Gustave Dorés’ Beatific Vision, From Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy.

It was as if something was perpetually tugging her downward, toward the underworld, the mess, the dirt, and the filth, as if she was unable to feel disgust when others did and was overwhelmed by fascination instead.

Ia Genburg, The Details, tr. Kira Josefsson

Amoureux de la nuit et de ses profondeurs.

(In love with the night and its depth.)

— STANISLAS DE GUAITA ⚜️ La Muse Noire, (1883)

Iron Cage Mediaeval Corset by Entity Custom Works

Margaret Atwood, from a story featured in Old Babes in the Wood publ. in 2023

Vitány Castle, Vértessomló, 1913. From the Budapest Municipal Photography Company archive.

“The witch is absolutely necessary.”

— Margaret Atwood, from “Two Solicitudes,” orginally published c. 1998 (via lostcenturies)

As you well know, you are something of an enchantress. And I am still under your spell. In earlier times you would probably have been either worshipped or hanged — or perhaps both, in that order.

Paul Brooks, quoted in ‘Anne Sexton: A Biography’ by Diane Wood Middlebrook

FUSELI, John Henry Swiss painter (b. 1741, Zürich, d. 1825, London) Romanticism The Nightmare 1790-91 Oil on canvas, 77 x 64 cm Goethe-Museum, Frankfurt

Fuseli did a total of four variations on The Nightmare, probably his best-known theme. The example in Frankfurt is the second variation. Though the motif was not inspired by any specific literary model, it would be unthinkable without a knowledge of ghost stories, especially English ones. The figure of the woman lying asleep or unconscious is extremely elongated and distorted, not because Fuseli could do no better, but in order to visualize the horrible oppressiveness of the gnome crouched on the woman’s breast, a nightmare and incarnation of unconscious terrors. In the gap between the curtains in the background appears the ghostly head of a blind horse, which anticipates the demoniac aspect given this animal especially in later French Romanticism.

Alchemical Symbols.