“His name never appeared in the papers.
The world maintained its traditional wall
Round the dead with their gold sunk deep as a well,
Whilst his life, intangible as a Stock Exchange
rumour, drifted outside.”
"Ultima Ratio Regum"
The Still Centre (1939)
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Stephen Spender 76
English poet and man of letters 1909–1995Related quotes

Creation Myths (1972), Deus Faber
Context: Our whole tradition has trained us to think always of God as being outside the world and shaping its dead material in some form. But upon making a general survey of creation myths, we see that this type of God mirrors a rare and specific situation; it mirrors a state where consciousness has already markedly withdrawn, as an independent entity, out of the unconscious and therefore can turn toward the rest of the material as if it were its dead object. It also already shows a definite separation between subject and object; God is the subject of the creation and the world, and its material is the dead objects with which he deals. Naturally we must correct this viewpoint by putting it into its right context, namely, that the craftsman in primitive societies never imagined himself to be doing the work himself. Nowadays if you watch a carpenter or a smith, he is in a position to feel himself as a human being with independent consciousness, who has acquired from his teacher a traditional skill with which he handles dead material. He feels that his skill is a man-made possession, which he owns. If we look at the folklore and mythology of the different crafts in more primitive societies, we see that they have a much more adequate view of it. They all still have tales which show that; man never invented any craft or skill, but that it was revealed to him, that it is the Gods who produced the knowledge which man now uses if he does anything practical.

Vol. III, Ch. XXVII, The Role of Credit, p. 440.
Das Kapital (Buch III) (1894)

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 67.

1980s and later, Interview in Silver & Gold Report (1980)

Source: A Short History Of The English Law (First Edition) (1912), Chapter I, Old English Law, p. 3

“Oedipus had already probed his impious eyes with guilty hand and sunk deep his shame condemned to everlasting night; he dragged out his life in a long-drawn death. He devotes himself to darkness, and in the lowest recess of his abode he keeps his home on which the rays of heaven never look; and yet the fierce daylight of his soul flits around him with unflagging wings and the Avengers of his crimes are in his heart.”
Impia jam merita scrutatus lumina dextra
merserat aeterna damnatum nocte pudorem
Oedipodes longaque animam sub morte trahebat.
illum indulgentem tenebris imaeque recessu
sedis inaspectos caelo radiisque penates
seruantem tamen adsiduis circumuolat alis
saeva dies animi, scelerumque in pectore Dirae.
Source: Thebaid, Book I, Line 46

Valerius recounting the tale of how Conan was caught
"A Witch Shall Be Born" (1934)