"Raleigh wore black velvet, with a myriad pearls sewn on loosely so that in a press they would fall and roll among the crowd, to be fought over as he passed on, with his gold earring, his princely perfume. Raleigh’s heart, so his myth went, was broken by the Queen. She called him “Water,” making fun of his name, and he, in his epic love-poem to her, called himself 'Ocean'."-(Turner)
ARIEL SINGS
"Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell" (Tempest Act 1.2 V. 397-407 Pg. 742)
(Aside: Notice 400 is forgot)
Here, said she,
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!) -( T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland", Burial of The Dead, Vrs.46-7)
'What is that noise?'
The wind under the door.
What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?'
Nothing again nothing.
'Do
'You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you
remember
'Nothing?'
I remember
Those are pearls that were his eyes.
'Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your
head?' -A game of Chess
I do not find
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.
I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.
Thank you. -Burial of the dead
"The way up and the way down are one and the same" (Heraclitus Fragmentes)
(Greek at the beginning of T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets)
Contradiction is life.
IV. Death by Water
"Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
And the profit and loss.
A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Considering Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you." (Eliot, Wasteland)
Phlebas in Latin means felibirus- "to be wept over, to be lamented."
Phoenicians lived in Canaan, a narrow strip of land between the Sea and the Mountains. They had not enough land to live off of so they lived off of the sea.Dans Le Restaurante
Phlebas, the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls and the wind's howl of
Cornwall,
And the profit and loss, and the cargo ships of pewter:
An undertow took him far away,
Passing the stages of his former life.
Go figure, it was a hard fate;
Nevertheless, he was once a handsome man, of great stature. (Eliot, "In the Restaurant")
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown. (Eliot, Prufrock)
The music is successful with a 'dying fall'
Now that we talk of dying-
And should I have the right to smile? -(Eliot, Portrait of a Lady)
"[T]his bird now chanced to intercept its broad fluttering wings between the hammer and the wood; and simultaneously feeling that ethereal thrill, the submerged savage beneath, in his death-gasp, kept his hammer frozen there; and so bird of heaven, with archangelic shrieks, and his imperial beak thrust upwards, and his whole captive form folded in the flag of Ahab, went down with his ship, which, like Satan, would not sink to hell till she had dragged a living part of heaven along with her, and helmeted herself with it." -Meville, Moby Dick.
Epilogue
Spoken by William Shakespeare as Prospero
Now my charms are all o'erthrown,
And what strength I have's mine own,
Which is most faint. Now 'tis true
I must be here confined by you,
Or sent to Naples. Let me not,
Since I have my dukedom got
And pardoned the deceiver, dwell
in this bare island by your spell;
But release me from my bands
With the help of your good hands.
Gentle breath of yours my sails
Must fill, or else my project fails,
Which was to please. Now I want
Spirits to enforce, art to enchant;
And my ending is despair
Unless I be relieved by prayer,
Which pierces so that it assaults
Mercy itself and frees all faults.
As you from crimes would pardoned be,
Let your indulgence set me free. (Shakespeare, The Tempest)
“No use covering up our eyes with our hands like Michelangelo’s damned soul” (Turner School of Night).
“In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo” (Eliot, Prufrock)
“Even in the sciences the boundaries of the world have cracked, giving us a glimpse of a void beyond. No use covering up our eyes with our hands like Michelangelo’s damned soul: the Renaissance pride of knowledge makes us peer between our own fingers” (Turner School of Night).
“In the room the women come and go
Taking of Michelangelo.
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, ‘Do I dare?’ and, ‘Do I dare?’
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spit in the middle of my hair—
(They will say: ‘How his hair is growing thin!’)
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to
The chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a
Simple pin-
(They will say: ‘But how his arms and legs are
Thin!’)
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?” –(Eliot, Prufrock)
“Fludd himself was probably on personal terms with several members of the School in its later years. If we generalize his principles once more, we are very close to the ideas we have already detected as characteristic of the School of Night. The principle of the lever, whereby a lesser weight balances a greater across a fulcrum by means of a proportionate difference in the length of the beam ends, can be extended and abstracted in a very suggestive way. In theory, for instance, an infinite weight could be properly balanced by an infinitesimal one if the scales are properly biassed: the world against a feather. The weightless thoughts of man can effectively control the massive universe itself, if correct principles of rational transformation–proper levers, pulleys, lenses, clocks, quadrants–can be found. The microcosm can not only reflect, but control, the macrocosm.” (Turner)
“And in The Tempest, islanded off from history, the Magician-Artist-Scientist-Philosopher is free within his magical theatre to revise the moral rules of the world for the better” (Turner)
“These fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why then Ile fit you.” (Eliot Wasteland, What the Thunder Said)
(Ile is french for Isle)
“What is translation if language is no less real than the world? Can we change the rules? Should we change the rules?” (Turner)
MIRANDA
O, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
HOw beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in't! -The Tempest
GNOSIS is a spiritual knowledge of a saint, or a mystically enlightened person.
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