - Nan Goldin, David Wojnarowicz

Lyons, Szarkowski, and the Perception of Photography - Anne Wilkes Tucker

The Feminist Critique of Art History - Thalia Gouma-Peterson, Patricia Mathews

In Plato’s Cave - Susan Sontag*

On reproduction of art (Chapter 1, Ways of Seeing) - John Berger*

On nudity and women in art (Chapter 3, Ways of Seeing) - John Berger*

Kalighat Paintings  - Sharmishtha Chaudhuri

Daydreams and Fragments: On How We Retrieve Images From the Past -  Maël Renouard

Arthur Rimbaud: the Aesthetics of Intoxication - Enid Rhodes Peschel

Cities

Tragic Fable of Mumbai Mills - Gyan Prakash

Whose Bandra is it? - Dustin Silgardo*

Timur’s Registan: noblest public square in the world? - Srinath Perur

The first Starbucks coffee shop, Seattle - Colin Marshall*

Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, Mumbai’s iconic railway station - Srinath Perur

From London to Mumbai and Back Again: Gentrification and Public Policy in Comparative Perspective -  Andrew Harris

The Limits of “White Town” in Colonial Calcutta - Swati Chattopadhyay

The Metropolis and Mental Life - Georg Simmel

Colonial Policy and the Culture of Immigration: Citing the Social History of Varanasi - Vinod Kumar, Shiv Narayan

A Caribbean Creole Capital: Kingston, Jamaica - Coln G. Clarke (from Colonial Cities by Robert Ross, Gerard J. Telkamp

The Colonial City and the Post-Colonial World - G. A. de Bruijne

The Nowhere City - Amos Elon*

The Vertical Flâneur: Narratorial Tradecraft in the Colonial Metropolis - Paul K. Saint-Amour

Philosophy

The trolley problem problem - James Wilson

A Brief History of Death - Nir Baram

Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical - John Rawls*

Should Marxists be Interested in Exploitation? - John E. Roemer

The Discomfort You’re Feeling is Grief - Scott Berinato*

The Pandemic and the Crisis of Faith - Makarand Paranjape

If God Is Dead, Your Time is Everything - James Wood

Giving Up on God - Ronald Inglehart

The Limits of Consensual Decision - Douglas Rae*

The Science of “Muddling Through” - Charles Lindblom*

History

The Gruesome History of Eating Corpses as Medicine - Maria Dolan

The History of Loneliness - Jill Lepore*

From Tuskegee to Togo: the Problem of Freedom in the Empire of Cotton - Sven Beckert*

Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism - E. P. Thompson*

All By Myself - Martha Bailey*

The Geographical Pivot of History - H. J. Mackinder

The sea/ocean

Rim of Life - Manu Pillai

Exploring the Indian Ocean as a rich archive of history – above and below the water line - Isabel Hofmeyr, Charne Lavery

‘Piracy’, connectivity and seaborne power in the Middle Ages - Nikolas Jaspert (from The Sea in History)*

The Vikings and their age - Nils Blomkvist (from The Sea in History)*

Mercantile Networks, Port Cities, and “Pirate” States - Roxani Eleni Margariti

Phantom Peril in the Arctic - Robert David English, Morgan Grant Gardner*

Assorted ones on India

A departure from history: Kashmiri Pandits, 1990-2001 - Alexander Evans *

Writing Post-Orientalist Histories of the Third World - Gyan Prakash

Empire: How Colonial India Made Modern Britain - Aditya Mukherjee

Feminism and Nationalism in India, 1917-1947 - Aparna Basu

The Epic Riddle of Dating Ramayana, Mahabharata - Sunaina Kumar*

Caste and Politics: Identity Over System - Dipankar Gupta

Our worldview is Delhi based*

Sports (you’ll have to excuse the fact that it’s only cricket but what can i say, i’m indian)

‘Massa Day Done:’ Cricket as a Catalyst for West Indian Independence: 1950-1962 - John Newman*

Playing for power? rugby, Afrikaner nationalism and masculinity in South Africa, c.1900–70 - Albert Grundlingh

When Cricket Was a Symbol, Not Just a Sport - Baz Dreisinger

Cricket, caste, community, colonialism: the politics of a great game - Ramachandra Guha*

Cricket and Politics in Colonial India - Ramchandra Guha

MS Dhoni: A quiet radical who did it his way*

Music

Brega: Music and Conflict in Urban Brazil - Samuel M. Araújo

Color, Music and Conflict: A Study of Aggression in Trinidad with Reference to the Role of Traditional Music - J. D. Elder

The 1975 - ‘Notes On a Conditional Form’ review - Dan Stubbs*

Life Without Live - Rob Sheffield*

How Britney Spears Changed Pop - Rob Sheffield

Concert for Bangladesh

From “Help!” to “Helping out a Friend”: Imagining South Asia through the Beatles and the Concert for Bangladesh - Samantha Christiansen 

