Orfeo Quotes

The job of taste was to thin the insane torrent of human creativity down to manageable levels. But the job of appetite was never to be happy with taste.

Only keep still, wait, and hear, and the world will open.

Of all the things that men may heed 'Tis most of love they sing indeed.

Be grateful for anything that still cuts. Dissonance is a beauty that familiarity hasn't destroyed yet.

It took me a while to understand that when you don’t like someone, nothing they can say or do will ever seem right. Something as harmless as giving a kid a cookie becomes something aggressive, a challenge to their authority.

Maybe that's the whole point-life showing me how good it could be, letting me have it just long enough to want it more than I've ever wanted anything else, only to rip it away. When you have nothing for so long, you forget the terror of having something to lose.

Chance was just an order that you hadn't yet perceived.

Music is a system of proportions in the service of a spiritual impulse.

Music forecasts the past, recalls the future. Now and then the difference falls away, and in one simple gift of circling sound, the ear solves the scrambled cryptogram. One abiding rhythm, present and always, and you're free. But a few measures more, and the cloak of time closes back around you.

Listen deep down: most life happens on scales a million times smaller than ours.

A mí me sobra el cuerpo, Orfeo, me sobra el cuerpo porque me falta alma

Listen closer, listen smaller, listen lighter, to any noise at all, and hear what the world will still sound like, long after your concert ends.

He will love this music to death. In a few more years, he’ll snort at its sentiment and mock its stirring progressions. Once you’ve loved like that, the only safe haven is resentment.

Music forecasts the past, recalls the future. Now and then the difference falls away, and in one simple gift of circling sound, the ear solves the scrambled cryptogram. One abiding rhythm, present and always, and you’re free.

- ¿Pero ahora se le ocurre comprar perro, señorito? - No lo he comprado, Domingo; este perro no es esclavo, sino que es libre; lo he encontrado. - Vamos, si, es expósito. - Todos somos expósitos, Domingo

Was tonality out there – God-given? Or were those magic ratios, like everything human, makeshift rules to be broken on the way to a more merciless freedom?

¡Ay, Orfeo, Orfeo, esto de dormir solo, solo, solo, de dormir un solo sueño! El sueño de uno solo es la ilusión, la apariencia; el sueño de dos es ya la verdad, la realidad. ¿Qué es el mundo real sino el sueño que soñamos todos, el sueño común?

Zag when they think you'll zig.

Do you run away or toward?

Orfeo son io, che d'Euridice i passi Seguo per queste tenebrose arene Ove giammai per vom mortal non vassi.

There is no safety. There is only forgetfulness.

There was nothing more pressing to do all day, every day, except think about the question that his whole life had failed to answer: How did music trick the body into thinking it had a soul?

Music wasn't about learning how to love. It was about learning what to disown and when to disown it. Even the most magnificent piece would end up as collateral damage in the endless war over taste.

The thing about music was that you never knew the shape of anyone’s desire.

Nostalgia de lo que no conoces, ¿cómo puedes extrañar vivir suspendida en el aire si siempre has vivido anclada a la tierra? Tal vez en tu otra vida serás pájaro. O pez.

It seemed to me that half of life’s problems would be solved if one of us had a vagina.

The oldest principle of composition: repeat everything.

Insecurity will always be a growth industry. The economy now depends on fear.

Way too late in life, Els learned that the time to concentrate yourself was right before sunrise.

There's joy in a minor key, a deep pleasure to be had from hearing the darkest tune and discovering you're equal to it.

She shone in beauty upon the shore; Long did my glance on her alight, and the longer I looked I knew her more.

We are made for art . . . The moment Maddy took up the tendril phrase, Els knew she was as dear to him as his own life. Talons gripped his ribs, and he felt a joy bordering on panic. He needed to know how this woman would unfold. He needed to write music that would settle into her range like frost on fields. They’d spend their years together, grow old, get sick, die in shared bewilderment.

Bonner leans his forehead against hers. Zig when they think you’ll zag. Creation’s Rule Number Two. What’s Number One? Els asks, willing to be this bent soul’s straight man. Zag when they think you’ll zig.

