History | Historical Women | Europe

"Grey time-worn marbles

Hold the pure Muses;

In their cool gallery,

By yellow Tiber,

They still look fair."

- Consolation by Matthew Arnold

In that great discourse with the living dead which we call reading, our role is not a passive one. […] We engage the presence, the voice of the book. We allow it entry, though not unguarded, into our inmost. A great poem, a classic novel, press in upon us; they assail and occupy the strong places of our consciousness. They exercise upon our imagination and desires, upon our ambitions and most cover dreams, a strange, bruising mastery. Men who burn books know what they are doing. The artist is the uncontrollable force; no western eye, since Van Gogh, looks on a cypress without observing in it the start of a flame. So, and in supreme measure, it is with literature. A man who has read Book XXIV of the Iliad - the night meeting of Priam and Achielles - or the chapter in which Alyosha Karamazov kneels to the stars, who has raid Montaigne’s chapter XX (Que philosopher c'est apprendre à mourir) and Hamlet’s use of it - and who is not altered, whose apprehension of his own life is unchanged, who does not, in some subtle yet radical manner, look on the room in which he moves, on those that knock at the door, differently - has read only with the blindness of physical sight. […] To read well is to take great risks. It is to make vulernable our identity, our self possession. In the early stages of epilepsy there occurs a characteristic dream (Dostoyevsky tells of it). One is somehow lifted free of one’s own body; looking backbone sees oneself and feels a sudden, maddening fear; another presence is entering one’s own person, and there is no avenue of return. Feeling this fear, the mind gropes to a sharp awakening. So it should be when we take in hand a major work of literature or philosophy, of imagination or doctrine. It may come to possess us so completely that we go, for a spell, in fear of ourselves and in imperfect recognition. He who has read Kafka’s Metamorphosis and can look into his mirror unflinching may technically be able to read print, but is illiterate in the only sense that matters.

George Steiner, “Humane Literacy” from Language and Silence (via mesogeios)

Just Garland

by salvadormaliii

Shoutout to all the cavemen who gave their lives to find out which plants are poisonous and which you can eat

“so maybe this bridge was always meant to burn / maybe we were handing the matches back and forth back and forth / waiting for someone to strike out / waiting for someone to say / okay this is enough / I need to see some light / I need to see some flames / let’s set this ablaze and not call the police / let’s close our eyes and run opposite ways / I think I need to get away from you for awhile / I think I need to make sure I can never come home to you again.”

— where did the fire go / it never kept us warm– lily rain

“There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.”

The Picture of Dorian Gray | Oscar Wilde

A sane person to an insane society must appear insane.

Kurt Vonnegut, Welcome to the Monkey House (via quotespile)

We belonged to each other, but had lived so far apart that we belonged to others now.

André Aciman, Call Me By Your Name (via terxture)