(Source: marilynne)
I think writers were viewed and treated as far more powerful beings in the nineteenth century than they are today and that we can feel their awareness of that power in the prose from that time. The twentieth century has seen the cultural disenfranchisement of fiction writers for reasons we all know—film, TV, the Internet. But to read a novel by Zola or Dickens or George Eliot is to encounter—in different forms, of course—a loose, swaggering, charming, flexible narrative voice. It’s a voice that has a bewitching authority. I wish there were more swagger in contemporary fiction, but I suppose it’s hard to swagger when one feels in constant danger of marginalization and obsolescence. Even a swagger might not read like a swagger anymore.
JABBERWOCKY
by Lewis Carroll
`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”
He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought —
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.
And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
“And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!’
He chortled in his joy.
`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
(from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872)
Once you label me you negate me.
(Source: warholian)
(via my0nlysunshinee)
In a world of injustice, justice may never sleep.
Like a wound on the sideLike a thorn in the heart
Like the sweet, sad song sung by the dying lark
Like a fast, cheery brook
Running down the hill
Only to be frozen by winter’s first chill
Like the foam on the tide of the miserable sea
Tear blinded eyes unable to see
Its hard to explain these secrets untold
And harder still to understand the pain of the soul.
