Conatus

the body is an exemplar of genius, an empire of ranks and orders, an aristocracy of organs, a wisdom incarnated, a temple of history, a compendium of ancestors, an inexhaustible source of livelihood, and a whole work of nature in motion. to grabble one's way through this winding earth of crooked reason is but a blasphemy against the body, to squeeze the infinite and mold it into one's hands, woe to those whom their soul transcends the rank of their body! but what soul is? is not soul another word for the things of the body? what are the workings of the body if not a reflection of the workings of a bigger entity, that is, the comsos, thus, it is a universe in miniature.

A New and Complete Dictionary of Arts and Sciences - Arteries of the Human Body, 1755.

What could be further from our age than the strange claim of a Leonardo to whom painting was a supreme goal and the ultimate demonstration of all knowledge? Leonardo was convinced that painting demanded universal knowledge, and he did not even shrink from a theoretical analysis which to us is stunning because of its very depth and precision.

Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen. — Leonardo Da Vinci

الكَڤَر الخاص بالألبوم هو لوحةNótt riding Hrímfaxie لپيتر نيقولاي آربو (فنان نرويجي)، تُصوّر الليل متجسدًا، يُسمى بالميثولوجيا النورسية Nótt. هذه الNótt هي جدة Þórr، وإلهة الظلام والأحلام. Night it's called among men, and darkness by the gods, and the masker by the mighty powers, unlight by the giants, joy-of-sleep by the elves, and dwarfs call it dream-goddess. — Poetic Edda, Alvíssmal. أسم حصانها Hrímfaxie، وهو يقود عربتها التي منحها إياها Óðinn مع Dagr (النهار، وهو أبنها الثاني في الأصل) ليصنعا الليل والنهار بدورانهما حول الأرض. لذا فهذا الطفل المتعلق معها على الحصان هو ابنها النهار الذي يلحقها دائمًا ويسافر معها في رحلة لا تنتهي في الأعالي تحت عين Óðinn الراعية، فيكون الليل والنهار اللذين نراهما يوميًا في حركة دورية متواصلة، أما أسم الأغنية Gullaldr لVarg Vikernes فيشير إلى العصر الذهبي.

When shall oblivion gift me his cloak?

“Every profound spirit needs a mask: moreover, around every profound spirit a mask is continually growing…”

من هو القارئ الرديء؟ الّذي يقرأ من أجل المتعة بالأساس. ومن الّذي يقرأ بالأساس من أجل المتعة؟ الإنسان كثير الشعور بالملل، وكثير الشعور بالملل هو الفقير داخليًا، أي السطحي أو التافه بكلمة واحدة. القارئ من أجل المتعة يتصرّف بناءً على الدافع الأكثر بدائيّة في الطبيعة من حيث التحفيز بهدف الفعل أو رد الفعل، أي بناءً على المتعة أو اللذّة، فالعقل عنده يكون بفعل المعرفة باحثًا عن المتعة بالمقام الأوّل. وبالتالي يتكشّف لنا المثال الأكثر عموميّة بين البشر، والأكثر إفادة للعصر الحديث ومنظومته.

دعوا الأبواب ‏مفتوحةً ‏فعند كل بابٍ ‏ينتظر الموت ‏وكلما زاد انْتِظاره ‏زادت غربته ‏وكلما زادت غربته ‏زاد إحساسكم ‏كلُّكم، بقبضته.

Tartini's Devil.

Tartini allegedly told the French astronomer Jérôme Lalande that he dreamed that The Devil appeared to him and asked to be his servant. Tartini handed the devil his violin to test his skill-the devil immediately began to play with such virtuosity that Tartini felt his breath taken away. When the tartini awoke he immediately wrote down the sonata, desperately trying to recapture what he had heard in the dream. Despite the sonata being successful with his audiences, Tartini lamented that the piece was still far from what he had heard in his dream. What he had written was, in his own words: "so inferior to what I had heard, that if I could have subsisted on other means, I would have broken my violin and abandoned music forever."

the endless rebirths of the legendary phoenix. In their magnificent monumental temples, their massive pyramids and effigies of stone, and in their treasure-filled tombs of embalmed mummies, the ancient Egyptians sought eternity. In everything they did, the people of this highly advanced and complex civilisation searched for the secret of immortality and craved the blessing of eternal happiness. So it is not surprising to find that it was in their country that there arose the myth of the Phoenix, the fabulous eagle-like bird of Arabia who, according to different versions of the legend, lives from 250 to 15,000 years and is ceaselessly reborn. The most popular version of the myth gives the bird a life span of five hundred years after which time it travels to Egypt and there buries itself in a nest of spices in which, being set on fire by the sun or some other secret power, it burns itself, and out of its ashes rises another. The very earliest gods of ancient Egypt were all represented as birds and animals. The Egyptians believed that these divine creatures led them into battle, and even fought for them. Gradually, these animal deities, or gods, began to take human form and that is why so many of the gods worshipped by ancient races have the heads of birds and animals. The Greeks and the Romans added their own elaborations to the Egyptian myth. It was Herodotus, who wrote one of the earliest accounts of the fantastic tale. He tells us of the many birds which were held sacred by the Egyptians, including one which they called the Phoenix.“I myself have never seen it,” he wrote with great scepticism, “but only pictures of it, for the bird comes but seldom to Egypt, once in five hundred years” Some five hundred years later, two Roman writers, Tacitus and Pliny, took up the miraculous tale. Pliny observed that the bird’s life cycle was the same as the Great Year – the time it took for the sun, the moon, and the five planets to return to their initial positions. The ancients believed that when this vast astronomical cycle was completed, the history of the world would repeat its life. Another philosophical school in ancient times believed that the universe died in fire and is reborn in fire and that the cycle has no beginning and will have no end. Perhaps the most famous of all mythical creatures, the fabulous Phoenix, with its magnificently-coloured plumage of red and gold, has fired the imagination of countless poets throughout the centuries. It is at its mystical, magical act of arising from the ashes of its dead self to be reborn again that man has marvelled, and the name of the Phoenix has even passed into our language as a symbol of rebirth and immortality.

"Apollo Served by The Nymphs," completed in 1675 by François Girardon and Thomas Regnaudin. Versailles, France.