
“Do I dare Disturb the universe?”
Source: The Wasteland, Prufrock and Other Poems
Notes on the Banner of Peace (24 May 1939)
Context: Where all the treasures of mankind must be saved, there one should find such a symbol that can open the inmost recesses of all hearts. The symbol of the Banner of Peace has been spread so surprisingly far and wide that people are quite sincerely asking whether it is original or an invention of later times. We have witnessed honest wonderment after having proved its ancient origins and spread. At present mankind is beginning to think with horror like troglodytes again, hoping to safeguard their property in underground depositories and caves. But the Banner of Peace just announces the principle. It argues that mankind has to find a way to agree, that its achievements are global and belong to all the nations. The Banner says: noli me tangere — do not touch — do not dare to disturb, to offend the Universal Treasure with a touch of destruction.
“Do I dare Disturb the universe?”
Source: The Wasteland, Prufrock and Other Poems
Anish Kapoor Opens the Door:Modern Artist Creates Monuments that Transcend Space & Time
...y un poco más tarde viene la pregunta que nadie se hace antes de obrar ni antes de hablar: ‘Do I dare disturb the universe?’, porque todo el mundo se atreve a ello, a turbar el universo y a molestarlo, con sus rápidas y pequeñas lenguas y con sus mezquinos pasos.
Source: Tu rostro mañana, 2. Baile y sueño [Your Face Tomorrow, Vol. 2: Dance and Dream] (2004), p. 111
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915)
Context: Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all: —
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
“Touch has a memory. O say, love, say,
What can I do to kill it and be free?”
“This man belongs to me now! You cannot touch him!”
To a raiding band, after protecting an ambushed white soldier with her shawl, as quoted in Eagle Woman Who All Look At, 2010, South Dakota Hall of Fame – Champions of Excellence, 2019-08-15 http://sdexcellence.org/Eagle_Woman_Who_All_Look_At_2010,
Alternatively, "This Man belongs to me now! You cannot mutilate him nor touch him!" as quoted in [Joseph Agonito, Brave Hearts: Indian Women of the Plains, https://books.google.com/books?id=QZ7RDAAAQBAJ, 1 October 2016, TwoDot, 978-1-4930-1906-9]
I Have The Touch
Song lyrics, Peter Gabriel (IV), Security (1982)
Preface to the first edition, written in the summer of 1950.
The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)
Context: The totalitarian attempt at global conquest and total domination has been the destructive way out of all impasses. Its victory may coincide with the destruction of humanity; wherever it has ruled, it has begun to destroy the essence of man. Yet to turn our backs on the destructive forces of the century is of little avail.
The trouble is that our period has so strangely intertwined the good with the bad that without the imperialists' "expansion for expansion's sake," the world might never have become one; without the bourgeoisie's political device of "power for power's sake," the extent of human strength might never have been discovered; without the fictitious world of totalitarian movements, in which with unparalleled clarity the essential uncertainties of our time have been spelled out, we might have been driven to our doom without ever becoming aware of what has been happening.
And if it is true that in the final stages of totalitarianism an absolute evil appears (absolute because it can no longer be deduced from humanly comprehensible motives), it is also true that without it we might never have known the truly radical nature of Evil.