
“He who would write heroic poems should make his whole life a heroic poem.”
Life of Schiller.
1820s, Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1827–1855)
Japanese Death Poems. Compiled by Yoel Hoffmann. ISBN 978-0-8048-3179-6
“He who would write heroic poems should make his whole life a heroic poem.”
Life of Schiller.
1820s, Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1827–1855)
“He writes the page of every day of his life who has the courage to live his dreams.”
Original: (it) Scrive la pagina di ogni giorno della sua vita colui che ha il coraggio di vivere i propri sogni.
Source: prevale.net
"The Snow Man"
Harmonium (1923)
Context: p>One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitterOf the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare placeFor the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.</p
Vain Fortune, Chapter 2.
Variant: Look upon him, O my Thebans, on your king, the child of fame!
This mighty man, this Œdipus the lore far-famed could guess,
And envy from each Theban won, so great his lordliness—
Lo to what a surge of sorrow and confusion hath he come!
Let us call no mortal happy till our eyes have seen the doom
And the death-day come upon him—till, unharassed by mischance,
He pass the bound of mortal life, the goal of ordinance.
[ Tr. E. D. A. Morshead http://books.google.com/books?id=i7wXAAAAYAAJ (1885)]
Variant: People of Thebes, my countrymen, look on Oedipus.
He solved the famous riddle, with his brilliance,
he rose to power, a man beyond all power.
Who could behold his greatness without envy?
Now what a black sea of terror has overwhelmed him.
Now as we keep our watch and wait the final day,
count no man happy till he dies, free of pain at last.
[quoted by Thomas Cahill in Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea]
Source: Oedipus Rex, Line 1529, Choragos.
“The poem is an original and unique creation, but it is reading and recitation: participation.”
How to Read a Poem And Fall in Love with Poetry (1998)