O.Wilde, Preface to 'The Picture of Dorian Gray'

The artist is the creator of beautiful things. (...)
Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.
Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope.
They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty.
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all. (...)
No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything. (...)
All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.
Those who read the symbol do so at their peril.
It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.
Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital.
When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself...

O. Wilde (1854-1900),
Preface to 'The Picture of Dorian Gray'


Saturday, May 21, 2011

Dante, The Divine Comedy, Hell, II, 1-9

LA DIVINA COMMEDIA  di  Dante Alighieri


INFERNO

Canto II
(Inizio della discesa & invocazione alle Muse)

   Lo giorno se n'andava, e l'aere bruno
toglieva li animai che sono in terra
da le fatiche loro; e io sol uno

   m'apparecchiava a sostener la guerra
sì del cammino e sì de la pietate,
che ritrarrà la mente che non erra.

   O muse, o alto ingegno, or m'aiutate;
o mente che scrivesti ciò ch'io vidi,
qui si parrà la tua nobilitate.


G. Doré


The Divine Comedy

by  Dante Alighieri

[translated  by  James Finn Cotter]


HELL
Canto II
(The beginning of the descent & the invocation to the Muses)

Day was now fading, and the dusky air
          Released the creatures dwelling here on earth
          From tiring tasks, while I, the only one,
 
            Readied myself to endure the battle
          Both of the journey and the pathos,
          Which flawless memory shall here record.
 
            O Muses, O high genius, aid me now!
          O memory that noted what I saw,
          Now shall your true nobility be seen!

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