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soft fall

soft fall
Now Love masters my limbs and shakes me, fatal creature, bitter-sweet.

- Sappho, Fragment 40, trans. H. T. Wharton

, Klimt, , and 9 other people have particularly liked this photo


16 comments - The latest ones
 Armando Taborda
Armando Taborda club
Hello Shi*, I'm an admin of the group Trees and Clouds Exhibition. It would be great if you would add this doc to our group. Thank you!

...we will see...Dave
16 years ago.
Shi* has replied to Armando Taborda club
Added, Armando ... later, the sun came out and we did see ... a monument to Sappho ... reminding me what a poetic genius she was!
16 years ago.
 mo |
mo |
soft atmosphere ... has something fairy tale like about it
16 years ago.
Shi* has replied to mo |
Fairy tales are all around us!
16 years ago.
 gin_able
gin_able
great idea to make it in black and white,
it's conveying allurement and despondency at the same time......
16 years ago.
Shi* has replied to gin_able
I find that it is exactly that melancholic beauty that gives autumn its strong attraction!
16 years ago.
 Sherry ~ Rebujito
Sherry ~ Rebujito
OHHHHHH
I love this!

enchanted
mystery
*good shivers* right Mo? :-)
we are the shiver princesses :-)
16 years ago.
Shi* has replied to Sherry ~ Rebujito
Not unknown to have a *good shiver* or two myself or even a *shimmie* on occasion!

... and enchantment in one form or another is the water that this fishy swims in ... enchantment and dreams ... a delicious cocktail!

... and princesses are always welcome in this fairytale realm! :)
16 years ago.
 Christel Ehretsmann
Christel Ehretsmann club
a beautiful verse ....blessed be the one who suffers from love .. Love is always..."bitter sweet " ...so much worthwhile in life .I like the idea of that Sapho statue emerging from the mist , as Venus emerging from the wave
16 years ago.
Shi* has replied to Christel Ehretsmann club
A little more Sappho for your pleasure, Christel:

Immortal Aphrodite of the broidered throne, daughter of Zeus, weaver of wiles, I pray thee break not my spirit with anguish and distress, O Queen. But come hither, if ever before thou didst hear my voice afar, and listen, and leaving thy father's golden house camest with chariot yoked, and fair fleet sparrows drew thee, flapping fast their wings around the dark earth, from heaven through mid sky. Quickly arrived they; and thou, blessed one, smiling with immortal countenance, didst ask What now is befallen me, and Why now I call, and What I in my mad heart most desire to see. 'What Beauty now wouldst thou draw to love thee? Who wrongs thee, Sappho? For even if she flies she shall soon follow, and if she rejects gifts shall yet give, and if she loves not shall soon love, however loth.' Come, I pray thee, now too, and release me from cruel cares; and all that my heart desires to accomplish, accomplish thou, and be thyself my ally.

- Wharton's literal translation
16 years ago.
Christel Ehretsmann club has replied to Shi*
how strange !
today was a marvellous autumn day high up in my Vosges mountains...I went up looking down at the lakes a little further down and sat among the blueberry plants, opened the book I took with me.
Roland Barthes' essay entitled Fragments d'un discours amoureux...
An in that book , there was a quote of Sappho's about languid desire...here it is in French :
"...car dès que je t'aperçois un instant,il ne m'est plus possible d'articuler une parole : mais ma langue se brise, et, sous ma peau, soudain se glisse un feu subtil : mes yeux sont sans regard, mes oreilles bourdonnent, la sueur ruisselle de mon corps, un frisson me saisit toute ; je deviens plus verte que l'herbe, et, peu s'en faut , je me sens mourir "
16 years ago.
 Shi*
Shi*
" because as soon as I see you ,it is no longer possible for me to articulate a word: but my language breaks, and, under my skin, suddenly a subtle fire slides: my eyes are without sight, my ears hum, sweat streams on my body, a shiver runs right through me; I become more green than the grass, and, needing little, I feel dying "

... is the best I can do ... wow! ... what a feeling ... at once familiar and strange.

heres another note (www.turksheadreview.com/library/texts/barthes-loversdiscourse-notes.html) I found on this text by Barthes, one that struck me just now:

"In the loving calm of your arms"

étreinte / embrace

The gesture of the amorous embrace seems to fulfill, for a time, the subject's dream of total union with the loved being.

... I know the feeling, although the clinical description is not in my spirit.

What a joy to wander in the hills with a good book and a beautiful soul.
16 years ago.
Shi* has added
... and here is a proper modern English translation:

31

That man to me seems equal to the gods,

the man who sits opposite you

and close by listens

to your sweet voice



5 and your enticing laughter—

that indeed has stirred up the heart in my breast.

For whenever I look at you even briefly

I can no longer say a single thing,



but my tongue is frozen in silence;

10 instantly a delicate flame runs beneath my skin;

with my eyes I see nothing;

my ears make a whirring noise.



A cold sweat covers me,

trembling seizes my body,

15 and I am greener than grass.

Lacking but little of death do I seem.



www.uh.edu/~cldue/texts/sappho.html
16 years ago.
 Christel Ehretsmann
Christel Ehretsmann club
just extraordinary to be able to dialogue that way..as if you just took out a book out of your library , to go on reading the poem I have begun . Magic web.I'll mark the links you've noted...so interesting.
I send you my afternoon place where I read Barthes
IMG 0039 1
16 years ago.
Shi* has replied to Christel Ehretsmann club
What a beautiful place, the ridges receding into the distance, the pines (they look like pine or spruce), I see the blueberries ... sense of space and nature ... the high places, yes.
16 years ago.

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