
“Good prose is written only face to face with poetry.”
Sec. 92
The Gay Science (1882)
“Good prose is written only face to face with poetry.”
Sec. 92
The Gay Science (1882)
“Look on me! if canst read the signs of love,
Thou’lt see that death is written in my face.”
Sonetto. (Poeti del Primo Secolo, Firenze, 1816, Vol. I, p. 105).
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 407.
“The face is its own fate — a man does what he must —
And the body underneath it says: I am.”
"The Knight, Death and the Devil," lines 34-39
The Seven-League Crutches (1951)
Context: Death and the devil, what are these to him?
His being accuses him — and yet his face is firm
In resolution, in absolute persistence;
The folds of smiling do for steadiness;
The face is its own fate — a man does what he must —
And the body underneath it says: I am.
Return to Tipasa (1954)
Variant translation: In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.
As translated in Lyrical and Critical Essays (1968), p. 169; also in The Unquiet Vision : Mirrors of Man in Existentialism (1969) by Nathan A. Scott, p. 116