Gaurav Sagar > Recent Status Updates

:Ripostes
To-Em-Mei's 'The Unmoving Cloud':

It is not that there are no other men
But we like this fellow the best,
But however we long to speak
He can not know of our sorrow.

Lament of the Frontier Guard:

Who has brought the army with drums and with kettle-drums?
Barbarous kings.
A gracious spring, turned to blood-ravenous autumn,
A turmoil of wars-men, spread over the middle kingdom,
Three hundred and sixty thousand,
And sorrow like rain.
Sorrow to go, and sorrow, sorrow returning.
Desolate, desolate fields,
And no children of warfare upon them,
No longer the men for offence and defence

Ripostes:

The Seafarer:
May I for my own self song's truth reckon,
Journey's jagron, how I in harsh days
Hardship endured oft.
Bitter breast-cares have I abided,
Known on my keel many a care's hold,
And dire sea-surge, and there I oft spent
Narrow nightwatch nigh the ship's head
While she tossed close to cliffs. Coldly afflicted,
My feet were by frost benumbed.
Chill its chains are; chafing sighs....

Rome that art Rome's one sole last monument,
Rome that alone hast conquered Rome the town,
Tiber alone, transient and seaward bent,
Remains of Rome. O world, thou unconstant mime!
That which stands firm in thee Time batters down,
And that which fleeteth doth outrun swift time.

Perhaps therefore we shall not even miss her, but Josefine, released from the earthly torment that in her opinion is the lot of the chosen ones, will happily lose herself in the numberless crowds of the heroes of our people, before long- as we don't keep any history- to be accorded the heightened relief of being, like all her brothers, forgotten.

Perhaps she should have directed her efforts differently from the start, perhaps she now sees her mistake, but she ca't start again, any sort of withdrawal would be tantamount to being untrue to herself, she must stand or fall with this demand.

What else could it possibly be? Whistling is the language of our people, only there are some who whistle all their lives and never know it, but here the whistling is detached from the fetters of everyday life, and it frees us too for a little while. We wouldn't miss these performances for the world.

it is after all her opinion that she is singing to lot of deaf ears; there is no want of applause and enthusiasm, but real insight, she claims, she has long since learned to do without. Then all these little disturbances are very convenient to her; everything that comes up against the purity of her song from outside, and is easily defeated, defeated without a struggle, just by coming up against her

In all this this the only exception is Josefine; she loves music, and is capable of transmitting it too; she is the only one; when she is gone, music will disappear- perhaps for ever- from our lives.

[A strange boatman- I know all those who usually pass here, but this one was a stranger- has just told me that a great wall is going to be built to protect the emperor. For it seems that infidel tribes, and demons among them, often gather in front of the imperial palace and shoot their black arrows at the emperor.]

One could not, for instance, make spend months or even years laying stone upon stone in some uninhabited mountain region hundred of miles from their homes; the hopelessness of such laborious toil, to which no end could be seen even in the longest lifetime, would have reduced them to despair, and above all diminished their fitness for the work.

How shall I put it?Beauty-yes, beauty is like a decayed tooth. It rubs against one'tongue, it hangs there, hurting one, insisting on its own existence. Finally it gets so that one can't stand the pain and one goes to dentist to have the tooth extracted. Then, as one looks at at the small, dirty, brown, blood-stained tooth lying in one's hand, one's thoughts are likely to be as follows "Is this it?Is this all it was?"

In order for me not to lose face it was, in fact, essential that I become a flower thief.

I was there alone, and the Golden Temple- the absolute, positive Golden temple- had enveloped me. Did I possess the temple, or was I possessed by it ? Or would it not be more correct to say that a strange balance had come into being at that moment, a balance which allow me to be the Golden Temple and the Golden Temple to be me?

said the overseer, 'why should we not admire it?' 'Because I have to starve, I can't do anything else,' said the hunger artist. 'Well, take a look at that,' said the overseer, 'and why can't you do anything else?' 'Because,' said the hunger-artist, and he raised his little head frantically, and with his lips puckered as if in a kiss, he spoke directly into the overseer's ear, so that none of his words was lost,

He, who had been cheered by thousands, could not now show himself in booths in little travelling fairs, and as far as taking another profession was concerned, the hunger-artist was not only too old, but, still more, he was too fanatically devoted to starvation.

no one had any right to be dissatisfied, no one, only the hunger artist, and only always him,

No one was capable of spending every day and every night with the hunger-artist as an invigilator without a break, and therefore no one could know from the direct evidence of his own senses whether the hunger-artist had starved himself without a break, without a lapse; only the hunger artist himself was in a position to know that, only he therefore could be the spectator completely satisfied by his own hunger.

And I have indeed asked myself on frequent occasions whether my current condition is so pleasing to me that I did not want to change it, and if it might not be possible to undertake certain adjustments, even if I didn't do it out of conviction that they were necessary, but purely to calm the little woman.

At the edge of the thicket stood a single late-blossoming cherry tree which had still not shed its blossoms. These were indeed late blossoms, and I wondered whether it wasn't because they had kept on stuttering when they first opened up that they were thus delayed.

She would only have to decide to view me as a complete stranger, which is what I am, and which I wouldn't seek to oppose, but which determination of hers I would rather welcome; she would only have to decide to forget all about my existence, which I have never foisted or sought to foist on her- and all suffering would be at end.

To an acquaintance, who waved up to him from the street in passing, he responded with a preoccupied smile.

What could you say to a man like that, who had obviously lost his way, whom you might sympathize with, but could do nothing to help ?

It seemed that hell could appear day or night, at any time, at any place, simply in response to one's thoughts or wishes. It seemed that we could summon it at our pleasure and that instantly it would appear.

To see human beings in agony, to see them covered in blood and tp hear their death groans, makes people humble. It makes their spirits delicate, bright, bloodthristy. No, it's on a beautiful spring afternoon like this that people suddenly become cruel.

I had no choice but to retire. My body was hot from dissatisfaction. The mysterious, evil action that I had committed, the cigarettes that had received as a reward, the Superior receiving them in ignorance of why I had obtained them- all this should have added up to something more dramatic and violent.

Finally I have come to live beside you, Golden Temple.

For a dead man's face falls in to an infinite depth beneath the surface which the face possessed when it was alive, leaving nothing for the survivors to see but frame of a mask; it falls so deep, indeed, that it can never be pulled back to the surface.
A dead man's face can tell us better than anything else in this world how far removed we are from the true existence of physical substance

As usual it occurred to me that words were the only things that could possibly save me from this situation. This was a characteristic misunderstanding on my part.

It was as it had been in life; there was no trace of the promised transfiguration; the thing that all the others had found in the machine, the officer himself had failed to find; his lips were pressed together, his eyes were open, their expression was that of the living man, their look was firm and assured, and the point of the great iron spike had passed through forehead.