April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Greeks called her Persephone. She is the Goddess of spring, leaving every year her dark chambers in Hades to bring flowers and fertility to mortals.
This was a difficult winter. I spent most of my time in the realms of sickness - adjoining the halls of Pluto. Until one day the lilac and the cherry tree bloomed in front of my window. The daughter of Demeter (or Ceres) had another spring in store for me.
Once more I recalled the fateful verses from the beginning of The Waste Land. My copy bears the date 1952. For fifty six years I cannot separate April from Eliot.
18 comments:
Nice
:-)
Wishing a text with the title "Phaeton", in many future Junes!
It is nice to see you back. However, i feel that you might have gone too far desserting your mother tongue in order to seek privacy. Let's see how long you can keep the barbarians out this time.
P.S. In a fight between anger or disgust and the need for communication, the latter will always prevail.
Welcome back!
Nice post!
:))
As i said before: deserting your mother tongue makes you less disert.
Very nice to see you back!!! :-)
I did not desert my mother tongue - I grew up multilingual - so this is one of my mother tongues. Depending on the mood and the subject - this could even be the only tongue of choice.
"That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
Has it begun to sprout?
Will it bloom this year?"
T.S.Eliot - The Wasteland
;)
April
What do you think when you hear April?
Do you think of fresh baked pie
Or is it the endlessness you see when you look in the sky
Is it the touch of the warm sun on your skin
Or is it the birds singing like flutes and violins
Do you think of lying for hours in the park
Or is the bright moon and the night so dark
What do you think when you hear April?
Benedict Graumann
Every April something tickles my heart. I remember my twenties, the dreams I had, the loves I lived. Almost twenty years later what did I succeed??
P.S. It's nice to have you back!!!
What a surprise!
I meet here friends!
I wish the future to be nice.
I think Persephone is a little angry the first days of April
I'm here
With a little help, my friends!
Not exactly as the title of the song is...
I've missed you loads, my Captain.
I guess April is the cruellest month cause
...Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers...
But then, you 've always told the truth, keeping to yourself what people really wanna know...why
Greetings from a mindless barbarian (I promise to bring around no more)
So, your reappearance is not unlike an April flowering, sudden and heart-warming and most welcome.
Hope it'll prove to be more like an eternal spring this time.
alive and kicking! (June, 2005)
I missed you too, captain!!(or should I say , Mayor :)
I hope , that the language barrier should keep the Hordes of Gideon outside
May this place be a safe haven captain, welcome back!!
PS: Sorry for the pessimistic email , earlier . I was only trying to rationalize your earlier decisions...
Whoever eats the pomegranate seeds must return to Hades for part of the year.
The people that don't know what a pomegranate fruit is are either ignorant in their bliss or knowledgeable and stone cold facing their predicament.
Oh Proserpina, the Prince of Darkness was hungry for you and you for the pomegranate seeds.
Acting on your feelings affected for ever humanity!
The story of Proserpina's influence continues:
Aeneas plucked a golden bough from a hidden tree in a grove sacred to Proserpina before he could descend to the lower world.
The branch came off easily so he was able to make the journey. (Aeneid)
Young Psyche so beautiful that people mistake her for the goddess Venus who was so furious at this insult that sends her son Cupid to punish Psyche for the freedom of her beauty.
Cupid shoots her down with his arrows and she falls madly in love with him, but he leaves her.
Psyche throws herself into a river, but at the last minute she is saved by the river god.
Psyche comes to Venus looking for Cupid but the goddess berates her and savagely beats her.
Venus commands Psyche to do various dangerous tasks for her, the last and the most dangerous is to bring a box to Proserpina in the lower world and ask her to put some of her beauty into it.
Psyche desperate for the impossibility of the task is trying to throw herself from a tower, but she is stopped from a figure of the underworld, that helps her to avoid all the traps that will be set for her there by Venus, how to get to Proserpina and how to come back again with the box.
Psyche follows all the instructions perfectly but when she comes back in the light again, her mind is filled with "reckless curiosity". She opens the box to take for herself a little bit of Proserpina's beauty, only to overcome by an "infernal and Stygian sleep" or is it death itself?
She is rescued however by Cupid who wipes up the sleep and puts it back in the box.
Psyche takes the box back to Venus, and Cupid asks Jupiter to permit him to marry Psyche and to make her immortal. Even Venus dances at the wedding, and in time a daughter is born who is called Pleasure.
(Metamorphoses by Apuleius).
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