Lost in her books....
Love and death, love doomed to perish: if this is not all of poetry, it is at least that which is genuinely popular and universally moving in our literature - from our most ancient legends to our most exquisite songs. Happy love has no place in history. Novels arise only around mortal love - that is, love threatened and condemned by life itself. Western lyricism extols neither sensual pleasure nor the fruitful tranquility of the loving couple; it is inspired not so much by fulfilled love as by passion - and passion, by its very nature, is suffering. This is the fundamental truth.
Zdravstvuyte!
I’m sorry to @becllio, @oddity-is-just-five-miles-away, @pjxcksonswrd, @thepastisapebbleinmyshoe, and everyone else I haven’t replied to yet — a few weeks ago, I made a bet with a friend and wrote my first novella. The protagonist is alien to me — not just in feeling, but in essence. Switching between us caused emotional burnout, accompanied by nightmares. There was this constant urge to destroy him — but every attempt felt forced, artificial, because he exists beyond reality, beyond my control. He kept slipping away. It was strange, deeply unsettling. I promise I’ll reply to everyone as soon as I finish the translation.
I want to emphasize that your blogs are wonderful and you truly deserve attention. But I’m worried I might not be able to reply in a way that’s deep or meaningful enough, and risk only disappointing you.
Reading your blog feels like walking through a museum and I love it. Please never stop
Privyet!
Thank you for your kind words! I’m truly delighted that my little blog brings you joy and reminds you of the museum. In return, when I think about museums—and monuments in particular—I recall a myth that you might find interesting.
[Anticlides, 140F] «...When Hermes killed Argus, the guardian of Io, by Zeus’s command, he was brought to trial. Hera and the other gods held him accountable, for he was the first god to be stained by murder. Yet, as they convened this trial, the gods feared Zeus’s wrath, since Hermes had acted on his orders. They wished to rid themselves of the guilt of the crime while simultaneously absolving Hermes. So they held a vote by casting stones at Hermes, until a great pile had formed at his feet...»
Of course, this reminds us of the ancient method of execution, in which the guilty person was stoned to death. Such heaps and mounds of stones are the prototypes of pyramids, which in turn mark a fixed point in space and time—the moment of a monarch’s death. Deep within lies the king—both benefactor and the cause of sorrow at once. Essentially, we might suppose that monuments and sculptures, whose purpose was also to symbolize the fixing of place and time, have their roots in this ancient form of execution. Passing by a stele, we may recall the deeds of heroes from past eras and juxtapose this image with the execution of death itself. Thus, a monument is an attempt to kill death here and now—stoning it, erecting over it a pyramid or an elaborate statue. For the hand that reaches out to protect the deceased and finds them gone—falls in grief upon its own brow. A monument is the manifestation of killing the killer, even if that killer is of divine origin.
[Hesiod, Theogony, 195] …Then forth stepped an awesome, beauteous goddess; and beneath her delicate feet the grass throve around: gods and men name her Aphrodite, the foam-sprung goddess… [D. Tartt, The Secret History] ...She was still a girl, a slight lovely girl who lay in bed and ate chocolates, a girl whose hair smelled like hyacinth and whose scarves fluttered jauntily in the breeze...