Orfeo: Io cercavo, piangendo, non più lei ma me stesso. Un destino, se vuoi. Mi ascoltavo. [...] Il mio destino non tradisce. Ho cercato me stesso. Non si cerca che questo. [...] Visto dal lato della vita tutto è bello. Ma credi a chi è stato tra i morti... Non vale la pena. [...] E voi godetela la festa. Tutto è lecito a chi non sa ancora. È necessario che ciascuno scenda una volta nel suo inferno. L'origine del mio destino è finita nell'Ade, finita cantando secondo i miei modi la vita e la morte. Bacca: E che vuol dire che un destino non tradisce? Orfeo: Vuol dire che è dentro di te, cosa tua; più profondo del sangue, di là da ogni ebbrezza. nessun dio può toccarlo.

Orfeo encontraba a Eurídice en la morgue y se la llevaba en brazos y le cantaba canciones. Luego le atizaban una pedrada en la cabeza y se despeñaba. Que te sirva de aviso. Al final los niños hacían salir el sol tocando la guitarra.

Reckless archaism. Arpeggiating under the influence. Presto in an andante zone.

Life is nothing but mutual infection.

Maybe the key to acclaim is simply to live long enough. But then, maybe acclaim is the foyer to death.

Gozamos con el espectáculo de nuestra propias destrucción porque pensamos que somos inmortales. En nuestro delirio, destruimos a los otros creyendo que así seremos por fin eternos. Así es como iniciará el colapso. Mientras tanto, tú y yo seguiremos leyendo.

Isn't the point of music to move listeners?" Mattison smiled. "No. The point of music is to wake listeners up. To break all our ready-made habits." "And tradition?" "Real composers make their own.

The fairy or fantastic world replaces the classical Hades (or Hell) in Sir Orfeo, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight takes this fantasy element to new heights. Sir Gawain is one of the Knights of the Round Table, the followers of King Arthur, who is so much of a presence in English history, myth and literature.

Art is not a mobocracy. It’s a republic.

No hill was so tall that it stayed my tread.

Fuck me. If I'm to die tonight, I want to know I'm alive for one last time.

Creation is much in need of ordering.

Sooner or later, all men will do and know all things.

I don't know any sad songs. Except for the funny ones.

... she shone in beauty upon the shore; Long did my glance on her alight, and the longer I looked I knew her more.

... for a man may cover his blemish, but unbind it he cannot, for where once 'tis applied, thence part will it never.

Allí unas veces se pasean los dos juntos, lado a lado, / otras veces va ella delante y él la sigue, otras él la precede, / y ya sin temor Orfeo se vuelve a mirar a su Eurídice. - Libro XI, p. 367 (ed. Alianza)

What do you think has become of the young and old men? And what do you think has become of the women and children? They are alive and well somewhere, The smallest sprout shows there is really no death, And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it, And ceas’d the moment life appear’d. All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

Verrai a visitarmi in sogno ed io sarò felice: è dolce vedere i propri cari anche di notte, per il tempo che ci è concesso. Magari avessi la voce e il canto di Orfeo, per ammaliare la figlia di Demetra o il suo sposo e così portarti via dall'Ade. Scenderei tra le ombre, e né il cane di Plutone né Caronte, il nocchiero delle anime potrebbero impedirmi di restituirti alla luce. Ma così come stanno le cose, aspettami, finchè non giunga il mio ultimo giorno: prepara la dimora, dove tu ed io abiteremo insieme. Ordinerò ai miei figli di depormi nella tua stessa bara di cedro, giaceremo fianco a fianco: neanche da morto voglio restar separato da te, l'unica persona a me fedele.

Hair so red, as red as flame, and eyes so green, as deep as the sea, your skin so pale I cannot tame - I burn and I drown when you come to me.

... right glad is the grass that grows in the open, when the damp dewdrops are dripping from the leaves, to greet a gay glance of the glistening sun.

I am but dirt and dust in kind, and you a rich and radiant rose...

Marry! Good man, 'tis madness thou askest, and since folly thou hast sought, thou deservest to find it.

We will not sleep, but will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. You'll see me again. But you'll never know when. Hear that shifting, ambiguous rhythm, that promise of all things possible, and the ear is on its way to being free.

