Monday, May 11, 2009

Williams + Mann

They craved the miraculous!

-W.C.W., Paterson


With evening, love wakens
though its shadows
which are alive by reason
of the sun shining--
grow sleepy now and drop away
from desire .

-W.C.W., Paterson


--


Aschenbach, receiving this smile, hurried away with it as with a fateful gift. He was so deeply shaken that he was forced to flee the light of the terrace, the front gardens, and he hastily sought the darkness of the park behind the hotel. Strangely indignant and affectionate exhortations were wrung from him: "You musn't smile like that! Listen, you mustn't smile at anyone like that!" He flung himself on a bench, he was beside himself, he breathed the nocturnal fragrance of the plants. And leaning back, with dangling arms, overwhelmed, and shuddering again and again, he whispered the standard formula of desire...

-Thomas Mann, Death in Venice


Bizarrely fertile intercourse of the mind with a body!

-Thomas Mann, Death in Venice

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