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Photo by Fabrizia Milia

The Atlantic Man (1981), dir. Marguerite Duras

Yes, I know we are merely empty forms of matter, but we are indeed sublime in having invented God and our soul. So Sublime, my friend, that I want to gaze upon matter, fully conscious that it exists, and yet launching itself madly into Dream, despite its knowledge that Dream has no existence, extolling the Soul and all the divine impressions of that kind which have collected within us from the beginning of time and proclaiming, in the face of the Void, which is truth, these glorious lies.

Stéphane Mallarmé to Henri Cazalis in April 1866 from Selected Letters of Stéphane Mallarmé

#stéphane mallarmé #quotes

ishikorokoroishi

“ Flowers and Plants ”

Photo by Ishikoro. Japan.

Love & Peace!

undinesea

But I am as real as my love and my despair.

Paul Éluard, from The Nakedness Of Truth (I Know It Well)

fleurs-du-bien

Liberté, j'écris ton nom, Paul Eluard

gacougnol

Clothilde Bertin Lalande Human Experimentation

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

#percy bysshe shelley #quotes

blueyezwhtedragon

the moon last night

autailome

“We know that the modern world is a violently disenchanted swirl shaped by the speculative flux of money that presses in on all sides. Yet, when we listen to the music that we love, the world seems reanimated, bursting with sense, utterly alive. The only proof of animism I know is music. When we listen, it is as if the world falls under the spell of a kind of natural magic. In music, the cosmos feels divinely infused.

[…]

There is a mysticism in the experience of music, a godless mysticism if you like, which operates in the realm of the senses and which resonates within us and beyond us. Sensate ecstasy. My intuition—it is nothing more than that—is that music, common, shared, everyday music, low or high or somewhere in between, is able, at its best, to describe how we feel and to allow us to feel something more.

Music is able to summon feeling, which can be a joy, but can also be a background fear, sadness or yearning, things deeper than cognition or concepts or consciousness. We might think of this as participation in what Julian [of Norwich] calls “kindly substance,” an empathy which is beyond words but perhaps their precondition. Music—and this is its miracle, which is why life without music would be a mistake, as Nietzsche insisted—can somehow hold that emotion and hold us there for that moment. And, as [T.S.] Eliot writes, we are the music for as long as the music lasts.”

Simon Critchley, Mysticism

cultofthedarksun

Adolphe Bouguereau

Ma’am, your choice of literature is exceptional. What are you reading? How do you find the books you read? Do you have any advice on starting to read again?

Thank you. That is genuinely kind of you to say.

At the moment I have been reading Albert Samain, H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), a few aphorisms from Cioran each day, Gérard de Nerval’s Les Chimères, Rémy de Gourmont, and Francis Vielé Griffin’s Cueille d’avril. I have always found myself drawn toward the Decadent and Symbolist traditions, along with hermetic, surrealist, and erotic poetry. I love literature that moves through dream, myth, mysticism, and transformation, where beauty is treated as a form of revelation.

I rarely search for books directly anymore. Instead, I follow lineages. If I fall in love with a poet/artist, I begin tracing the people who shaped them, the books they admired, the artists they corresponded with, and the movements they belonged to. Before long, one discovery opens into another, and an entire hidden literary world begins to emerge! Research has become one of my favorite parts of reading because it feels less like studying and more like excavating forgotten treasures. Every bibliography, every footnote, every passing reference has the potential to become another doorway.

If I had one piece of advice for someone hoping to read again, it would be to create rituals instead of expectations. Read one poem with your morning coffee, one aphorism before bed, or even a single page each evening. Consistency is far more important than volume. Reading should feel like returning to a familiar sanctuary rather than completing an assignment.

Most importantly, let curiosity guide you. Follow the threads left behind by the writers you already love. Their influences become your next discoveries, and those discoveries inevitably lead somewhere unexpected. I think that is one of the great pleasures of literature. You are never simply reading a book. You are entering a conversation that has been unfolding for centuries.

#I hope this is helpful!