by Osip Mandelstam (1891 – 1938).

Sisters

Sisters – Heaviness and Tenderness- you look the same.
Wasps and bees both suck the heavy rose.
Man dies, and the hot sand cools again.
Carried off on a black stretcher, yesterday’s sun goes.

Oh, honeycombs’ heaviness, nets’ tenderness,
it’s easier to lift a stone than to say your name!
I have one purpose left, a golden purpose,
how, from time’s weight, to free myself again.

I drink the turbid air like a dark water.
The rose was earth; time, ploughed from underneath.
Woven, the heavy, tender roses, in a slow vortex,
the roses, heaviness and tenderness, in a double-wreath.

Notes:
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/mandelst.htm
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/698

Material for the Stout-Hearted Reader to Ruminate

♦ Essays, Lectures & Speeches ♦

—   —   —

Seán MacBride (1904 –1988) was an Irish statesman and head of various international agencies, including Chairman of Amnesty International, President of the International Peace Bureau, Geneva, Switzerland and President of the Commission of Namibia, United Nations, New York. He shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1974 with Eisaku Sato, the Prime Minister of Japan.

This week’s text is his Nobel Peace lecture, “The Imperatives of Survival”, delivered on December 12, 1974. MacBride’s lecture speaks of the consequences of some of the technological advancements made in the twentieth century.

“This stupendous scientific and material revolution has changed practically every factor in our ecology and society…

Peace then has to be the DESPERATE IMPERATIVE of humanity. Many imperatives flow from this only too obvious conclusion. These imperatives would be comparatively easier of achievement if those in authority throughout the world were imbued with an ethic that made world peace the primary objective and if they were inspired by a moral sense of social responsibility. It should be the primary role of the Churches to build this new morality.

The practical imperatives for peace are many and far-reaching. But there is no shortcut and each must be tackled energetically. They are: 

1. General and Complete Disarmament – including nuclear weapons.
2. The glorification of peace and not of war.
3. The effective protection of human rights and minorities at national and international levels.
4. Automatic and de-politicized mechanism for the settlement of international and non-international disputes that may endanger peace or that are causing injustices.
5. An international order that will ensure a fair distribution of all essential products.
6. An International Court of Justice and legal system with full automatic jurisdiction to rectify injustice or abuse of power.
7. An international peace-keeping force and police force with limited function.
8. Ultimately, a world parliament and government.”

Join others from around the world in this weekly reading event! You can find MacBride’s text at this website:

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1974/macbride-lecture.html

by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik (1826 – 1887).

In Our Boat

Stars trembling o’er us and sunset before us,
Mountains in shadow and forests asleep;
Down the dim river we float on forever,
Speak not, ah, breathe not—there’s peace on the deep.

Come not, pale sorrow, flee till to-morrow;
Rest softly falling o’er eyelids that weep;
While down the river we float on forever,
Speak not, ah, breathe not—there’s peace on the deep.

As the waves cover the depths we glide over,
So let the past in forgetfulness sleep,
While down the river we float on forever,
Speak not, ah, breathe not—there’s peace on the deep.

Heaven shine above us, bless all that love us;
All whom we love in thy tenderness keep!
While down the river we float on forever,
Speak not, ah, breathe not—there’s peace on the deep.

Notes:
http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1057
http://www.answers.com/topic/dinah-maria-mulock

by  Mathilde Blind ( 1841 – 1896).

Autumn Tints

Coral colored yew-berries
Strew the garden ways,
Hollyhocks and sunflowers
Make a dazzling blaze
In these latter days.

Marigolds by cottage doors
Flaunt their golden pride,
Crimson-punctured bramble leaves
Dapple far and wide
The green mountain-side

Far away, on hilly slopes
Where fleet rivulets run,
Miles on miles of tangled fern,
Burnished by the sun,
Glow a copper dun.

For the year that’s on the wane,
Gathering all its fire,
Flares up through the kindling world
As, ere they expire,
Flames leap high and higher.

Notes:
http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=446
http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Mathilde_Blind
http://orlando.cambridge.org/public/svPeople?person_id=blinma

by A. Mary F. Robinson (1857 – 1944).

Dawn Angels

All night I watched awake for morning,
At last the East grew all a flame,
The birds for welcome sang, or warning,
And with their singing morning came.

Along the gold-green heavens drifted
Pale wandering souls that shun the light,
Whose cloudy pinions, torn and rifted,
Had beat the bars of Heaven all night.

