Red wall

I am made all things to all men—
Hebrew, Roman, and Greek—
In each one's tongue I speal,
Suiting to each my word,
That some may be drawn to the Lord!

I am made all things to all men—
In City or Wilderness
Praising the crafts they profess
That some may be drawn to the Lord—
By any means to my Lord!

Since I was overcome
By that great Light and Word,
I have forgot or forgone
The self men call their own
(Being made all things to all men)
So that I might save some
At such small price, to the Lord,
As being all things to all men.

I was made all things to all men,
But now my course is done—
And now is my reward…
Ah, Christ, when I stand at Thy Throne
With those I have drawn to the Lord,
Restore me my self again!

Rudyard Kipling, “At his execution”

Abstract Nº67

Ah, well should men be circumspection taught
With those who seen not only the deed done
But with their sense look through into the thought.

Dante Alighieri, "The Divine Comedy" (Inferno, Canto XVI, Lines 117-120).

Blood and thunder

The poem obviously refers to bloodshed and cannonshots, I just abstracted the topic onto a turmoil of blood and clouds.
Lord Byron is much more enjoyable than the image.

Oh blood and thunder! and oh blood and wounds!
These are but vulgar oaths, as you may deem,
Too gentle reader! and most shocking sounds:
And so they are; yet thus is Glory's dream
Unriddled, and as my true Muse expounds
At present such things, since they are her theme,
So be they her inspirers! Call
them Mars,Bellona, what you will --they mean but wars.

All was prepared --the fire, the sword, the men
To wield them in their terrible array.
The army, like a lion from his den,
March'd forth with nerve and sinews bent to slay, --
A human Hydra, issuing from its fen
To breathe destruction on its winding way,
Whose heads were heroes, which cut off in vain
Immediately in others grew again.

History can only take things in the gross;
But could we know them in detail, perchance
In balancing the profit and the loss,
War's merit it by no means might enhance,
To waste so much gold for a little dross,
As hath been done, mere conquest to advance.
The drying up a single tear has more
Of honest fame, than shedding seas of gore.

And why?- because it brings self-approbation;
Whereas the other, after all its glare,
Shouts, bridges, arches, pensions from a nation,
Which (it may be) has not much left to spare,
A higher title, or a loftier station,
Though they may make Corruption gape or stare,
Yet, in the end, except in Freedom's battles,
Are nothing but a child of Murder's rattles.

[...]

Lord Byron "Don Juan", Canto the eighth.

3D abstract Nº8 (or "Curves")

Nothing important: when I was trying to produce an Evolutionary Art program to work Interactively with Genetic Algorithms to create images in 3D, at the end of 2007, this was my eighth 3D abstract. In fact I "discovered" that it was very difficult to create anything except for abstracts; however, slight exceptions had happened.

The melodic curves of speech are an expression of the complete organism and of all phases of its spiritual activities. They demonstrate whether a man is stupid or intelligent, sleepy or awake, tired or alert. They tell us whether he is a child or an old man, whether it is morning or evening, light or darkness, heat or frost, and disclose whether a person is alone or in company. The art of dramatic writing is to compose a melodic curve that will, as if by magic, reveal immediately a human being in one definite phase of his existence.

Leoš Janáček, "Letters and Reminiscences".

Burak

After 137 days of arrest Fouad al-Farhan is free! (See left panel). I'm very happy for him, his family, and his 25 reasons why he blogs.

