Why is it that all those who have become eminent in philosophy or politics or poetry or the arts are clearly of an atrabilious temperament, and some of them to such an extent as to be affected by diseases caused by black bile, as is said to have happened to Heracles among the heroes? -- Aristotle, Problemata XXX.1 953a10-14
-- (Video discovered first at Passages)
"On that first day of November in 1980, preoccupied as I was with my notes and the ever widening and contracting circles of my thoughts, I became enveloped by a sense of utter emptiness and never once left my room. It seemed to me then that one could well end one’s life simply through thinking and retreating into one’s mind, for, although I had closed the windows and the room was warm, my limbs were growing progressively colder and stiffer with my lack of movement, so that when at length the waiter arrived with the red wine and sandwiches I had ordered, I felt as if I had already been interred or laid out for burial, silently grateful for the proffered libation, but no longer capable of consuming it." -- WG Sebald, Vertigo
"When we heard that, we were ashamed, and refrained our tears; and he walked about until, as he said, his legs began to fail, and then he lay on his back, according to the directions, and the man who gave him the poison now and then looked at his feet and legs; and after a while he pressed his foot hard and asked him if he could feel; and he said, no; and then his leg, and so upwards and upwards, and showed us that he was cold and stiff." -- Phaedo
"Demo Antiwar 1," by Chris Marker, part of "Staring Back" exhibition at Peter Blum Studios, New York, through November 3rd.
"And one day, when I am a grey-haired boy, may spring and the morning
and the evening light rejuvenate me a little more each day, until I
feel the last and sit down in the open air and from there go away, to
eternal youth." -- Friedrich Holderlin, July 1799
They are very much our royalty:
"It is only through the ones who question that the truth of being becomes a distress. They are the genuine believers, because in opening themselves up to what is ownmost to truth, they maintain their bearing to the ground.” -- Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy
