“
As a poet I hold the most archaic values on earth . . . the fertility of the soil, the magic of animals, the power-vision in solitude, the terrifying initiation and rebirth, the love and ecstasy of the dance, the common work of the tribe. I try to hold both history and the wilderness in mind, that my poems may approach the true measure of things and stand against the unbalance and ignorance of our times.
”
”
Gary Snyder
“
We will go far away, to nowhere, to conquer, to fertilize until we become tired. Then we will stop and there will be our home.
”
”
Dejan Stojanovic
“
You’re not doing well and finally I don’t have to
pretend to be so interested in your on going tragedy,
but
I’ll rob the bank that gave you the impression that
money is more fruitful than words, and
I’ll cut holes in the ozone if it means you have one less day of rain.
I’ll walk you to the hospital,
I’ll wait in a white room that reeks of hand sanitizer and latex for the results from the MRI scan that tries to
locate the malady that keeps your mind guessing, and
I want to write you a poem every day until my hand breaks
and assure you that you’ll find your place,
it’s just
the world has a funny way of
hiding spots fertile enough for
bodies like yours to grow roots.
and
I miss you like a dart hits the iris of a bullseye,
or a train ticket screams 4:30 at 4:47, I
wanted to tell you that it’s my birthday on Thursday
and I would have wanted you to
give me the gift of your guts on the floor, one last time,
to see if you still had it in you.
I hope our ghosts aren’t eating you alive.
If I’m to speak for myself, I’ll tell you that
the universe is twice as big as we think it is
and you’re the only one that made that idea
less devastating.
”
”
Lucas Regazzi
“
And I think of the sins I already belong to, all the secrets I already know. I am already fertile with the forest and the fog, my mind pregnant with all the things she wishes I didn’t know.
”
”
Nikita Gill (Fierce Fairytales: Poems and Stories to Stir Your Soul)
“
From her thighs, she gives you life
And how you treat she who gives you life
Shows how much you value the life given to you by the Creator.
And from seed to dust
There is ONE soul above all others --
That you must always show patience, respect, and trust
And this woman is your mother.
And when your soul departs your body
And your deeds are weighed against the feather
There is only one soul who can save yours
And this woman is your mother.
And when the heart of the universe
Asks her hair and mind,
Whether you were gentle and kind to her
Her heart will be forced to remain silent
And her hair will speak freely as a separate entity,
Very much like the seaweed in the sea --
It will reveal all that it has heard and seen.
This woman whose heart has seen yours,
First before anybody else in the world,
And whose womb had opened the door
For your eyes to experience light and more --
Is your very own MOTHER.
So, no matter whether your mother has been cruel,
Manipulative, abusive, mentally sick, or simply childish
How you treat her is the ultimate test.
If she misguides you, forgive her and show her the right way
With simple wisdom, gentleness, and kindness.
And always remember,
That the queen in the Creator's kingdom,
Who sits on the throne of all existence,
Is exactly the same as in yours.
And her name is,
THE DIVINE MOTHER.
”
”
Suzy Kassem (Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem)
“
CARL SAGAN SAID that if you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe. When he says “from scratch,” he means from
nothing. He means from a time before the world even existed. If you want to make an apple pie from nothing at all, you have to start with the Big Bang and expanding universes, neutrons, ions, atoms, black holes, suns, moons, ocean tides, the Milky Way, Earth, evolution, dinosaurs, extinction- level events, platypuses,
Homo erectus, Cro- Magnon man, etc. You have to start at the beginning. You must invent fire. You need water and fertile soil and seeds. You need cows and people to milk them and more people to churn that milk into butter. You need wheat and sugar cane and apple trees. You need chemistry and biology. For a really good apple pie, you need the arts. For an apple pie that can last for generations, you need the printing press and the Industrial Revolution and maybe even a poem.To make a thing as simple as an apple pie, you have to create the whole wide world.
