Fallen;

Prose, poetry, art. 27. I post intermittently.

[elizabethanism]

Literature takes a habit of mind that has disappeared. It requires silence, some form of isolation, and sustained concentration in the presence of an enigmatic thing.

~ Philip Roth

[metamorphesque]

Letters to Milena, Franz Kafka (translated by Tania and James Stern)

[derangedrhythms]

And he sets the sea of my life steady, flooding it with the deep rich color of his mind and his love and constant amaze at his perfect being: as if I had conjured, at last, a god from the slack tides, coming up with his spear shining, and the cockleshells and rare fish trailing in his wake, and he trailing the world: for my earth goddess, he the sun, the sea, the black complement power: yang to yin.

Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath ⁠— 17th July 1957

[undinesea]

Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, “A Defence of Poetry,” from Toward the Open Field: Poets on the Art of Poetry 1800-1950

[terrorignitis]

Others may forget you, but not I. / I am haunted / by your beautiful ghost.

Empress Yamato Hime no Ōkimi (倭姫王)

[petaltexturedskies]

The world is violent and mercurial — it will have its way with you. We are saved only by love — love for each other and the love that we pour into the art we feel compelled to share: being a parent; being a writer; being a painter; being a friend. We live in a perpetually burning building, and what we must save from it, all the time, is love.

Tennessee Williams

[funeral]

Many places have a "forest that shouldn't be entered." Even people who are used to working in the mountains feel there is something there. They are suddenly overcome with fear and it becomes the custom to avoid certain places. These places exist. I don't know what is there, but I think they are real . . . The world is more than we can fathom with our five senses. The world doesn't exist just for humans. So I think it is all right to have such things. This is why I think it's a mistake to think about nature from the idea of efficiency, that forests should be preserved because they are essential for human beings . . . I am concerned, because for me the deep forest is connected in some way to the darkness deep in my heart. I feel that if it is erased, then the darkness inside my heart would also disappear, and my existence would grow shallow.

Hayao Miyazaki, “Totoro Was Not Made as a Nostalgia Piece” in Starting Point: 1979-1996

[metamorphesque]

Your Unripe Love, Paruyr Sevak (translated by Tathev Simonyan)

[wovi]

*

plath

[wovi]

[derangedrhythms]

I am the angel who dwells in the point where lines fork. Whoever retraces the way of divided things encounters me, whoever descends to the bottom of contradictions runs into me, whoever mingles again what was separated feels my membraned wing brush his cheek!

Italo Calvino, The Castle of Crossed Destinies; from 'The Waverer's Tale', tr. William Weaver

[simplytolkien]

“‘I will be a healer, and love all things that grow and are not barren.’”

— ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

[threeamserif]

instagram | photos are my own, reblogs fine, do not repost/reuse

[derangedrhythms]

My husband. My husband, who, with so much love, filled my bedroom with lilies until it looked like an embalming parlour.

Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories; from ‘The Bloody Chamber’

[ghostlypetal]

ghostlypetal

[nonalimmen]

© Nona Limmen Facebook / Instagram

[mournfulroses]

Charles Baudelaire, from a letter to Caroline Aupick featured in The Selected Letters of Charles Baudelaire