AT FIRST, THERE’S only a thread of frost spreading across a pane. Oboe and horn trace out their parallel privacies. The thin sinews wander, an edgy duet built up from bare fourths and fifths. The singer enters, hesitant, hinted by bassoon. She channels a man wrung out after a sleepless night, a father with nothing left to keep safe. Now the sun will rise so brightly . . . The sun rises, but the line sinks. The orchestration, the nostalgic harmonies: everything wrapped in the familiar late nineteenth century, but laced with the coming fever dream. Bassoon and horn rock an empty cradle. Scant, muted violas and cellos in their upper registers enter over a quavering harp. The line wavers between major and minor, bright and dim, peace and grief, like the old hag and lovely young thing who fight for control of the fickle ink sketch. The voice

E tu troverai alla sinistra delle case di Ade una fonte, e accanto a essa un bianco cipresso diritto: a questa fonte non accostarti neppure, da presso. E ne troverai un'altra, fredda acqua che scorre dalla palude di Mnemosine: e davanti stanno i custodi. Di' loro: Sono figlio di Terra e di Cielo stellante, inoltre la mia stirpe è Celeste; e questo sapete anche voi. Sono riarsa di sete e muoio: ma date, subito, fredda acqua che scorre dalla palude di Mnemosine. Ed essi ti lasceranno bere dalla fonte divina, e in seguito tu regnerai assieme agli altri eroi. Di Mnemosine, questo è il sepolcro..." Laminetta trovata a Petelia Oblio e memoria sono i due strumenti del dissetamento. Se si beve dalla corrente dell'oblio si dimentica tutto e si rinasce a una nuova vita, cioè la sete è soltanto ingannata, e l'arsura non tarda a ripresentarsi in una nuova individuazione. Ma se si beve dalla fonte di Mnemosine, come testimoniano queste laminette, la memoria fa recuperare la conoscenza del passato e dell'immutabile, l'uomo riconosce la sua origine divina e si identifica in Dioniso, e l'arsura non viene spenta, ma dissetata, da una gelida, divina, prorompente conoscenza.

JO: A refrain I like throughout the book is, “Music doesn’t mean things. It is things.” RP: Yes. The struggle for composers, which Els goes through in different stages over the course of his seventy years, is precisely that battle between a music that might be a matter of life and death, as it is for Shostakovich, or a way of surviving the evils of human history, as it is for Messiaen. You align yourself to a kind of music in the service of one or another of all the different kinds of things that the human mind might want. And at the end of the day, you have this reflective feeling of saying, it’s very possible that in pursuing a kind of music that you wanted to serve a certain function, to create a certain social urgency, to solve the problems of your historical time and place, that it might also have been worthwhile to make a music that simply moves people in the most etymological sense of that word—actually just makes their bodies want to move. It’s that tension—between the music of pattern, the music of the cognitive brain; and the music of body, the music of pure spirit—that infects his life at every turn. Music is both those things! And human beings are both thinking creatures and feeling creatures. And the art that hits on all cylinders, the art that moves us intellectually and bodily and spiritually, is what we’re after. But to capture all those things in the same vessel is a very, very difficult task. And it’s a very difficult one for Els until the very end.

¡Comprar yo su cuerpo... su cuerpo...! ¡Si me sobra el mío, Orfeo, me sobra el mío! Lo que yo necesito es alma, alma, alma

It hasn't been so easy for me, either," Alessandro said. "Not recently. But I'll die before I'm mad like you." "That's your choice," Orfeo told him. "Me, as surely as I stand upon this commode, I'll have the power to wait for the gracious sap. I'll wait in fog, rain, or on the mountaintop, but I'll wait, and the blessed sap will come, and do you know what it will do? I'll tell you. It will fuck the typewriter." Alessandro was stunned. Still, he managed to say, "I saw typewriters in the hall of scribes." "No one said the battle would be easy. They creep upon me like a lapping tick. All day long, tick-tock tick-tock tick-tock, ding! Tick-tock tick-tock tick-tock, ding! Whoever invented that machine...!" His eyes fired in rage.

Tonight I will write poetry I will pile the world on my pillow Like a paramilitary sous chef Toss an avalanche of flowers With sunlight and olive oil.

