🦋 Speech is its Delight and Essence
We do not understand speech, because speech does not understand itself, nor wish to; the true Sanskrit* would speak in order to speak, because speech is its delight and essence.
This line is from Novalis' The Novices of Sais, newly reprinted in a translation by Ralph Manheim. (Thanks to Conrad and Forrest, for pointing it out to me.) It strikes me as so similar to Fritz' speech to Karoline about Language, that I think Fitzgerald must have used it as source material. (It is also, I think, quintessentially stoner.) Another great line from The Novices of Sais, from the chapter titled "Nature": It must have been a long time before men thought of giving a common name to the manifold objects of their senses, and of placing themselves in opposition to them. It suddenly occurs to me that "manifold" might be a good translation of vielgestaltete in the first paragraph of Hymns to Night.
*This word is kind of bugging me, because when I read it I see the name of a language, not a type of philosophy. My suspicion is that Novalis intends it to mean "mystic", so I am making that substitution when I read.
posted evening of Wednesday, October 31st, 2007
➳ More posts about The Novices of Sais
➳ More posts about Philosophy
➳ More posts about Novalis
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➳ More posts about The Blue Flower
➳ More posts about Penelope Fitzgerald
your header attributed
the novalis quote to
penelope fitzgerald.
i went back to check
and saw another quote
altogether ... hmmm.
anyway, there's a bug
in there somewhere.
posted afternoon of November second, 2007 by vlorbik
wait. you meant it.
fitzgerald cribbed novalis.
but if the quote keeps changing
how's anybody gonna know
what you're on about even if
they *do* read the doggone post
before flying off the handle
with random senseless corrections?
....hmmm?
posted afternoon of November second, 2007 by v again
oh. you've gotta actually
*follow the links*!
boy, this is devious.
keep 'em coming.
posted afternoon of November second, 2007 by not sayin'
random senseless corrections
That's what it's all about, man.
posted afternoon of November second, 2007 by Jeremy
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