”
”
Nicola Yoon (The Sun Is Also a Star)
“
Nothing any man can do will improve that genius; but the genius needs his mind, and he can broaden that mind, fertilize it with knowledge of all kinds, improve its powers of expression; supply the genius, in short, with an orchestra instead of a tin whistle. All our little great men, our one-poem poets, our one-picture painters, have merely failed to perfect themselves as instruments. The Genius who wrote The Ancient Mariner is no less sublime than he who wrote The Tempest; but Coleridge had some incapacity to catch and express the thoughts of his genius - was ever such wooden stuff as his conscious work? - while Shakespeare had the knack of acquiring the knowledge necessary to the expression of every conceivable harmony, and his technique was sufficiently fluent to transcribe with ease.
”
”
Aleister Crowley (Moonchild)
“
To plunge one thing into the shape or nature of another is a fundamental gesture of creative insight, part of how we make for ourselves a world more expansive, deft, fertile, and startling in richness.
”
”
Jane Hirshfield (Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World)
“
Now I become myself. It's taken
Time, may years and places;
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people's faces,
Run madly, as if Time were there,
Terribly old, crying a warning,
"Hurry, you will be dead before--"
(What? Before you reach the morning?
Or the end off the poem is clear?
Or love safe in the walled city?)
Now to stand still, to be here,
Feel my own weight and density!
The black shadow on the paper
Is my hand; the shadow of a word
As thought shapes the shaper
Falls heavy on the page, is heard.
All fuses now, falls into place
From wish to action, word to silence,
My work, my love, my time, my face
Gather into one intense
Gesture of growing like a plant.
As slowly as the ripening fruit
Fertile, detached, and always spent,
Falls but does not exhaust the root,
So all the poem is, can give,
Grows in me to become the song;
Made so and rooted by love.
Now there is time and Time is young.
O, in this single hour I live
All of myself and do not move.
I, pursued, who madly ran,
Stand still, stand still, and stop in the sun.
”
”
May Sarton
“
Beloved,
my ears listen for you,
my lips thirst for you,
my eyes search for you,
and darkness brings light,
but light brings truth
to be fed by your sight.
And when the winds of Persia blew,
for a moment in time,
something awakened in my fertile mind;
an awareness boldly standing in
my view, that my heart has always,
and only, bled for you.
”
”
V.S. Atbay
“
There are gods
of fertility,
corn, childbirth,
& police
brutality--this last
is offered praise
& sacrifice
near weekly
& still cannot
be sated
”
”
Kevin Young (Brown: Poems)
“
Deep in the collective psyche, religious sectors, beset by morality and tormented by their own inner shadows, issue a silent plea to the great system that rules our lives. They desperately seek to avoid the incandescent glare of truth, fearing that its revealing light will free them from the chains they themselves have forged. Thus they remain in a state of denial. Thus they live, clinging like sows to the gestation of their perversities, as if in that fertile soil they would find the seed of their salvation."--From the book The Devil's Writer
”
”
Marcos Orowitz (Talent for Horror: Homage to Edgard Allan Poe ("Talent for Horror" Series book revelation 2022))
“
That I might be allowed to dream the other
Whose fertile memory will be a part
Of all the days of man, I humbly pray;
My god, my dreamer, keep on dreaming me
”
”
Jorge Luis Borges (Selected Poems)
“
So Man, grown vigorous now, holds himself ripe to breed, daily devises how to ejaculate his seed and boldly fertilize the black womb of the unconsenting skies.
”
”
C.S. Lewis (Poems)
“
Fertile ether where the destruction of worlds
is a single heart that burns itself out with love.
”
”
Vicente Aleixandre (A Longing for the Light: Selected Poems)
“
what has no place in a poem has no place in my house.
”
”
Yukio Mishima (Spring Snow (The Sea of Fertility, #1))
“
As to animals," said the Count unexpectedly, "whatever one says, I maintain that the rodent family has a certain charm about it."
"The rodent family . . . ?" replied the Baron, not getting the drift at all.