In George Sale's translation (I734), the opening verse of Chapter XVII of the Koran consists of these words: "Praise be unto him, who transported his servant by night, from the sacred temple of Mecca to his farther temple of Jerusalem, the circuit of which we have blessed, that we might show him some of our signs. . . ." Commentators say that the one praised is God, that his servant is Mohammed, that the sacred temple is that of Mecca, that the distant temple is that of Jerusalem, and that from Jerusalem the Prophet was transported to the seventh heaven. In the oldest versions of the legend, Mohammed is guided by a man or an angel; in those of a later date he is furnished with a heavenly steed larger than an ass and smaller than a mule. This steed is Burak, whose name means "shining. " According to Richard Burton, translator of The Book of a Thousand Nights and a Night, Moslems in India usually picture Burak with a man's face, the ears of an ass, a horse's body, and the wings and tail of a peacock.
One of the Islamic legends tells that Burak, on leaving the ground, tipped a jar of water. The Prophet was taken up to the seventh heaven, along the way speaking in each of the heavens with the patriarchs and angels living there, and he crossed the Unity and felt a coldness that chilled his heart when the Lord laid a hand on his shoulder. Man's time is not commensurate with God's time; on his return the Prophet raised the jar, out of which not a single drop had yet been spilled.
Miguel Asin Palacios, the twentieth-century Spanish Orientalist, speaks of a mystic from Murcia of the I zoo's who, in an allegory entitled the Book of the Night Journey to the Majesty of the All-Generous, has seen in Burak a symbol of divine love. In another text he speaks of the "Burak of the pureness of heart."

Jorge Luis Borges, "The book of imaginary beings".

Under the microscope

Here's a new one, finished today. It is rare that I post an image so fast after finished but it's a vision of what I sneezed! and under the microscope! I couldn't resist ;-)

Here too are the dreaming landscapes,
lunar, derelict.
Here too are the masses,
tillers of the soil.
And cells, fighters
who lay down their lives for a song.

Here too are cemeteries,
fame and snow.
And I hear the murmuring,
the revolt of immense estates.

Miroslav Holub, "In the microscope".

Combustion

This image remind me of a video about an engine's ignition that I saw during highschool, many years ago. And the words of Novalis just gave it the deepness I wanted.

If our Bodily Life is a burning, our Spiritual Life is a being burnt, a Combustion (or, is precisely the inverse the case?); Death, therefore, perhaps a Change of Capacity.

Novalis, quoted by Thomas Carlyle in his essay "Novalis".

Abstract Nº66

It isn't beauty that we love, he thought, it's failure - the failure to stay young for ever, the failure of nerves, the failure of the body. Beauty is like success: we can't love it for long.

Graham Greene, "The heart of the matter" (Book 3, Part 2, Chapter 3-2)

Abstract Nº65

Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries — stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region. Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded forever.

Herman Melville, "Moby-Dick", Ch. 1, (Loomings).

Happy couple

For happy couples and for L., who knows about: What starts terribly can end wonderfully.

They wanted to speak, but could not; tears stood in their eyes. They were both pale and thin; but those sick pale faces were bright with the dawn of a new future, of a full resurrection into a new life. They were renewed by love; the heart of each held infinite sources of life for the heart of the other.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, "Crime and Punishment", Epilogue.

Abstract Nº64

...And also wanted to post my preferred passage of "Eloisa to Abelard"; so I do today.

[...]

Now turn'd to Heav'n, I weep my past offence,
Now think of thee, and curse my innocence.
Of all affliction taught a lover yet,
'Tis sure the hardest science to forget!
How shall I lose the sin, yet keep the sense,
And love th' offender, yet detest th' offence?
How the dear object from the crime remove,
Or how distinguish penitence from love?
Unequal task! a passion to resign,
For hearts so touch'd, so pierc'd, so lost as mine.
Ere such a soul regains its peaceful state,
How often must it love, how often hate!
How often hope, despair, resent, regret,
Conceal, disdain — do all things but forget.
But let Heav'n seize it, all at once 'tis fir'd;
Not touch'd, but rapt; not waken'd, but inspir'd!
Oh come! oh teach me nature to subdue,
Renounce my love, my life, myself — and you.
Fill my fond heart with God alone, for he
Alone can rival, can succeed to thee.

