‘THE sun shone on all statues, but only the statue of Memnon gave forth a sound’.—SCHOPENHAUER (‘On the Senses’), The World as Will and Idea. Trans. R. B. Haldane and J. Kemp.
‘We naturalize ourselves to the employment of eternity.’—BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE, Aphorisms.
‘His step is the migration of peoples, a migration greater than all ancient invasions’.— ARTHUR RIMBAUD (‘Genius’), Les Illuminations. Trans. Helen Rootham.
‘… countries, and things of which countries are made, elements, planet itself, laws of planets and of men, have passed through this man as bread into his body, and become no longer bread, but body’.—EMERSON (‘Plato, or the Philosopher’), Representative Men.
‘“What”, it will be Question’d, “when the Sun rises, do you not see a round disk of fire somewhat like a guinea?” “Oh no, no, I see an Innumerable Company of the Heavenly Host crying Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord God Almighty.” I question not my Corporeal or Vegetative Eye any more than I would Question a Window concerning a Sight. I look thro’ it & not with it’.—BLAKE, Vision of the Last Judgment.
‘… passing from passion to reason, from thanksgiving to adoring, from sense to spirit, from considering ourselves to an union with God.’— JEREMY TAYLOR, Holy Living.
‘… this prodigious overflowing of all barriers of phenomenality must necessarily evoke an incomparable ecstasy in the inspired musician…. There is but one state that can surpass the musician’s, the state of the Saint; and that, especially because it is enduring, and incapable of being clouded, whilst the ecstatic clairvoyance of a musician alternates with an ever-recurring state of individual consciousness’— WAGNER, Beethoven. Trans. E. Dannreuther.
What is true of the musician is also true of the poet.—E. S.