Each hair is a poem I gave my son Each hair is my allowance from the universe Each hair is a sunspot on someone's broken heart

Quite clearly, Europe had come apart and millions had died not because of the shifting of great historical forces or the accidents of fate or destiny, the several bullets of Sarajevo, colonial competition, or anything else. It was because Orfeo had slipped from his seat in the office of the attorney Giuliani and been carried upon the flood, like a corked bottle full of shit, until he had lodged upon a platform at the Ministry of War, where his feverish hand and only half-innocent imagination had been directing the machinery of nations in homage to the exalted one and the holy blessed sap.

La mujer respondió: «Intentaré domesticarlo con la música, Majestad, como hizo Orfeo con las fieras.» Viajaron a través de prados y bosques que olían a fruta. Cuando cruzaron la frontera, desaparecieron las montañas y las ciudades, y la mujer rompió a llorar. «Chéri —dijo—, estoy mareada. Aquí todo parece infinito.» Se mareaba con lo que veía, con la simple vista de la llanura agonizante, cargada con el aire pesado del otoño que lo cubría todo, con aquella llanura vacía donde ya habían recolectado todo, con aquella llanura por donde avanzaban durante horas infinitas sin ver ni siquiera el camino, donde sólo se divisaban las bandadas de grullas en el cielo, donde los maizales ya se encontraban devastados, como después de una batalla, cuando incluso el paisaje cae herido tras el paso de las tropas.

¡Un paso decisivo! Y dime, Orfeo, ¿qué necesidad hay de que haya ni Dios ni mundo ni nada? ¿Por qué ha de haber algo? ¿No te parece que esa idea de la necesidad no es sino la forma suprema que el azar toma en nuestra mente?»¿De dónde ha brotado Eugenia? ¿Es ella una creación mía o soy creación suya yo?, ¿o somos los dos creaciones mutuas, ella de mí y yo de ella? ¿No es acaso todo crea- ción de cada cosa y cada cosa creación de todo? Y ¿qué es creación?, ¿qué eres tú, Orfeo?, ¿qué soy yo?»Muchas veces se me ha ocurrido pensar, Orfeo, que yo no soy, a iba por la calle antojándoseme que los demás no me veían. Y otras veces he fantaseado que no me veían como me veía yo, y que mientras yo me creía ir formalmente, con toda compostura, estaba, sin saberlo, haciendo el payaso, y los demás riéndose y burlándose de mí. ¿No te ha ocurrido alguna vez a ti esto, Orfeo? Aunque no, porque tú eres joven todavía y no tienes experiencia de la vida. Y además eres perro. »Pero, dime, Orfeo, ¿no se os ocurrirá alguna vez a los perros creeros hombres, así como ha habido hombres que se han creído perros?

Muchas veces se me ha ocurrido pensar, Orfeo, que yo no soy, e iba por la calle antojándoseme que los demás no me veían. Y otras veces he fantaseado que no me veían como me veía yo, y que mientras yo me creía ir formalmente, con toda compostura, estaba, sin saberlo, haciendo el payaso, y los demás riéndose y burlándose de mí.

They form in front of him: his friend, his wife, his daughter. People who loved him, who believed he’d do good things. In the mild April mist, he thinks: All I ever wanted was to make one slight noise that might delight you all. How small a thought it took. How small a thought.

From the first leaping figure in the strings, Els heard again the problem with music. Even the slightest tune sounded like a story. Melody played on the brain like a weather report, an avowal of faith, gossip, a manifesto. The tale came across, clearer than words. But there was no tale.

He read what he could find—the distilled knowledge of hundreds of experts. He couldn’t follow all the physiology. The body had evolved to feel fear, hope, thrill, and peace in the presence of certain semi-ordered vibrations; no one knew why. It made no sense that a few staggered chords could make the brain love an unmet stranger or grieve for friends who hadn’t died. Nobody could say why Barber moved listeners and Babbitt didn’t, or whether an infant might be raised to weep at Carter. But all the experts agreed that waves of compressed air falling on the eardrum touched off chain reactions that flooded the body in signals and even changed the expression of genes.

