Apuleius' ... "Metamorphoses, or the Golden Ass"... illustrations and translations...

'

'Lend me your ear, reader: you shall enjoy yourself'

 The Golden Ass 

Illustrations and translations of the Latin novel the

Metamorphoses or the Golden Ass by Lucius Apuleius

Isis Revealed

illustrated by Percival Goodman. New York: The Limited Editions Club, 1932.

‘Looking up I saw the full orb of the Moon shining with peculiar lustre and that very moment emerging from the waves of the sea. Then the thought came to me that this was the hour of silence and loneliness when my prayers might avail. For I knew that the Moon was the primal Goddess of supreme sway; that all human beings are vitalised by the divine influence of her light; that all the bodies which are on earth, or in the heavens, or in the sea, increase when she waxes, and decline when she wanes. Considering this, therefore, and feeling that Fate was now satiated with my endless miseries and at last licensed a hope of salvation, I determined to implore the august image of the risen Goddess.
  So, shaking off my tiredness, I scrambled to my feet and walked straight into the sea into order to purify myself. I immersed my head seven times because (according to the divine Pythagoras) that number is specially suited for all ritual-acts; and then, speaking with lively joy, I lifted my tear-wet face in supplication to the irresistible Goddess: ....

translated by Jack Lindsay

illustrated by Percival Goodman. New York: The Limited Editions Club, 1932.



“Queen of Heaven, whether you are fostering Ceres the motherly nurse of all growth, who (gladdened at the discovery of your lost daughter) abolished brutish nutriment of the primitive acorn and pointed the way to gentler food (as is yet shown in the tilling of the fields of Eleusis); or whether you are celestial Venus who in the first moment of Creation min

gled the opposing sexes in the generation of mutual desires, and who (after sowing in humanity the seeds of indestructible continuing life) are now worshipped in the wave-washed shrine of Paphos; or whether you are the sister of Phoebus, who by relieving the pangs of childbirth travail with soothing remedies have brought safe into the world lives innumerable, and who are now venerated in the thronged sanctuary of Ephesus; or whether you are Proserpine, terrible with the howls of midnight, whose triple face has power to ward off the assaults of ghosts and to close the cracks in the earth, and who wander through many a grove, propitiated in divers manners, illuminating the walls of all cities with beams of female light, nurturing the glad seeds in the earth with your damp heat, and dispensing abroad your dim radiance when the sun has abandoned us—O by whatever name, and by whatever rite, and in whatever form, it is permitted to invoke you, come now and succour me in the hour of my calamity. Support my broken life, and give me rest and peace after the tribulations of my lot. Let there be an end to the toils that weary me, and an end to the snares that beset me. Remove from me the hateful shape of a beast, and restore me to the sight of those that love me. Restore me to Lucius, my lost self. But if an offended god pursues me implacably, then grant me death at least since life is denied me.”

Lucius restored to human shape by the Grace of Isis

illustrated by Jean de Bosschère.  London: John Lane - The Bodley Head, 1923.

Thus the divine shape breathing out the pleasant spice of fertill Arabia, disdained not with her divine voyce to utter these words unto me: Behold Lucius I am come, thy weeping and prayers hath mooved mee to succour thee. I am she that is the naturall mother of all things, mistresse and governesse of all the Elements, the initiall progeny of worlds, chiefe of powers divine, Queene of heaven, the principall of the Gods celestiall, the light of the goddesses: at my will the planets of the ayre, the wholesome winds of the Seas, and the silences of hell be disposed; my name, my divinity is adored throughout all the world in divers manners, in variable customes and in many names, for the Phrygians call me the mother of the Gods: the Athenians, Minerva: the Cyprians, Venus: the Candians, Diana: the Sicilians Proserpina: the Eleusians, Ceres: some Juno, other Bellona, other Hecate: and principally the æthiopians which dwell in the Orient, and the ægyptians which are excellent in all kind of ancient doctrine, and by their proper ceremonies accustome to worship mee, doe call mee Queene Isis…’

translated by William Adlington

Ex libris... E Aulitzky...Satyr

from exlibris artshop see previous blog for links

Ex libris... R Koch...Satyr

from a good collection of Ex-libris that you can purchase at the Exlibris Artshop

previous > EX-LIBRIS

previous > SATYR

Amodali... Babalon, a celebration of the mystical and erotic imagination ... Liber Incarnadine