These clustered round the moon, but higher
A troop of shining spirits went,
Who were not made of wind or fire,
But some divine dream-element.

Some held the Light, while those remaining
Shook out their harvest-colored wings,
A faint unusual music raining,
(Whose sound was light) on earthly things.

They sang, and as a mighty river
Their voices washed the night away,
From East to West ran one white shiver,
And waxen strong their song was Day.

Notes:
http://orlando.cambridge.org/public/svPeople?person_id=robiam

by Hamlin Garland (1860 –  1940).

Do You Fear the Wind?

Do you fear the force of the wind,
The slash of the rain?
Go face them and fight them,
Be savage again.
Go hungry and cold like the wolf,
Go wade like the crane:
The palms of your hands will thicken,
The skin of your cheek will tan,
You’ll grow ragged and weary and swarthy,
But you’ll walk like a man!

Notes:
http://uncw.edu/garland/
http://www.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/garland.htm

by Luis de Góngora  (1561 – 1627).

To the sun because it rose while he was
with a woman and he had to leave her

 

Already kissing two crystalline hands,
Already clinging to a white, smooth neck,
Already scattering ’round it all that hair,
which Love from the gold in its mines had torn;
already breaking on those precious pearls
a thousand sweet words, not deserving it,
already plucking from each lovely lip
crimson roses with no fear of thorns,

was I, oh shimmering and jealous Sun,
when your light, shattering my eyes,
killed my delight and stopped what I’d begun.

If heaven has not yet become too weak,
in order that yours cease to give me pain,
may its rays kill you as they did your son.

(transl.  by Alix Ingber, 1995)

Notes:
http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Luis_de_G%C3%B3ngora#encyclopedia
http://www.answers.com/topic/lu-s-de-g-ngora-y-argote
http://sonnets.spanish.sbc.edu/

 

by William Butler Yeats (1865 – 1939).

To an Isle in the Water

Shy one, shy one,
Shy one of my heart,
She moves in the firelight
Pensively apart.
 
She carries in the dishes,
And lays them in a row.
To an isle in the water
With her would I go.
 
She carries in the candles,
And lights the curtained room,
Shy in the doorway
And shy in the gloom;
 
And shy as a rabbit,
Helpful and shy.
To an isle in the water
With her would I fly.

Notes:
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/wbyeats.htm
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1923/yeats-bio.html

by Christina Rossetti (1830 – 1894).

One Day (1866)

I will tell you when they met:
In the limpid days of Spring;
Elder boughs were budding yet,
Oaken boughs looked wintry still,
But primrose and veined violet
In the mossful turf were set,
While meeting birds made haste to sing
And build with right good will.

I will tell you when they parted:
When plenteous Autumn sheaves were brown,
Then they parted heavy-hearted;
The full rejoicing sun looked down
As grand as in the days before;
Only they had lost a crown;
Only to them those days of yore
Could come back nevermore.

When shall they meet? I cannot tell,
Indeed, when they shall meet again,
Except some day in Paradise:
For this they wait, one waits in pain.
Beyond the sea of death love lies
For ever, yesterday, to-day;
Angels shall ask them, ‘Is it well?’
And they shall answer, ‘Yea.’

Notes:
http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/crossetti/index.html
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/rossetti.htm

Material for the Stout-Hearted Reader to Ruminate

♦ Essays, Lectures & Speeches ♦

—   —   —

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 – 1860) was a German philosopher known for his atheistic pessimism and philosophical clarity. He was among the first to contend that at its core, the universe is not a rational place.  His best-known work is The World as Will and Representation (1818). 

This week’s text is Schopenhauer’s essay “On Education” in Studies in Pessimism (1890), which is a selection and translation by T. Bailey Saunders of nine essays from Schopenhauer’s Parerga und Paralipomena published in1851.

He based his argument in “On Education” on the statement that, “The human intellect is said to be so constituted that general ideas arise by abstraction from particular observations, and therefore come after them in point of time.”  He then argued that education, especially for children less than 12 years of age, should enrich the opportunities for observation and limit the amount of general ideas taught.  He felt this to be a more natural way of learning that minimized the need to unlearn fallacies later on.

Join others from around the world in this weekly reading event! You can find Schopenhauer’s text at these websites:

http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/arthur/pessimism/chapter6.html

http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/22574/

http://www2.hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/schopenhauer/Schopenhauer-4.pdf