"Rabbits, marmots, squirrels, and the like."
"You have pets of that sort, sir?"
"No, sir, not at all. Too much of an odor. It would be all over the house."
"Ah, I see. Very charming, but you wouldn't have them in the house, is that it?"
"Well, sir, in the first place, they seem to have been ignored by the poets, d'you see. And what has no place in a poem has no place in my house. That's my family rule."
"I see."
"No, I don't keep them as pets. But they're such fuzzy, timid little creatures that I can't help thinking there's no more charming animal."
"Yes, Count, I quite agree."
"Actually, sir, every charming creature, no matter what sort, seems to have a strong odor."
"Yes, indeed, sir. I believe one might say so.
”
”
Yukio Mishima (Spring Snow (The Sea of Fertility, #1))
“
The magic in a word remains magic even if it is not understood, and loses none of its power. Poems may be understandable or they may not, but they must be good, and they must be real.
From the examples of the algebraic signs on the walls of Kovalevskaia's nursery that had such a decisive influence on the child's fate, and from the example of spells, it is clear we cannot demand of all language: "be easy to understand, like the sign in the street." The speech of higher intelligence, even when it is not understandable, falls like seed into the fertile soil of the soul and only much later, in mysterious ways, does it bring forth its shoots. Does the earth understand the writing of the seeds a farmer scatters on its surface? No. But the grain still ripens in autumn, in response to those seeds. In any case, I certainly do not maintain that every incomprehensible piece of writing is beautiful. I mean only that we must not reject a piece of writing simply because it is incomprehensible to a particular group of readers.
”
”
Velimir Khlebnikov
“
It was a destructive novel of acquired ideas. To finally wake up in a state of creative anguish, to lose oneself in order to find oneself again, to sleep in the arms of a beautiful student whose name one didn't know, to fall back to sleep over a love poem-that was called existence. The harmonics of artistic creation, of fertile sensibility, of anticipated events-history in movement-that was called a privilege.
”
”
Elie Wiesel (Hostage)
“
In Ireland the three divine sisters known as na Morrigna or "The Great Macha and associated with battles and protection, magic and shape shifting, fertility and abundance, and sovereignty and the Otherworld (to varying degrees).
”
”
Sharon Paice MacLeod (Celtic Myth and Religion: A Study of Traditional Belief, with Newly Translated Prayers, Poems and Songs)
“
Tears fall like liquid leaves
into the streams and full,
autumn-coloured rivers of our blood
And liquid leaves become crystal
in our winter fortress
before they flow
shifting, changing
rich red by grace of autumn
and fertile in the spring
”
”
Tamara Rendell (Realm of the Stag King (Lunar Fire, #1))
“
Our genus, Homo, arose two and a half million years ago, and for more than ninety-nine percent of human existence, we all lived like Onwas, in small bands of nomadic hunter-gatherers. Though the groups may have been tight-knit and communal, nearly everyone, anthropologists conjecture, spent significant parts of their lives surrounded by quiet, either alone or with a few others, foraging for edible plants and stalking prey in the wild. This is who we truly are. The agricultural revolution began twelve thousand years ago, in the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East, and the planet was swiftly reorganized into villages and cities and nations, and soon the average person spent virtually no time alone at all. To a thin but steady stream of people, this was unacceptable, so they escaped. Recorded history extends back five thousand years, and for as long as humans have been writing, we have been writing about hermits. It’s a primal fascination. Chinese texts etched on animal bones, as well as the clay tablets containing the Epic of Gilgamesh, a poem from Mesopotamia dating to around 2000 B.C., refer to shamans or wild men residing alone in the woods. People
”
”
Michael Finkel (The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit)
“
On a spring day in 1988…a Massachusetts man who collected books about local history was rummaging through a bin in a New Hampshire antiques barn when something caught his eye. Beneath texts on fertilizers and farm machines lay a slim, worn pamphlet with tea-colored paper covers, titled Tamerlane and Other Poems, by an unnamed author identified simply as “a Bostonian.” He was fairly certain he had found something exceptional, paid the $15 price, and headed home, where Tamerlane would spend only one night. The next day, he contacted Sotheby’s, and they confirmed his suspicion that he had just made one of the most exciting book discoveries in years. The pamphlet was a copy of Edgar Allan Poe’s first text, written when he was only fourteen years old, a find that fortune-seeking collectors have imagined happening upon probably more than they’d like to admit. The humble-looking, forty-page pamphlet was published in 1827 by Calvin F.S. Thomas, a relatively unknown Boston printer who specialized in apothecary labels, and its original price was about twelve cents. But this copy, looking good for its 161 years, most of which were probably spent languishing in one dusty attic box after another, would soon be auctioned for a staggering $198,000.
