O Lords of Limit, training dark and light...

David Lewis-Williams, in The Mind in the Cave (2002). Thames & Hudson

An important reciprocality is implied by these images born of light and shadow. On the one hand, the creator of the image holds it in his or her power: a movement of the light source can cause the image to appear out of the murk; another movement causes it to disappear. The creator controls the image. On the other hand, the image holds its creator in its power: if the creator or subsequent viewer wishes the image to remain visible, he or she is obliged to maintain a posture that keeps the light source in a specific position. If the viewer tires and as a result lowers the light, the image seems to retreat into the realm behind the membrane. Perhaps more than any other Upper Palaeolithic images, these 'creatures' (creations) of light and darkness point to a complex interaction between person and spirit, artist and image, viewer and image. There was a great deal more to Upper Palaeolithic cave paintings than pictures simply to be looked at: some of the images sprang from a fundamental metaphor.

Praia de Dover - Matthew Arnold

Praia de Dover
de Matthew Arnold

O mar está calmo esta noite.
A maré está cheia, a lua lá ao fundo
Sobre os estreitos; na costa de França a luz
Brilha e desaparece; os penhascos de Inglaterra surgem,
Reluzentos e vastos, de fronte à baía tranquila.
Vem à janela, o ar da noite é doce!
Apenas, da longa linha de salpicos
Onde o mar se depara com a terra tingida de lua,
Ouve! escutas o rosnido a raspar
Dos seixos que as ondas recolhem, e lançam,
Ao voltarem, para a praia alta,
Começa, e cessa, e começa de novo,
Com trémula lenta cadência, e traz
Para dentro a nota eterna da tristeza.

Há muito tempo atrás Sófocles
Ouviu-o no Egeu, e trouxe
À sua mente o turvo fluxo e refluxo
Da miséria humana; nós
Achamos também no som um pensamento,
Ao ouvi-lo neste distante mar do norte.

O Mar da Fé
Esteve também, em tempos, cheio, e cercando a costa da terra,
Jazia como as dobras de um brilhante cinturão desenfaixado.
Mas agora apenas oiço
O seu melancólico, longo, ruído em retirada,
Recuando, ao sopro
Do vento da noite, abaixo as vastas e cinzentas bordas
E os pedregulhos desnudados do mundo.

Ai, amor, sejamos verdadeiros
Um para o outro! pois o mundo, que aparenta
Estender-se diante nós como uma terra de sonhos,
Tão variado, tão belo, tão novo,
Em verdade não tem nem alegria, nem amor, nem luz,
Nem certezas, nem paz, nem socorro à dor;
E nós estamos aqui como numa planície enegrecida,
Arrastados por alarmes confusos de combates e fugas,
Onde ignorantes exércitos se batem de noite.

Tradução minha.

Dover Beach

by Matthew Arnold

The sea is calm tonight. 

The tide is full, the moon lies fair 

Upon the straits; on the French coast the light 

Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, 

Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. 

Come to the window, sweet is the night-air! 

Only, from the long line of spray 

Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land, 

Listen! you hear the grating roar 

Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, 

At their return, up the high strand, 

Begin, and cease, and then again begin, 

With tremulous cadence slow, and bring 

The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago 

Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought 

Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow 

Of human misery; we 

Find also in the sound a thought, 

Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith 

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore 

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. 

But now I only hear 

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, 

Retreating, to the breath 

Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear 

And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true 

To one another! for the world, which seems 

To lie before us like a land of dreams, 

So various, so beautiful, so new, 

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, 

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; 

And we are here as on a darkling plain 

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, 

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

يشرف الحق

Al-Kindi. On first philosophy 103.4-8. (My trans.)

We should not feel ashamed for appreciating the Truth and from acquiring it from where it may come, even if it should come to us from distant races and from different peoples. For someone who seeks the Truth, there is nothing that takes precedence to the Truth [itself], there is nothing, in whoever speaks it or brings it, that could take value away from it, and we can never disregard them [whoever they happen to be]. The Truth never humiliates - it ennobles. 