Els puts his eye to a burst of stars. They cluster, a blue star nursery, spraying out new worlds. He feels like he did two years ago, when he first looked at a glowing stain of cells under the 1,000x objective and realized that life happens elsewhere, on scales that have nothing to do with him.

To call any music subversive, to say that a set of pitches and rhythms could pose a threat to real power . . . ludicrous. And yet, from Plato to Pyongyang, that endless need to legislate sounds. To police the harmonic possibilities as if there were no limits to music’s threat.

Musical taste changes so little. The sound of late childhood plays at our funerals.

Orfeo: – Se non fossi astemio, adesso berrei per dimenticare. Drago: – Dio in salmì, ma è proprio quello che vogliono, Orfeo. La paura. Invece noi dobbiamo restare lucidi. Si vedeva che Orfeo era un volgare consumatore di H2O. Gli era uscita una frase senza senso. In Friuli si beve per ricordare meglio, altro che dimenticare, si disse Furlan raddrizzandosi

Study your hunger and how to feed it. Trust in whatever sounds twist your viscera.

Esos músicos son contemporáneos de Orfeo, porque las diferencias cronológicas se borran en la memoria de los muertos; y yo estoy muerto, profesor, tan muerto como aquellos de sus amigos que descansan dos metros bajo tierra.

He drove, to her direction. They followed a suite of quiet residential streets, emerging onto a commercial boulevard. They said nothing, as if they were a sunset couple taking their ten thousandth car ride together in this life. He wanted to give her the wheel, to see if she still drove like she was sailing an ice boat across a windy northern lake.

La compassion de la vieille hospitalière m'émeut profondément. Elle vit dans sa crypte comme Orfeo dans sa cave, deux êtres solitaires et taciturnes. Et pourtant, l'un et l'autre débordent d'humanité, davantage que bien des gens qui marchent au grand jour en surface.

It’s astonishing, he said. What is? The things that happen down there. I have no idea what you’re talking about. He couldn’t begin to tell her. Life. Four billion years of chance had written a score of inconceivable intricacy into every living cell. And every cell was a variation on that same first theme, splitting and copying itself without end through the world. All those sequences, gigabits long, were just waiting to be auditioned, transcribed, arranged, tinkered with, added to by the same brains that those scores assembled. A person could work in such a medium—wild forms and fresh sonorities. Tunes for forever, for no one.

I, too, had nothing to say, and I tried to say it as well as I could. What harm could so small a thing as saying nothing do to anyone?

Life is nothing but mutual infection. And every infecting message changes the message it infects.

So, what are you saying? That this was all some kind of vicarious fantasy? The road not taken? In a way. I was . . . I was trying . . . Oh, shit. Her hand rose and her eyes widened. You were composing. In DNA? It did sound ludicrous. But what was music, ever, except pure play?

Battered by cacophony, he grows huge. The thousand noisy tourists turn into a single organism, and then a single cell, passing millions of chemical signals a minute between its organelles. Plans blind us to the possible. Life will never end. The smallest sound, even silence, has more in it than the brain can ever grasp. Work for forever; work for no one.