”
”
Allison Hoover Bartlett (The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession)
“
Exclusive emphasis on either the physical or the spiritual Whitman misses his determined intermingling of the two realms. His earliest notebook poem contained the lines, “I am the poet of the body / And I am the poet of the soul,” establishing at once the interpenetration and cross-fertilization between matter and spirit that is felt in virtually all his major poems. The earthly and the divine, the sensuous and the mystical, are never far from each other in his verse. His images flow rapidly from the minutiae of plant or animal life through parts of the human body to sweeping vistas of different times and places,
”
”
David S. Reynolds (Walt Whitman's America: A Cultural Biography)
“
Gervex's painting had a lurid and well-known literary source: it was based on Alfred de Musset's poem "Rolla," published in 1833 and 1840. The poem, a paradigm of July Monarchy romanticism, chronicles the disgrace that befalls Jacques Rolla, a son of the bourgeoisie, in the big city. The narrative of his decline — he squandered his fortune and committed suicide — is interleaved with lamentations over the moral and spiritual decadence of contemporary life. Thenineteen-year-old Rolla becomes the "most debauched man" in Paris, "where vice is the cheapest, the oldest and the most fertile in the world."
The poem tells a second story as well, that of Marie (or Maria or Marion), a pure young girl who becomes a degraded urban prostitute. Her story amplifies the poet's theme — a world in moral disarray - and provides the instrument of, and a sympathetic companion for, Rolla's climactic self-destruction. Musset is clear about his young prostitute's status: she was forced into a prostitution de la misère by economic circumstances ("what had debased her was, alas, poverty /And not love of gold"), and he frequently distinguishes her situation from that of the venal women of the courtesan rank ("Your loves are golden, lively and poetic; . . . you are not for sale at all"). He is also insistent about the tawdry circumstances in which the young woman had to practice her miserable profession ("the shameful curtains of that foul retreat," "in a hovel," "the walls of this gloomy and ramshackle room").
The segments of the poem from which Gervex drew his story — and which were published in press reviews of the painting — are these:
With a melancholy eye Rolla gazed on
The beautiful Marion asleep in her wide bed;
In spite of himself, an unnameable and diabolical horror
Made him tremble to the bone.
Marion had cost dearly. — To pay for his night
He had spent his last coins.
His friends knew it. And he, on arriving,
Had taken their hand and given his word that
In the morning no one would see him alive.
When Rolla saw the sun appear on the roofs,
He went and leaned out the window.
Rolla turned to look at Marie.
She felt exhausted, and had fallen asleep.
And thus both fled the cruelties of fate,
The child in sleep, and the man in death!
It was a moment of inaction, then, that Gervex chose to paint - that of weary repose for her and melancholic contemplation for Rolla, following the night of paid sex and just prior to his suicide.
”
”
Hollis Clayson (Painted Love: Prostitution and French Art of the Impressionist Era)
“
Society of Dead Poets and Poetesses
No, none of them actually died,
The poets continue to wander,
Speaking through the Voices of Others,
Do you think you can silence us,
When our voice is an Anthem,
When our weeping is music,
And when our immortality
Becomes alive,
Did you think the Seine
Would stop flowing
Because of a few cannon shots?