وينبغي لنا أن لا نستحي من استحسان الحق، واقتناء الحق من أين أتى، وإن أتى من الأجناس القاصية عنا، والأمم المباينة، فإنه لا شيء أولى بطالب الحق من الحق. وليس يبخس الحق، ولا يصغر بقائله ولا بالآتي به. ولا أحد بخس الحق؛ بل كان يشرفه الحق.

Nómade (Mário Beirão)

Tradução minha.

ⲡⲣⲁϣⲉ ⲙⲡⲥⲁϩ ⲡⲉ ⲧϭⲟⲙ ⲙⲡⲉϥⲙⲁⲑⲏⲑⲏⲥ

Heraclitus in Sumerian

§1

John. L. Hayes. (2000) A Manual of Sumerian Grammar and Texts p.193 Undena Publications.

til - This sign has several readings and meanings in Sumerian. In its reading as til, it is equated with Akkadian gamāru, laqātu, and qatû. The CAD glosses qatû as "1. to come to an end, to be used up, 2. to perish, 3. to become completed, finished, settled". In the causative stem, šuqtû is glossed as "to bring to an end." 

The word til meaning "to live" has occurred several times, notably in the formula nam-til3-la-ni-še3 ["for his life"]. It is curious that the words "to live" and "to come to an end" are homophones, both being pronounced /til/. They are, however, written differently: "to live" is written by the til3 sign, , and "to come to an end" by the til-sign, . [...] As discussed under Phonology, the existence of such apparent homphones as til and til3  has led numerous scholars to suggest that Sumerian was a tonal language.

§2

βιός· τῷ τόξῳ ὄνομα βίος ἔργον δὲ θάνατος 

Heraclitus DK B48

Bow [biós] - the name is life [bíos], yet the work is death.

Sappho in Sumerian

lubi dingireneginam

Zara Yacob

Moral Letters to Lucilius // a poem

A translation of a poem of mine.


My dear Lucilius.
Once again I encourage you to ponder
The virtues of temperance
And tranquillity.
My dear Lucilius.
Long have I written to you incessantly,
And told you tales of brave souls
That you might copy them.
We are both making great progress.
My dear Lucilius.
Our friends tell me
That in your party nights you pass by my house
And sing just a bit lower
So as not to wake me up.
I have indeed a light sleep,
Though not from cares,
But from the light electric the gods
Planted inside me,
In my spirit,
And that keeps me up at night
While I write to you.
My dear Lucilius.
Tell me news. Some say
That every night you sing
Until your lips stiffen and numb.
I have trouble believing this.
You do not sing, you pray.
Always have you kept the two apart.
And be that as it may I do not think you could sing
Without me there to give you the tone.
This is true,
Is it not?
My dear Lucilius.
Once again I ask that you direct your body
To just deeds, that you conform your soul
To the super-celestial gods.
If I repeat myself, if I search for you,
If I insist and see myself in you,
That is because I know that God that spins everything
Spins us both in unison,
If I take your hand He
Takes mine in turn,
And with the other He takes yours.
My dear Lucilius.
Try to dull your love.
Dull it and smoothen it,
The love for people,
The love for the beautiful statues in your palaces,
Dull the love for philosophy,
The love for music,
The love for the gods of Love and the others.
Love instead the dulling itself.
But even that in a way that's tame and faint.
Let it dry and gather it once more the following Summer.
Thin it until it fits,
Like a papyrus sheet,
Between the closed beak of an ibis.
My dear Lucilius.
Once again I encourage you to ponder
The virtues of temperance and resignation.

Imagem: Jusepe de Ribera. Seneca (?), 1625-1650 @ Londres.

Oswald von Wolkenstein

franzoisch, mörisch, katlonisch und kastilian,

teutsch, latein, windisch, lampertisch, reuschisch und roman,

die zehen sprach hab ich gebraucht, wenn mir zerran;

auch kund ich fidlen, trummen, paugken, pfeiffen!