The Liber Incarnadine project is an online, experimental installation, the conceptualization and visual design by Amodali, formerly of Sixth comm/Mother destruction, now a solo artist.

'Liber Incarnadine' is essentially a glorification of the human urge towards love, transcendance, and a resanctification of the erotic impulse within a 21st Century perspective. It explores ideas regarding the relationship between lover and beloved, ego and other aspects of being, and one's relation to the macrocosm. It creates an environment for concepts such as 'alchemical marriage' and pansexuality to flourish, and encourages a dynamic exploration of this. Within an infinite love letter, which pays tribute to the dizzying innovation of our erotic imagination and yearnings towards ecstatic consciousness.

"Still they mutter and rumble under my flesh burning with fiery tongues deep into my womb. All of your secret selves that you were not conscious of have written their story into my blood, the immortal, the ancient and primordial, the elemental, the electrophysical. Pristine and scientific 'snapshots' burst through into my consciousness randomly of 'energy profiles' frozen in time when you came in me, complex graphic flows charting the particular erotic topology of a moment, by examining these it's possible to evaluate the precise nature of the energy interchanges that took place, which of the subtle bodies were engaged, eye contact fixing the flux with particular intent..." (Contribution from Amodali to Liber Incarnadine)

L.I. seeks to be a sanctuary for all the most sublime, lascivious passions. Painful or ecstatic, profound or desolate musings; aiming to raise these to the heights of spiritual engagement. To create an open ended document, a testament to our sacred and holy urge towards union. Text submitted anonymously by online individuals will form a seamless stream, sections of the text will be sampled at random during live performances by Amodali and offered as prayers to our lady Babalon in the form of vocalizations/chant.

This is the first, experimental, magical liturgy from 'Incarnadine lodge' a gnostic, illuminist body dedicated to research and exploration of the 156 current, sex-magick and alchemy.

To contribute  > *Liber Incarnadine*

 

Please treat this space as a sanctuary for any disenfranchised aspect one's soul's yearning, erotic impulse, or any desire towards one's 'other' that has not found fulfillment, be this philosophical, spiritual or visceral. The text will be  seamlessly taken into the virtual grail to create an infinite love letter to our lady. Extracts of the text will be taken at random and incorporated into future Amodali performances, where they will be vocalized as chant. Permission for Amodali to sample text donated to L.I. is implicit in the submission. Copyright remains with the owner.

all text from Liber Incarnadine

Jeremias Drexel... Opera omnia....1662

click for larger image

Monica Guevara...erotica

pencil and ink drawing

previous post >MG

Paul Holman... poem... 3

3

 She had been earthed

( had i earthed

her by my intrusion? )

eyes no longer turned

upon phenomena I

could not locate.

She considered me a 

plunderer, a facund man,

a madman: one who

scries alphabets

of daggers, of arrows.

Zigzagged tights in a

knot in her pocket,

the tip of each

hair luminous a fox-

fire or rotten wood,

she opened the violet

gate at her throat

to release the fractal

silhouette of Pan.

Published in a wonderful collection of esoteric poetry and essays > Datura by Scarlet Imprint 

previous POEMS

 

PAUL HOLMAN is the author of The Fabulist (1991) and The Memory of the Drift (2000). He was co-editor of Invisible Books in the 1990s.