Well, I return, for I have been very silent,
Oh God! This silence screams!
They awakened those who were already awake,
Just as wine intoxicates the drunkards,
Words intoxicate the poet who,
Over time,
Realizes that those same words
That once caressed him
Become poison in his Blood,
Killing him slowly,
For the pleasure of their drinkers,
In the end, the death of the Author is a fact,
Singing to the Four Winds,
My poems are not mine,
They are poems of the world,
And my life, too,
Is no longer mine,
It is yours,
The poet is the most vulgar type of clown,
For he is the one who offers his Existence
In sacrifice for a meager attention,
Like the ugliest harlot,
Who gives her carnal pleasures
To men who no longer
Even understand what pleasure is,
Everything has become mechanical,
And mechanics became flesh,
The vagabond poet
Is the bullock who emasculates himself,
To bring fertility to those who surround him.
”
”
Geverson Ampolini
“
She has a genius,” distinguished Simon Iff. “Her dancing is a species of angelic possession, if I may coin a phrase. She comes off the stage from an interpretation of the subtlest and most spiritual music of Chopin or Tschaikowsky; and forthwith proceeds to scold, to wheedle, or to blackmail. Can you explain that reasonably by talking of ‘two sides to her character’? It is nonsense to do so. The only analogy is that of noble thinker and his stupid, dishonest, and immoral secretary. The dictation is taken down correctly, and given to the world. The last person to be enlightened by it is the secretary himself! So, I take it, is the case with all genius; only in many cases the man is in more or less conscious harmony with his genius, and strives eternally to make himself a worthier instrument for his master’s touch. The clever man, so-called, the man of talent, shuts out his genius by setting up his conscious will as a positive entity. The true man of genius deliberately subordinates himself, reduces himself to a negative, and allows his genius to play through him as It will. We all know how stupid we are when we try to do things. Seek to make any other muscle work as consistently as your heart does without your silly interference—you cannot keep it up for forty-eight hours. All this, which is truth ascertained and certain, lies at the base of the Taoistic doctrine of non-action; the plan of doing everything by seeming to do nothing. Yield yourself utterly to the Will of Heaven, and you become the omnipotent instrument of that Will. Most systems of mysticism have a similar doctrine; but that it is true in action is only properly expressed by the Chinese. Nothing that any man can do will improve that genius; but the genius needs his mind, and he can broaden that mind, fertilize it with knowledge of all kinds, improve its powers of expression; supply the genius, in short, with an orchestra instead of a tin whistle. All our little great men, our one-poem poets, our one-picture painters, have merely failed to perfect themselves as instruments.
”
”
Aleister Crowley
“
If I ever some day write an epic poem -- or somehow find my imagination fertile enough to write a novel without borrowing episodes from my colleagues right and left -- then I promise to let my heroes sleep in peace from sunset to dawn every night. Wouldn't you say daytime allows plenty of time for cut-and-thrust swordplay?
”
”
Anne Gédéon La Fite de Pelleport (The Bohemians)
“
(Writing about the Green Knight in long poem Sir Gawain and The Green Knight)
It seems safe to say, first, that the peom is not an allegory, in any simple sense of the term. Bercilak, as a supernatural creature tempting Gawain to sin, has elememts of a devil, as a genial host who leads Sir Gawain to self-knowledge, he is a friendly guide; and as a green man who dies in winter and is miraculously reborn, he has elements of a fertility deity. But he cannot be flatly equated with any of these figures without falisfyjng the complexity.
”
”
Denton Fox (Twentieth Century Interpretations of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight)
“
Beauty Ain't Beauty (The Sonnet)
Beauty is not in the eye of the beholder,
Beauty is in the heart of the beholder.
Eyes have evolved not to perceive beauty,
But to look for a fertile progenitor.
