The Relationship Between A Person And The Native Flora And Fauna Of Where They Grew Up Is Something That

the earth and the milky way and moon, władysław teodor benda, 1918

Victor Hugo on Talleyrand's death

For @empirearchives who was interested, here's a translation of Victor Hugo's text about Talleyrand's death. My thanks to @microcosme11 for her help <33

Choses Vues, Victor Hugo

1838

Talleyrand

19th of May

In the Rue St-Florentin, there is a palace and a sewer.

The palace, with its noble, rich, and dull architecture, was long called "Hôtel de l'Infuntado"; today, we read on its front door: Hôtel Talleyrand. During the fourty years he lived on this street, the last host of this palace might never have set eyes on this sewer.

He was a stranged, feared, and considerable character: his name was Charles-Maurice de Périgord; he was noble as Machiavel, a priest like Gondi, defrocked like Fouché, witty as Voltaire, and lame as the devil. One could say that everything limped with him: the nobility which he had put to the service of the republic, the priesthood he had dragged on the Champ-de-Mars then threw down the drain, the marriage he had broken by twenty scandals and by a voluntary separation, the wit he dishonoured through vileness. This man, nevertheless, had grandeur.

The splendours of both regimes were mixed together inside of him: he was prince of the old kingdom of France, and prince of the French Empire.

For thirty years, from the depth of his palace, from the depth of his mind, he had just about led Europe. He had let the revolution call him "tu", and had smiled at it, ironically of course; but it had not noticed. He had approached, known, observed, pierced, stirred, upturned, delved into, mocked, intellectually fertilized all the men of his era, all the ideas of his century, and there had been a few minutes in his life when, holding in his hand the four or five fearsome threads that moved the civilized universe, he had had for a puppet Napoleon the First, Emperor of the French, King of Italy, Protector of the Confederation of the Rhine, Mediator of the Swiss Confederation. Such was the game this man played.

After the Revolution of July, that old race, whose grand chambellan he was, having fallen, he found himself standing on one foot and told the people of 1830, sitting, bare-armed, on a pile of cobbles: Make me your ambassador.

He had received Mirabeau's last confession and Thiers' first confidence. He had said himself he was a great poet and had made a trilogy in three dynasties: Act I, Buonaparte's Empire; Act 2, The House of Bourbon; Act 3, The House of Orleans.

He had done all of this in his palace, and, in this palace, like a spider in its web, he had attracted into it and taken successively heroes, thinkers, great men, conquerors, kings, princes, emperors, Bonaparte, Sieyès, Mme de Staël, Chateaubriand, Benjamin Constant, Alexander of Russia, Wilhelm of Prussia, Francis of Austria, Louis XVIII, Louis-Philippe, all the golden, shiny flies who buzzed in the history of those last fourty years. The whole sparkling swarm, fascinated by this man's deep eye, had successively passed under the dark door that bore, written on its architrave: Hôtel Talleyrand.

Well, the day before yesterday, 17 March, 1838, that man died. Doctors came and embalmed the corpse. For this, like the Egyptians, they first withdrew the bowels from the belly and the brain from the skull. Once done, after they had transformed the prince de Talleyrand into a mummy, and nailed this mummy in a white satin-lined coffin, they withdrew, leaving upon a table the brain, that brain which thought so many things, inspired so many men, built so many edifices, led two revolutions, fooled twenty kings, contained the world.

Once the doctors were gone, a valet entered, he saw what they had left. Hold on! they forgot this. What to do ? He remembered that there was a sewer in the street, he went there, and threw that brain into this sewer.

Finis rerum.

i must not afternoon nap. afternoon nap is the mind-killer. afternoon nap is the little death that brings total obliteration. i will face my afternoon sleepy tired and permit it to pass over and through me. and when it has gone i will turn the inner eye to see its path. where the afternoon sleepy tired has gone there will be nothing. only i will remain

hii i'm in desperate research of songs that may suit brutus and cassius relationship as well as just songs that may remind brutus and/or cassius, do you have any suggestions/recs? ty ^-^

OH BOY DO I EVER

here's a playlist

this is more of my personal ideas/writing/drawing playlist, but I consider grandson's dirty to be THEE brutus/cassius/conspiracy/hand in bloody hand song

your hand touching mine. this is how galaxies collide. ― Sanober Khan

― Carolyn Forché / Katatsumori (Naomi Kawase, 1994) / John Berger / Katrien de Blauwer / Hélène Cixous / Bruno Munari / Eli Craven / Sharon Olds / Hart Crane / A Hidden Life (Terrence Malick, 2019) / Mary Ruefle / Robert Bly / Hans Bellmer / Richard Siken / Eli Craven / Cassandra Clare / Katrien de Blauwer / Louise Glück ―

Mary Oliver, from “Hum Hum”, A Thousand Mornings

Yoshida Toshi Mendocino, Sunrise

with reverse

Joan Baez and Bob Dylan, Hollywood Bowl 1963 

wondering if marat - that was in part sardinian - has ever said "eja" in his lifespan

Franz Skarbina (1877) Der Alte Fritz als Rückenfigur