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;
Labour and rest, that equal periods keep;
"Obedient slumbers that can wake and weep;"
Desires compos'd, affections ever ev'n,
Tears that delight, and sighs that waft to Heav'n.
Grace shines around her with serenest beams,
And whisp'ring angels prompt her golden dreams.
For her th' unfading rose of Eden blooms,
And wings of seraphs shed divine perfumes,
For her the Spouse prepares the bridal ring,
For her white virgins hymeneals sing,
To sounds of heav'nly harps she dies away,
And melts in visions of eternal day.

Far other dreams my erring soul employ,
Far other raptures, of unholy joy:
When at the close of each sad, sorrowing day,
Fancy restores what vengeance snatch'd away,
Then conscience sleeps, and leaving nature free,
All my loose soul unbounded springs to thee.
Oh curs'd, dear horrors of all-conscious night!
How glowing guilt exalts the keen delight!
Provoking Daemons all restraint remove,
And stir within me every source of love.

[...]

Alexander Pope, (My preferred passage of) "Eloisa to Abelard".

Abstract Nº63

Art is a human activity having for its purpose the transmission to others of the highest and best feelings to which men have risen.

Leo Tolstoy, "What is Art?", Chapter 8.

abstract Nº62

Popular usage has it that art is a language. For example music is a language, the language of love, or the universal language. In reply to this bit of folk wisdom some philosophers have pointed out that a language is made up of symbols. A symbol is something carrying a meaning, and as such it exists to be understood, to impart information whether conceptual or factual. If a work of art is a symbol, then its value is either cognitive or practical and its purpose is to carry information. Almost with one accord, though, aestheticians deny that art is either cognitive or practical in its proper function. Consequently most of them reject the theory that a work of art is a symbol as a visciously intellectualistic theory which misses the whole meaning of fine art.

Still the rumor persists that art does have a meaning. A testi­mony to the persuasiveness of this conviction are the several theories which maintain that art is expressive: E. F. Carritt's theory, for example, and Croce's. For expressing is the making of an object in such a fashion that it conveys a meaning, and works of art are so made. Then art, if it has a meaning, must also be symbolic; it must in some sense be a language.

Edward G. Ballard, "Art and Analysis: An Essay toward a Theory in Aesthetics" (Chapter IV).

Pastel flower

Wanted to post my favourite part of the book "Zophiel" too, by Gowen Brooks; a book that I like very much, it is sort of a love story of a fallen angel for a beautiful maiden, and I like this part not only because of the reference to painting.

[...]

Thou who wert born of Psyche and of Love
And fondly nurst on Poesy's warm breast
Painting, oh, power adored!
My country's sons have poured
To thee their orisons; and thou hast blest
Their votive sighs, nor vainly have they strove.

Thou who art wont to soothe the varied pain
That ceaseless throbs at absent lover's heart,
Who first bestowed thine aid
On the young Rhodian maid
When doomed, from him whose love was life, to part,
From a lone bard accept an humble heartfelt strain.

[...]

Maria Gowen Brooks, (Excerpt of) "Zophiel".

Abstract Nº61

Wanted to post this fragment of Thoreau:

[...]

Is't then too late the damage to repair?
Distance, forsooth, from my weak grasp hath reft
The empty husk, and clutched the useless tare,
But in my hands the wheat and kernel left.

If I but love that virtue which he is,
Though it be scented in the morning air,
Still shall we be truest acquaintances,
Nor mortals know a sympathy more rare.

Friendship is evanescent in every man's experience, and remembered like heat lightning in past summers. Fair and flitting like a summer cloud; -there is always some vapor in the air, no matter how long the drought; there are even April showers. Surely from time to time, for its vestiges never depart, it floats through our atmosphere. It takes place, like vegetation in so many materials, because there is such a law, but always without permanent form, though ancient and familiar as the sun and moon, and as sure to come again.
The heart is forever inexperienced.

[...]

Henry David Thoreau, (One of my favourite fragments of) "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers".

Jupiter

The most difficult poet in spanish you may find. He's obviously talking about the mythical Jupiter, while I just tried to make the image alike to the planet.