All instincts of beauty are prehistoric,
All impulse of attraction is mere heat.
Such tendency is an act of animal libido,
It has nothing to do with human heartbeat.
If you wanna discover someone's beauty,
You gotta throw the dirt off your heart.
Observe their behavior outside the body,
Only then shall you witness true beauty's path.
Across the vacuum of body lies the valley of beauty.
Defy the vacuum, and you'll realize, beauty is divinity.
”
”
Abhijit Naskar (Bulldozer on Duty)
“
Once, he showed me a picture of an ancient clay tablet, Babylonian or Sumerian, something like that, 4,000 years old. I expected it to be something holy, a poem to a fertility goddess, some ancient fable. But it was, Cyrus told me, just a lengthy complaint from a business transaction about receiving the wrong kind of copper. “The copper is substandard. I have been treated rudely. I have not accepted the copper, but I paid money for it.” I never forgot that. Cyrus was laughing of course, he thought it was hilarious. “Ancient one-star review!” he said.
”
”
Kaveh Akbar (Martyr!)
“
Resting my hands on the arms of the throne, I scanned the pews below. Not a single soul from Lasania was in attendance. None even knew that their lives and their children’s lives all hinged on tonight and what I needed to do. If they ever discovered that Roderick Mierel—the one the histories of Lasania called the Golden King—hadn’t spent day and night in the fields with his people, digging and scraping away land ruined by war until they revealed clean, fertile soil… That he hadn’t sown the land alongside his subjects; his blood, sweat, and tears building the kingdom… If they learned that the songs and poems written about him had been based on a fable, what was left of the Mierel Dynasty would surely collapse.
”
”
Jennifer L. Armentrout (A Shadow in the Ember (Flesh and Fire, #1))
“
Freyr is the embodiment of the Third Function: “He controls the rain and the shining of the sun,”—this brings Aubéron to mind—“and through them all bounty of the earth. It is good to invoke him for peace and abundance. He also determines men’s success in prosperity.”11In fact, the Njörðr–Freyr–Freya triad is the result of a process of polymorphism: Nerthus has “exploded” into three distinct deities, each of whom specializes in a specific domain within the same function. Njörðr is the patron of sailing and fishing, and Freya oversees love and pleasure. By placing the elves under Freyr’s aegis, the ancient mythographers, with Snorri Sturluson at the forefront, placed them in the sphere of fertility and fruitfulness. It is quite possible that at one time in their historical evolution, elves were gods in their own right. It is tempting to accept this hypothesis in view of the triadic expressions that insert them alongside the Æsir and the Vanir. There is a good example of this in the Eddic poem För Skírnis (Skírnir’s Journey), where we read: “I am not one of the elves, nor one of the Æsir, nor one of the shrewd Vanir.”12 But as gods, the elves would not have been singled out, and they would reflect a complex of notions centered on the Third Function—a complex that the Vanir would have absorbed.
”
”
Claude Lecouteux (The Hidden History of Elves and Dwarfs: Avatars of Invisible Realms)
“
Two Valentines are actually described in the early church, but they likely refer to the same man — a priest in Rome during the reign of Emperor Claudius II. According to tradition, Valentine, having been imprisoned and beaten, was beheaded on February 14, about 270, along the Flaminian Way. Sound romantic to you? How then did his martyrdom become a day for lovers and flowers, candy and little poems reading Roses are red… ? According to legends handed down, Valentine undercut an edict of Emperor Claudius. Wanting to more easily recruit soldiers for his army, Claudius had tried to weaken family ties by forbidding marriage. Valentine, ignoring the order, secretly married young couples in the underground church. These activities, when uncovered, led to his arrest. Furthermore, Valentine had a romantic interest of his own. While in prison he became friends with the jailer’s daughter, and being deprived of books he amused himself by cutting shapes in paper and writing notes to her. His last note arrived on the morning of his death and ended with the words “Your Valentine.” In 496 February 14 was named in his honor. By this time Christianity had long been legalized in the empire, and many pagan celebrations were being “christianized.” One of them, a Roman festival named Lupercalia, was a celebration of love and fertility in which young men put names of girls in a box, drew them out, and celebrated lovemaking. This holiday was replaced by St. Valentine’s Day with its more innocent customs of sending notes and sharing expressions of affection. Does any real truth lie behind the stories of St. Valentine? Probably. He likely conducted underground weddings and sent notes to the jailer’s daughter. He might have even signed them “Your Valentine.” And he probably died for his faith in Christ.