Eric Gill.... print

 

engraving from E.Powys Mathers : Procreant Hymn

One of the first Gill was to illustrate for the Golden Cockerel Press

André Masson .... print

etching from Georges Batailles “Sacrifices” (1936)

previous Masson

Harry Crosby... Sun Testament....

SUN-TESTAMENT
(For W.V.R.B.)

I, The Sun, Lord of the Sky, sojourning in the Land of Sky, being of sound mind and memory, do hereby make, publish and declare the following to be my Last Will and Testament, hereby revoking all other wills, codicils and testamentary dispositions by me at any time heretofore made.

First, I hereby direct and elect that my estate shall be administered and my will construed and regulated and the validity and effect of the testamentary dispositions herein contained determined by the laws of the Sky.

Second, I give and bequeath absolutely to my wife, the Moon, four octrillion centuries of sun-rays, this legacy to have priority over all other legacies and bequests and to be free from any and all legacy, inheritance, transfer, successions, taxes or duties whatsoever, said taxes or duties to be borne by my estate.

Third, I give and bequeathe the sum of one million centuries of sun-rays net free from any and all legacy, inheritance, transfer, succession, taxes or duties whatsoever, said taxes or duties to be borne by my estate, to my Executors, to be used for the erecting of an Obelisk to the Sun.

Fourth, I give and bequeathe to my beloved wife the Moon my assortment of sunstones, my sun-yacht that for many aeons has navigated the sea of clouds, together with my collection of butterflies which are the souls of women caught in my golden web and my collection of red arrows which are the souls of men caught in my golden web.

Fifth, I give and bequeathe to my sons and daughters the stars, my mirror the ocean and my caravan of mountains.

Sixth, I give and bequeathe to Aurora Goddess of the Dawn a sunrise trumpet and a girdle of clouds.

Seventh, I give and bequeathe to the planet Venus all my eruptive prominences whether in spikes or jets or sheafs and volutes in honor of her all-too-few transits.

Eighth, I give and bequeathe to Lady Vesuvius a sunbonnet, a palace of clouds and the heart she once hurled up to me.

Ninth, I give and bequeathe to the Sun-Goddess Rat the Lady of Heliopolis and a garden of sunflowers.

Tenth, I give and bequeathe to Icarus a sunshade and a word of introduction to the Moon.

Eleventh, I give and bequeathe to Horus (Egyptian Hor) the falcon-headed solar divinity a thousand sun-hawks from my aviary to be mummified in his honor.

Twelfth, I give and bequeathe to Amenophus IV of Egypt my golden gourd that his thirst for me may be assuaged.

Thirteenth, I give and bequeathe to Renofer, High Priest of the Sun, my shares in Electric Horizens and Corona Preferred.

Fourteenth, I give and bequeathe to Louis XIV of France, Le Roi Soleil, my gold peruke.

Fifteenth, I give and bequeathe to Arthur Rimbaud a red sunsail.

Sixteenth, I give and bequeathe to my charioteer Phaeton my chariot of the sun and my chariot-horses Erythous Acteon Lampos Philogeus.

Seventeenth, I give and bequeathe to each of the Virgins of the Sun in Peru, to each and every citizen of Heliopolis, to the Teotitmocars of Mexico who built the giant pyramid to the Sun, to each and every of the Incas, to the Hyperboreans dwellers in the land of perpetual sunshine and great fertility beyond the north wind, my halo, rainbows and mirages, to the Surya-bans and the Chandra-bans of India to each a sunthought and to my lowly subject the Earth ten centuries of sunrays.

Eighteenth, I give and bequeathe likewise to the Japanese Flag whose center is a Red Sun and to the flags of Persia (the Lion and the Sun) and to the flags of Uruguay and Argentine my fiery flames and furious commotion.

Nineteenth, I give and bequeathe to all the inns, cabarets, bars, taverns, bordels whose ensign is the Sun, pieces of brocaded sunlight.