La Breve storia dell’anima che proponiamo non è una summa sistematica e completa del tema, non è neppure un saggio accademico destinato agli addetti ai lavori, non è un testo di approfondimento teorico, desideroso di inoltrarsi su vie inesplorate. Il metodo adottato è quello suggerito da Italo Calvino in una delle sue Lezioni americane. È la tecnica dello scultore che non aggiunge ma toglie, scalpellando senza sosta l’enorme blocco di marmo per far emergere un volto o un torso. Abbiamo pensato di adottare come schema simbolico per questa ricerca nell’orizzonte dell’anima quello della navigazione. Varie sono le tappe del viaggio. Prima però di imbarcarsi, è necessario un itinerario di avvicinamento al fiume transitando nelle culture primitive, nelle antiche e gloriose civiltà dell’Egitto, della Mesopotamia, dell’India e dell’Arabia, visitando anche luoghi reconditi, quasi simili a grotte oscure, come nel caso della metempsicosi, dello spiritismo, della metapsichica. Il grande fiume dell’anima che dobbiamo navigare, circondato da queste terre, rivela due sorgenti specifiche che lo hanno alimentato in modo copioso. Da un lato, c’è la «Sorgente sacra» delle Scritture bibliche con il loro originale e variegato messaggio che ha alcuni apici nel libro della Genesi e nelle parole di Cristo e di san Paolo. D’altro lato, ecco l’«Altra sorgente», quella della cultura greca, ove appaiono i miti affascinanti di Psiche e di Orfeo, ma anche si stagliano pensatori eccelsi come Platone, Aristotele e Plotino. Dalle sorgenti la navigazione s’inoltra poi nel corso tortuoso del fiume: si devono percorrere secoli e secoli di storia. Tre sono i profili dell’anima che entrano in scena. C’è anzitutto quello disegnato dalla teologia cristiana nel suo incessante interrogarsi, nelle risposte del Magistero ecclesiale ufficiale, nell’elaborazione intensa dei suoi pensatori e anche nel suo sforzo ardito di affacciarsi sull’oltrevita dell’anima, al di là del confine della morte. C’è, poi, la complessa riflessione della filosofia occidentale, a partire da Cartesio, dal cui dualismo si diramano sia i grandi «spiritualisti» come Spinoza e Hegel, sia l’aspra reazione dei «materialisti», negatori convinti dell'anima. È il capitolo dell’«Anima filosofica» che si apre anche a teorie innovative, come quelle dell’evoluzionismo e della psicologia/psicoanalisi. Infine c’è il profilo dell’«Anima poetica»: è uno sguardo gettato sul mistero dello spirito dall’intuizione letteraria. Si va, allora, dalle scene create dal genio di Dante al terribile patto tra Faust e Mefistofele descritto da Goethe, dai dialoghi tra anima-corpo-natura immaginati da Leopardi, Rosenzweig o Péguy fino alle sorprendenti proposte di Pirandello e di tanti altri autori. Si giunge così a una tappa conclusiva: si penetra nell’odierno inquietante ma anche affascinante laboratorio delle neuroscienze per incontrare quell’«uomo neuronale» che alcuni vorrebbero spogliato dell’anima e ridotto a cervello. Quando si sarà conclusa la navigazione lungo il fiume della storia dell’anima, si avrà forse un’impressione antitetica rispetto alla voce dell’indigeno amazzone: l’anima è ben più veloce e vivace della civiltà moderna. È ciò che affermava nel V secolo uno scrittore spirituale, Giovanni Cassiano: «Stiamo sicuramente andando indietro quando ci accorgiamo di non essere andati avanti: l’anima non può rimanere ferma».

Recordemos que el platonismo renacentista vinculo estrechamente a Hermes, Orfeo y Platón.

«Dammi del veleno» disse lei con uno sbuffo sonoro, dato dalla sua incapacità di dialogare come una persona normale. Meglio mettere subito fine alle sue sofferenze. «Il risultato potrebbe essere lo stesso», Orfeo iniziò a mescolare la sua creazione, che aveva preso una ben poco invitante sfumatura di verde «Non ho mai detto di essere un bravo barista». - Capitolo 1

PEARL AND SIR ORFEO* THE FATHER CHRISTMAS LETTERS THE SILMARILLION* PICTURES BY J.R.R. TOLKIEN* UNFINISHED TALES* THE LETTERS OF J.R.R. TOLKIEN* FINN AND HENGEST MR BLISS THE MONSTERS AND THE CRITICS & OTHER ESSAYS* ROVERANDOM THE CHILDREN OF HÚRIN* THE LEGEND OF SIGURD AND GUDRÚN* THE FALL OF ARTHUR* BEOWULF: A TRANSLATION AND COMMENTARY* THE STORY OF KULLERVO THE LAY OF AOTROU & ITROUN