”
”
Robert Morgan (On This Day: 365 Amazing and Inspiring Stories about Saints, Martyrs and Heroes)
“
Where I had expected to appreciate the monuments and love the natural environment, the reality was entirely the reverse. The immense beauty of many buildings and landscapes had an immediate and visceral impact, and yet in the natural world, where I am generally most comfortable, I was hesitant. While I was duly impressed by what I saw, I could never connect bodily and emotionally. Being from a flat, dry continent, I looked forward to the prospect of soaring alps and thundering rivers, lush valleys and fertile plains, and yet when I actually behind them, I was puzzled by how muted by responses were. My largely Eurocentric education had prepared me for a sense of recognition I did not feel, and this was confounding. The paintings and poems about all these places still moved me, so I couldn't understand the queer impatience that crept up when I saw them in real time and space. Weren't these landforms and panoramas beautiful? Well, yes, of course they were, although a little bit of them seemed to go a long way. To someone from an austere landscape, they often looked too cute; they were pretty, even saccharine. I had a nagging sensation that I wasn't 'getting it.
”
”
Tim Winton (Island Home)
“
SOLEMNLY OVER THE FERTILE LAND Solemnly over the fertile land The brief and futile white cloud passes, And for a black instant the fields are touched By a cold breeze. So too in my soul the slow thought soars And darkens my mind, but I, like the field That returns to itself, return to the day, The surface of life. 31 MAY 1927
”
”
Fernando Pessoa (Fernando Pessoa & Co.: Selected Poems)
“
you are of me, that's what
and that's the meaning of fertility
hard and moist and moaning
”
”
Frank O'Hara (Lunch Poems)
“
DIALOGUE BETWEEN THE GROUND AND A FALLEN LEAF
Fallen Leaf: “I have fallen, softly,
Without harm, to find my root
Yet people continue to walk upon me as they please
And I suffer as I am destroyed”
“Just look, all things grow upon me
Yet I,” said the earth, “become less fertile by the day
It would seem you know little about true happiness
Otherwise what you said to me would not cut so deeply”
The fallen leaf spoke no more
But I had come to understand
”
”
Shi Zhi (Winter Sun: Poems (Volume 1) (Chinese Literature Today Book Series))
“
THE STUPID THINGS I’VE DONE Let your sunlight shine on this piece of dung, and dry it out, so I can be used for fuel to warm a bathhouse. Look on the terrible things I’ve done, and cause herbs and eglantine to grow out of them. The sun does this with the ground. Think what glories God can make from the fertilizer of sinning!
”
”
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi (The Book of Love: Poems of Ecstasy and Longing)
“
For Penina Mezei petrify motive in folk literature stems from ancient, mythical layers of culture that has undergone multiple transformations lost the original meaning. Therefore, the origin of this motif in the narrative folklore can be interpreted depending on the assumptions that you are the primary elements of faith in Petrify preserved , lost or replaced elements that blur the idea of integrity , authenticity and functionality of the old ones . Motif Petrify in different genres varies by type of actor’s individuality, time and space, properties and actions of its outcome, the relationship of the narrator and singers from the text. The particularity of Petrify in particular genres testifies about different possibilities and intentions of using the same folk beliefs about transforming, says Penina Mezei. In moralized ballads Petrify is temporary or eternal punishment for naughty usually ungrateful children. In the oral tradition, demonic beings are permanently Petrifying humans and animals. Petrify in fairy tales is temporary, since the victims, after entering into the forbidden demonic time and space or breaches of prescribed behavior in it, frees the hero who overcomes the demonic creature, emphasizes Mezei.