Twentieth, I give and bequeathe sunbonnets to various high monuments in particular the Eiffel Tower, the Woolworth Building, and to an imaginary tower built by the combined height of the phalluses of men.

Twenty-First, I give and bequeathe to Apollo of Greece a temple of the sun to Osiris of Egypt a temple of the sun to Indra of India a temple of the Sun this legacy is over and above any and all commissions to which they may be entitled as executors.

Twenty-Second, All the rest residue and remainder of my estate of whatsoever kind and nature, wheresoever situated, not specifically given or bequeathed hereinabove, including any and all void or lapsed legacies or bequests, I give, devise and bequeathe to Mithra of the Persians and to Surya of the Hindus, or to the survivor with the request that they establish therewith a fund for Sun-Birds (i.i. poets) to be organized and administered by them in their sole discretion and judgement, this fund to be known as the Sun and Moon Fund for Sun-Birds.

Twenty-Third, I hereby nominate, constitute and appoint Osiris of Egypt Apollo of Greece and Indra of India Executors of this my last will and testament.
In witness thereof, I have herewith set my hand and seal to this holographic will, entirely written and dated and signed by me at my Castle of Clouds this nineteenth day of January nineteen hundred and twenty eight.


Signed : The Sun

Signed, sealed, published and declared by The Sun, the Testator above named as and for his last Will and Testament in the presence of us who at his request and in his presence and in the presence of each other have hereunto subscribed our names as witnesses thereto.
Hu of the Druids
Ptah of the Egyptians
Vitzliputsli of the Mexicans




Sleeping Together
cry in your sleep and implore
cry autumn’s fire still small
cry as the door to the wind
cry for the touch of the snow upon snow
cry of the things that you fear
cry in the darkness a distant
dream in my ear

(from Sleeping Together, 1929)





previous Harry Crosby

Ex libris... Elfiede Weidenhaus...Satyr

New Work... 2011

... I'm not able to say... What room is this?
and he dissapears in the sky
He can only touch himself from the outside
In what number do you rest beloved Father?

Verbal Mucky Zing~Dolorosa 2011

Elie Grekoff (1914-1985) ... Tiresias...illustrations 1954

from TIRESIAS by Marcel Jouhandeau, 1954

these illustrations are from the Bibliothèque Gay

an interesting essay on Marcel Jouhandeau's Tiresias >>  by Ed Madden
The Anus of Tiresias: Sodomy, Alchemy, Metamorphosis

Francis Picabia ... Untitled drawing & poem

Gstaad

The sea pitches endlessly

The role mirrors her pupils

From memory

So mirthful

Swaying of gravity

Expresses a resonance

Of constant desires

I have excuses

And lack strength and courage

influence is a useless thing

She is the most beautiful of the women

On my mind 

more poems > 

previous PICABIA

Leonor Fini... La Galère/Jean Genet ... 1947 drawing..

Drawing for Jean Genet's La Galère 1947,a long poem written as a homage to murderer

Harcamone, the book was condemned in 1954 and Genet was fined 100.ooo francs.

"By the threads of death
the weapons of these nights
carried my arms paralyzed by wine
the azure of nostrils
traversed by the rose gone astray
where a gilded doe shudders under the brush...
I astonish myself and lose myself
in pursuing your course
astonishing river
from the veins of discourse"         

***

"The tree's blue branches
stretch from the salt to the sky. 
My solitude sings
to my vespers of blood
an air of golden bubbles
squeezing from my lips."

Jean Genet - The Galley

Ex libris... Alfonso Bosco

Ex libris... Vienna Workhops

Austin Osman Spare ... Satyr... Happy Birthday!

Austin Osman Spare ~ 30 Dec 1886 –15 May 1956

O Give Thanks Unto!

:

O Give Thanks Unto scanned from a set of postcards from recent "Fallen Visionary" exhibition 2010

The Psychology of Believing.

