The 'Mental Traveller'
Forever open is his door
To the wayfaring traveller
& to the Μάγος or 𐎶𐎦𐎢𐏁
Once the wandering is done with, starts the Cleansing & Clarifying Odyssey
⮩ Giving 56 a new meaning
Perfect knowledge of such things cannot be acquired without divine inspiration, given that all prophetic inspiration derives its initial origin from God Almighty, then from chance and nature. Since all these portents are produced impartially, prophecy comes to pass partly as predicted. For understanding created by the intellect cannot be acquired by means of the occult, only by the aid of the zodiac, bringing forth that small flame by whose light part of the future may be discerned. We need god to prosper those without him will not.
Nostradamus, Les Propheties (1555), Preface.
《道德經-第四十五章》
大成若缺，其用不弊。
大盈若沖，其用不窮。
大直若屈，大巧若拙，大辯若訥。
躁勝寒靜勝熱。
清靜為天下正。
(Great or overflowing virtue) - James Legge
Who thinks his great achievements poor,
Shall find his vigour long endure.
Of greatest fulness, deemed a void,
Exhaustion never shall stem the tide.
Do thou what's straight still crooked deem;
Thy greatest art still stupid seem,
And eloquence a stammering scream.
Constant action overcomes cold; Being still overcomes heat.
Purity and stillness give the correct law to all under the heaven.
45 - Herman Ould
The greatest perfection seems inadequate,
But it is unfailing in its usefulness;
What is brimful seems empty,
But it is inexhaustible in its usefulness.
The completely straight seems crooked, the greatest skill seems awkward,
The greatest eloquence seems like stammering.
Activity overcomes cold,
But stillness overcomes heat.
Only by purity and stillness will the world be governed.
45 - Arthur Waley
What is most perfect seems to have something missing;
Yet its use is unimpaired.
What is most full seems empty;
Yet its use will never fail.
What is most straight seems crooked;
The greatest skill seems like clumsiness,
The greatest eloquence like stuttering.
Movement overcomes cold;
But staying still overcomes heat.
So he by his limpid calm
Puts right everything under heaven.
The 'Mental Traveller' indicаtes an explorer of mental phænomena. The mental phænomenon here symbolized seems to be the career of any great Idea or intellectual movement—as, for instance, Christianity, chivalry, art, &c.—represented as going through the stages of—1. birth, 2. adversity and persecution, 3. triumph and maturity, 4. decadence through over-ripeness, 5. gradual transformation, under new conditions, into another renovated Idea, which again has to pass through all the same stages. In other words, the poem represents the action and re-action of Ideas upon society, and of society upon Ideas.
Arguments of the stanzas:
2. The Idea, conceived with pain, is born amid enthusiasm.
3. If of masculine, enduring nature, it falls under the control and ban of the already existing state of society (the woman old).
5. As the Idea develops, the old society becomes moulded into a new society (the old woman grows young).
6. The Idea, now free and dominant, is united to society, as it were in wedlock.
8. It gradually grows old and effete, living now only upon the spiritual treasures laid up in the days of its early energy.
10. These still subserve many purposes of practical good, and outwardly the Idea is in its most flourishing estate, even when sapped at its roots.
11. The halo of authority and tradition, or prestige, gathering round the Idea, is symbolized in the resplendent babe born on his hearth.
13. This prestige deserts the Idea itself, and attaches to some individual, who usurps the honour due only to the Idea (as we may see in the case of the papacy, royalty, &c.); and the Idea is eclipsed by its own very prestige, and assumed living representative.
14. The Idea wanders homeless till it can find a new community to mould ('until he can a maiden win').
15 to 17. Finding whom, the Idea finds itself also living under strangely different conditions.
18. The Idea is now "beguiled to infancy"—becomes a new Idea, in working upon a fresh community, and under altered conditions.
20. Nor are they yet thoroughly at one; she flees away while he pursues.
22. Here we return to the first state of the case. The Idea starts upon a new course—is a babe; the society it works upon has become an old society—no longer a fair virgin, but an aged woman.