Faith in the power of magical evocation of death petrifaction exists in curses in which the slanderer or ungrateful traitor wants to convert into stone. In search of the magical meaning of fatal events in fairy tales, however, it should be borne in mind that they concealed before, but they reveal the origin of the ritual. The work of stone - bedrock Penina Mezei pointed to the belief that binds the soul stone dead or alive beings. Penina speaks of stone medial position between earth and sky, earth and the underworld. Temporary or permanent attachment of the soul to stone represents a state between life and death will be punished its powers cannot be changed. Rescue petrified can only bring someone else whose power has not yet subjugated the demonic forces.
While the various traditions demons Petrifying humans and animals, as long as in fairy tales, mostly babe, demon- old woman. Traditions brought by Penina Mezei , which describe Petrify people or animals suggest specific place events , while in fairy tales , of course , no luck specific place names . Still Penina spotted chthonic qualities babe, and Mezei’s with plenty of examples of comparative method confirmed that they were witches. Some elements of procedures for the protection of the witch could be found in oral stories and poems. Fairy tales keep track of violations few taboos - the hero , despite the ban on the entry of demonic place , comes in the woods , on top of a hill , in a demonic time - at night , and does not respect the behaviors that would protect him from demons .
Interpreting the motives Petrify as punishment for the offense in the demon time and space depends on the choice of interpretive method is applied. In the book of fairy tales Penina Mezei writes: Petrify occurs as a result of unsuccessful contact with supernatural beings Petrify is presented as a metaphor for death (Penina Mezei West Bank Fairytales: 150). Psychoanalytic interpretation sees in the form of witches character, and the petrification of erotic seizure of power. Female demon seized fertilizing power of the masculine principle. By interpreting the archetypal witch would chthonic anima, anabaptized a devastating part unindividualized man. Ritual access to the motive of converting living beings into stone figure narrated narrative transfigured magical procedures some male initiation ceremonies in which the hero enters into a community of dedicated, or tracker sacrificial rites. Compelling witches to release a previously petrified could be interpreted as the initiation mark the conquest of certain healing powers and to encourage life force, highlights the Penina.
”
”
Penina Mezei
“
Why the Leaves Change Colour
The first girl who was ever born with amber skin was Mother Nature’s own child.
Her birth was from a seed Mother Nature planted in the darkest, purest, most
fertile soil, and soon there was a flower, and the flower opened up to show the
most beautiful little girl imaginable.
One day when the little girl was playing, the Sky, who was her brother, jealous of
how lovely she was and how happy and distracted their mother had been since she
was born, stole her and placed her upon a star so far away from the earth, Mother
Nature could not get to her.
In her grief, Mother Nature took every leaf that existed on Earth and turned them
amber.
The baby girl raised herself on this star—after all, she was her mother’s child,
fortitude became her. She became majestic, and independent, and knew how to
cope with anything alone because she had always only known alone. When the girl
was finally old enough to explore the universe by itself, she travelled across the
stars, finding beauty in thousands of planets, but none where she really felt at
home. Until, that is, she came upon a beautiful blue planet with amber leaves.
Walking through golden leaves, she remembered who she was, and who her
mother was, for this is the magic of the bond children have with their mothers.
They will remember them even if they are millions of miles away; why do you
think good mothers can say things like ‘I love you all the way around the universe’
and you just know they mean it and know not to question it?
When Mother Nature felt in her bones that her child had returned, she took her into
her arms and turned all the leaves to green again. But because the leaves of amber
gold were how her girl found her again, it happens every single year in
commemoration. We call it a season. We named it after Mother Nature’s only
daughter. We called it Autumn.
”
”
Nikita Gill (Fierce Fairytales: Poems and Stories to Stir Your Soul)