
" Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night http://www.internal.org/view_poem.phtml?poemID=92" (1952)
Source: Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
Source: In Country Sleep, and Other Poems
" Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night http://www.internal.org/view_poem.phtml?poemID=92" (1952)
Source: Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
“Love is often gentle, desire always a rage.”
The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Love
Variant translation: I, too, felt ready to start life all over again. It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe. To feel it so like myself, indeed, so brotherly, made me realize that I’d been happy, and that I was happy still. For all to be accomplished, for me to feel less lonely, all that remained to hope was that on the day of my execution there should be a huge crowd of spectators and that they should greet me with howls of execration.
As translated by Stuart Gilbert
The Stranger (1942)
Context: For the first time in a long time I thought about Maman. I felt as if I understood why at the end of her life she had taken a 'fiancé,' why she had played at beginning again. Even there, in that home where lives were fading out, evening was a kind of wistful respite. So close to death, Maman must have felt free then and ready to live it all again. Nobody, nobody had the right to cry over her. And I felt ready to live it all again too. As if the blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself — so like a brother, really — I felt I had been happy and that I was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate.
" Once by the Pacific http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/once-by-the-pacific-2/" (1928)
General sources
Context: You could not tell, and yet it looked as if
The shore was lucky in being backed by cliff,
The cliff in being backed by continent;
It looked as if a night of dark intent
Was coming, and not only a night, an age.
Someone had better be prepared for rage.
There would be more than ocean-water broken
Before God's last Put out the Light was spoken.
“Rage—Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles”
I. 1–5 (tr. Robert Fagles).
Iliad (c. 750 BC)
Context: Rage—Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles,
murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses,
hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls,
great fighters' souls, but made their bodies carrion,
feasts for the dogs and birds.
“If one is not to get into a rage sometimes, what is the good of being friends?”
Source: Middlemarch