Thoughts

Isn't it amazing how one thought always leads to another? I was writing a paper on "What is literacy" and talked about if "literacy" is the root to the great branches of communication then where does art fit in? Art communicates, at least that is what I think, so how is art not literacy. Then my mind wandered to Nerval and his surreal imaging and hints at mythology with his poems. Is this an art, or is this literacy? Maybe both? One can never know where my thoughts will lead me...

El Desdichado [The Disinherited]

Gerard De Nerval (1808-1855)

Translation by Robert Duncan

I am the dark one,--the widower,--the unconsoled,

The prince of Aquitaine at his stricken tower:

My sole star is dead,--and my constillated lute

Bears the black sun of the Melancolia.

In the night of the tomb, you who consoled me,

Give me back Mount Posilipo and the Italian Sea,

The flower which pleased so my desolate heart,

And the trellis where the grape vine unites with the rose.

Am I Amor or Phoebus?...Lusignan or Biron?

My forehead is still red from the kiss of the queen;

I have dreamed in the grotto where the mermaid swims...

And two times victorious I have crosst the Acheron:

Modulating turn by turn on the lyre of Orpheus

The sighs of the siant and the cries of the fay.