Per Amica Silentia Lunae E-Book

W.b.yeats

• Herausgeber: W. B. Yeats
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

My Dear “Maurice”—I was often in France before you were born or when you were but a little child. When I went for the first or second time Mallarmé had just written: “All our age is full of the trembling of the veil of the temple.” One met everywhere young men of letters who talked of magic. A distinguished English man of letters asked me to call with him on Stanislas de Gaeta because he did not dare go alone to that mysterious house. I met from time to time with the German poet Doukenday, a grave Swede whom I only discovered after years to have been Strindberg, then looking for the philosopher’s stone in a lodging near the Luxembourg; and one day in the chambers of Stuart Merrill the poet, I spoke with a young Arabic scholar who displayed a large, roughly-made gold ring which had grown to the shape of his finger. Its gold had no hardening alloy, he said, because it was made by his master, a Jewish Rabbi, of alchemical gold. My critical mind—was it friend or enemy?—mocked, and yet I was delighted. Paris was as legendary as Connaught. This new pride, that of the adept, was added to the pride of the artist. Villiers de L’Isle Adam, the haughtiest of men, had but lately died. I had read his Axel slowly and laboriously as one reads a sacred book—my French was very bad—and had applauded it upon the stage. As I could not follow the spoken words, I was not bored even where Axel and the Commander discussed philosophy for a half-hour instead of beginning their duel. If I felt impatient it was only that they delayed the coming of the adept Janus, for I hoped to recognise the moment when Axel cries: “I know that lamp, it was burning before Solomon”; or that other when he cries: “As for living, our servants will do that for us.”

Leseprobe

W. B. Yeats

Per Amica Silentia Lunae

UUID: 14296812-7e38-11e5-944f-119a1b5d0361

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Table of contents

PROLOGUE

EGO DOMINUS TUUS

ANIMA HOMINIS

ANIMA MUNDI

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

My Dear “Maurice”—You will remember that afternoon in Calvados last summer when your black Persian “Minoulooshe,” who had walked behind us for a good mile, heard a wing flutter in a bramble-bush? For a long time we called her endearing names in vain. She seemed resolute to spend her night among the brambles. She had interrupted a conversation, often interrupted before, upon certain thoughts so long habitual that I may be permitted to call them my convictions. When I came back to London my mind ran again and again to those conversations and I could not rest till I had written out in this little book all that I had said or would have said. Read it some day when “Minoulooshe” is asleep.W. B. YEATS.

EGO DOMINUS TUUS

HicOn the grey sand beside the shallow stream,Under your old wind-beaten tower, where stillA lamp burns on above the open bookThat Michael Robartes left, you walk in the moon,And, though you have passed the best of life, still trace,Enthralled by the unconquerable delusion,Magical shapes.  IlleBy the help of an imageI call to my own opposite, summon allThat I have handled least, least looked upon.  HicAnd I would find myself and not an image.  Ille