If the "supreme belief" remains unknown, believing is fruitless. If "the truth" has not yet been ascertained, the study of knowledge is unproductive. Even if "they" were known their study is useless. We are not the object by the perception, but by becoming it. Closing the gateways of sense is no help. Verily I will make common-sense the foundation of my teaching. Otherwise, how can I convey my meaning to the deaf, vision to the blind, and my emotion to the dead? In a labyrinth of metaphor and words, intuition is lost, therefore without their effort must be learned the truth about one's self from him who alone knows the truth . . . . yourself. 

from The Book of Pleasure (self-love) ~

The Psychology of Ecstasy

previous AOS

Leonora Carrington... two figures... drawing

Ex libris... Chester Dodge... Satyr

Publilius Optatianus Porphyrius 1595...poem...Carmina Figurata

Sometime around the end of the first quarter of the fourth century C.E., a former resident of the imperial city of Rome then living in exile in Achaea began a written campaign for his recall to the capitol. The campaign coincided with the Vicennalia, or twentieth anniverary, of the reign of the first Christian Roman Emperor, Constantine, an event celebrated in July 325 in Nicomedia and again in the summer of 326 at Rome itself. The writing campaign took advantage of this event and consisted of a series of panegyric poems addressed to Constantine in commemoration of both the Vicennalia and Constantine’s earlier defeat of Licinius in 324. The series, included in what is now known collectively as the Carmina or Carmina Figurata, is of an unusual and innovative sort: the poems contain supplementary text “hidden” within the main body of the individual poems and intended to be “discovered” by the reader. These versus intexti poems were apparently intended to dazzle Constantine with their technical virtuosity and thereby inspire the hoped-for recall of their creator, Publilius Optatianus Porphyrius. The campaign was ultimately successful, and the intriguing larger body of work created by Optatianus remains captivating even today, both for its simple visual appeal and for its display of remarkable technical skill.... continued

related previous POST

Leonard BASKIN(1922-2000) Portrait of Matthias Grunewald...print

Previous BASKIN

Wladd Muta.... Graphic Works...Magicka AnUra-Flora

Les pétales des fleurs de grenouilles, “AnUra-Flora“,
se développent dans un tout premier temps
à partir des tissus pulmonaires du batracien (fig.1.).
L'amorce de la mutation utilise
les traces génétiques fantômes
des branchies du stade larvaire (têtards).
Le pétale se constitue ensuite
exclusivement sur une base
de tissu épithélial humide (muqueuse) respiratoire.
L'étalement des tissus s'accompagne,
progressivement et en s’amplifiant,
d'une hybridation du tramage cellulaire
VÉGÉTALE & ANIMALE.
Même une fois aboutie, l‘AnUra-Flora
gardera toujours
cette singularité cellulaire hybride.
La fleur se déploie tout autour d’un cœur ;
celle-ci n’a pas de tige (fig.3.).

Pour parvenir de façon simple à la transmutation,
lorsque l’on ne maîtrise pas
les techniques avancées des Arts-Humides,
il faut avoir au préalable
introduit un fragment de pétale d’AnUra-Flora
à l’intérieur de l’œuf, d’une grenouille commune,
le jour même de la ponte.
Le fragment doit être en contact avec le noyau,
si le contact ne se fait pas
le transposon génétique ne peut se constituer.
Il est conseillé de contaminer un grand nombre d’œufs,
car moins de 1% d'entre eux arriveront à l’âge adulte.

La voie royale des Arts-Humides
passe, bien entendu, par le fruit
et produit des résultats significativement plus puissants (fig.3.),
mais le maniement du fruit (œuf issu de la fleur)
est d’une complexité sans nom
et très peu ne parviennent au moindre résultat.
La fleur créée par introduction du fragment,
peut vivre jusqu’à trois années,
le triple par le fruit. 