24. The Idea seems so new and unwonted that, the nearer it is seen, the more consternation it excites.
26. None can deal with the Idea so as to develop it to the full, except the old society with which it comes into contact; and this can deal with it only by misusing it at first, whereby (as in the previous stage, at the opening of the poem) it is to be again disciplined into ultimate triumph.
1.
I travelled through a land of men,
A land of men and women too;
And heard and saw such dreadful things
As cold earth-wanderers never knew.
2.
For there the babe is born in joy
That was begotten in dire woe;
Just as we reap in joy the fruit
Which we in bitter tears did sow.
3.
And if the babe is born a boy,
He's given to a woman old,
Who nails him down upon a rock,
Catches his shrieks in cups of gold.
4.
She binds strong thorns around his head,
She pierces both his hands and feet,
She cuts his heart out at his side,
To make it feel both cold and heat.
5.
Her fingers number every nerve
Just as a miser counts his gold;
She lives upon his shrieks and cries,
And she grows young as he grows old.
6.
Till he becomes a bleeding youth,
And she becomes a Virgin bright;
Then he rends up his manacles
And binds her down for his delight.
7.
He plants himself in all her nerves
Just as a husbandman his mould,
And she becomes his dwelling-place
And garden fruitful seventyfold.
8.
An aged shadow soon he fades,
Wandering round an earthly cot,
Full fillèd all with gems and gold
Which he by industry had got.
9.
And these are the gems of the human soul
The rubies and pearls of a lovesick eye,
The countless gold of the aching heart,
The martyr's groan anc the lover's sigh.
10.
They are his meat, they are his drink;
He feeds the beggar and the poor;
To the wayfaring traveller
Forever open is his door.
11.
His grief is their eternal joy,
They make the roofs and walls to ring;
Till from the fire upon the hearth
A little female babe doth spring.
12.
And she is all of solid fire
And gems and gold, that none his hand
Dares stretch to touch her baby form
Or wrap her in his swaddling band.
13.
But she comes to the man she loves,
If young or old or rich or poor;
They soon drive out the aged host,
A beggar at another's door.
14.
He wanders weeping far away,
Until some other take him in;
Oft blind and age-bent, sore distressed,
Until he can a maiden win.
15.
And to allay his freezing age,
The poor man takes her in his arms;
The cottage fades before his sight,
The garden and its lovely charms.
16.
The guests are scattered through the land;
For the eye altering alters all;
The senses roll themselves in fear,
And the fiat earth becomes a ball.
17.
The stars, sun, moon, all shrink away,
A desert vast without a bound,
And nothing left to eat or drink,
And a dark desert all around:
18.
The honey of her infant's lips,
The bread and wine of her sweet smile,
The wild game off her roving eye,
Do him to infancy beguile.
19.
For as he eats and drinks he grows
Younger and younger every day,
And on the desert wild they both
Wander in terror and dismay.
20.
Like the wild stag she flees away;
Her fear plants many a thicket wild,
While he pursues her night and day,
By various arts of love beguiled.
21.
By various arts of love and hate,
Till the wild desert's planted o'er
With labyrinths of wayward love,
Where roam the lion, wolf, and boar.
22.
Till he becomes a wayward babe,
And she a weeping woman old;
Then many a lover wanders here,
The sun and stars are nearer rolled;
23.
The trees bring forth sweet ecstasy
To all who in the desert roam;
Till many a city, there is built,
And many a pleasant shepherd's home.
24.
But when they find the frowning babe,
Terror strikes through the region-wide:
They cry—'the babe—the babe is born!'
And flee away on every side.
25.
For who dare touch the frowning form,
His arm is withered to its root:
Bears, lions, wolves, all howling flee,
And every tree doth shed its fruit.
26.
And none can touch that frowning form
Except it be a woman old;
She nails it down upon the rock,
And all is done as I have told.
No comments:
Post a Comment