Antiquitopia

Only on the level of analogy have I ever experienced intellectual pleasure. For me the only manifest truth in the world is governed by the spontaneous, clairvoyant, insolent connection established under certain conditions between two things whose conjunction would not be permitted by common sense. As much as I abhor, more than any other, the word therefore , replete with vanity and sullen delectation, so do I love passionately anything that flares up suddenly out of nowhere and thus breaks the thread of discursive thinking. What comes to light at the moment is an infinitely richer network of relations whose secret, as everything suggests, was known to early mankind. It is true that flare quickly dies out, but its glimmer is enough to help measure on their dismal scale the exchange values currently available that provide not answer except to basic questions of a utilitarian nature. .... Poetic analogy has this in common with mystical analogy: it transgresses the rules of deduction ...

From the Telegraph via Agade: By Nick Squires in Rome Published: 6:30AM GMT 18 Feb 2010 Golden Bough from Roman mythology 'found in Italy' In Roman mythology, the bough was a tree branch with golden leaves that enabled the Trojan hero Aeneas to travel through the underworld safely. They discovered the remains while excavating religious sanctuary built in honour of the goddess Diana near an ancient volcanic lake in the Alban Hills, 20 miles south of Rome. They believe the enclosure protected a huge Cypress or oak tree which was sacred to the Latins, a powerful tribe which ruled the region before the rise of the Roman Empire. The tree was central to the myth of Aeneas, who was told by a spirit to pluck a branch bearing golden leaves to protect himself when he ventured into Hades to seek counsel from his dead father. In a second, more historically credible legend, the Latins believed it symbolised the power of their priest-king. Anyone who broke off a branch, even a fugitive slav...

I am in the middle of teaching Dante's Divine Comedy (the "Divine" purportedly added by Boccaccio), and lines that catch my attention at every reading is in Purgatorio , which, by the way, is my favorite of the three cantica. Of fantasy, you that at times would snatch us so from outward things--we notice nothing although a thousand trumpets sound around us-- who moves you when the senses do not spur you? A light that finds its form in Heaven moves you-- directly or led downward by God's will. Within my fantasy I saw impressed the savagery of one who then, transformed, became the bird that most delights in song; at this, my mind withdrew to the within, to what imagining might bring: no thing that came from the without could enter in. Then into my deep fantasy there rained one who was crucified; and as he died, he showed his savagery and his disdain. (Dante, Purgatorio 17:13-27) In this ode to fantasy, Dante is describing his dreams, but there is something else about...

Late have I loved you, Beauty so old and so new: Late have I loved you. And see, you were within And I was within the external world And sought you there, And in my unlovely state I plunged into those lovely created things which you made The lovely things kept me far from you Though if they did not have their existence in you They had no existence at all. You called and cried out loud And shattered my deafness You were radiant and resplendent, You put to flight my blindness. You were fragrant, And I drew in my breath and now pant after you. I tasted you, And I feel but hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, And I am set on fire to attain the peace which is yours. (Augustine, Confessions X.xxvii (38))