Thundering monsignor, since when do you
hurl bolts at juveniles? I can't count up
how many plumes you had to saddle for
him who even these days bears your cup.

The Phrygian youth, of whom antiquity
his beauty praises so, should kiss the foot
of him who was for Spain splendor so great,
and scant, but fatal, now is merely soot.

Your minister, no gryphon, surely harsh,
which Steropes had forged in Lipari,
a bezoar I say of a new Peru,

the petals kindled of a fragile flower,
and not the towering Ceraunian peaks.
Oh Jupiter, oh you, it's always you!

Luis de Góngora, "To Jupiter".


Here, the original:

Tonante monseñor, ¿de cuándo acá
fulminas jovenetos? Yo no sé
cuánta pluma ensillaste para el que
sirviéndote la copa aún hoy está.

El garzón frigio, a quien de bello da
tanto la antigüedad, besara el pie
al que mucho de España esplendor fue,
y poca, mas fatal, ceniza es ya.

Ministro, no grifaño, duro sí,
que en Líparis Estérope forjó,
piedra digo bezar de otro Pirú,

las hojas inflamó de un alhelí,
y los Acroceraunios montes no.
¡Oh Júpiter, o tú, mil veces tú!

Luis de Góngora, "A Júpiter".

Abstract Nº60

I've handled colour as a man should behave. You may conclude that I consider ethics and aesthetics as one.

Josef Albers, from an interview with Katherine Kuh.

Two hearts

Time, hurry my Love to me:
Haste, haste! Lov'st not good company?
Here's but a heart-break sandy waste
'Twixt Now and Then. Why, killing haste
Were best, dear Time, for thee, for thee!

Oh, would that I might divine
Thy name beyond the zodiac sign
Wherefrom our times-to-come descend.
He called thee `Sometime'. Change it, friend:
`Now-time' sounds so much more fine!

Sweet Sometime, fly fast to me:
Poor Now-time sits in the Lonesome-tree
And broods as gray as any dove,
And calls, `When wilt thou come, O Love?'
And pleads across the waste to thee.

Good Moment, that giv'st him me,
Wast ever in love? Maybe, maybe
Thou'lt be this heavenly velvet time
When Day and Night as rhyme and rhyme
Set lip to lip dusk-modestly;

Or haply some noon afar,
— O life's top bud, mixt rose and star,
How ever can thine utmost sweet
Be star-consummate, rose-complete,
Till thy rich reds full opened are?

Well, be it dusk-time or noon-time,
I ask but one small boon, Time:
Come thou in night, come thou in day,
I care not, I care not: have thine own way,
But only, but only, come soon, Time.

Sidney Lanier, "Special pledging".

Abstract Nº59

On a very old glass at Market-Hill

Frail glass! thou mortal art as well as I;
Though none can tell which of us first shall die.


Answered ExTempore by Dr. Swift

We both are mortal; but thou, frailer creature,
May'st die, like me, by chance, but not by nature.

Jonathan Swift, "The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume II"

Bioluminiscent flora II

Light breaks where no sun shines;
Where no sea runs, the waters of the heart
Push in their tides;
And, broken ghosts with glowworms in their heads,
The things of light
File through the flesh where no flesh decks the bones.

A candle in the thighs
Warms youth and seed and burns the seeds of age;
Where no seed stirs,
The fruit of man unwrinkles in the stars,
Bright as a fig;
Where no wax is, the candle shows its hairs.

Dawn breaks behind the eyes;
From poles of skull and toe the windy blood
Slides like a sea;
Nor fenced, nor staked, the gushers of the sky
Spout to the rod
Divining in a smile the oil of tears.

Night in the sockets rounds,
Like some pitch moon, the limit of the globes;
Day lights the bone;
Where no cold is, the skinning gales unpin
The winter's robes;
The film of spring is hanging from the lids.