Gender

Clothing Behaviour as Non-verbal Resistance - Diana Crane

The Normalisation of Queer Theory - David M. Halperin

Menstruation and the Holocaust - Jo-Ann Owusu*

Women’s Suffrage the Democratic Peace - Allan Dafoe

Pink and Blue: Coloring Inside the Lines of Gender - Catherine Zuckerman*

Women’s health concerns are dismissed more, studied less - Zoanne Clack

Food

How Food-Obsessed Millennials Shape the Future of Food - Rachel A. Becker (as a non-food obsessed somewhat-millennial, this was interesting)

Colonialism’s effect on how and what we eat - Coral Lee

Tracing Europe’s influence on India’s culinary heritage - Ruth Dsouza Prabhu

Chicken Kiev: the world’s most contested ready-meal*

From Russia with mayo: the story of a Soviet super-salad*

The Politics of Pancakes - Taylor Aucoin*

How Doughnuts Fuelled the American Dream*

Pav from the Nau

A Short History of the Vada Pav - Saira Menezes

Fantasy (mostly just harry potter and lord of the rings)

Purebloods and Mudbloods: Race, Species, and Power (from The Politics of Harry Potter)

Azkaban: Discipline, Punishment, and Human Rights (from The Politics of Harry Potter)*

Good and Evil in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lengendarium - Jyrki Korpua

The Fairy Story: J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis - Colin Duriez (from Tree of Tales)*

Tolkien’s Augustinian Understanding of Good and Evil: Why The Lord of the Rings Is Not Manichean - Ralph Wood (from Tree of Tales)*

Travel

The Hidden Cost of Wildlife Tourism

Chronicles of a Writer’s 1950s Road Trip Across France - Kathleen Phelan

On the Early Women Pioneers of Trail Hiking - Gwenyth Loose

On the Mythologies of the Himalaya Mountains - Ed Douglas*

More random assorted ones

The cosmos from the wheelchair (The Economist obituaries)*

In El Salvador - Joan Didion

Scientists are unravelling the mystery of pain - Yudhijit Banerjee

Notes on Nationalism - George Orwell

Politics and the English Language - George Orwell*

What Do the Humanities Do in a Crisis? - Agnes Callard*

The Politics of Joker - Kyle Smith

Sushant Singh Rajput: The outsider - Uday Bhatia*

Credibility and Mystery - John Berger

happy reading :)

[divinecynicism]

“Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.” - Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

[digivolvin]

person of color: hey wouldn’t it be cool if angels were represented as brown or black more often–

edgy whites who went to a week of bible study 15 yrs ago and regurgitate all their Superior Knowledge from textually inaccurate all-caps tumblr posts written by supernatural fans: um…… ACTUALLY :) angels don’t look like HUMANS they look like ELDRITCH NIGHTMARES™ that MELT YOUR BRAIN OUT so stop giving them skin colors :) try a few animal heads instead :) don’t forget the eyeballs :) 

[libby-doe-mods-denofiniquity-de]

But it’s true?? That’s why they’re always saying “do not be afraid”. Some of them have three faces on one head?? It’s in both Old Testament and Revelations.

[digivolvin]

i mean, this is my favorite of all subjects so why not chat about it a little. sorry in advance for the essay you didn’t ask for, but i’m getting a lot of smartasses on this post telling me the Edgy Whites aren’t wrong. so let’s go:

1) even if it was true (which it’s not, i will get to that) this wouldn’t be an adequate reason for criticizing or derailing poc who are trying to subvert the association of divinity/purity & whiteness. you know the idea of the aryan race came from the myth of divine whiteness? you know how all fantasy elves are pale slender & white, thanks to j.r.r. tolkein’s prevailing white/christian influence? so if you see poc trying to reframe this, let them!

2) it isn’t true. don’t get me wrong, you can envision, interpret, and portray angels however you want, that’s part of the fun of art and writing and fantasy. i know that a certain post influenced how a lot of people on tumblr imagine angels (again, because people like subverting popularized imagery) but if we’re talking about biblical accuracy, then let’s be biblically accurate. 

more specifically, if someone is going to condescend to poc (or anyone!) about the “factual” appearances of angels in the bible, then they damn better get it right. 

to start with– angels as winged messengers were popularized after the roman catholic church began co-opting greco-roman imagery, and modeled much of their depictions of angels after hermes and eros. so yeah, the image of pale white angels is tiresome and not technically accurate to the bible.

that said, the majority of angels in the bible very likely appeared as wingless humans with occasional supernatural attributes. 

biblical angels are understood by theologists & angelologists to exist in a celestial hierarchy, de coelesti hierarchia, which accounts for nine distinct types. they’re organized in tiers, so to speak. within the first sphere are seraphim, cherubim, and ophanim. this first choir resides within the inner sanctum of heaven; they are the lovecraftian ones tumblr is so big on. 

