#stephen mitchell

[thecalminside]

The path into the light seems dark,

the path forward seems to go back,

the direct path seems long,

true power seems weak,

true purity seems tarnished,

true steadfastness seems changeable,

true clarity seems obscure,

the greatest art seems unsophisticated,

the greatest love seems indifferent,

the greatest wisdom seems childish.

-Lao Tzu

[saintsebastiensbf]

Stephen Mitchell, Gilgamesh

[studiotriggerfan397]

"Men are born soft and supple; dead, they are stiff and hard. Plants are born tender and pliant; dead, they are brittle and dry. Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible is a disciple of death. Whoever is soft and yielding is a disciple of life. The hard and stiff will be broken. The soft and supple will prevail." - Tao Te Ching (Chapter 76, translation by Stephen Mitchell)

[justineportraits]

Stephen Mitchell Torn (mixed media)

[limeshade]

Wrapt in herself she wandered. And her deadness was filling her like fullness. Full as a fruit with sweetness and with darkness was she with her great death, which was so new that for the time she could take nothing in.

She had attained a new virginity and was intangible; her sex had closed like a young flower at the approach of evening, and her pale hands had grown so disaccustomed to being a wife, that even the slim god’s endlessly gentle contact as he led her disturbed her like a too great intimacy.

Even now she was no longer that blonde woman who’d sometimes echoed in the poet’s poems, no longer the broad couch’s scent and island, nor yonder man’s possession any longer.

She was already loosened like long hair, and given far and wide like fallen rain, and dealt out like a manifold supply.

She was already root.

And when abruptly, the god had halted her and, with an anguished outcry, outspoke the words: He has turned round!— she took in nothing, and said softly: Who?

—Rainer Maria Rilke, “Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes.” (1904, excerpt) tr. Stephen Mitchell

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Rilke.

(Translation by Stephen Mitchell)

[riding-with-the-wild-hunt]

Homosexuality and the doubled self

Christopher Marlowe, Edward II (1594) // Sîn-lēqi-unninni, The Epic of Gilgamesh (trans. by Stephen Mitchell, 2004) // Herman Melville, Moby-dick; or, The Whale (1851)

[seekingstars]

Archaic Torso of Apollo - Rainer Marie Rilke, tr. Stephen Mitchell