Tolkien THE HOBBIT LEAF BY NIGGLE ON FAIRY-STORIES FARMER GILES OF HAM THE HOMECOMING OF BEORHTNOTH THE LORD OF THE RINGS THE ADVENTURES OF TOM BOMBADIL THE ROAD GOES EVER ON (WITH DONALD SWANN) SMITH OF WOOTTON MAJOR WORKS PUBLISHED POSTHUMOUSLY SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT, PEARL AND SIR ORFEO* THE FATHER CHRISTMAS LETTERS THE SILMARILLION* PICTURES BY J.R.R. TOLKIEN* UNFINISHED TALES* THE LETTERS OF J.R.R. TOLKIEN* FINN AND HENGEST MR BLISS THE MONSTERS AND THE CRITICS & OTHER ESSAYS* ROVERANDOM THE CHILDREN OF HÚRIN* THE LEGEND OF SIGURD AND GUDRÚN* THE FALL OF ARTHUR* BEOWULF: A TRANSLATION AND COMMENTARY* THE STORY OF KULLERVO THE LAY OF AOTROU & ITROUN BEREN AND LÚTHIEN* THE FALL OF GONDOLIN* THE NATURE OF MIDDLE-EARTH THE HISTORY OF MIDDLE-EARTH – BY CHRISTOPHER TOLKIEN ​I THE BOOK OF LOST TALES, PART ONE ​II THE BOOK OF LOST TALES, PART TWO ​III THE LAYS OF BELERIAND ​IV THE SHAPING OF MIDDLE-EARTH ​V THE LOST ROAD AND OTHER WRITINGS ​VI THE RETURN OF THE SHADOW ​VII THE TREASON OF ISENGARD VIII THE WAR OF THE RING ​IX SAURON DEFEATED ​X MORGOTH’S RING ​XI THE WAR OF THE JEWELS ​XI THE PEOPLES OF MIDDLE-EARTH

Ésta es la revelación de la eternidad, Orfeo, de la terrible eternidad. Cuando el hombre se queda a solas y cierra los ojos al porvenir, al ensueño, se le revela el abismo pavoroso de la eternidad. La eternidad no es porvenir. Cuando morimos nos da la muerte media vuelta en nuestra órbita y emprendemos la marcha hacia atrás, hacia el pasado, hacia lo que fue. Y así, sin término, devanando la madeja de nuestro destino, deshaciendo todo el infinito que en una eternidad nos ha hecho, caminando a la nada, sin llegar nunca a ella, pues que ella nunca fue.

In the creature’s howling, Els heard the roots of music—the holy society of small discord.

Questo è il volto dell’eternità, Orfeo, il terribile volto dell’eternità. Quando l’uomo rimane da solo e chiude gli occhi di fronte all’avvenire, e al sogno, gli si rivela l’abisso spaventoso dell’eternità. L’eternità non è avvenire. Quando moriamo la morte ci fa compiere metà d’un giro sulla nostra orbita e riprendiamo il cammino all’indietro, verso il passato, verso ciò che è stato. E via così, senza meta, dipanando la matassa del nostro destino, disfacendo tutto l’infinito che ha impiegato un’eternità per farci essere, camminando verso il nulla, e senza mai raggiungerlo, perché non è mai stato.

Amo, ergo sum! Quest’amore, Orfeo, è come pioggia ristoratrice, in cui si disfa e prende corpo la nebbia dell’esistenza. Grazie all’amore sento il corpo dell’anima, lo tocco. Il cuore stesso dell’anima mi duole, grazie all’amore, Orfeo. E l’anima in se stessa, cos’è mai se non amore, se non dolore incarnato?

Something magnificent and enduring hid under music’s exhausted surface. Somewhere behind the familiar staff lay constellations of notes, sequences of pitches that could bring the mind home.

Els had staked his life on finding that larger thing. Something magnificent and enduring hid under music’s exhausted surface. Somewhere behind the familiar staff lay constellations of notes, sequences of pitches that could bring the mind home.

I’d been hearing that tune for sixty years. Musical taste changes so little. The sound of late childhood plays at our funerals.

There’s joy in a minor key, a deep pleasure to be had from hearing the darkest tune and discovering you’re equal to it.

Non è giusto... non c'è giustizia né vita in ciò che resta dell'umanità" sussurrò appena lei.

Immersa oltre la città, oltre la folla e la silenziosa follia della non-morte, la attraversava senza confondervisi.

Domani io permarrò. Tanto basta", come la stessa Akropolis ricordava costantemente, con quel misto di antico e moderno, di arcaici stucchi e scuro metallo, le alte colonne di pietra e le tubature di rame dal diametro gigantesco che fuoriuscivano come flebo da un corpo languente.