the seraphim (isaiah 6:1-8 and revelations 4:8, the burning ones, sometimes interpreted as a mass of serpents, multiple eyes, etc.) the cherubim (isaiah 1:5-11 and ezekiel 1:5-13, multiple wings, multiple faces) and ophanim (ezekial 1:15-21′s iconic Wheels™) are all witnessed by prophets. not in visitations, but in visions of heaven. these are THE scary angels, the angels of the guillermo del toro persuasion. 

but, they exist outside of sight from humans, which is why it was exclusively prophets who could describe them. they do not come down to earth to chat with random civilians. they’re too busy with the tasks of the omniscient, and their proximity to god is what makes them so powerful and so otherworldly. (and no, you won’t drop dead just looking at them: only god is said to be that powerful.) 

the second choir– the dominions, virtues, and powers– are typically interpreted to remain unseen and work on the spiritual plane, tasked with more menial things than the first choir, keeping the nonphysical realm in working order. 

the third choir are the ones who move between heaven and earth to serve humans: the principalities, archangels and angels. these are the ones most regularly described in the bible as messengers, guides, and guardians who take on the form of man in order to serve and aide them. almost every mention of angelic messengers or apparitions in the bible is an angel of the third choir. 

(side note: the only angels not accounted for in the celestial hierarchy are the nephilim: the fallen ones who had children by humans, referenced in genesis 6:1–4 and often considered to be demons.)

so if the angels appearing to humans aren’t abominations, why do they scare people so badly? 

the phrase “do not be afraid/be not afraid” is said in variations over 100 times in the bible, not exclusively by angels. most often it’s spoken as an assurance of god’s love and protection. yes, a handful of times it’s said by angels. (matthew 1:20, matthew 28:5, luke 1:13, luke 1:30, luke 2:10, to name some prominent instances.) almost every single one of these, the angel in question is doing just that– assuring vulnerable or frightened people that god is protecting them. 

most notable of these angels is gabriel, the archangel and messenger who appears to mary to tell her she will conceive jesus. let’s look at the context at play: mary was a young unwed woman who would not have been accustomed to spending time alone with young man outside her family. when gabriel appears to her, a strange man in her home, she has every reason to be frightened. gabriel goes on to tell her that she’s going to be the mother of god, and this is when he reassures her not to be afraid, because it will be done through god’s workings. gabriel ≠ an eldritch horroterror. 

the second instance is that of the messenger angel who tells the women of jerusalem not to be afraid, but jesus has been raised from the dead. this angel is described as unearthly, and tbqh he’s dope as hell: “his appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow.” (matthew 28:5) there’s reason to believe this angel is of the same countenance as the one described in a vision in the book of daniel: “then i lifted up mine eyes, and looked, and beheld a certain man clothed in linen (…) his body also was like the beryl, and his face as the appearance of lightning, and his eyes as lamps of fire, and his arms and his feet like in colour to polished brass, and the voice of his words like the voice of a multitude.” (daniel 10:5-7) my fave description of an angel in the bible by far, but… still not an eldritch horrorterror. 

in a third instance (luke 2:10), the angelic heralds who inform the sleeping shepherds of jesus’ birth do startle the men, and they do tell them not to fear. but it’s said its the glory of god emanating from them that scares the shepherds, not a monstrous appearance. 

the cosmic fear attributed to visits from the divine is called numinous dread, the terror that fills us when we’re approached by something we have no capacity to understand. numinous dread is akin to what makes people quiver at the thought of ghosts, or the size of distant planets, or the expanse of the universe– something incalculable and unknowable to the point of being frightening. this to me is by far the coolest aspect of angels. the fact that the very scope of their existence can tug and distort the fabric of our dimension, to the point that humans are bowled over by the merest whiff of their presence? it’s why angels who appear human but still frighten people is such an underrated concept.

you know the phrase “every angel is terrifying”? the author, rainer maria rilke, wrote endlessly on the nature of the human and divine, especially in his work the duino elegies. in the full quote from the first elegy, he mused on the vastness of angels in comparison to mortals:

“For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we are still just able to endure, and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying.”

this, to me, is the most succinct and lovely illustration of angels, which doesn’t define them either as monsters or humans– he’s fixed on the feeling of awe that’s inherent to the divine, however it manifests. 

none of this invalidates creative interpretations of biblical angels! it just means you should not be talking down to anyone about their level of accuracy, especially in regards to race.

in summary: YES, some angels are scary looking in the bible. NO, not every single one looks like edgy white tumblr wants to believe. YES, everybody is allowed to have fun with their interpretations and portrayals, go wild. NO, it’s not even remotely acceptable to condescend to people who want to envision them as people of color because, textually, they manifest as humans in the bible, and everyone in the bible was brown and black. 

[jukers-deactivated20230225]