La mutation florale à proprement parler
a lieu au terme de la vie normale de l’animal
(soit une dizaine d’année)
– lune rousse, constellation de la grenouille –
bien sûr celle-ci ne peut s’opérer si le batracien
meurt prématurément, par accident ou maladie.
Il faut donc en prendre grand soin
si l’on espère un jour lui faire atteindre
l’état d’AnUra-Flora.


Avant la mutation,
l’individu grenouille ne présente aucune particularité,
en tout parfaitement semblable
à une grenouille commune.


L'événement transmutatoire en lui-même
est extrêmement bref
et peut se réaliser sur un laps de temps
n’excédant pas les 3 heures.
Assister au spectacle de la transformation
est un enchantement,
c'est un évènement d’une grande beauté.
Le déploiement des tissus couleurs de braises
se fait dans le crépitement
d'un feu humide et cristallin,
danse végétale d'une grâce inouïe (fig.2.). 

Les usages de l’AnUra-Flora sont multiples
(par contact, contemplation, ingestion ou masque).
Entre autres choses :
stimulation des rêves lucides
et mémorisation des rêves en général,
“cœur de combustions“
dans un grand nombre d’opérations
impliquant l’eau et la lune,
mise en condition psychique
pour la création d’“Ikebana d’organes vivants“,
et souvent même, simple décoration. 

Previous post

Victor Brown.... bookplate for Lily Yeats

from Poems by WB Yeats, Cuala Press 1935

"There's nothing but our own red blood

Can make a right Rose Tree..."

wb yeats

The Angel of Death ... in micrography...

This illustration is found in a book entitled Nisyonot be-Ketav Ivri (Experiments in Hebrew Script)

a magnificent example of micrography, tiny Hebrew script marking out the shape of a figure, in this case a classic portrayal of the Angel of Death. In this particular example the script is in Hebrew yet the language is German. The many signed names would indicate that this was done in Central Europe, probably in a school of the German Haskalah (Enlightenment) movement, around the middle of the 19th century.

Eric William Ravilious(1903-1942)... Woodcut

Doctor Faustus Conjuring Mephistophilis 1929

Ravilious was a prolific British illustrator and worked predominantly with wood engravings. The subject for this work relates to the 16th century medical practitioner, Dr. Johannes Faust who, legend has it, sold his soul to Mephistopheles, an evil spirit.

Ex libris...Eugen Dorr

Leonor Fini... etching 1957

The Witches' Sabbath Resurrected

previous FINI

Herbert Grass...Thoughts on Love and Religion 1912

Ex Libris... P Wolbrand

Suniti Namjoshi ....Building Babel..The Black Piglet

from Building Babel by Suniti Namjoshi

Every retelling of a myth is a reworking of it. Every hearing or reading of a myth is a recreation of it. It is only when we engage with a myth that it resonates, becomes charged and recharged with meaning...

Suniti Namjoshi ...poem excerpts

Theres sunshine in the garden

there are flowers in the hall

at your gate a lovesick beast

is breaking down the wall...

from poem ~ Courtship

Why did you make a hole in the sky,
Breaking the backdrop of placid blue days?
The black crow are flapping wildly in my head
While the blue air has closed about your absence.
from poem ~ In Three Tenses



Suniti Namjoshi

Hans Bellmer...print.... undated

"At the source of the most intensely black and scandalous works...we believe there exists this sort of passage from passion to action, a secret need for equilibrium, the urge to create an imaginary evil from which we may take pleasure within the excesses of intellectual passion, in order to cure ourselves of the real evil we're suffering"

from Scandal with a Secret Face - an Essay by Nora Mitrani 1950

previous Bellmer

Horst Haack ... print... Genderles Being 1969

Horst Haack was born in 1940 in Neubrandenburg. He lived in Lübeck from 1945 to 1959 before moving to West Berlin to study painting at the Berlin Academy of Art. Painting "light"! As of 1967, he lived and worked for 12 years on the island of Ibiza (Spain). From there, in 1979 he moved to Paris where he started in 1981 "Chronographie Terrestre (Work in Progress)", without at the time realizing this was his future life's work. It is a painted, drawn and panel-mounted diary that he has continued to work on ever since. At present he lives in Darmstadt (Germany) and Paris.