Light breaks on secret lots,
On tips of thought where thoughts smell in the rain;
When logics die,
The secret of the soil grows through the eye,
And blood jumps in the sun;
Above the waste allotments the dawn halts.

Dylan Thomas, "Light breaks where no sun shines".

Abstract Nº58

Your voice is the breath of flowers,
your voice is the harmony of swans;
the splendor of the day is your glance,
and the color of roses is your color.

You lend new life and hope
to a heart that already died for love:
you grow in the desert of my life
like a flower on a bleak plateau.

Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, Rhyme LXXXIV.

The original in spanish (Rima LXXXIV):

Tu voz es el aliento de las flores,
tu voz es de los cisnes la armonía;
es tu mirada el esplendor del día,
y el color de la rosa es tu color.

Tú prestas nueva vida y esperanza
a un corazón para el amor ya muerto:
tú creces de mi vida en el desierto
como crece en un páramo la flor.

Dangerous flower

Deeper and bolder truths be careful, my friends, of avowing;
For as soon as ye do all the world on ye will fall.

Friedrich von Schiller, "Dangerous Consequences".

Abstract Nº57

The first worship of idols was certainly fear of the things in the world, but, connected with this, fear of the necessity of the things, and, connected with this, fear of responsibility for the things. So tremendous did this responsibility appear that people did not even dare to impose it upon one single extra-human entity, for even the mediation of one being would not have sufficiently lightened human responsibility, intercourse with only one being would still have been all too deeply tainted with responsibility, and that is why each thing was given the responsibility for itself, more indeed, these things were also given a degree of responsibility for man.

Franz Kafka, "The Blue Octavo Notebooks", 92.

Lucky in love

A supposed four-leaf clover made of supposed heart-shaped leaves. For those who already are lucky in love, and for the wannabe's.

There is no chance, no destiny, no fate,
Can circumvent or hinder or control
The firm resolve of a determined soul.
Gifts count for nothing; will alone is great;
All things give way before it, soon or late.
What obstacle can stay the mighty force
Of the sea-seeking river in its course,
Or cause the ascending orb of day to wait?
Each well-born soul must win what it deserves.
Let the fool prate of luck. The fortunate
Is he whose earnest purpose never swerves,
Whose slightest action or inaction serves
The one great aim. Why, even Death stands still,
And waits an hour sometimes for such a will.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox, "Will".

Abstract Nº56

When they are preparing for war, those who rule by force speak most copiously about peace until they have completed the mobilization process.

Stefan Zweig, "Sternstunden der Menschheit" (Stellar Moments in Human History).

Horizon

I saw a man pursuing the horizon;
Round and round they sped.
I was
disturbed at this;
I accosted the man.
"It is futile," I said,
"You
can never — "

"You lie," he cried,
And ran on.

Stephen Maria Crane, (poem named after the first line).

Spider shape

A noiseless, patient spider,
I mark'd, where, on a little promontory, it stood, isolated;
Mark'd how, to explore the vacant, vast surrounding,
It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself;
Ever unreeling them—ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you, O my Soul, where you stand,
Surrounded, surrounded, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing,—seeking the spheres, to connect them;
Till the bridge you will need, be form'd—till the ductile anchor hold;
Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my Soul.

Walt Whitman, “Leaves of grass”.

Abstract Nº55

Im Kampf zwischen Dir und der Welt, sekundiere der Welt.
(In the struggle between yourself and the world, second the world.)

Franz Kafka, "The Blue Octavo Notebooks", 52.

Abstract Nº54

Beyond a certain point there is no return. This point has to be reached.

Franz Kafka, "The Blue Octavo Notebooks", 5.

Bioluminiscent flora

Again, just felt like illustrating this poem that I like.

Light as the linnet on my way I start,
For all my pack I bear a chartered heart.
Forth on the world without a guide or chart,
Content to know, through all man's varying fates,
The eternal woman by the wayside waits.

Robert Louis Stevenson, poem named after the first line.