Secret Games.. the Prose and Art of J Karl Bogartte... part 1

The WONDERful prose of J K Bogartte...excerpts...

Secret Games is Book II in the ongoing series of prose poems exploring the sense of the marvelous mating of science and erotic metamorphosis as a form of landscape in which the real becomes imaginary, and forces itself into visible nature.....

In that place where life and death pass by unnoticed, the Messengers without their shadows light up the fabric of unauthorized expectations, like vague recollections of thoughts that were never yours, or another form of magic, or perfidious logic, when it multiplies your body out of the space that occupies your body, out of the circle of your ageless metamorphosis within a further space more paradoxical than the others, when you follow the births and funerals of a consciousness that resembles the sea, like a fire-propagating game of chance...

~~~

The Paradoxical Game of Night

La noche es la quema de agua...

~~~

The pure fruit of an emergency landing, is a last ditch effort, a glowing hunger strung up by its ankles from the rafters, and impersonating the sputtering compass when it loses all sense of direction, kneels and licks your precious feet... then dashes off, exhilarated and beside itself. There is humor in the word: “precious.” The fruit is a night-light for the children who walk in their sleep––and therefore, the night is a narcissistic diversion... an act of irony that makes for intimate conversation between total strangers, when hidden meanings are always appreciated... when no one is present.

Reality is the amorous disruption of the wedding night, its fables and narratives in the black glass of the zookeepers’ promiscuous twin, the leopard’s robe of ingenious escapes, and the promenade of wonders...

Love is subversion of the senses, the negative light of magnetic sensations that cover you with the black dust of wings in the continuous vessel that reproduces your presence, and overflows. A singular plurality out of which are coaxed the drops of poison, of light, or words, a language of dew in the early morning, the dangerous clairvoyance of the body that swims in the bright water of its own two-way mirror. The psychosomatic eggs of an open window. Black honey, a pure black stone with a faithless heart of fire. Illusive and impeccable intervention.

 When the laws of nature intercede on her behalf, footprints are sent scurrying in every direction, and when the coordinates mimic the exact measurements needed to trigger the alchemical vessels that seduce the weather, that whir and hum like simian lanterns held up to warn of impending dangers and invisible locks, she enters the forest from behind, where the spirits speak only Spanish and the nights are without equal. It is necessary to harness these wonders. The minerals of distraction, molecules of light.

Her flesh of poppies reflects the sun while her shadow impersonates the moon. The history of perversions is the gold of science. She is an endlessly bathing light.

Amethyst of exchanging blood that ravages equality in the mother tongue, when the moon is a cat’s cradle in the sea of consciousness, of civil war in the telepathy of rebellious spirits, lovers in the fields of lunacy...

She was conscious of the purity of revenge, and he, the color of Central Asia at noon, always knew the mirror of her arousal. Together they avoided detection. Together, they were distant treasures.....

from Soluble Language 

Art WORKS - photomorphoses

Jean Gabriel Daragnes (French, 1886-1950)...Woodcuts...Satyr

two scans from a favourite book "The Modern Woodcut" by Herbert Furst

on  one of my favourite obsessions... Le Satyre

Here illustrating Paul Claudel's "Protee"

Daragnes also illustrated Oscar Wilde's "Ballad of Reading Gaol" Gerard de Nerval's "Main Enchantee" and Poe's "Raven" to name a few

.

..let there be darkness as I await my portion in which will be created from my soul the drop ready to fall in its greatest heaviness. Let me offer a libation to you in the shadows, like the mountain spring that offers drink to the Ocean in its little shell!

Paul Claudel

more woodcuts & satyr 

Ex libris...Franz von Bayros

previous Bayros